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Roderick

Feminism

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With the FYC, I did a bit more reading after my original post, and I can't find any evidence that anyone involved with it has any history with video game production.  It's a visual effects and design studio doing the work, which is great for concept art, but poor for game design.  It appears to be a guy (Matthew Rappard) who founded it, but you won't find his name on any of the official pages nor is it easy to find information about what kind of experience he has with a project like this or video game production. 

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/v/ designed a female character that was tasteful. What is your point in mentioning that? Because honestly, /v/ is so wildly vitriolic that literally the only reason they developed that character is so that suckers who believe that they're being earnest can use it as ammunition to defend them. Or in other words, they did it to piss off their critics and make it so a surface level survey of their intentions reveal "feminism" instead of "attention-whoring scam".

 

I like the design a lot, because I'm dumb, but 4chan does have a history of being decent when it wants to be, and you're totally right that you don't get a prize in feminism for creating a character that is not a disgusting sex-doll caricature for once. Other boards like /x/ have had non-sexy girl mascots for years, but that doesn't stop them from contributing to a very ugly misogynistic atmosphere at times.

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I'm sure this has been mentioned already, but I'm really enjoying Tim Schafer's responses to people getting mad at him for tweeting about the latest Feminist Frequency video. He's basically just calling them out for their idiocy. This is the kind of thing I've long dreamed of. I hope other high-profile male developers get in on this action. Someone like Cliffy B, maybe. Although I know he's said some... questionable stuff before, but man. Can you imagine the backlash if he openly supported Feminist Frequency? Or fucking Gabe Newell? We get enough dudes in the press doing it already, and it's clear that the anti-feminism crowd think the press are fighting against the developers for whatever stupid reason. It's time for developers to prove them wrong. C'moooooon please.

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If Gabe Newell — christ-like "savior" figure for the masses of horrible "PC master race" gamer man-children — publicly supported "feminism" in any capacity I would be so happy.

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Unfortunately, I suspect Gaben knows a little too well who butters his bread to ever speak up about any of this. ):

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He's been pissing them off for years with HL3, don't see how this would change much.  What are they going to do, not use Steam?

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Unfortunately, I suspect Gaben knows a little too well who butters his bread to ever speak up about any of this. ):

 

I doubt his menservants would quite because of it.

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Your point is good, but for the sake of argument: yeah, they could migrate to one of the other game platforms that exist now.

 

Of course I don't actually believe that would happen. And even more "of course" I'd love Gabe to surprise me.

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If you're going to make statements like this, don't end them with this obvious out. Stand by your accusations.

I do. I just wonder the length of the resulting arugment. Look, the replies are here already.

 

[...] I can see how an (alleged) attempt to shut down a game development competition could make you view Quinn as something of an asshole, but I don't really see how that compares to having an eight thousand-word rant divulging (and possibly inventing) your personal life in the most unflattering light possible, experiencing systematic harassment and death threats, and generally being made into a strawman for everyone's pet gripe against games journalism for weeks on end.

 

Is it just that you don't have a name and face to attach to all of that assholery that makes Quinn's behavior feel more egregious? This is what I mean about how the internet could make any of us look bad if it wanted to do so. I'm just lucky that I'm not successful or female enough to attract its toxic gaze.

I never brought up her personal life (see after next quote) and games journalism, just the way she sabotaged TFYC's project.

 

I'm not sure sure about what you mean with the second part. Just because she's the victim of a controversy that shouldn't exist doesn't excuse her from the other thing (that is a public matter) she did. And because it came to light that she's responsible to a degree, yes of course I'm going to dislike her for that.

 

I'm reading this as "She deserves it."

What am I doing wrong here?

I don't know, maybe you're expecting me to feel that way just because I said I don't like her. But the two opinions can be completely separate. Just so noone feels the need to speculate about my views on this or try to dismiss legit criticism towards her as victim blaming, I think that the details (fictional or not) about her personal life being made public, the now sadly standard death and rape threats and the harrassment are as inappropriate as you do. Of course she didn't deserve it.

 

If the personal life thing never came to light, I probably would never have heard of the FYC thing either, in which case I wouldn't be writing this now because the project may have stayed buried. If this was only a matter of her personal life and the games journalism thing, and she hadn't interacted destructively with TFYC, I 100% wouldn't be writing this now.

 

In addition to what Bjorn said, a "game jam" such as that one exploits women in the same way that artists are exploited in various avenues by people potentially "giving them a chance for people to see their work". There are any number of examples, but one of the most immediate that comes to mind is when a tech startup decides to post a "contest" on social media - design us a logo and the best one gets $100 (or whatever, just imagine this is a fair rate for designing a logo in that industry)! If they manage to sucker 10 artists that each spend two hours designing them a logo, they basically get 20 hours of work for the price of 2 hours. One artist gets paid while nine did a lot of work for nothing.

 

In this case, there's not even a promise of $100 at the end. There's a revenue share agreement that pays a paltry 8% of profits. That's generous if you assume the game even makes a profit. Who are the Fine Young Capitalists to promise that the game will be a success? A massive majority of indie games break even or make a very small profit, particularly if you're talking about a small team with a small scope game.

Isn't that how contests usually work? Winner gets the best prize, while the runner-ups get less, sometimes nothing. Maybe I'm being naive and my opinions are being colored, but I still think they should be allowed to take part in the contest. Isn't it considered a problem that there aren't enough women working in the video game industry, and wouldn't this give the potential opportunity to get some names out there? It would be fantastic if lots of women could conjure up tons of experience and credentials, and break into the field so that they would be equally represented.

 

Any of these women, as well as any others out there, are free to make their own indie game, promote it and keep 100% of the profits! I don't see why this project shouldn't be allowed to exist unless it's guaranteed to be a huge financial success, and I especially don't see why its existence should be decided by some people who already have a foothold in the field.

 

/v/ designed a female character that was tasteful. What is your point in mentioning that? Because honestly, /v/ is so wildly vitriolic that literally the only reason they developed that character is so that suckers who believe that they're being earnest can use it as ammunition to defend them. Or in other words, they did it to piss off their critics and make it so a surface level survey of their intentions reveal "feminism" instead of "attention-whoring scam".

 

This is a quote from the thing I linked in the previous post

And to anyone trying to take away 4chan's donations by calling them 'spiteful'...hello? Do you remember how you all threw money at Anita Sarkeesian to spite the mean trolls harassing her? That money was given out of spite, but you STILL BELIEVED IN HER CAUSE. People don't just open their wallets out of pure spite to the tune of 30 [i think the 4chan share of that is about $13k] thousand dollars. If the cause of feminism in gaming was REALLLY so abhorrent to ALL of 4chan, then they wouldn't give money, period. Imagine asking me to give money to some pro-life group just because it would spite one of the cretins who posts NSFW photos on my blog posts. I'd NEVER do it and don't pretend a lot of you would either. There has to be some underlying sympathy.

And I brought up the character because they could've designed it to be pretty much anything. Once the amount of donations from the 4chan group exceeded $2000, they were allowed to submit a character design that would bypass the judging panel. If they were donating just to troll the feminists, wouldn't THAT have been the perfect spot to create some kind of hateful anti-woman character. My point is not that 4chan is now a bastion and a safe haven for feminism, or even common decency, or that their past, current or future misbehaviour should be excused. I'm saying that they're for once doing a nice thing, and people are being hypocrites by sabotaging a cause they should be supporting just because 4chan is involved, or (earlier) because they decided that noone else should be allowed to take part either.

 

My point is that being against ZQ's misbehaviours (the relevant ones) doesn't mean being against feminism or women, that it's because of the other (irrelevant / fabricated or not) misbehaviours OR that it means you think "she deserved it".

 

As for the issues of trust for the FYC and Bjorn's points. Yes, be skeptical. I was very skeptical when the Indiegogo page first went down, and I wondered if it was just some elaborate ruse. Noone's forcing anyone to donate to the project, but noone should direct their twitter hordes to take it down either.

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I actually wrote an email to Gabe through Valve's website immediately after my last post here, asking him to speak publicly against sexism and other forms of bullshit in the industry.

 

I don't really expect anything to come of it. But hopefully...

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I never brought up her personal life (see after next quote) and games journalism, just the way she sabotaged TFYC's project.

 

I'm not sure sure about what you mean with the second part. Just because she's the victim of a controversy that shouldn't exist doesn't excuse her from the other thing (that is a public matter) she did. And because it came to light that she's responsible to a degree, yes of course I'm going to dislike her for that.

 

My issue is not you disagreeing with Quinn's behavior, which I think is perfectly valid considering how little is known about the full actions and involvement of both parties. My issue is you choosing not to address the brutal abuse and harassment of Quinn, in favor of pointing out that she was a somewhat impolitic critic of another project involving women, and thereby declaring that you're closer to 4chan's side than Quinn's. It comes too close to taking the stalking and death threats perpetrated against women as a given that should be ignored when determining fault, which is something with which I can never be okay.

 

My real concern with these incidents is that we invariably get trapped to some degree in comparing the best and most laudable motives of the perpetrator (ignoring the bullying and intimidation that supports it) with the dirtiest and most questionable sins of the victim (ignoring the willingness of the Internet Hate Machine to bend the truth). What does that accomplish? We all have dumb or shitty things we've done that could be inflated into evil-sounding conspiracies by an Imgur user with sufficient imagination, but why the hell should we have to spend any time at all weighing whether the victim of heinous online assaults is a good person or not anyway?

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Isn't that how contests usually work? Winner gets the best prize, while the runner-ups get less, sometimes nothing. Maybe I'm being naive and my opinions are being colored, but I still think they should be allowed to take part in the contest. Isn't it considered a problem that there aren't enough women working in the video game industry, and wouldn't this give the potential opportunity to get some names out there? It would be fantastic if lots of women could conjure up tons of experience and credentials, and break into the field so that they would be equally represented.

 

Any of these women, as well as any others out there, are free to make their own indie game, promote it and keep 100% of the profits! I don't see why this project shouldn't be allowed to exist unless it's guaranteed to be a huge financial success, and I especially don't see why its existence should be decided by some people who already have a foothold in the field.

 

Winner gets the best prize, potentially and most likely nothing. Runners-up definitely get nothing. In exchange for probably nothing and nothing, they get to spend their time and effort. That being said, what did Quinn do to not make this thing a possibility? Someone hacked their page, but there's absolutely no evidence that it was Quinn herself and I don't think you could make a compelling argument that she was responsible for it in any way. She's not stopping anyone from participating, but shedding light on a scam. Just like I wouldn't try to stop any artists from spending hours of unpaid time to hope to win a one-time contest on Twitter - people have talent and a lot of artists don't have a steady source of income, so they'll try anything to make some money. But I sure as shit would call out the company that's trying to exploit that need through a "contest" that gives them hundreds of man hours of work at bargain price.

 

This next part is conjecture, but I'll go for it anyways - ideas and producers/directors have almost no value in games. Why? Well, a whole lot of shit has to go into games to make them into reality. Tons of kids want to grow up and make games, but very few of them do because almost nobody just "makes games". I mean, Tom Bissell, Terry Cavanaugh, Phil Fish, and Jonathan Blow did, but they're also insane workaholics who spent thousands of hours making their games. I don't really see what the value could be for a person who has no technical skill to get their ideas out there, because everyone's ideas are out there.

 

I really don't think there's a "get experienced and successful quick" scheme that could work for developing games. You'd have to do a lot to convince me that this project could have "conjured up tons of experience and credentials" that would have magically made it able for these people to make a living selling games. People spend years and years trying to achieve that through education and sweat and they don't succeed.

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My issue is not you disagreeing with Quinn's behavior, which I think is perfectly valid considering how little is known about the full actions and involvement of both parties. My issue is you choosing not to address the brutal abuse and harassment of Quinn, in favor of pointing out that she was a somewhat impolitic critic of another project involving women, and thereby declaring that you're closer to 4chan's side than Quinn's. It comes too close to taking the stalking and death threats perpetrated against women as a given that should be ignored when determining fault, which is something with which I can never be okay.

 

My concern with these incidents is that we invariably get trapped to some degree in comparing the best and most laudable motives of the perpetrator (ignoring the bullying and intimidation that comes with it) with the dirtiest and most questionable sins of the victim (ignoring the willingness of the Internet Hate Machine to bend the truth). What does that accomplish? We all have dumb or shitty things we've done that could be inflated into evil-sounding conspiracies by an Imgur user with sufficient imagination, but why the hell should we have to spend any time weighing whether the victim of heinous online assaults is a good person or not anyway?

 

Aren't you just doing the same thing he is, just from the opposite site? Quinn being harassed doesn't excuse whatever shitty things she's done, just as the shitty things she's done doesn't excuse the harassment.

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The harassers are the ones who are presenting the "evidence" that she's doing shitty things. They are not a credible source of information.

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Not everyone critical of Ms. Quinn are the people telling her to kill herself on twitter, unless you're saying the FYC and people like that are secretly behind it all?

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That's your evidence? Vocal criticism = sabotage? I think I might have hurt my eyes rolling them too hard.

 

Did you not get the memo? Governments and similar institutions are incredibly fragile and any intrepid indie game developer could cripple one by throwing shade on twitter.

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Not everyone critical of Ms. Quinn are the people telling her to kill herself on twitter, unless you're saying the FYC and people like that are secretly behind it all?

 

I didn't come close to saying anything like that.

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Not everyone critical of Ms. Quinn are the people telling her to kill herself on twitter, unless you're saying the FYC and people like that are secretly behind it all?

 

Those people have picked an extraordinarily bad time to air their supposedly legitimate complaints against Quinn, is what I have to say. Bringing them up now, when Quinn is receiving threats on her life, cannot be interpreted as anything but an interest in pouring fuel on the fire, now that Quinn has been made a victim. Also, I'm sure you're not painting moral equivalency between, on the one hand, allegations of someone's private sex life and a couple dozen critical tweets they made of an single event and, on the other hand, systematic and extreme abuse of an individual by a large group of anonymous people both on the internet and in real life over the course of several weeks. One of these things is what we've been discussing, and the other has been brought up repeatedly even though its connection to the first one is superficial and tenuous.

 

Personally, I am tired of the small misdemeanors we all commit in our daily lives being brought up "incidentally" or "for context" when the internet decides to try and ruin the life of another woman. How is anything Quinn does or has done relevant to the issue of her harassment? If it is not relevant, why bring it up in this thread, except to appear more "fair-minded" on the issue of whether we should brutalize women who've made the dangerous choice of becoming public figures? Disliking someone is a personal matter, but opposing our culture of violence and intimidation against women is anything but.

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On the topic of The Fine Young Capitalists, I've been really wary about that whole topic ever since the initial allegation, because the guy from TYFC who makes the claim strongly insinuates that Zoe Quinn used her Gaming's Feminist Cabal connections to have them blacklisted, which is an immediate red flag. 

 

He also has timeline problems since he seems to try to insinuate that their contest was attacked to preserve interest in Rebel Jam, Zoe Quinn's planned game jam.  Rebel Jam became a thing in the aftermath of the Game_Jam debacle, which happened around a month after she spoke out about TYFC.

 

I've felt for awhile like there are certain behaviors that our society has gendered (being emotional, complaining and gossiping) and that the gendering of those behaviors contributes to men (some men, #notallmen) being relatively blind to those behaviors when they or other men engage in them.  In the reactions to Sarkeesian, or the mob going after Quinn, you can see men (manbabies) just being emotional as fuck, like complete temper-tantrum freakouts, but they accuse other people of being too emotional, seeing their own emotions as calm, rational behavior.  They complain about women like Sarkeesian criticizing gaming, viewing her work as being nothing but one big complaint, without being able to see their own behavior.  And a lot of the stuff around Quinn is similar to very traditional gossip, and you can see people dig on Sarkeesian to try and get gossip material on her.  And the gossip even fulfills a similar purpose, of identifying those who violate the shared group norms and punishing them.

 

It's not a thing I just see online, I see it all over in my regular life too.  I feel like its a really pervasive attitude that runs through our culture.

 

It's not directly related, but this reminds me a lot of my basic theory that the root of a whole lot of anger and conflict coming from members of the societally preferred class who are lashing out about losing that status basically stems from projection.  They can't actively admit that the favored group has received preferential treatment, but at some unconscious level they do accept that it has happened.  Their fear, which causes them to lash out, stems from the belief that the new order that will be established when they're not in control is going to behave like they did, except this time they get to be on the wrong end of the marginalization and harassment.

 

Thus, you have the folks who are harassing Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian because they fear that the end of the reign of patriarchy in video games will lead to them being marginalized and harassed like women are today.  The same goes for MRAs with gender issues outside of just the scope of video games, and the same goes for white supremacists and their fears of the loss of white dominance over culture. 

 

(And if you ever get stuck in a place playing awful right-wing talk radio, as I have been from time to time here in Texas, looking at their arguments through the lens of projection can be very instructive and a way to stay sane.)

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I don't agree that fact she's a woman is the only reason for the backlash against her, although that is part of it for some of them obviously. People have legitimate (From my view, of course. Few here share it.) reasons to be, not vitriolic, but suspicious and critical of Zoey Quinn, and of course that doesn't means she deserves abuse, but she does deserve public scrutiny for her actions. I feel like the fact she is woman under attack by mean people in the internet (gasp!) is being used to shut by her and her supporters, knowingly or not, to shut down all criticism, not just the sexist assholes. Which ultimately just polarizes everything and harms the feminist cause. 

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DJApmG5.jpg

As an aside, I was unaware of the FYC until this whole thing, but that these have quickly become the public faces of the 'reasonable gamer' push-back against the corrupting SJW influence is just ... I lack the words to describe how incredibly perfect it is. Sometimes caricatures are real, folks.

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I don't agree that fact she's a woman is the only reason for the backlash against her, although that is part of it for some of them obviously. People have legitimate (From my view, of course. Few here share it.) reasons to be, not vitriolic, but suspicious and critical of Zoey Quinn, and of course that doesn't means she deserves abuse, but she does deserve public scrutiny for her actions. I feel like the fact she is woman under attack by mean people in the internet (gasp!) is being used to shut by her and her supporters, knowingly or not, to shut down all criticism, not just the sexist assholes. Which ultimately just polarizes everything and harms the feminist cause.

 

if by "mean people in the internet" you mean "criminals who hacked her banking information and attempted to invade her own home" (gasp!)

 

 

(I'm not having this discussion; I just wanted to object to what a trifling description of some incredibly fucked up shit that is)

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I don't agree that fact she's a woman is the only reason for the backlash against her, although that is part of it for some of them obviously. People have legitimate (From my view, of course. Few here share it.) reasons to be, not vitriolic, but suspicious and critical of Zoey Quinn, and of course that doesn't means she deserves abuse, but she does deserve public scrutiny for her actions. I feel like the fact she is woman under attack by mean people in the internet (gasp!) is being used to shut by her and her supporters, knowingly or not, to shut down all criticism, not just the sexist assholes. Which ultimately just polarizes everything and harms the feminist cause. 

 

You realize that the inciting event for the so-called scrutiny of Quinn was an extremely long series of 4chan posts by an ex-boyfriend about her supposedly scandalous sex life, which involved "seducing" multiple male journalists for unspecified but nefarious purposes? Gradually, people have brought up what could potentially be considered legitimate issues against Quinn, but they are contained entirely within the preexisting rhetorical framework of an evil woman using her vagina to poison games journalism. Surely those people are aware that their comments will be associated with the current harassment and abuse? I don't know, TYFC could have made their complaints months ago, but they chose to do so now, exploiting the rage against Quinn in the less progressive areas of the internet for presumably selfish purposes. If it was really just poor timing that had them decide six months after the fact to make accusations, right when Quinn is going through hell because an angry ex whipped up an internet mob, then they have my most sincere condolences, but somehow I doubt that's the case.

 

Here's the thing. If you don't want to be associated with the bottom-feeders struggling to assassinate Quinn's character, just... I don't know, wait another month, then make your own post explaining the events in a reasonable manner? Surely, if Quinn's crimes have kept all this time, they can wait a few weeks more until she isn't the ongoing victim of a public terror campaign.

 

 

EDIT: And yeah, what tegan said. What harms the feminist cause is the failure to oppose misogynist terror tactics wherever they occur, not the failure to foster a perfectly open dialogue at all times. First, put out the burning house, then decide whether it was in danger of spreading.

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