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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Yeah, I also feel like this was just a joke and isn't a big deal. McWhertor gave the domain back and clearly never had any intention of doing anything shady with it.

 

However, I also feel like it was a pretty dumb joke and I have no idea who is supposed to be laughing with or enjoying it. It so closely imitates serious legal issues about intellectual property and branding that it's difficult for anyone not "in the know" to understand that it's a joke.

 

Based on the posts I've read so far, I don't get the impression that anyone believes there was any malevolent intent. I feel like a lot of folks (here and elsewhere) are just baffled by how meaningless of a gesture it seems like to them. And by the fact that it wasn't funny, just kind of dumb.

 

But then, I don't think it was a prank meant for the public to understand. I think it was an in-joke for journalists and PR folks, so I don't feel like the public opinion matters - except for the fact that public opinion can influence brand reputation, which kind of sucks if it was just meant to be a harmless joke between insiders. McWhertor probably only saw the part that was funny to him, and not the part that people outside of his field would misunderstand. Not everybody has good PR skills. Poor guy shouldn't be fired, but maybe he should get some training so that he can be better prepared for stuff like this if it happens to him again.

 

And JonCole has a point that GG will get angry about anything. They're on the look-out for things to be upset about. Everything is fuel to them - they're not just innocently misunderstanding this situation, they're assuming the worst and actively whipping up conspiracies and witch-hunts.

 

I think that yearoftheps3 is a good comparison. That's something that everyone in the know (the Idle Thumbs community) realizes is a joke and thinks is funny - but if Sony really did declare 2015 the Year-of-Our-Lord-PS3 and then someone dug up El Muerte's site and assumed the worst...I can see it exploding in the same way, from the same kinds of misunderstandings.

 

And now I feel like I'm speculating too much and trying to grasp concepts that are a little above my head, so I'm gonna stop. I'm basically just summarizing points made by people smarter than me anyway, sorry ;__;

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El Muerte doesn't work for Idlethumbs, update the website, record any podcasts, write any articles, or otherwise profit from anything having to do with Idlethumbs.

 

Obviously everyone finds something wrong with this even the staunch defenders, so be it. Considering no other employees or Polygon owners have come to the defense of this prank makes me think they aren't happy about the public image it portrays of Polygon.

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Literally the only reason I find anything wrong with it is because he should've been aware that other people will find something wrong with it. On its own, it's nothing. In context, it's nothing made into more than nothing.

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It's doing Lego's job for them (at personal cost, no less), what on earth is there to complain about?

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I think some of us made a big deal of it because we didn't know he just gave it to LEGO pretty much the moment he got it, that's the big difference, if you do this kind of thing and KEEP the domain, you're a jerk.

 

We I first heard about this news I didn't even know who did, all I knew is that someone bought the LEGO Universe domain that wasn't working for LEGO.

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I think some of us made a big deal of it because we didn't know he just gave it to LEGO pretty much the moment he got it, that's the big difference, if you do this kind of thing and KEEP the domain, you're a jerk.

 

We I first heard about this news I didn't even know who did, all I knew is that someone bought the LEGO Universe domain that wasn't working for LEGO.

 

That's kind of where I am right now. It's a stupid prank to pull because of the potential to be misunderstood even after all the details are known. I certainly wouldn't do anything like it in the area of my professional employ, but then I'm not a published journalist for a respected gaming site, so what do I know. It's his prank to pull and it didn't cause any damage, so the real consequences are on the people flying off the handle about it.

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The idea that this is bad because GG will use it to their advantage is obviously ridiculous. They are a uniquely abysmal arbiter of ethics. As has been noted, they really don't need anybody's help to come up with new spurious claims, and on the flipside, any genuine ethical quandary has so far proven to go straight over their heads. The guy also probably doesn't deserve to be fired for pulling a prank.

 

That said, it's still unprofessional behavior for somebody writing about games. He didn't register a

, but the one Lego would be interested in themselves, which has the uncomfortable air of ransoming it, even if that wasn't acted on. That he transferred it to them without demands doesn't change that he created a scenario he easily could have abused - similar to how a stranger grabbing your phone without asking to make a quick call and then giving it back is not the same as it never having been gone. Especially since it's impossible to tell exactly what his original plans were here: his original tweet was only pointing out that he got the domain and the handover happened some time later after just about all of games Twitter pointed out that this looked more than a little shady.

 

Plus the entire kerfluffle only draws more attention to Lego's goof in not registering that in advance. He isn't doing their job so much as drawing attention to the fact that they didn't do their job. There's a reason most of us can probably more easily imagine this coming from some too clever by half, vindicative nerd than a professional writer. Unintentional or not, it feels like somebody going "Gotcha!" at a company they have a complicated love/hate relationship with.

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Gosh I feel so strongly that the idea of holding "could have happened"s against someone is incredibly silly that I don't even know how to respond to it. He didn't do it, but what if he did because he totally could have!!!

 

Like I could have decided to murder someone this morning. I didn't, but golly I made a poor decision by waking up and going outside of my apartment where people besides me exist.

 

Yes that's a patently absurd analogy. But that's kind of my point.

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Gosh I feel so strongly that the idea of holding "could have happened"s against someone is incredibly silly that I don't even know how to respond to it. He didn't do it, but what if he did because he totally could have!!!

 

Like I could have decided to murder someone this morning. I didn't, but golly I made a poor decision by waking up and going outside of my apartment where people besides me exist.

 

Yes that's a patently absurd analogy. But that's kind of my point.

 

Sometimes "could have" is actually strong enough to warrant a response though.  This mostly falls into the category of dangers stemming from recklessness.  Think DWI/DUI here.

 

Clearly this isn't anything of that sort though so yeah, that doesn't apply for this but just wanted to mention that "could have happened" is valid concern sometimes :P

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I think my final opinion on this is 'yeah but what amateurs announced the name of their product and didn't make sure they had the domain name'. Literally anyone could have had it once the name was announced.

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There's still a pretty big difference between somebody punishing Lego for their mistake and you actively deciding to be that somebody (if a pretty kind version of that person). If he wanted to resolve this agreeably with them, he could have simply pointed it out to them, or secured the domain and completed the handover before tweeting about it (briefly put up a funny image on there if you want to joke about it later I guess). To avoid claims of favoritism or getting entangled in the affairs he writes about, he could have stayed out of it entirely. I'm not sure which of the two is ideal, honestly.

 

Likewise, there's a big difference between making assumptions about what could have happened if everything suddenly moved in a completely new direction for no reason, or speculating on what might have happened if events continued along the track they were already on. It's patently absurd to assume for no reason that you or I would commit horrible murder, but does the assumption stay patently ridiculous when we buy a toy gun, take it to a public event and wave it around for laughs? Is it still clear to everyone that we mean no harm? Or does our behavior in some way make us responsible for the misunderstanding we are then upset about?

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I think that there are a lot of factors in play here, the foremost in my mind is that due to the fact that this is a hobbyist industry a lot of the coverage of it is lighthearted and not to the journalistic standards of more serious news like NYT or something. This creates a weird tension when you have something that feels ethically foggy due to that levity. What would this story have been if he registered the domain and instead hosted a text file on it that was a brief piece on the challenges of branding on the internet?

 

I honestly think that he was making an earnest attempt to shine a light on the silliness of a company that doesn't secure the domain of a brand that they're about to publicly rollout. He did it in a not too classy way, sure, but I really think intent is important here. I'm also finding it hard to square what people expect out of a person/website whose job it is to cover game companies. There is no responsibility to make Lego "look good"; Lego is not Polygon's client and deserves no special treatment. The idea that McWhetor shouldn't have put egg on Lego's face strikes me as in a similar vein to TB's rant about how game developers are superior and game journalists owe their jobs to devs for making the games to begin with.

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The whole domain thing is something to either giggle or roll your eyes at and I don't understand why anyone would want to treat it as anything more than a silly, forgettable joke.

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It's patently absurd to assume for no reason that you or I would commit horrible murder, but does the assumption stay patently ridiculous when we buy a toy gun, take it to a public event and wave it around for laughs? Is it still clear to everyone that we mean no harm? Or does our behavior in some way make us responsible for the misunderstanding we are then upset about?

Well that's a rather loaded analogy at this point in time. So to speak.

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Gaters have a new favoritest study of allest of timest, and it hails from Cologne! It was great reading the article on reaxxion, which reviews the study on the basis of the abstract alone. I myself didn't read the study because I don't exactly have 51$ ready, but judging from the information in this fairly nifty and balanced overview, the problem I have with the study lies in the questions asked in the telephone survey, in their relevance and in their directness. They asked people to rate their agreement with these three statements:

 

"The man should be responsible for all major decisions made in a family"

"In a group of male and female members, a man should take on the leadership"

"Even if both partners work, the woman should be responsible for taking care of the household"

 

In my opinion, that is an extremely high entry bar for sexist notions. My expectation would be that even rampant sexists wouldn't overtly agree with those statements due to obvious societal stigma (particularly not in Germany); and in the context of this whole discussion, this kind of sexism simply isn't that relevant. The questions do not serve the underlying study. Today we're not facing people who say "men should be in charge of a family", they're saying "the video game medium was created by men for men, and it should remain like that forever".

 

 

 

And, Doug, is there any particular reason you're mentioning giantbomb.com...?? :huh:

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And, Doug, is there any particular reason you're mentioning giantbomb.com...?? :huh:

 

At one point a Thumb (whether they were an official Thumb or fan I can't remember) bought a GiantBomb URL to redirect to Idle Thumbs as a joke in the height of IT have tons of wacky domains that direct to them. That was a joke that could have looked like squatting but no-one had any real problem with it.

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Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's a good point. The more I think and read about the whole thing, the less of a big deal it seems like.

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El Muerte doesn't work for Idlethumbs, update the website, record any podcasts, write any articles, or otherwise profit from anything having to do with Idlethumbs.

 

Except for my 15 minutes of fame \o/

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That said, it's still unprofessional behavior for somebody writing about games. He didn't register a

, but the one Lego would be interested in themselves, which has the uncomfortable air of ransoming it, even if that wasn't acted on. That he transferred it to them without demands doesn't change that he created a scenario he easily could have abused - similar to how a stranger grabbing your phone without asking to make a quick call and then giving it back is not the same as it never having been gone. Especially since it's impossible to tell exactly what his original plans were here: his original tweet was only pointing out that he got the domain and the handover happened some time later after just about all of games Twitter pointed out that this looked more than a little shady.

I think that says it best. Plus because of the redirect it involves Polygon in it, which I get the feeling no one wanted and as you guys defend, the guy acted alone, but it doesn't make his employer look good. Had the guy just linked to whatever damn site I guess it could be shrugged off as simply stupid and unfunny.

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Well that's a rather loaded analogy at this point in time. So to speak.

 

Just a little, yeah.

 

There is no responsibility to make Lego "look good";

 

Certainly not, but it's also not his job to make the company look bad or to personally gloat over their error in any way. The deferential attitude you mention is an issue, but so is the us vs. them mentality of grilling developers and feeling personally wronged if they mess up (two different emotional reactions that come from a very similar place in people) and "Haha, they dun goofed" places itself in the tradition, if unintentional, of industry "watchdogs" who understand that role to mean making sure companies continue to churn out uninspired drivel and they actually get as many hours of wish fulfillment as was promised on the back of some box. Or else.

 

This is part of a much longer conversation about the function of games writing of course, but for me that little goof is a good example of a scene that is less interested in asking challenging, broad questions about culture, art, or means of production than it is in asking "Why were you at that hotel last week when your game still isn't done?", "Why didn't you make the game the way I want?", "Why didn't you register the domain in time?" Which is challenging only in so far as it challenges the industry to keep up their part of the announcement, trailer, preview routine.

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Here's a discussion between Jeff Gerstmann and an actual Gamergater. It's amazing just how ridiculous his arguments seem when they leave the echo chamber and come out into the real world.

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I thought the domain squatting was kind of a crappy thing to do, but also so inconsequential that I don't care.

 

Also, Lego owns legos.com and used to have it redirect to a message chastising people for incorrectly pluralizing their brand name. They had this coming.

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Here's a discussion between Jeff Gerstmann and an actual Gamergater. It's amazing just how ridiculous his arguments seem when they leave the echo chamber and come out into the real world.

 

Holy crap I just listened to that whole thing and props to Jeff for actually letting it go that far and not losing his cool. 

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