Blogs Games journalism isn't corrupt, but Youtube has a problem.

I must be the only person on the planet that hasn't got a clue what Gamersgate is all about. I tried to read a bit about it once but it left me even more confused so I left it at that.

 

Seconded.

Trust me, you're better off not knowing and not bothering.

 

Yes, I did get that impression.

 

Yeah, you'll be washing your brain in bleach for days. That is after you ritually burnt whatever unfortunate internet device you used to read up about the subject inside a protective pentagram, buried the ashes in a lead-lined box under a big slab of concrete and salted the earth around it so nothing will ever grow there again.

 

For me the following video from 2012 summed up the "problems" if they can be called that, between gaming journalism, commentators, and personalities.

 

I don't want to refght Gamergate, but the Internet generally and gaming specifically has a problem with testosterone fueled douchbaggery. Huge swaths of the net are massively toxic and so is a lot of online gaming. I'm certainly not suggesting that all gamers are "white, overweight, women-hating men", or at least as often early teen boys unsupervised on the internet, but enough of them are that it creates an an violent where no sane person wants to tread. Not everywhere online needs to be a safe place or "family friendly", but likewise a lot of what goes on every day in terms of rape and murder threats, cyber stalking, posting personal information and even SWATting is never acceptable in any context.

I would say that while games journalism may have some problems, gaming has bigger problems overall with the behavior of the players and the willingness of the community to tolerate and even encourage that behavior.

 

Nathan Grayson never wrote a review on Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest.

I'm using all of the names so you can google it and check it if you want. Gamergate is/was/always will be an excuse to harass women on the internet.

Sorry, I understand that this is something you feel strongly about, but I was there when this all kicked off, and it was born out of a desire to punish a woman for cheating on someone (I wouldn't condone cheating on people. It's a shitty thing to do.) which honestly, isn't really any of our business.

Sarkeesian didn't scam anyone out of half a million pounds either. She ran a Kickstarter. It's fine to not contribute to a kickstarter if you don't like what's going on. She ran the Kickstarter two years before all the GG nonsense kicked off to make a video series.

it's tiresome to have to argue this out with people, I know. But all of the facts are available online. I just want to get back to enthusing about rad video games without people yelling about publishers are paying for coverage.I write about games because I like games, I'm less keen on people being dicks to each other and I feel if there's one thing that Gamergate really did for gaming, its reenforced the fact that, at least for games, several people aren't welcome in a crowd that I used to feel like I belonged to.

 

Still am (about online) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Dennis only knows print.

Unless a YouTuber is backed by an actual website I wouldn't trust them. That's my rule of thumb. There's so so sooo many ethical shades of grey though

 

True but if I'm not mistaken he did give it what some would consider favorable coverage, the video i posted goes into how the blurring of lines between journalism, commentating, and personalities can and does happen all to easily.

Not that i agree with how people reacted to the whole GG thing, it's the Internet and as usual people made a mountain out of a molehill and overreacted, however in this situation particularly they took it to quite frankly frightening extremes.

 

"Favorable coverage" was how some GGers tried to backpedal and rationalize their actions when it became clear that Nathan Grayson's supposed review had never existed. There are continuous attempts at rewriting history by some in GG, claiming it was about "favorable coverage" from the very beginning, but that's simply not true. Some even go so far as to say no one at all thinks or ever claimed it's about a review.
I read the infamous Zoe Post 2 days after it came out and have been following the resulting internet shitstorm of unseen proportions since. The bit about the review has been quietly removed.

The "favorable coverage" in question was this article on Rock Paper Shotgun:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01/08/admission-quest-valve-greenlights-50-more-games/

The "favorable coverage" consists out of 3 words:
"powerful Twine darling Depression Quest"

The "favorable coverage" was given in january 2014, a time when even Eron Gjoni admits there's no proof of a possible conflict of interest:

http://thezoepost.wordpress.com/

This takes "making a mountain out of a molehill" to new unholy proportions.

Those 3 words are somehow supposed to justify years of harassement of him and his friends, death threats, very specific physical threats, driving him out of his home and leaving him homeless for 6 months, doxxing, coordinated attempts to drive him to suicide, sending private pictures to friends, relatives and employers, continuously harassing their partner's employer until they got fired, etc. And all of this together with a whole bunch of other non-journalist women in video ga-
Wait a minute, those are all things that happened to Zoe Quinn, not Nathan Grayson, the guy who supposedly committed the ethical violations GG is "actually all about". Grayson didn't get harassed in any significant way and was able to just lay low for a few weeks and pick up his life again. Quinn is still in hiding.
Hmm. Almost makes you think GG actually isn't about ethics in games journalism, doesn't it? ...Food for thought.

(Just to be clear, the part above isn't directly aimed at you Corky, just a rant at no one in particular I had to get out of my system )

I'm going to try to stop replying now. Gamergate awakens frustrations in me I thought I had buried. Anyone with questions or remarks I'll refer to these 4 massive pages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_Gamergate_claims
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Gamergate

 

It all started revolving around Ms Quinn because people took it to be the first solid proof that there was collusion in Games Journalism, and to be fair; there has been some merit since, as there have been clear ethical violations found Since.

As a note; Ms Quinn is doing very well for herself still, going to the UN to talk about online harassment for example.

I don't even want to list all my complaints about the Gamergate wikipedia page. Safe to say; Long time editor Mark Bernstien banned from editing any page relating to Gamegate or "Any gender related dispute or controversy" over the continual edit warring that was occurring on that page.

I could rant for an incredibly long time on the topic, as I've seen some seriously shady things going on, not least of which is the recent Sinking of Gawker by Hulk Hogan after they clearly violated a Judge's order to remove a video, then proceeded to gloat about how they refused to do so.

 

My Googlefu told me it's probably this one,
https://archive.is/QCtQm

Understatement of the year.

 

Oh man, I thought I'd totally buried and moved on from GamerGate, but I've had an absolute riot re-reading about that hate fest . It also reminded me why I decided that TotalBiscuit was a complete tool; I'd watched one or two of his videos recently and found myself to be in agreement with him, but had a nagging voice in the back of my mind telling me that I'd decided to put very little trust in that man's opinion.

Excellent reply, and those rationalwiki pages are exceptional. I didn't read the timeline though, that one really was too long.

Your posts in this thread go a long way to making up for all the envy you've caused me, thanks to your seemingly endless camera-porn posts in Recent Purchases .

That's almost perfect; the only way you could have made that reply any better is if you'd added "So it really is about ethics in video games journalism" .

There was no proof in the ZoePost, it was a rant from an ex. As was shown at the time, there was no positive coverage or review of her game. And you can't claim "clear ethical violations" or "shady things going on" without citing sources or evidence.

Speaking about your experience of harassment, abuse, doxxing, being hounded out of your home, being publicly humiliated, etc, etc, does not equate to "doing well".

Gaters were challenged by Jimmy Wales to propose a non-biased entry for GamerGate. They failed, spectacularly.

Hulk Hogan vs Gawker had literally nothing to do with GamerGate or video games, other than the fact that the two sites had the same parent company. Yet still, as demonstrated here, it's claimed as a GamerGate "win".

 

In what parallel universe is being harassed so badly the UN invites you to talk about it as an authority on the subject "doing very well for yourself"?

(how is this relevant to ethics in video game journalism?)
Gawker is ****. I think no one but Gawker itself will deny that.

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Yes, I've also seen that article thrown around. Not sure how interviewing someone who played an important role in the reality show which is the subject of the article counts as "favorable coverage" though. It doesn't provide any details on Depression Quest or whether it's good, it just mentions it as the game Quinn made.
Also it was written and published before april.

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EDIT:

I failed.

 

Was that based on his view of GG? Not being deliberately obtuse or anything it's just I've found most of his videos to be alright, although I've not watched more than a dozen of his that happen to cover things of interest to me, however, and without being aware of the timeline, that video about the blurring of the lines between journalism, commenting, and personalities did seem to hit the nail on the head, at least for me it did.

Yea don't ask me, i have neither the patience or fortitude go down the rabbit hole, especially when it's little more than a he said, she said situation.

 

I'm right here with you.

I find it best to keep a general rule to ignore any "scandal" which is popularly referred to as "<whatever>gate"

Other than Watergate, that one gets a pass.

Having had the misfortune of taking in what I imagine is the tip of the iceberg in this thread, dear lord I'm glad I have this rule.

 

Watergate gets a pass because it is literally the origin of the "<scandal>-gate" trope .

Pretty much that, yeah. TBF I do agree with a lot of the stuff that he talks about, but he really missed the mark on GamerGate. He still tries to claim it's about ethics, and he was doing it at the start of this year (abridged):

Basically the same old tired argument: "Actually it's about ethics in video games" and the Quinnspiracy.

He's missing the point. Have the "ethics discussion" sure, but you damn well distance yourself from any of the GamerGate shenanigans or any of the utterly false allegations which spewed forth from it. YouTube is a far more powerful medium now than "traditional" games media was and there is conclusive evidence that some (and I stress some) YouTube figures have engaged in practices that are less than ethical. So yes, let's have that discussion about the shady crap that does actually go on; but let's talk about actual real things that actually happened and can actually be proven. Let's talk about the crap like skin gambling fraud and undisclosed paid content, and let's critically examine both "traditional" media and "new" media alike.

He's also missing the fact that there were targeted campaigns against specific people who had been branded "feminists", "feminazis", "SJWs", and the like. There were organised actions against specific people and publications. You're not guilty by association simply because you use the same hashtag as these shiteheads, but after learning of some of the truly awful things that are going on under that banner why wouldn't you want to distance yourself from it?

 

Probably because the core problems don't go away, eventually they have to be addressed and normally that involves talking with people you neither like or agree with, wars eventually give way to diplomacy, maybe one day we'll skip the wars altogether although I'm not going to hold my breath on that one.

If everyone distanced themselves the "problems" never get resolved.

 

Isn't calling games media "journalism" over stating it's importance a little? I like games, I watch some games media on you tube. But games media is essentially coverage of an industry that provides a luxury entrainment product. A product that is very much inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

 

This.

Even if I don't agree with the streamer about a game, I am witnessing it myself. Whilst it's not exactly the same as playing it myself, it gives me a pretty good idea of if I will like it or not. Companies with faith in their games often let streamers show off games a day or so before they're out, so you can still get any pre-order incentives even after watching some gameplay if you so wish.