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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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So Brad Wardell, Stardock CEO and known asshole, is appearing in this wonderful little film:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAkWjT6Oops

 

I know there was some discussion about this in the Offworld Trading Co. thread, but has anyone discussed this with Soren Johnson? It seems like there's a pretty big disconnect between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Wardell's politics. Sure, Offworld Trading Co. is clearly a good fit for Stardock in a traditional sense, but is it okay to do business with someone as destructive to the positive evolution of games and gaming culture?

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I know there was some discussion about this in the Offworld Trading Co. thread, but has anyone discussed this with Soren Johnson? It seems like there's a pretty big disconnect between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Wardell's politics. Sure, Offworld Trading Co. is clearly a good fit for Stardock in a traditional sense, but is it okay to do business with someone as destructive to the positive evolution of games and gaming culture?

 

I have seen people try to discuss it with Soren Johnson, and so far he has avoided the question. Obviously we can't know what he's thinking, but I suspect he's not a fan of Wardell's politics (or perhaps he is, but recognizes that expressing it publicly may be a bad idea), and working with Stardock is mostly a marriage of convenience.

 

To answer the philosophical question, I think it is okay to do business with someone like that. It means Brad Wardell gets some more money, but I don't think that's damaging to games a whole. Brad Wardell already has $X, where X is not small, I can't imagine that him having $1.5X would result in him doing anything worse than he's already doing. Maybe one could argue that Wardell is a bad person and does not deserve to get more money, but you seem to be talking more about the big picture than individuals.

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Continuing to do business with him just legitimizes his platform for hateful speech, I think. Sure, the whole GG thing continues to wane and appears to mostly be an echo chamber of stupidity, but it seems fairly disingenuous for Mr. Johnson to retweet Peter Moore's pro-fem remarks regarding misogyny directed at the announcement of women players in this year's FIFA game while concurrently sidling up to a creep like Wardell.

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But his platform is already legitimized. What does working with Johnson give him that he doesn't already have? How is Wardell going to do more damage now than in the hypothetical world where Johnson found someone else to work with?

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It's also worth noting that they dragged Jack Thompson up from whatever pit he's been hiding in and that makes me laugh and laaaaaaaugh.

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He might do less damage in that world because once his shitty politics actually make developers avoid the company, Stardock is increasingly likely to get rid of him, at which point he would be just one more incredibly sexist dude adjacent to games rather than a sexist dude directly in games that might get in the way of women trying to make games.

 

It's hard to judge people in individual cases when you don't really know the whole story or why they may be unable to leave or discuss a partnership even though they might really want to, but on a bigger scale, it's a really big issue that there's practically no consequence in this industry to being an incredibly sexist or otherwise discriminatory dirtbag. It's like how TB is a complete garbage golem but indie devs will still mostly try and play nice with him because he promises that sweet exposure.

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It's also worth noting that they dragged Jack Thompson up from whatever pit he's been hiding in and that makes me laugh and laaaaaaaugh.

 

Jesus, Jack Thompson? He was The Enemy, Sauron, he was literally coming to take away our videogаmes. And now GG has a narrative about how the bad people are coming to take away our videogаmes, and they're siding with Jack Thompson. Nevermind the combination of hypocrisy and tone-deafness necessary for that, how are the kind of people who get GG-level angry able to stomach working with possibly the only person who was ever gaming's antagonist?

 

 

He might do less damage in that world because once his shitty politics actually make developers avoid the company, Stardock is increasingly likely to get rid of him, at which point he would be just one more incredibly sexist dude adjacent to games rather than a sexist dude directly in games that might get in the way of women trying to make games.

 

It's hard to judge people in individual cases when you don't really know the whole story or why they may be unable to leave or discuss a partnership even though they might really want to, but on a bigger scale, it's a really big issue that there's practically no consequence in this industry to being an incredibly sexist or otherwise discriminatory dirtbag. It's like how TB is a complete garbage golem but indie devs will still mostly try and play nice with him because he promises that sweet exposure.

 

With TB, it's a bit of a monopoly issue. He is (I'm not well informed and could be wrong here) the biggest Youtube reviewer by a large margin, and reviews are necessary to sell an indie game, so you work with TB because he's the only (big) game in town. There has to be an infectious disease joke in there somewhere.

 

In general though, would you say the games industry has more of a problem with that than anywhere else? Rewind a year to before an internet argument had everyone in the industry eager to shout their opinion, did games not have the same level of letting-people-be-shitty that every other industry does?

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He might do less damage in that world because once his shitty politics actually make developers avoid the company, Stardock is increasingly likely to get rid of him, at which point he would be just one more incredibly sexist dude adjacent to games rather than a sexist dude directly in games that might get in the way of women trying to make games.

 

This is pretty much a pipe dream.  Wardell basically is Stardock.  He's President, CEO, and founder of the company.  The HR employee who gets to help fashion the narrative about internal events at the company is Wardell's wife.  The chances of him being forced out of a still-functional Stardock are slim to none.

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This is pretty much exactly why I haven't bought Offworld although it looks like it's very much my bag otherwise. Mr. Wardell crossed the won't support line for me quite some time ago. Sad too, I used to be a huge STardock fan since the Galciv 2 days.

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I'm not a big fan of the 'boycott for opinion' approach. It reeks far too much of gamergate itself.

 

I've stopped following the wacky exploits of Mr. Wardell some time ago. I've read his central interview though... the one where he fantasizes about 95%+ of all 'core' gamers being male... which is not even true for his own strategy games, and these indeed are the genre with least female interest...

 

Looking forward to the Sarkeesian Effect. No, seriously, for several reasons. Paul Elam interviews are always hilarious. Put Roosh in there as well (and they surely have done that, no doubt about it, interviewed by Aurini because Owen hates his guts) and you have gamergate put in exactly the corner they've protested their asses off to not be in.

 

I don't consider gamergate to be primarily misogynist – or rather, implicitly more than overtly – but when two misogynist pricks are making a movie and are inviting their misogynist friends to elaborate on their "views", that's something you can shove in the movement's face for all eternity. We may even see some gaters protesting that these people don't speak for them. Also, any kind of concrete accusation and definition of the "Social Justice Warrior" enemy concept may help to disprove the existence and at the same time dissect the techniques of constant dehumanization applied by no one in a more extremist way than Davis Aurini.

 

(By the way: TotalBiscuit may be a prime gamergate agitator, yet for once, kudos for his Hatred review... focusing on the gameplay and finding it incredibly wanting)

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So do many. But I somehow doubt we'll even see a single shot from inside Aurini's apartment. After all, he bought a car from backer money so he could reach all his interview partners... :)

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I'm not a big fan of the 'boycott for opinion' approach. It reeks far too much of gamergate itself.

If that was all that gamergate did I would have no problem with them. Don't buy games by people you find reprehensible and otherwise don't be a bother? Yes please.

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Hey, I even intend to buy Armikrog. :)

 

You're right of course. Individual buying decisions can hinge on an assessment of the creator's character. What just rubs me the wrong way is organized boycott. The literal "vote with your wallet, people".

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I'm fine with the idea of deciding not to buy something because you disagree with a creator or company's principles. I dunno if you wanna take that as endorsing the idea of boycotts or not. I don't think of it as such, but I guess it probably is.

 

I guess I just haven't found a piece of art or product that I feel is more valuable to me than the idea of, say, "all people should be treated like human beings."

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Yeah, I know there's no ethical consumption under capitalism but I'm completely okay with putting my money into people and shit that I like vs. Brad Wardell (though this is a non-issue, I still don't even know what he makes or does.) It's not a boycott if it's a personal choice you make for your own money. 

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I mean, I don't eat Chik Fil-A, either. Y'all do what you want, I'm not really interested in telling anyone what they should or shouldn't do with their money, but I'd feel like a worse person if my money was going to support Brad Wardell. Fuck that guy, frankly.

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I feel like there is a difference with making a personal choice to not support a product because of attached people having especially distasteful opinions and maybe educating others on the harmful ideas.

As far as I'm aware, boycotts are specifically about organising a mass of people to act as one.

I'm not going to try and stop everyone from giving sales to Stardom. At most, I'll inform them of why I've decided to avoid it and leave it there.

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I don't see an issue with boycotting somebody so spectacularly vile (hence why I made the personal decision not to buy Offworld Trading Company, or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for that matter), except that people often make these decisions thinking they now fixed everything when really whatever alternatives they end up directing their support to instead are still ethically questionable, if possibly to a slightly smaller degree. Because capitalism is a totalizing system, and as Apple Cider already said, there's no ethical consumerism possible under it.

 

Different example of this would be recent calls to boycott Patreon over some vile stuff that's hosted on there, a move which would inevitably hurt creators more than the platform, and not even any of the people folk are meaning to hit, since nobody who cares strongly enough about that kind of thing to withdraw money would have been supporting gross shit in the first place. And even after that, where is the money you are not giving the platform anymore going, really? Probably not something great.

 

So I don't begrudge anybody their decision to choose supporting Soren Johnson over also supporting Brad Wardell in the same move. But also "things are never going to change anyway" isn't a position I personally ever want to base any decisions on.

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I'm sure I've said this in another thread at some point, but with the case of OTC specifically, I'm willing to give Soren some leeway and don't begrudge anyone for buying it.

 

There were some signs pointing towards Wardell being an asshat years ago, but he didn't go full on dirtbag (as far as I know) until gamergate.  And in business, sometimes you work with people who are asshats.  Soren's business partnership with Wardell predates gamergate by at least a year (and probably more, that's just when Mohawk was announced). 

 

I'm not going to be as generous with my opinion of anyone who elects to go into business with Wardell now though. 

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I don't see an issue with boycotting somebody so spectacularly vile (hence why I made the personal decision not to buy Offworld Trading Company, or The Vanishing of Ethan Carter for that matter), except that people often make these decisions thinking they now fixed everything when really whatever alternatives they end up directing their support to instead are still ethically questionable, if possibly to a slightly smaller degree. Because capitalism is a totalizing system, and as Apple Cider already said, there's no ethical consumerism possible under it.

 

I don't see Chmielarz as spectacularly vile, he's just a tool like Mark Kern, hoping to get something out of it. Sooner or later I'd like to experience his creation, if only to see if it lives up to his claims of having found the holy grail of storytelling via games. It's quite an egomaniac position from which he slanders critics and questions their knowledge of basic narrative principles...  let's just say, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter would have to be an extraordinary game with an extraordinary story, and from what I've seen he fails on count one already. :wacko: 

 

Well, it's the new age of video game sales. Buy a game for less than three bucks and, regardless of Valve's protestations, you don't help the developer in any sensible way.

 

That's what I intend to do with the Astronauts game.

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A real ethics issue in games writing: the widespread and completely fucking bullshit attitude that if you aren't constantly on the verge of peeing your pants with excitement, you aren't doing your job properly.

 

Like this ex-journo ranting about a dismissive preview of the new Rockband Polygon apparently ran, and how the writer needs to learn to show proper love and respect for games, or quit. Why even do this if you don't share the passion? Why even do this if you're not interested in celebrating what you see? Because glob forbid we ever send people to games events who aren't so fucking amazed to just be there they might actually form a critical thought or two. Did you know that there are a million people who would love to have your job? Why aren't you properly enthusiastic?

 

Ugh.

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