weemadarthur
Member
Here, before responding again, read this.
http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter
Because you want some perspective on the issue.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Canadian Prime Minister:"We need to stand against gamergate and video games misogyny"
http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter
Because you want some perspective on the issue.
Angelus Errare
Banned
Closest America has come to someone like this is Obama and unfortunately there's a term limit.
John Kowalski
Banned
That's not healthy...
OminoMichelin
Member
Let me tell you a secret: everything we see in media involves politics in some way.
And why are some people so ready to conflate the condemnation of GGers to somehow regulating the game industry?
But he's not advocating 'government' meddling in game development. He simply stated that online harassment, misogyny in the game industry and things like GamerGate that target women are things we need to stand against. That's something everyone would agree with. Besides, unless Americans get serious about these issues, there is very little Canada can do to change things.
Guileless
Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
It's just one arguably throwaway sentence, so who knows what he really thinks. I'm not an expert here, but don't some of the prominent anti-GGs make videos that explicate popular video games to show misogynist themes? Not just stuff like killing hookers in GTA.
Living in and subsequently crawling out of a woodworks is just begging for Tetanus. I hope they're vaccinated.
Because it's not just GG - the way people are hunted for daring to have an opinion represents the most harmful extension of outrage culture, whereby nearly everything can be deemed 'harassment'. Innocuous criticism is "harassment". Asking for transparency is "harassment". Daring to dispute the hiveminded doctrine of political correctness and radical feminism is "harassment". Doxxing is "harassment". Swatting is "harassment". Stalking is "harassment". Encouraging suicide is "harassment". Bomb, death and rape threats are "harassment".
I mean, if you start to take legal action against those forms of behaviour, where does it end? Regulating the game industry is a very small step to take if governments are already condemning individuals' private correspondence and erasing any lingering rights to freedom of speech that haven't already been burnt on a pyre of political correctness.
SolidSnakex
Member
It should be noted that the OP quote and thread title are incorrect. He doesn't say anything about "video games misogyny". This is what he actually said
"The things that we see online, whether it's issues like gamergate in videogames and misogony in popular culture is something we need people to stand clearly against."
We sorta discussed it earlier as that particular "video games misogyny" quote struck some as being weird, and as it turned out he didn't say it.
ClosingADoor
Member
There is no government meddling in game development and I know of no government that has plans to do that. The government is not coming for your games.
These sure are some hoops you're jumping through.
OminoMichelin
Member
So in fear of doing too much we should instead decide to do absolutely nothing?
Gotcha.
Serious answer: it's up to the legislators to decide what's harassment. Of the "harassments" you lumped together (I assume to prove your point), not all of them are actually harmful. It's up to the law and the judges to decide what is what.
The slippery slope argument doesn't work here in my opinion.
What is a prominent anti-GG?
johntown
Banned
This is the start and this is how governments get involved in things they have no business in. The statement is too broad and could be used as a starting point in game censorship if the game is deemed offensive to women etc. This is my opinion on what I think could very well happen.
The demoness Sarkeesian.
You are not making a case for why this is a starting point for game censorship. You're just stating a slippery slope argument without actually stating how and when the slippery slope begins. This is stated here (a peer-reviewed online international philosophy journal):
Besides, governments already have legislation on
Work practices
Work environment laws
Health security
Guidance Lines and Ratings for Entertainment Products
But you are now saying that governments shouldn't have any say whatsoever or meddle with anything when it comes to game development?
You are right. I hope what happened to the movie, music, comic book, manga, books, radio industry doesn't happen here. Those industries are regulated to hell and back and are now bastions of feminist ideals and PC propaganda.
johntown
Banned
Exactly
Damn.
1. You haven't made a case for why they even would meddle with "CENSORSHIP" (or ban "stuff that is offensive to women") or whatever it is you're afraid of will happen.
2. Governments already have laws in place to protect workers at game developers (labor laws) and consumers of video games (ratings). Your premise is faulty, unless you are an extreme libertarian who doesn't want legislation on work practices and labor rights at all.
What on earth? This is like saying that outlawing rape is the first step towards the government controlling people's sexual activities. I'm not sure how cracking down on stalking/threats/harassment is ever going to affect game development. The very notion is beyond absurdity.
Shrike_Priest
Member
Yes, most of those things you listed are harrassment. Like literally, by the book, harassment. "Daring to have an opinion" is not, "innocuous criticism" is not, "asking for transparency is not" and "questioning redical feminism" are not harassment. They are straw men. Because people are not saying those things are harassment. They're saying groups who do those things also harass. Don't conflate the two.
ClosingADoor
Member
There is no meddling in games from government (outside of tax stuff, age ratings, etc). There are no plans for that also.
No government is going to enter a development studio and say "replace that character with this" or "remove this scene". They don't do that for movies, music, newspapers, tv, etc, etc. So why the sudden fear that this is going to happen with video games.
How anybody can believe otherwise is beyond me.
Because that's the only argument they have against the pressure to not allowing people to be shitheads. "muh videogames"
Guess who have something to say on this.
If anyone wants to know more about this you can listen to a very lengthy interview with Dyack on the Cane and Rinse podcast. It's like 2 weeks old or so.
Simply put he most likely didn't have a GG atmosphere in his company and thus questions if the issues are overblown. He himself hates sexism. His whole deal with Gamer Gate is that he is still very touchy about how the press handled him around Too Human and post Too Human. So that "ethics in journalism" is his calling card. It's just damn weird that he won't let go of the Gamer Gate ties because everyone under the sun understands it's not about journalism.
Dennis mate, I get your issues with journalism in videogames. You're not a fool for discussing this. Just let go of the GG thing man. It makes you look much worse than you really are.
it's a harassment campaign against figureheads in the gaming community that want to improve the representation of their race / gender under the guise of protecting freedom of speech / expression and tackling issues of ethics in games journalism.
it's actually much more complex than that and it can't be summed up well in a few sentences as there are people that bought into the protection of their rights and ethics stuff and now defend the "movement" for that despite it not being what the core group actually actions.
The Jackdog
Member
Guess who have something to say on this.
how is this guy still around?
whats he DOING?
he hasnt made a damn game in ages
Your comment its political in nature, in a video game message board, about a gaming-related topic.
Temporal Mess
Neo Member
See: Mark Kern.
SketchTheArtist
Member
Guess who have something to say on this.
I'm sure Trudeau has the internet to read about this and come to his own conclusions without the input of an apparent "game developer". Does Dyack not think all the high priority election issues are going to be more of an immediate concern?
gutter_trash
Banned
as a guy in the industry, i can tell you that ratio of men and women employees in game development is still heavily lopsided.
more can be done to make gaming jobs more apealing for women in our industry and
lots still need to be improved in smaller development houses that still have a boys clubhouse mentality.
larger studios have taken steps to improve things but many smaller studios still have a long way to go.
since many game developpers like Dyack love to take government subsidies, they should be more respectfull towards 50% of tax payers who happen to be women.
Guileless
Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
The Gamer Gate critics quoted in the mainstream press articles about Gamer Gate and the critics invited to the UN conference. I Grandpa Simpsoned my way in and out of the Gamer Gate thread here, but otherwise all I know about it is what I've read in the non-gaming press and the press's coverage of the UN conference. I don't remember any names off the top of my head other than Anita Sarkeesian, who has been named in the titles of threads here.
Canis lupus
Member
Gamergate started because a jilted ex-boyfriend wrote a rambling 7,000 word essay attacking his ex-girlfriend and shopped it around the worst corners of the internet, in the hopes that the goobers who inhabit those dark corners would attack her and "ruin her life".
His plan worked far better than he could have hoped or expected, with signal boosting from right-wing nutjob Adam Baldwin coining #Gamergate along the way, and the online hate mob it spawned continues to this day.
you are right. while i wouldn label them as "Anti-GG" as these people did what they did before gamergate was a thing. these are people that campaign for better representation fortheir gender in games and received harassment for it. So they started up an anti harassment campaign due to how ill equipped the police are at dealing with this kind of abuse.
SkeptiMism
Member
As a society, we have changed our opinions on many, many issues during the last 100 years (and obviously before that too) as we've learned more and educated people and in general listened to people's troubles. Undoubtedly, this will continue in the future. Do you understand how much we have changed views on women's rights for example? Or gay rights? Or black people's rights? Or things like the attitude towards mental illnesses? That's just to name some.
I can tell you, the change is fucking massive. Do problems still exist? Absolutely, but that doesn't mean we haven't reduced them a lot and changed the situation for the better.
Now, why would you think we can not do anything to bullying and online bullying? It's absolutely not some untouchable, impossible thing to change. Change doesn't happen overnight, but it can happen. We can do it.
The problem isn't some small thing either. Bullying causes suicides every single day. Lives are lost because of it. People fall to depression or other mental illnesses and become marginalized. It's a major issue that's pretty costly for us. So yes, I strongly believe world leaders should pay more attention to it. And I do agree that at the same time, we should teach people to deal with it better, but really, telling people just to man up doesn't help.
This also doesn't mean that there aren't other important issues.
astroturfing
Member
i.. still don't understand. what does this have to with videogames? or sexism in games? how does Anita Sarkeesian and her youtube series tie into this?
this whole thing is incredibly confusing to me and i'm legit baffled why a prime minister would talk about it.
Why would anyone be against that? Do these people think everyone in that domain should be white men only or what?
He was asked about violence against women being endemic to young men both online and offline. Why wouldn't he talk about it?
It's seriously not worth knowing or learning about. Consider your ignorance about the subject a gift and not a curse.
The fact that the Prime Minister of Canada would even reference it is baffling beyond words.
Guileless
Temp Banned for Remedial Purposes
I agree that it is very unlikely we will have censors making individual decisions about scenes, but you are approaching this issue narrowly. You did acknowledge the role of government subsidies. It is not hard to imagine in the future development studios that flaunt official taboos being denied tax breaks or subsidies that put them at a competitive disadvantage to other studios that would have the effect of choking off certain content. I would not be surprised if this already happens at some level with videogames. (I have no idea if it actually does).
The music/movies/tv example is not definitive. The country that produces most of the world's popular culture has among the strongest legal and cultural speech protections. But since the videogame industry is so different from those in many ways, game studios are not as heavily concentrated in the US. Tomorrow I'm buying a game developed in Canada, for example. Again, I'm not an expert and anyone feel free to correct me, but from reading threads posted here, the UK already has some form of government policing of online comments and Australia has much more aggressive government censors.
Also, as a matter of historical perspective, most of the posters here have all been lucky enough to grow up in the most free speech friendly societies in human history, and so it's easy to think this is natural and inevitable. But it's not as a matter of historical fact, and technology and centralization of government is making it much easier for governments to control their populace.
So these are the reasons I do not think it's a good idea to dismiss out of hand any fears of censorship and ridicule and/or demonize anyone that raises the issue.
Read this.
It's good to see someone taking online harassment seriously, because not talking about it won't make it go away.
Temporal Mess
Neo Member
It doesn't.
So the ex-girlfriend happened to be a small indie developer, so there's your tenuous link to video games. And one of the conspiracies that floated around was that she slept with a games journalist in order to get a positive review of her game (no such review by the guy she's accused of sleeping with exists).
Anyway, the whole thing turned into a reactionary, misogynistic circlejerk and suddenly these losers were sending harassment to any somewhat outspoken woman in gaming. Sarkeesian didn't actually have anything to do with this at the beginning, but because she was already getting harassed by these guys she kind of got lumped in with it very quickly.
And as for a politician talking about it... Maybe it has something to with how popular swatting seems with GG? That shit puts peoples' lives in danger, yo.
I don't think they think that (apart from a couple of far out crazies) their worldview and reality just don't match up. They don't think sexism is as prevalent as people are claiming and so they perceive this lobbying as women trying to take control rather than just trying to become more equal.