"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[tegan]

I thought it was filmed on the grassy knoll?

 

It can be two things!

[Blambo]

I just listened to a little bit of totalbiscuit's new rant, and it's kind of weird how he's slowly turning around on certain issues in a way that sounds kind of apologetic, but with bad faith. He kept saying that editorials and "agenda" driven articles and criticisms are necessary and interesting but should be separated and clearly noted, away from the "objective" mechanics focused criticisms (???). It just seems like he's trying to keep his opinions on thematic content wrapped up in a journalistic quality argument  in a way that on the surface gives thematic criticism a fair shake while still relegating it to a lesser form of criticism. He's created two sides to his argument that are both defensible: you can't say that he's being unfair to thematic criticism because that's his "personal preference" but then wraps the opinion up in an absolute statement of how things should be, which he thinks is defensible because it's "objective".

 

It's just really confusing and I don't understand how you can adopt an opinion like this without significant cognitive dissonance.

[Merus]

It's just really confusing and I don't understand how you can adopt an opinion like this without significant cognitive dissonance.

 

Step 1: be paid to be an opinionated asshole

[Gormongous]

Step 1: be paid to be an opinionated asshole

 

Step 2: no true Scotsman all day every day.

[Mangela Lansbury]

He kept saying that editorials and "agenda" driven articles and criticisms are necessary and interesting but should be separated and clearly noted, away from the "objective" mechanics focused criticisms (???).

 

This was a huge part of the harassment of Jenn Frank. Her piece in the Guardian was published under a News > Technology > Games heading, and I saw a lob of hubbub about how it was opinion masquerading as news and it wasn't REALLY news and Jenn Frank should be ashamed of publishing her opinion piece as if it was a 100% factual account and blah blah blah.

 

It sounds like even in his, "I'm not a misogynist!" statement, he's managing to make the coded message, "Yo misogynists, we're cool, right?"

[iaman]

This was a huge part of the harassment of Jenn Frank. Her piece in the Guardian was published under a News > Technology > Games heading, and I saw a lob of hubbub about how it was opinion masquerading as news and it wasn't REALLY news and Jenn Frank should be ashamed of publishing her opinion piece as if it was a 100% factual account and blah blah blah.

 

It sounds like even in his, "I'm not a misogynist!" statement, he's managing to make the coded message, "Yo misogynists, we're cool, right?"

 

Yeah, this seems like the most dangerous thing about (some of) the discussion I've seen from people that are reasonably well-respected within the crowd.

 

Not to conflate this issue with an issue that is *significantly* larger and more pernicious in our culture at large, but there are studies that suggest associating oneself with people who make sexist jokes or allowing oneself to otherwise be exposed to them increases one's likelihood to blame victims for rape and identify or sympathize with rapists. It's a stretch, but it's entirely possible (though unproven) that we are seeing a similar thing happen in this case (Namely: that some of the folks who are well-respected in the crowd for seeming neutral or unbiased may, in fact, have some biases that they themselves cannot possibly speak to due to being neck-deep in a crowd which, at least superficially, has folks being quite sexist or misogynistic (whether these people are trolls or not)).

 

It would be interesting to see a similar study done on this subject in particular, but I dunno how it could be done in a way that wouldn't be accused of painting the crowd in an unfair light, given that every time I've seen them interact with folks bringing up the fact that their tag is full of folks who (trolls or otherwise) are harassing people, they immediately deny that those folks are a part of the movement while simultaneously claiming that the most angry/trollish/hostile elements of the set of people criticizing their movement are representative of everybody who takes issue with their views. It seems like there's a distinct lack of intellectual rigor/honesty in the debate at large, which is distressing given that it was initially started either A ) In response to the Zoe stuff, or B ) In response to a series of articles in response to a bunch of people (whether a part of the movement or not) sending significant amounts of harassment to women in the game dev/journo community (whether or not you believe that happened. For the record, I trust Anita when she tells me that she has been harassed related to this situation, because I could see a whole lot of it all over the internet even before she herself said anything about Zoe's situation, whether they are a part of the movement or not), and one side of the movement seems to be reticent to acknowledge that either A is the case or that B cannot only be treated as a distinct (and, as they assert, colluded) set of pieces and need to be looked at in the context in which they were written, whereas the other side appears to be more or less okay with letting the movement's beginning be defined by either event as long as people don't try to divorce the discussion from its context.

 

Frank discussions about journalistic ethics are things that I want to happen often and loudly (but with civility) in our medium, but it just seems like there's a large amount of people involved in this who are unable (due to living in a society that is actively hostile to them, or just plain not caring, or being trolls) to approach it with honesty and civility. I'd be interested in seeing the absolute most civil, honest, and reasonable voices from games journalism and from folks who honestly take issue with aspects of games journalism have a discussion in a safe space where we can guarantee nobody will be harassed, but that seems like a pipe dream at this point.

 

EDIT: It is amazing how much I contorted my words in this post to make it clear that I am not trying to conflate the trolls with the folks who appear to have legitimate concerns

[Bjorn]

I hate to drag actual ethics into this thread, but hey, it's in the title.
 
Forbes has a breakdown on various reactions to the contracts some YouTubers signed to get their hands on Shadows of Morder early.  And though I've been generally avoiding the Escapist lately, Jim Sterling actually got a copy of the contract and calls out the worst shit in it (the amount of expected control over final content is insane).  And it doesn't look like many places are talking about this.  Neither Joystiq nor Polygon (my main two sites for vidya game news) seem to have posted about it.  And a quick look at #gamergate doesn't seem to pull up much discussion either (to be fair, I only looked for about five minutes before getting disgusted and moving on). 

[Justin Leego]

There is a write up on Kotaku already, so that's something.

[JonCole]

Kotaku's Nathan Grayson wrote a quite in-depth post about it and actually is moving up in terms of pubs I respect, especially with this post regarding the future of the site. Also, The Verge published the anti-GG stance that I really hoped that Polygon would have had the courage to take.

 

That said, I really think that editorial and reviews are the primary focus of Polygon and so I'm not all that surprised that this hasn't been covered yet there.

[Bjorn]

Thanks for those links.  I had seen a mention of the Kotaku editorial direction change, but hadn't actually read it.  I never really cared for Kotaku, something about them historically rubbed me the wrong way.  But the pieces being written there and the decisions they've made in the last few months are genuinely changing the way I think about them.  The editorial change in particular should be interesting.  The rare time I really get hooked for deep, extended amounts of time on a game, one of the things I love about the communities around those games are the things we keep learning for months or years after release.  And that's the kind of stuff that communities know, but that the games press or general fans don't. 

[sclpls]

I never liked Kotaku because Gawker in general always seems pretty skeevy overall, and to add to that they mix in their posts about games with a bunch of posts about some crazy thing from Japan, which is tedious to scroll through, and makes me not really want to check out the site. I hope other places follow their lead though.

[Justin Leego]

Kotaku's Nathan Grayson wrote a quite in-depth post about it and actually is moving up in terms of pubs I respect, especially with this post regarding the future of the site. Also, The Verge published the anti-GG stance that I really hoped that Polygon would have had the courage to take.

 

That said, I really think that editorial and reviews are the primary focus of Polygon and so I'm not all that surprised that this hasn't been covered yet there.

 

Yes, I think the recent timing of the Verge article might be a factor in Polygon's non-reporting over the Shadow of Mordor / YouTuber Coverage topic - any mention could be interpreted as (over-)overkill, and that wouldn't be conducive to open discussion and positive change.

 

What with the Kotaku article being written by Nathan Grayson you can imagine how that is being accepted in some quarters.

[Henroid]

I hate to drag this back to the shit-well, but this popped up on my Twitter feed a moment ago.

 

[tegan]

I had to look up what Thunderclap is, but it looks like it's basically an internet petition site that wishes it was Kickstarter. Eesh.

 

Also, they're at more than 9000 clicks as of this writing, so it's possible that graphic might have made things worse by making more people aware of it...

[Henroid]

I had to look up what Thunderclap is, but it looks like it's basically an internet petition site that wishes it was Kickstarter. Eesh.

 

Also, they're at more than 9000 clicks as of this writing, so it's possible that graphic might have made things worse by making more people aware of it...

That's still a bad sign for them for two reasons.

 

First, it demonstrates how disconnected this "grass roots movement" is. They can't even coordinate to do anything until they're shamed on it in some fashion.

 

Second, there's no way to tell how many of those clicks are being generated by some people putting effort into faking the numbers out.

 

And actually that leads to a third - if it really is a petition style site more than anything, the numbers mean jack shit.

[Christopher]

they're at more than 9000 clicks

 

What's at over 9000 clicks? I don't understand.

 

The Thunderclap is still at 3716. The number does not go up. The site is like Kickstarter, but for coordinating social media. So, basically, you set a minimum number (in this case, 500) and if you meet the minimum number of supporters, Thunderclap will automate a simultaneous tweet by all 500+ supporters. So, basically, today 3716 people simultaneous tweeted some gooberglerp support simultaneously, and that's it. The Thunderclap is over. The number can't be increased, because the campaign ended and the coordinated social message already happened.

 

They were hyping it up pretty seriously as some kind of a game changer amongst themselves and pressuring people to sign up for the past week, so I think 3716 is probably a pretty good estimate of their core support. 

[Denial]

I had to look up what Thunderclap is, but it looks like it's basically an internet petition site that wishes it was Kickstarter. Eesh.

 

Well, it's meant to be a viral promotion enhancer - the idea is that you give it posting privileges for your Twitter account, and at a set time it uses that to tweet the same message from all the accounts that signed up to that "Thunderclap", in the hope of getting the hashtag trending.

 

Of course, there are a couple of problems with that. One is that so much of Gamergate is using either alts or burner accounts, or only set up Twitter accounts to participate in Gamergate and only follow other Gaters, that the actual reach of this "Thunderclap" was in practical terms pretty limited.

 

(Compare with, say, the Phonebloks Thunderclap - genuinely viral, and probably the service's high watermark.)

 

In fact, a third of the 1,800,000 people it was supposed to reach were contributed by three users - Totalbiscuit, Adam Baldwin and Boogie.

[BusbyBerkeley]

"I have always loved video games, I aspire to become an indie developer to have freedom over my creations, I wish to contribute with the industry that helped to define my identity."

 

Man, it's pretty hilarious and rad how none of the gators are, you know, actually involved in games at all save for a few heavy hitting perennial d-bags like totalbiscuit. 

[Blambo]

I know lots of people who are stuck in a quagmire of having an indie identity but lacking the willingness or confidence to learn and do things, who are perfectly capable of doing so. To them making and consuming video games is an identity first and foremost and only maintain themselves to the degree that they can uphold such an identity.

 

Yeah they're mostly male teenagers and college students.

[Bjorn]

I keep thinking that it would make a fascinating project to note down the IDs of a hundred or so gaters (ones who are using established Twitter accounts, or some of the Facebook accounts that have shown up, etc), and then try and talk to a bunch of them about a decade from now, see how they feel about #gamergate 10 years down the road. 

[SuperBiasedMan]

In nine years I'll start a kickstarter for my documentary, "Opening Up the GamerGate".

[Dewar]

Well, it's meant to be a viral promotion enhancer - the idea is that you give it posting privileges for your Twitter account, and at a set time it uses that to tweet the same message from all the accounts that signed up to that "Thunderclap", in the hope of getting the hashtag trending.

 

Of course, there are a couple of problems with that. One is that so much of Gamergate is using either alts or burner accounts, or only set up Twitter accounts to participate in Gamergate and only follow other Gaters, that the actual reach of this "Thunderclap" was in practical terms pretty limited.

 

(Compare with, say, the Phonebloks Thunderclap - genuinely viral, and probably the service's high watermark.)

 

In fact, a third of the 1,800,000 people it was supposed to reach were contributed by three users - Totalbiscuit, Adam Baldwin and Boogie.

 

I can't believe that anyone would sign up to let something like that tweet for you. That's just asking to be hacked.

[tegan]

What's at over 9000 clicks? I don't understand.

 

The Thunderclap is still at 3716. The number does not go up.

 

Oh weird; I swear this number was nine thousand and something the other day.

 

...Maybe a bunch of bot accounts got culled from it or something.

[deleted user]

_

[Blambo]

What's at over 9000 clicks? I don't understand.

 

The Thunderclap is still at 3716. The number does not go up. The site is like Kickstarter, but for coordinating social media. So, basically, you set a minimum number (in this case, 500) and if you meet the minimum number of supporters, Thunderclap will automate a simultaneous tweet by all 500+ supporters. So, basically, today 3716 people simultaneous tweeted some gooberglerp support simultaneously, and that's it. The Thunderclap is over. The number can't be increased, because the campaign ended and the coordinated social message already happened.

 

They were hyping it up pretty seriously as some kind of a game changer amongst themselves and pressuring people to sign up for the past week, so I think 3716 is probably a pretty good estimate of their core support. 

 

"I support single mothers, peace, living space, and veterans. I am #LiterallyHitler."

 

Anyway, here's from the other gamergate thunderclap:

 

As someone who's been tracked down and harassed, at home and at work, by people radicalized by a hateful ideology, and who's personally seen the same — and worse — happen to dozens of #GamerGate & #NotYourShield supporters, I'm appalled by mainstream game journalism's take on the issue. I think it's ridiculous that they're make the baseless allegation that #GamerGate exists to harass two women most of us never even heard of — before the allegations, anyway. We came together out of concern for ethics in gaming journalism and proper representation in the media. We have faced far more harassment and abuse by our detractors than they have even claim to have faced — let alone actually faced — and we don't have Kickstarters/Patreons or daddy's trust fund to fall back on when it hits us home. TELL THE TRUTH: Devs are being blacklisted, women and children are being attacked, writers are being defamed, the only gay gaming convention that exists has been bullied into submission, and more, because of false narratives manufactured by a group of corrupt journalists. We demand an end to this corruption. That's why we stand for #GamerGate & #NotYourShield.