"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[Vainamoinen]

The thing about Yannopoulos is, he's ripping off the gamergaters. With Bain, you at least get the impression that he really believes all that borderline imbecile crap he's coughing up daily. Yannopoulos has made a dishonest turn the second he heard about gamergate. His plainly anti video game articles are still online, if I'm not mistaken. If it serves him in any way, his "book about gamergate" could take a stance against the gamergaters, as in muckraking, as in "My year among stupid kids". But, hey, they're giving him this.

 

 

That's the kind of misplaced devotion kid gamers usually only have for Gabe Newell.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Maybe if we find more plagiarism in Milo's poems, he can be the QR Markham of goober goggle.

 

(that is my favorite piece of news form the publishing industry this decade, i have to find excuses to shoehorn it into conversations, sorry everyone)

[Merus]

Make sure you catch the Thumbs reference.

 

Wait hang on, that has Ern Malley in it.

 

Guys, Milo's mentioned Ern Malley in the first 'poem' which throws the entire enterprise into question. I don't think these poems should be read as actual poems, not as earnest expressions of Milo's soul, anyway.

[Griddlelol]

The thing about Yannopoulos is, he's ripping off the gamergaters. With Bain, you at least get the impression that he really believes all that borderline imbecile crap he's coughing up daily. Yannopoulos has made a dishonest turn the second he heard about gamergate. His plainly anti video game articles are still online, if I'm not mistaken. If it serves him in any way, his "book about gamergate" could take a stance against the gamergaters, as in muckraking, as in "My year among stupid kids". But, hey, they're giving him this.

 

 

That's the kind of misplaced devotion kid gamers usually only have for Gabe Newell.

 

I wonder how many of the high profile gators are in it for a potential pay off? It would be pretty easy to get a following in that community, generate youtube money, write a book, release a gamergate game. 

 

I wish I had the time to be a fakegate and make money of these idiots.

[Vainamoinen]

I wonder how many of the high profile gators are in it for a potential pay off? It would be pretty easy to get a following in that community, generate youtube money, write a book, release a gamergate game.

That essentially is the same allegation the gaters are tossing around for the main feminist actors. It is mostly just meant to invalidate all arguments of the opposing side before a discussion even starts. I usually try not to do it.

 

In the case of Yannopoulos however, it's kind of hard to invalidate arguments that are not even brought forward. He doesn't put any kind of effort in it, he's just trolling. I found that sweet playing card under an article on breitbart titled, "What feministfrequency has to teach us about the effect of video games on society", and the article consists of, ha ha, an empty page. It's kind of difficult to say anything against this kind of argumentation.

 

Besides, of course, "good thing that's not the topic of the Tropes vs. Women series".

[Cleinhun]

Alright, so, aside from the obvious reasons that this is terrible, I think it might be the worst designed custom MTG card I've ever seen. Let's make a list of the things wrong with it, from the top down:

1) What kind of font is that? It's hard to read and MTG doesn't even use wierd fonts.

2) The mana cost is (5), but the card uses the white card frame, so either it's colorless and has the wrong frame or it's white and the mana cost is wrong. Based on the jesus/saint theme I assume it's supposed to be the latter.

3) The card name calls him "Saint" but the picture seems to be Jesus with Milo's head. Last I checked Jesus wasn't a saint but I guess I can let this slide.

4) The proper format for the type line is "card type - subtype" and "savior of gamerkin" is not a card type. It should be written as "Creature - Journalist" or perhaps "Creature - Savior"

5) Having 2 types of counters on the same card is confusing, since it can be hard to differentiate between different types of counters.

6) White card are generally not supposed to destroy creatures outright. They either retaliate against an attacker, remove temporarily, or give the opponent something in return. The choice to make it target only "professional victims" makes it especially thematically inappropriate for a white card.

7) Having the "destroy target professional victim" ability be one time use and tied to the removal of the counter is really clumsy. If you cared about destroying something, you wouldn't play milo until there was already a target in play, and if you did your opponent would hold off playing and targets until milo was removed. Why not just have it destroy something when it comes in to play?

8) The last ability is at least in-color for white (untapping creatures and angry mobs are both things white can do), and it makes more mechanical sense than the previous ability, but untapping creatures is usually more interesting if your opponent doesn't know you can do it, so you can create surprise blockers. This ability would probably just make combat planning more difficult in a way that wouldn't be interesting.

9) I don't really understand what snarky wit and brittish accents have to do with destroying people and untapping mobs

10) 4/6 seems like a weird size for a single person. There are only 7 4/6 white creatures in the game and they are all either angels, large beasts, or groups of people.

Edit: 11) Also terrible photoshop job, by which I probably mean mspaint job.

 

Anyway, that apparently is what I have to say on the topic.

[Apple Cider]

Did anyone catch the Nightline segment with Anita Sarkeesian? I thought it was pretty good even if it was a little corny because it's a packaged news segment.

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/video/feels-gamergate-target-28238598

 

 

[Vainamoinen]

Pretty sensationalist stuff of which e.g. Katherine Cross wasn't too fond of. What you do get in return is, of course, TotalBiscuit commenting on how the segment had "lies within the first 5 seconds"... because there presupposedly are no video games "showing violent depictions of women being raped".

Only the usual hyperbole makes Bain's comment the laughing stock here. The underlying basic assumption is that rape being shown in video games is neither extremely frequent nor a recognizable trope, and that is quite correct; nor is that the central problem feminists have with video games.

It does happen occasionally, and is then mostly just the cheapest possible shock value, plenty worthy to have a good SJW fit over, but that is comparatively rare.

[Apple Cider]

I'm mostly interested in the fact that this stuff is making national news. I always thought Anita's stuff was pretty rudimentary/101 level but that fact does not diminish that she's still a human being and doesn't deserve death threats or her safety being diminished. 

 

I know rape isn't frequent but there's quite a lot of background violence, assault or generally shitty stuff implied that floats around a bit more, making up a miasma that's a little more complex. I honestly hate the idea of it being used at all, ever, as shock value, because it's quite a bit more horrible than shocking. I can tell you that it's incredibly alienating, however, to someone like me.

[feelthedarkness]

i assume these knobs are using a hyper specific definition, because Metal Gear Ground Zeros had a prominent specific sexual violation? that's not some obscure title. 

[Twig]

The fascinating thing about it is that literally the same day he made that ridiculous comment, there was a news story about Hotline Miami 2 being refused classification in Australia because of an explicit rape scene. I'm pretty sure he's played Hotline Miami 1 (in fact, I just confirmed that he made a video about it), and while he might not have liked the game (I didn't watch said video), you'd think he'd at least be marginally knowledgab-- haha wait for a second there I forgot who I was talking about. Nevermind.

[Bjorn]

Also, once you let users have a certain amount of control (either through dev choice or hacking), it does seem like rape becomes increasingly likely if its able to be simulated at all. There's the super disturbing Day Z rape, or the rape hack for GTAV. Teabagging has become so common to have practically lost meaning, but the reason it originally worked as a taunt is that it was channeling homophobic fears about sexual assault. It's meaningless as a taunt without it being a sexual violation.

In single player stuff, we still have examples of rape. There's the sexual violence against one of Heavy Rain's characters, which ends up being wildly out of place and with no purpose other than titillation in one part. It sounds like the violent rape scene is still in Hotline Miami 2, which the current descriptions of it sound even worse than the scene that was in the original demo, which the devs tried to excuse by explaining the player had walked into a porn shoot and didn't know it. And back to GTA, there's the thing I just wrote about somewhere on these forums about sex with prostitutes, how consent is predicated on a financial transaction, and if a player steals money back from the sex worker, then it becomes rape.

[Bjorn]

Ah, RPS ran a piece about Hotline 2. It's exactly the same scene. Comments are classy, super classy (not really, don't read them).

[Apple Cider]

I just wrote up a piece about why I hate rape in games because it's literally what people are talking about on Twitter and I honestly wish it did not exist in games outside of survivor/victim-driven or centered narratives.

[Mangela Lansbury]

It's not nearly as bad in video games as it is in comics (How do we give this woman depth? I know! Rape!), but it's a definite trope across media in what I guess is called nerd culture. I wish it would go away.

[Argobot]

I absolutely agree that rape is mishandled in all media and is often used as a lazy shorthand to give the story a false gritty feel. If that disappeared as a storytelling method, I would be so happy. My hope is that as better and more thoughtful writing appears in games, there will either be less of a need to use sexual assault as a tasteless narrative or there will be more nuanced depictions that carry real meaning.

[Twig]

There's the super disturbing Day Z rape.

 

Wow, I'd never heard about this before, but... ugh, it doesn't surprise me, and that makes it all the worse. That's utterly repulsive and sickening.

[Gaizokubanou]

I have a question.  So I think everyone on this board agrees that depiction of rape is repulsive...  So why is it that it seems to stand out among other repulsive crimes?  I play ton of wargames, and any fellow wargamer do fair share of warmongering and if it's 4X/grand strategy, also dip into occasional genocide.  In the past week I've been playing the heck out of Wargame: Red Dragon and there I thoroughly enjoyed bombing tank formations using cluster bomb or napalming towns to kill dug in infantries because those are really effective tactics.  If landmines are available (they are not  but saying IF) and they are cost effective, I would surely spam those all around the map as well.  Is it the abstraction that let's those just less noticeable?  Then we have Mortal Kombat series one of the main draw of the series is that you execute your opponent after the fight in very gory details.  But I would argue that MK is probably one of the least worrying depiction of ultra violence as it's so fantastical.  So is it that rape and threat of it is very real (but then of course, military oppression or other violent deaths are also very real in some parts of the world so that alone would be bit inconsistent?  or is rape truly more universal than those?)?  Or is it what constitutes rape is constantly challenged by rather large proportion of the society (cause almost every repulsive crimes have some minor elements of the society that challenges it so size ought to be matter) that makes its depiction worse than other crimes where?  Or is it that rape is often presented as really poor means to an end (in most wargames, killing is easily understood and logical means to an end though explosions sure are enjoyable by themselves)  Or is it that they are in theory, all equally objectionable but we are just desensitized to other types?

 

Because if someone were to tell me that I enjoy horrible things because of the way I play and enjoy Wargame: Red Dragon, that 'feels' like their criticisms are way off but I'm having trouble making a clear distinction (but as you can see, I can think of few but they seem very minute?) between that sort of casual mass killings done in wargames and sexual violence.

[feelthedarkness]

When translating these things into video games the greater war horror is largely abstracted in strategic moves played across countless nameless units. Sexual assault is more inherently personal, and people are far more likely to have encountered that than be cluster bombed on D-Day. I'm sure if you found somebody that had they probably wouldn't enjoy the game version. Also, however minor it might be those units have a fighting chance, some kind of autonomy. They're actors/heros of their own story. Sexual assault is inherently about disempowering. 

[Gaizokubanou]

When translating these things into video games the greater war horror is largely abstracted in strategic moves played across countless nameless units. Sexual assault is more inherently personal, and people are far more likely to have encountered that than be cluster bombed on D-Day. I'm sure if you found somebody that had they probably wouldn't enjoy the game version. Also, however minor it might be those units have a fighting chance, some kind of autonomy. They're actors/heros of their own story. Sexual assault is inherently about disempowering. 

 

Yes but not enjoying it is different from calling it out as work of no or negative value.  And as for autonomy and disempowerment, I presume then living post trauma is more disempowering than death (excluding corpse defiling ATM)?

 

BTW minor point but Wargame: Red Dragon focuses on 1970 ~ 1990, not WW2 (did WW2 even feature cluster bomb?)

[Bjorn]

So, TB and a bunch of people are incensed that ABC is moderating their YouTube comments.  So a guy who doesn't allow direct replies to his videos...gets mad at someone for not allowing him to directly reply to their video.  Also, he'll disable replies to his comments if he wants.  Because he's allowed to directly speak to the people he wants to criticize in YT comments, but can't allow others to do the same to him. It's kind of stunning, really.

[Brodie]

Gaizokubanou,          

                            Victims of sexual assault and rape are so prevalent in our society that, statistically speaking, we all know a few. This is not the case, generally speaking, with people who have lived through a genocide or been a casualty of war. They exist, and their pain shouldn't be exploited so that lazy writers can crank up the tension in whatever derivative Shooter McBroguy story they are working on, but in terms of numbers; way more victims of sexual assault and rape. We don't do enough for them to begin with and using that sort of violence as a plot device is awfully fucking insensitive. 

[Gaizokubanou]

Ok so it is primarily about the prevalence-realness of the crime in question.  So in theory, in a nicer world where rape drops off to similar point as say, genocide, then it would be much less of an issue to use it as plot device, as lazy as they may be.

[Apple Cider]

What Brodie said. Most of us aren't actors in violence, either, in the same kinds of ways that we are in video games. Our culture is ultimately violent, yes, but our culture is also pretty well designed to sexually violate people as well, let perpetrators not even be named, get away with it and not support victims at the same time, if they are even believed. A lot of women and people in general suffer from even more low-level violation on a daily basis. It's a very huge, interlaced problem. 

 

Violence in video games is way more abstract or heavily fantastical in a way that most of us are never going to really relate to or find ourselves pursuing. Rape, however, is something many of us experience or even perpetrate. And it's often tossed in to make the world more "realistic" or gritty. Both of which are disgusting reasons.

 

I don't know, it's really hard to explain this stuff to people who haven't had to live through it. I am going to have to live with shit that happened to me for the rest of my life. 

 

Edit: If rape was less prevalent, I doubt it'd be in video games at all, actually. I think the reason it turns up in video games is related to why it's so prevalent in society, but that's me.

 

Edit2: here, here's just my blog post about it: http://www.applecidermage.com/2015/01/16/a-brutal-landscape-sexual-assault-in-gaming-narratives/

[Brodie]

Ok so it is primarily about the prevalence-realness of the crime in question.  So in theory, in a nicer world where rape drops off to similar point as say, genocide, then it would be much less of an issue to use it as plot device, as lazy as they may be.

 

No. One reason that it's so horrible is the prevalence. There are many, many others.

 

I have to back away from this topic now as I will not be able to continue discussing it rationally.