Corruption in Gaming Journalism Discussion V2 - Back from the dead!
5,003 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Talishmar;47028356]Didn't he come around after these tweets when TB had a private chat with him?[/QUOTE]
He issued a non-apology and has been quiet about it since.
[QUOTE=Tamschi;47028421]He issued a non-apology and has been quiet about it since.[/QUOTE]
I think that's the best you can hope for with most of them, at least he didn't just dig his heels in and refuse reason?
[QUOTE=NoOnE#235;47028439]I think that's the best you can hope for with most of them, at least he didn't just dig his heels in and refuse reason?[/QUOTE]
It is indeed rather sad that all things considered the bar for acceptable behavior is now so depressingly low.
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;47028476]It is indeed rather sad that all things considered the bar for acceptable behavior is now so depressingly low.[/QUOTE]
Welp, we know what that means.
Someone call James Cameron! :v:
Sorry if I'm late but #ZeroBiscuit is now a [URL="https://www.crowdrise.com/zerobiscuit"]fundraiser to fight hunger.[/URL]
The funds will go to [URL="https://www.crowdrise.com/secondharvest"]Second Harvest[/URL], who've been fighting hunger for over 40 years.
[QUOTE=Hidole555;47028768]Sorry if I'm late but #ZeroBiscuit is now a [URL="https://www.crowdrise.com/zerobiscuit"]fundraiser to fight hunger.[/URL]
The funds will go to [URL="https://www.crowdrise.com/secondharvest"]Second Harvest[/URL], who've been fighting hunger for over 40 years.[/QUOTE]
I love how these hashtags had such malicious intent, but are now instead being used for the general good of all.
Hey AG, does this count as weaponizing charities? :v:
[QUOTE=Solo Wing;47028840]I love how these hashtags had such malicious intent, but are now instead being used for the general good of all.
Hey AG, does this count as weaponizing charities? :v:[/QUOTE]
Of course it does, paying anything that doesn't feed into their own agenda is weaponizing something.
Interview with an industry insider about gamergate
[url]http://digitalconfederacy.com/339-gamergate-interview-special-industry-insider-s[/url]
Can't really verify if he's really what he says he is but it's a very interesting read regardless
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;47029000]Interview with an industry insider about gamergate
[url]http://digitalconfederacy.com/339-gamergate-interview-special-industry-insider-s[/url]
Can't really verify if he's really what he says he is but it's a very interesting read regardless[/QUOTE]
Strikes me as another worthless, too-long, nobody interview.
Don't get me wrong, it's got stuff in it. That's my point though, it's just [I]stuff.[/I]
The interviewed party (anonymous, or pseudonymous if you're enough of a Private Dick to find a Disable Developers Organizer with a sister, who has attended PAX, and does know Brianna Wu) does the usual hemming and hawwing that so-called sensible people are fae to doe.
"Oh," the person says, "Gamergate really is solid at it's core but it's just not organized enough. If they could just be adults about it all they'd be quite the legitimate little movement."
Then there are some sentences that sound oddly out of touch, or completely fictitious to me, like a reflective, "Why isn't GamerGate on Zoe Quinn's side? After all, she got unfairly run over by the media." What? Where did that come from? Is that intentionally out-of-left waxxing philosophical, or is that some weird "Maybe if you picked your enemies better" slant?
Don't get me wrong. Awesome that people have opinions. Cool insights if they're real.
Totally fucking fluff though. Doesn't take a valuable stand, doesn't go to at-bat, doesn't even do the mild service of "GG is doing something valuable". Instead the interviewed party picks up whatever it likes and loads it on with enough caveats that it could easily be an "neutral-anti GG" article if the interview questions were more pointed or it had been edited even competently.
I'll say for someone who claims to work behind the scenes and whose anonimity is extremely important he gives a lot of details that would make him easy to track down. Pretty suspicious.
But I still found it interesting even though as you said some of the things like quinn being on our side were absolute nonsense
EDIT: apparently his identity is being verified so we'll see
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;47029181]I'll say for someone who claims to work behind the scenes and whose anonimity is extremely important he gives a lot of details that would make him easy to track down. Pretty suspicious. But I still found it interesting even though as you said some of the things like quinn being on our side were absolute nonsense EDIT: apparently his identity is being verified so we'll see[/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure I know whom this person is, and the reason they're sympathetic to Quinn and Wu is they believe she has MH issues. She does not. The former is simply a careless (in both senses of the word) user, and the latter, while actually having diagnosable phenomena, is still very much in control of her own actions. The article also ignored that a sizable faction of #GG wants more diversity in characters, employees and gaming in general. The only really salient point you can take is that this is 100% political, and as long as #GG continues to give lip service to Sarkeesian, she will retain power and be able to present herself as a victim, and thereby get infinite unending political dollars.
[QUOTE=27X;47029286]
The only really salient point you can take is that this is 100% political, and as long as #GG continues to give lip service to Sarkeesian, she will retain power and be able to present her self as a victim, and thereby get infinite unending political dollars.[/QUOTE]
It's not just #GG it's the internet as a whole. If people had just shut up and let her fans give her $6000 on Kickstarter she never would have wielded the influence she has now.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029329]It's not just #GG it's the internet as a whole. If people had just shut up and let her fans give her $6000 on Kickstarter she never would have wielded the influence she has now.[/QUOTE]
I don't think that's a practical argument.
If Gamergate had failed the exact same thing could be said. Had people shut up she would not have gotten money from Intel. Had we proven that it was critiquable the first time we probably wouldn't be facing so much journalism backlash.
There were obvious flaws with Tropes vs Women from the beginning. Besides, isn't there still contention that she posted threads on 4chan to directly spark ire?
[QUOTE=Thlis;47029361]I don't think that's a practical argument.
If Gamergate had failed the exact same thing could be said. Had people shut up she would not have gotten money from Intel. Had we proven that it was critiquable the first time we probably wouldn't be facing so much journalism backlash.
There were obvious flaws with Tropes vs Women from the beginning. Besides, isn't there still contention that she posted threads on 4chan to directly spark ire?[/QUOTE]
It's a hell of a lot more practical than "Lets attack this person as much as we can because we can't let her be an influential voice in the industry oh shit she is on stage talking to game developers what have we done".
That there were obvious flaws with her series of videos is incontrovertible at this point. The main problem is that neither her nor the types of people who would give money to a Kickstarter project aimed at educating them about how sexist video games are would be interested in intellectual discussion on the topic. Which sidesteps the fact that the vast majority of the shit she got over the series was pretty far away from intellectual.
Someone dressed up as Vivian James in Magfest got harassed.
[url]http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2tzjih/cosplaying_vivian_james_at_magfest_a_tale_of/[/url]
Gamergate is entirely different because she injected herself into the conversation and people took the bait and ran with it. Every Sarkeesian thread that pops up on the first page of KiA is publicity for her in an era where publicity, good or bad, for a female in the video games world is never a bad thing.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029400]It's a hell of a lot more practical than "Lets attack this person as much as we can because we can't let her be an influential voice in the industry oh shit she is on stage talking to game developers what have we done".
That there were obvious flaws with her series of videos is incontrovertible at this point. The main problem is that neither her nor the types of people who would give money to a Kickstarter project aimed at educating them about how sexist video games are would be interested in intellectual discussion on the topic. Which sidesteps the fact that the vast majority of the shit she got over the series was pretty far away from intellectual.[/QUOTE]
Isn't that just letting things slide?
Disregarding the proven theft of artwork and gameplay footage, the fact that any critique of her work, regardless of the critic's gender, is treated as harassment by these journalists is a testament to how far we have let things slide.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029413]Gamergate is entirely different because she injected herself into the conversation and people took the bait and ran with it. Every Sarkeesian thread that pops up on the first page of KiA is publicity for her in an era where publicity, good or bad, for a female in the video games world is never a bad thing.[/QUOTE]
That difference is questionable if it was Sarkeesian posting the threads on 4chan. Right now I am trying to find the old posts, I forgot that was several years ago.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029434]It's not that any critique is treated as harassment, it's that legitimate, non-harassing critique is simply ignored because there is so much obvious harassment and shitty things people have aimed at Sarkeesian that it makes it easy for journalists already in her corner to defend her.[/QUOTE]
I don't know, personally, only recognizing "harassing" critiques and flat out denying the existance of "legitimate" critiques seems akin to labeling all critiques as harassing.
[QUOTE=Thlis;47029419]Isn't that just letting things slide?
Disregarding the proven theft of artwork and gameplay footage, the fact that any critique of her work, regardless of the critic's gender, is treated as harassment by these journalists is a testament to how far we have let things slide.[/QUOTE]
It's not that any critique is treated as harassment, it's that legitimate, non-harassing critique is simply ignored because there is so much obvious harassment and shitty things people have aimed at Sarkeesian that it makes it easy for journalists already in her corner to defend her.
[editline]28th January 2015[/editline]
It's kind of like a reversal of what we are seeing with TB right now. When IA, king of pol, or Milo were the strong voices for #GG it was easy enough to push them aside because their pro-gaming, pro-ethic stances were matched be equal (or overwelming) amounts of unrelated political garbage.
Now with TotalBiscuit and his focus squarely on games and games journalism you can tell just how fucking mad anti-GG is because they have no ammo.
[editline]28th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=Thlis;47029419]
I don't know, personally, only recognizing "harassing" critiques and flat out denying the existance of "legitimate" critiques seems akin to labeling all critiques as harassing.[/QUOTE]
The difference is that they aren't taking legitimate critique and posting it in their articles about Sarkeesian and calling it harassment, because that would be too obvious. So they simply don't acknowledge it and just find tweets from random assholes on the internet and then proceed to write articles about how "Gamers have a problem with women" and "Gaming is a boys club that hates girls" and shit like that.
You have to keep in mind that people who write articles like that already have a vested interest in seeing Sarkeesian as a victim. Which is fucked up, but it's the system we have to work within today.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029434]there is so much obvious harassment and shitty things people have aimed at Sarkeesian that it makes it easy for journalists already in her corner to defend her.[/QUOTE]
I never questioned that at first but when the best highlight of the threats she receives is a woman threatening her to "quickscope you irl. fgt" you have to start wondering how much of it is fabricated bullshit
Same could be said about brianna wu receiving "scores of emails" from ex-GG supporters and the one she posts just so happens to be someone trolling her
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47029413]Gamergate is entirely different because she injected herself into the conversation and people took the bait and ran with it. Every Sarkeesian thread that pops up on the first page of KiA is publicity for her in an era where publicity, good or bad, for a female in the video games world is never a bad thing.[/QUOTE]
Whether what you say about ignoring her before is true or not (and I don't think it would have changed anything, she was hellbent on becoming a "victim"), it is far too late to ignore her influence now. Considering we don't have connections, money, or fame, the truth isn't going to tell itself, so we have no choice but to do the leg work ourselves.
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;47029523]I never questioned that at first but when the best highlight of the threats she receives is a woman threatening her to "quickscope you irl. fgt" you have to start wondering how much of it is fabricated bullshit
Same could be said about brianna wu receiving "scores of emails" from ex-GG supporters and the one she posts just so happens to be someone trolling her[/QUOTE]
Generally I give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like this because people on the internet are assholes. I'm a nobody who does particularly well in a game of Battlefield and I get a death threat. It's not surprising to me at all that figures like Wu and Sarkeesian would receive a lot of hurtful shit, so I'm not in a particular rush to say it's fake, even if it's possible (and even probable)
What is shitty though is to take these anomalies and use them to cast an aspersion across the entire video games playing community.
[editline]28th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=FlakAttack;47029548]Whether what you say about ignoring her before is true or not (and I don't think it would have changed anything, she was hellbent on becoming a "victim"), it is far too late to ignore her influence now. Considering we don't have connections, money, or fame, the truth isn't going to tell itself, so we have no choice but to do the leg work ourselves.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure if she was betting on the type of response she got from her Kickstarter ($6,000 goals on Kickstarter are absurdly low) but she has proven herself to be a master at manipulation and seeing her name in press so it's entirely possible she saw the vitriol coming.
As for "the truth", there has never been a movement in the history of the world that hasn't proclaimed itself as being on the side of truth. I'm not trying to shut down legitimate criticism of Sarkeesian or asking people to stop criticizing her, I'm just saying it hasn't been productive historically.
[editline]28th January 2015[/editline]
That we don't have connections, money, or fame is largely why combating Sarkeesian's influence only helps to fuel her popularity.
Part of the real issue with sarkesian is how as much honest and wellI thought out criticism there may be and actually is of her work none of it is what anyone focuses on. She doesn't deal with her intellectual criticisms and as a result neither does her fan base. It seems to me that due to the medias representation of her, the useless vitriol and hatred that has been launched against her that she's been even further elevated from actual criticism.
[QUOTE=Jamsponge;47027723]What I don't get is how anti-GG people are allowed to brush off their past by saying "You shouldn't be digging up dirt about me! That's harassment!" or even just totally ignore it, but as soon as they find out that when TotalBiscuit was 5 he once laughed at a disabled person and then immediately was scolded, apologised and changed his ways, that's grounds to believe that he's an ableist disgusting awful human being.[/QUOTE]
Many don't know how to make amends for their fuck ups and consider it their ball and chain. Part of what makes TB respectable is that he tries his best to see most shades to a conflict. He has fucked up many times in the past, but he realized his fuck ups, apologized in a mature manner when needed, and went on with his life with what he learned. He's blunt when he feels it's needed and tries to see truths and lies mixed into the batter. TB knows his flaws, but he isn't afraid of it, he works with it to the best of his ability. Jon Bain is an inspired and inspiring man who has made a profound impact as an honest, adaptive, and all around cool guy.
Totalbiscuit has came back from his planned two day hiatus to respond to [url=http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skbco2]Extracredit's response from today[/url].
[QUOTE=Fangz;47029806]Totalbiscuit has came back from his planned two day hiatus to respond to [url=http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skbco2]Extracredit's response from today[/url].[/QUOTE]
I feel like if anyone (and I mean anyone) tried to debate Totalbiscuit, they would lose in the first minute of his rebuttal.
[QUOTE=Tamschi;47027922][...]
In other news, [URL="https://twitter.com/GameDiviner/status/560245465896480768"]someone is accusing Portnow of running with 60k[/URL] from [URL="http://www.rockethub.com/projects/25243-games-for-good"]this fundraiser[/URL]. I tried to find evidence to the contrary. I couldn't find any :tinfoil:[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://archive.today/HRrlw#selection-989.0-989.398"]I found a quote that he supposedly sent to his RocketHub backers[/URL], at least supporting that he tried to fulfil the campaign goals: [quote=One Angry Gamer][...]
In fact, Extra Credits’ James Portnow has run into some problems securing ears and support for his Games For Good project due to the highly volatile nature that has become the games industry – thanks mostly in part to a lot of the misinformation and toxicity spread from games media regarding their very own audience. Portnow, in his update to his Rockethub supporters from back in October, 2014, stated…
[quote]This has been a project of great joy and innumerable frustrations for me. This last year has probably been the most stressful of my life, and these last few months have been a daily deluge from all the press and political people I’ve met backing off from their support or, in a few cases, pointing to recent events and telling me I’ve lied to them and that nothing good can come from this medium.[/quote]
[...][/quote]
I can't verify this, but if accurate it seems he has (misguided) personal beef with GamerGate and is letting it out on innocent people. (Those politicians he paraphrases seem like assholes too though.)
[editline]29th January 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=joshuadim;47029871]I feel like if anyone (and I mean anyone) tried to debate Totalbiscuit, they would lose in the first minute of his rebuttal.[/QUOTE]
Unless they are honest and have a point (and a bit of debate skill, but I suspect that may be less of a requirement than usual with him).
Then both parties would end up winning :v:
[QUOTE=joshuadim;47029871]I feel like if anyone (and I mean anyone) tried to debate Totalbiscuit, they would lose in the first minute of his rebuttal.[/QUOTE]He is very good at seeing through rhetoric and beyond that the people that have been attacking him dont have much else going on
It should also be noted that every time he does this he is defending himself against people who don't really know what they are talking about
[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;47030100]
It should also be noted that every time he does this he is defending himself against people who don't really know what they are talking about[/QUOTE]
Particularly in this case with EC asking if TB has ever disclaimed his promotional videos. He obviously has if you watch even one of them. He clearly wants to separate promotion from his other content and I love it. A lot of Youtubers don't have the same integrity.
To be fair, (I used to be a fan of EC but dropped them around the time they tried to [I]defend Mass Effect[/I]) a debate is "won" by how persuasive it is. That is, how well it appeals to it's audience.
If you've got some other metric for how debates are won, then uh, elucidate please.
Now we're kind of a captive audience for TB. He's been honing and refining (conciously or not, you decide) his tone, his style and his position for years. He's the factman. He's a straight shooter. He's a journalist in the Wild West of journalism and that makes him the [I]sheriff.[/I] He's the sheriff and he's shooting for the good old townsfolk of Consumerville with a capital C.
Suppose for a moment that that sort of person hadn't already won you over. Suppose you actually don't like people who take themselves to "have the facts."
Suppose instead that you're reading or listening to TB as an adverse audience. That you're taken to give folks like Extra Credits the benefit of the doubt when they say something because they deliver solid, coherent intellectual opinions from a position of academic authority that is sensitive, calm and collected. They have established truisms, they have unveiled that which was hidden only by ignorance, they are in fact a [I]classroom course material at some game design universities.[/I] That is to wit, where TB speaks from a soapbox they speak from a pulpit.
TB, in this context, [I]sounds like a bully.[/I] Not just a bully but an arrogant bully who think's he's driving the greatest wagontrain of all time when in fact he's just shepherding nerds.
The fact that people, asking about gamergate in this very thread, can assert "Isn't this just about people being mad over review scores?" means that's a valid point of view. If you multiply the "So-What?" factor out to it's logical extent, it seems like TB is getting awful riled up about "silly internet business" that he admits to participating in.
If that's the case then he lost. At least among a certain set of people. He might impress some neutrals and some sympathizers with his "citation needed" and he certainly will acquit himself well in the field of demonstrable facts. However at this stage in the debate, assuming no forthcoming rebuttal or clusterkerfluffle, he's done a bad job of making headway into anyone who might not have already said to Extra Credits, "Hold on, what makes you say all of that?" All his tone, his attitude and his style have done is up the ante on the battlefield mentality where it's Big Bad Total Biscuit, Leader of the Sea Lioning Gaters, versus the little guys. The sensitive guys. The guys who have transpeople and women and artists on their side. Not fat, balding, cancerhaving angry nerds who got their big shot from World of Warcraft podcasts or whatever.
For this reason I am glad that Totalbiscuit (as much as I adore his work, what he does, and who he simply is) is not "The Leader" of Gamergate and the fact that there is no leader of gamergate. The typical way he handles debates literally crumbles when it comes to maintaining a long-term level of "So-What" and "Civility." He becomes a pretty sharply cut caricature of the snide, arrogant, hat tipping patriarch who's unconsciously reinforcing some sinister kulturkampf.
Do bear in mind, I'm saying [I]given a reading as an opponent.[/I] I think TB nailed it here. I think we all think he nailed it. I just don't think he nailed it the right way. That is, in a way that promote dialogue. He got it in a way that ends it.
I think part of it (likely most of it) comes from the fact that it's people he has historically worked, collaborated, or associated with throwing him under the bus in the public arena when they could as easily just ask him in a PM or, as he said, on Skype, what he means by things he says.
[editline]28th January 2015[/editline]
It's also the fact that he has always spoken in a decided no-nonsense way which isn't always palatable. Personally I love it but as you say, my perspective is of someone who already generally agrees with TB
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