Jump to content
JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

Recommended Posts

I'm pretty sure they do have another, paid, security team.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

PAX has paid security - Enforcers aren't intended to be security guards. They are called "Enforcers" I suspect because it sounds cool, but the ones with front-of-house responsibilities are AFAIK basically like any other Con fan support team - primarily there to answer questions and direct people.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

(Also, I think they are paid - although I would think not very much, relative to a licensed and badged security guard.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

PAX's core is run by Reed Expo, which is one of the biggest corporate conference organizers in the country. I don't doubt that they have their own security detail at least for insurance purposes. Small side story: One of my pals runs a largeish nerd convention in Boston, that is truly independent/non-profit, and it seemed like Reed was targeting them with PAX East, which conveniently started popping up during week before their convention for a few years. PAX East was relatively new at the time, and it was surprising to my friends as they had to lock in their dates up to 5 years in advance. 

 

Which is all to say that while the PA team has a lot of faults for their failure to get their minds right, the institutional aspect of PAX is (by my possibly flawed understanding) not run by them. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, it seemed to hurt them a little when it first happened, because parents are only willing supply so much money and an entire weekend to kids nerd pursuits, but they seemed to find an equilibrium.

 

There were some funny organizational issues when they were scheduled for the same weekend because they depleted and overdrafted the entire Boston areas holdings of folding chairs and AV equipment. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

In addition to their paid security guards there was also a significant Boston PD presence at PAX East in past years. I didn't attend this year, but it sounds like that's still the case.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

yeah, after the marathon bombings there was some changes made in police presence, including some heavy advance warnings to attendees to be careful where there going in certain costumes. we had one guy in a VERY well done Solid Snake with "m-16" wander out onto Boylston Street which ended very badly for him. I mean not actually hurt but probably had a solid snake in his trousers. (i'm so sorry)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There's definitely both paid security staff and paid convention centre staff at PAX Aus, and Australia tends to get awfully suspicious of volunteers who turn up to help profit-focused organisations, so technically Enforcers are also paid.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"As a complete ignoramus, it really bothers me when people who spend many years studying media suggest that it has an effect on people without also immediately giving me a personal lecture about their research (which I have never bothered to look at, of course)"

 

Complete Cookie, apparently.

 

The fucking deep-seated irony of people dismissing the humanities as pseudoscience, while also giving their own armchair summary of the field. These people don't even put real effort into their claims! Anyway, here's my view on how the media really works, based on a full five minutes of intense rumination.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

At this juncture, people like him should not and cannot willfully post stuff like this when Google is at their disposal. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The fucking deep-seated irony of people dismissing the humanities as pseudoscience, while also giving their own armchair summary of the field. These people don't even put real effort into their claims! Anyway, here's my view on how the media really works, based on a full five minutes of intense rumination.

 

This guy.  Ugh.

 

I remember when he first emerged as a Starcraft 2 guy, and became a big part of that scene. He basically has an accent and has parlayed that into a small career. Good for him. As someone whose accent has not hurt him working in the US, I can relate. However, all of this crap is either incredibly self-serving (see the way he treats people that criticize him) or just stupid beyond measure. I have read, in one of those bloody twitlongers, him claim that if you think women are "fragile" enough to be affected by a shirt with women on it (the fairly minor "incident" with the British scientist a few months ago) then maybe YOU'RE the sexist one.

 

Which, you know, is juvenile at best. Last night he was whining that radicals were complaining International Women's Day is an hour shorter than other days, pointing out that the clocks hadn't changed outside the US and that it's not always the day the clocks change. He whiffed on the fact that people were sharing that as a joke. Sure, there might have been people complaining, but there's someone out there complaining about pretty much everything, you know? 

 

So, it's conceivable he's a complete dolt. I get most upset by his pretensions to intellectual superiority. The guy lacks even a rudimentary grasp of logic, unfortunately. Now, back to him being self-serving. "Movie" Bob Chipman called him out yesterday on Twitter, and really it was unpleasant and unnecessary, calling 90% of TB's fans dullards.

 

' class="bbc_url">@

...because his fanbase is 90% dullards who don't WANT games to try to be anything more than distractions. So transparent.

— Bob Chipman (@the_moviebob) March 8, 2015

 

Honestly, it was kind of dumb, and exactly the kind of classic teenage finger pointing bullshit that there is already far too much of on the Internet. TB, for his part, pointed out that free speech does not exclude one from a response from the person being criticized (I agree) and then encouraged his followers to harass Chipman.

 

You're all a bunch of fucking idiots, according to a pseudo-intellectual mildly popular movie reviewer. So that's you told.
— TotalBiscuit (@Totalbiscuit)

' class="bbc_url">@

You're all a bunch of fucking idiots, according to a pseudo-intellectual mildly popular movie reviewer. So that's you told.
— TotalBiscuit (@Totalbiscuit)

 

He meanwhile estimates his audience to be two million people, which seems generous. Basically, he argues he is taking the moral high ground while siccing people on another person. He knows damn well there is a core within his audience that will go and give Chipman a hard time. Honestly, I'm fine with him not liking Chipman (as I said, Chipman himself wasn't being particularly polite) but take it up with Chipman yourself.

 

It's just such a classic example of how this whole GG thing has been run from the start. 

 

[EDIT] Sorry that this is a bit of a mess. I'm not used to including tweets embedded in the post. I'd spend more time trying to fix it but I need to stop writing about an awful person and do some work. [/EDIT]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Guys, he has an iq of 135 or something I think he knows better than us.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

"But news media is (supposedly) a completely factual representation of what is actually going on in the real world."

 

"But again, advertising at least to some degree is factual, it's based in the real world on real products."

 

How is this guy posting forward in time from the 50s?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm really confused by this. Not that I don't believe her or agree with her: I'm just don't understand why a department would cut funding for video game research based on GG. I'm in history, not archiving, but in my department GG seems to have greatly increased the interest in video games - or at least "Gamers" - as a topic of study. A hate group forms out of a hobby based on consumption? I can think of like, a dozen dissertations of the top of my head that you could write about that and they'd all be really interesting. I know if I end up doing a PhD, the significance of my topic will trade at least a bit on the impact of GG. Maybe archiving's different, I guess. Maybe if you're focused more on the physical - or digital - objects of vidoe games, it's harder to justify keeping them around when people use them as a launching pad for terrorist activity. But still, that sounds like bullshit to me. Archives keep all sorts of seemingly trivial or hateful stuff. I can't think of how an good archivist - let alone a whole department - could argue that saving video games isn't worthwhile.

 

So yeah, the effect of GG is absolutely shitty here, but her department's also completely in the wrong for being so reticent to let her take up that project, especially since they seem to have been skeptical even before GG.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm really confused by this. 

 

Me too. It's not a question of believing her or not, either, there's just no context. As an historian with an interest in writing about video games, I understand and have experienced the skepticism she discusses. I'm lucky; I have a TT job at an institution where I'm not under huge pressure to get a book or two out in six years. I can therefore (and really need to) write about video games, and push to get work on games into peer-reviewed journals. She's in a more complicated position, but again: it's not clear to me what that position is. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So, it's conceivable he's a complete dolt.

 

Evidence points in that direction. Moviebob's comment may not have been in entirely good faith, but I think his view of TB's fanbase might not be entirely inaccurate, given what the guy brings to the table of game criticism. Plus it's really hypocritical to use the "your argument is not above critique" line as a way to suggest that his own argument remains untouched. Why the concern for people's right to now criticize Moviebob, but not Moviebob's right to criticize TB himself?

 

So yeah, the effect of GG is absolutely shitty here, but her department's also completely in the wrong for being so reticent to let her take up that project, especially since they seem to have been skeptical even before GG.

 

I feel much the same way. I don't doubt her experience with that department, but the yarn into which this has been spun about GG destroying academic interest in games is greatly exaggerated. Anybody who ever got an inside view of academia will tell you that funding and support are notoriously hard to come by and distributed in messed up ways: prestige often factors into it much more strongly than merit. Those stereotypes about games not being worth the effort existed before, and so did the parts of game culture that justified the stereotype in people's minds. It's a stretch to say that GG ruined this just because it gives some people who don't know what they're doing another excuse to keep ignoring games, as if these people wouldn't have found an excuse otherwise.

 

My experience has also been that other departments are increasingly interested in games because of this. Been doing a lot of Gender Studies stuff recently and for them GG is an object worth of study all its own, another network of violent anti-feminism to trace and look into.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So isn't it interesting that the heat is largely being focussed on her rather than the department making those decisions? :(

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I feel much the same way. I don't doubt her experience with that department, but the yarn into which this has been spun about GG destroying academic interest in games is greatly exaggerated. Anybody who ever got an inside view of academia will tell you that funding and support are notoriously hard to come by and distributed in messed up ways: prestige often factors into it much more strongly than merit. Those stereotypes about games not being worth the effort existed before, and so did the parts of game culture that justified the stereotype in people's minds. It's a stretch to say that GG ruined this just because it gives some people who don't know what they're doing another excuse to keep ignoring games, as if these people wouldn't have found an excuse otherwise.

 

Yup, this. It's also worth noting that the academic study of video games, video games culture, history et al. is in nascent form. I, for example, have zero interest in how video games work as a tool for education or study. I am interested in games as primary sources and in particular in the emergence of the communities surrounding video games. I'm interested in writing an article about eSports for example that contextualizes the practice with reference to the emergence of professional sport in the nineteenth century. The fact is, the historiography is non-existent. There is a growing body of work on games in education and, in particular, narratology of games. Not so much in my field just yet. So, there is no accepted "field." Instead, games will feature in many different fields. Of course, if this is being limited to archiving or media studies, that's its own conversation.

 

As for GG "destroying" interest in video games... that makes zero sense to me. Colleagues (across fields) that are dismissive of video games generally become incredibly interested in discussions on GG. I understand the concern, and it's important to highlight it, but without more context I'm not inclined to be overly worried.

 

I'm not sure where the "heat" is, as her feed is full of her own tweets, taking a less than measured approach to the issue. I will say that I am regularly faced with people online that try to explain things to me based on a perusal of wikipedia, which is a little annoying after working towards a PhD. So, people doing that should stop being idiots. At the same time, she should ignore those comments and move on. [EDIT] "She should ignore those comments and move on" is not meant to diminish the fact that it SUCKS when people talk down to you. I mean that more in the sense that she should accept the fact these people know less than her and not waste her energy defending herself when her experience should do that for her.[EDIT]

 

I will say this: the academic market at the moment is brutal. Brutal. I'm sorry she's so far into debt ($100k according to her feed) but the situation is what it is. I would love it if NYU or another research institution chose to put some financial weight behind academic study of video games, but it's not clear what her work is, whether she's the right person to do it, or how it factors into the array of choices available to NYU. The proliferation of adjuncts is a huge issue in academia right now. Her stories of missing meals and medical bills suck, but within the context of thousands of faculty across the country having exactly the same problems despite working in more widely accepted fields of study, they don't add much context.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Irishjohn, you and I should talk. I think our research interests are quite similar.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Irishjohn, you and I should talk. I think our research interests are quite similar.

 

Let's make it happen. Send me a PM with your email. I'm also good friends with Bob Whitaker (@whitakeralmanac), who created and runs the series "History Respawned" on YouTube and just spoke at Pax East.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Some of the things people are saying are certainly melodramatic and come from limited perspective (in her case, of one academic department and some horrible shits on Twitter), but take a spin through her mentions and you'll glimpse an awful shitstorm:

https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%408BitBecca&src=typd

 

I'm significantly less reassured than you.

 

For my part, I still regularly meet people who don't play games at all and, for instance, scoff loudly when they hear a friend of mine just completed a PhD in video games and the sublime. Similarly, I deal with hundreds of developers and not many of them have any understanding of culture or how video games work as a medium outside of industry. "Industry" is deeply coded into their vocabulary, go to phrases and habitual discussions. Nearly every conversation gets dragged back to the selling-focussed methods and perspectives that often alienate non-industry people who work in fields such as academia and art.

 

I'm glad your work and careers seem to be going well. Maybe things are different in your neck of the woods, but when the audience for games and the industry that feeds it are both largely impenetrable and occasionally hostile to outsiders, it's dispiriting. In 2004 I saw an immature industry that didn't really take care of itself or understand its need for a wider foundation. A lot has changed in the intervening decade, yet not that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Been doing a lot of Gender Studies stuff recently and for them GG is an object worth of study all its own, another network of violent anti-feminism to trace and look into.

 

This reminds me that during her talk, Anita Sarkeesian shared that moot had gone to one of her talks and she didn't know, which made the bit where she advised no-one to ever go to 4chan because it's a breeding ground for hate groups really awkward after the fact.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Some of the things people are saying are certainly melodramatic and come from limited perspective (in her case, of one academic department and some horrible shits on Twitter), but take a spin through her mentions and you'll glimpse an awful shitstorm:

https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%408BitBecca&src=typd

 

I'm significantly less reassured than you.

 

Well, I should be clear: my work focuses mostly on cultural identities in the interwar period in China and Taiwan. The study of video games is something I want to become more involved in, and mostly will be able to because I work at a Liberal Arts institution that doesn't demand I write a book on a more "acceptable" topic for tenure. We'll see how that plays out.

 

There's also the wider issue here regarding how society views academia generally, which is an enormous part of the problem with GG. I'm convinced a lot of the GG supporters who have been through college, or are about to go through it, take the extremely harmful view that they only need to acquire skills and that classes with heavy writing components are a "waste of time." I currently teach at a college where such perspectives are rare but I've encountered it in previous jobs and have taught my fair share of computer science and business students that were outright hostile to the idea of thinking critically. It can be terrifying. (I should point out I have had wonderful, wonderful students that majored in these same areas; the typical "what's the point?" students tend to come from these majors though)

 

So yes, that's an issue. However, when I look at those mentions I just see a lot of people talking about something about which they know next to nothing. That doesn't really help her having to deal with it (though whether or not she has to deal with it is an interesting question; one of my problems with twitter is that people feel they have to respond, I know I would feel that way) but it does mean that those criticisms need to be taken with a pinch of salt at least.

 

Basically, an enlightened public discussion of games (see: Feminist Frequency) is not necessarily going to emerge at the same rate as academic discussions of games. Both discussions will cross over, interact and develop in their own ways. I think it's important, for the academic side at least, to understand where those distinctions lie. She's not making it clear to me that she does. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.

×