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GamerGate: a discussion without internet-murdering each other about it

Dunki

Member
I can agree with "Just like the left created the Monster called Milo. Gamergate in the end created the monster called Anita. Both of these groups made the person they despised the most untouchable due to their actions."

But, Milo is so far worse to me, he's a human shitstain. Anita, at least, never advocated for sexual relationships with children, and she, at least, wrote her own shit, and she, at least, never had a presentation where she blew up a picture of one of her opponents as a teenager and wrote the words "UNFUCKABLE” over the top. I understand the idea, but Milo is just trash. I mean he doesn't even believe in climate change!



.

Anita did not wrote her own shit. This McIntosh guy was the writer and Anita presented it. In her first video she even stated wikipedia word for word without even mentioning it in her soruces. It is not about her opinions but about their ways to gain traction and attention.
 

nowhat

Member
And why did it have technical issues? Because the focus was on hiring a 'diverse' development team instead of a competent one.
Or you know, things like
  • It was made mostly by BioWare Montreal, who up until then had mostly been responsible for ME3 multiplayer
  • Up until about 18 months before release it was supposed to be "No Man's Sky, the RPG" until they realized it wouldn't work (big surprise there)
  • Frostbite may be a good engine for FPSs, but it sucks ass for RPGs. Even BioWare Edmonton (the main team, with much more development chops) struggled to get it to work with DA:I
  • The original plan was to use mocap data as a starting point for the animations and then tweaking it afterwards, as it should be. But the managers (whether due to pressure from EA or not) decided raw mocap is fine, just ship it
And so on, the issues are well documented. Currently on mobile so I don't want to start googling for references, but they most certainly exist. But sure, diversity hires was the issue.
 

MazeHaze

Banned
I don't even know what there is to discuss. Zoe Quinns game was free, and none of the dudes she was involved with even covered her game in the first place. Yet she still gets harassed to this day.

The idea of inviting Zoe Quinn to GAF right now is the most out of touch load of horse shit I've ever read. Just look at this thread, it's mostly people "just asking questions", agreeing gamergate really was about ethics in journalism, trashing Anita, "the sjws are the real nazis", "so much for the tolerant left"

People who entertain the idea that gamergate was anything other than a hate motivated harassment campaign against women and transgender people in the industry are either ignorant douchebags, trolling, or in denial.
 

akuda

Member
I feel an attachment to the movement that is no longer especially attached to the usual names that people bring up on either side. I think we tend to get bogged down by the Anitas and the Klepeks who don't really deserve that level of attention. If there's a platform anymore, I think I tend to define it by moments, the actual things that have happened to me, and not other people, that cement me in how I feel about these things.

>I'm talking to a friend about GTA. He tells me, something essentially "Rockstar have a duty to make a game that sends the right message." I interrupt, saying as a woman I don't find the game insulting. "You don't, but their audience is so large, it's in the public's best interest to require GTA games to send a message that's positive about women and correct about gun violence."

Do any of you agree with that? Even years after the GG thing started hearing things like this still rankle me. I strongly believe in the opposite - start with the intent of the creator, review the game based on how well it achieved the goal it set for itself. Is GTA the satire it intended to be successfully, is this terrible Pokemon fanmod as offensive as its creator wanted to be, etcetera. To see a review that says "This square peg isn't fitting into this round hole" epitomizes the thing I wanted to change back in the day. A hard game can be hard, and isn't responsible for creating some kind of anti-casual atmosphere just for desiring to be hard. A game can set out to teach the player a progressive lesson, but the absence of a progressive lesson should not dock a game any points.

>The details of this one are foggy because of the shouting match that happened afterwards (because, always.) I'm catching up with an old friend and he tells me something he heard on Waypoint. I remembered reading a few hours prior that the article had been utterly debunked. I tell him, and he sinks in, and says maybe I remember wrong. I pull it up, and he says the game's bad anyway. I tell him he's wrong, and ask him if he's played it, and he said no. I asked him where he heard it was bad, and he said, Waypoint.

All over gaming there's a culture of damning recent releases as Bad Games. And among consumers, I think that's to be expected. You don't buy Rofo Pop, or convenience store sushi, or shop at Ikea expecting antiques. But why do journalists do it? And go out of their way to spread misinformation? There's a blatant agenda that's tied with trying to get a "hot take" out (see: Is Monster Hunter the next Cabela) and some people are unwitting pawns. The consumers should be left to come up with their own ex machina score, but before official reviews even come out 'journalists' are out there starting inane controversy, trying to scare people out of buying games they're hearing about for the first time. If you only play five games a year and spend the rest of the year listening to Waypoint, games must be so terrifying, full of demons that simply aren't there.

>I'm in a debate room at a con (this is giving you a skewed perception of how social my life is), I go up to take the mic and I get challenged as the only woman in the room to explain why gaming doesn't bother me, and why the men in gaming don't bother me.

I would document my time in the gaming hobby as utterly unfettered by gender until 2014. I played MMOs with voice on, I played first-person-shooters with groups of men, went to conventions, I could feel that I was something of a rarity, but not oppressed or attacked. Was Link female, no, but Jade is! Sure there's some skimpy armor out there, but I put that down as a lack of creativity, not an attempt to drive me out of gaming. Nowadays however, I'm constantly challenged just for being a passive participant. Not even just me, men are, everyone is, as though who is similar is to blame for everything that happens. My identity had nothing to do with my hobby until 2014, and every step to make things "better" has made things MUCH WORSE.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I'm glad a dialogue is possible now at least. It's been years now since the initial GG movement but we haven't had an open dialogue about it on NeoGAF for most of the time since. Obviously GG remains just about the single most inflammatory and divisive subject in video game subculture, and some folks need to keep it a little more civil in the recent set of responses, but it's functional in here and I'm gleaning a lot about where people are coming from with their various positions on it as it exists in 2018 compared to back at the start.

I'm seeing people lean in the direction of GG here without coming across as the same folks who were obsessed with Zoe Quinn's alleged seduction sex spree (I will not apologize for making fun of all those people hyper-concerned about that or taking the salty ex's blog post seriously as an Important Industry Matter). And -- hopefully -- the folks who sent me thousands of harassing messages for calling that stuff out at the time and obsessively collected personal details and archived posts from my entire lifespan on the internet to prove my "sjw hypocrisy" or whatever the fuck also, I assume, aren't the same folks talking here like reasonable adults either. If you are, let me know so we can go take it outside. Well, at any rate, most of of those twitter bombs were bots created en masse by a small subset of creeper people, and one of the guys with the creepy blog about me went to jail last I heard, but it was still a real thing when it was aimed at me, and so there's no doubt in my mind that it was a real thing for the primary targets of the debacle (Zoe and Anita). The GG movement HQs at the time did coordinate objectives to that effect as per that giant Buzzfeed expose recently, and the informal "GG Leadership" did directly attack and continuously attempt to discredit me and scandalize me from that point forward as part of that agenda (e.g. Adam Baldwin callout and twitter battle; GG orchestrated Slate.com feature that defamed me and NeoGAF and Moot among others, and regular attempts to scandalize me anywhere they could find an audience or get an account through on NeoGAF to evaporate instantly).

So pardon me if I didn't go out of my way for folks on the GG side on here at the time. I'm okay with having let them burn in the mass ban shitstorms of each excruciating thread about Anita's dumb videos we had to go through. But that's the past, and none of that nonsense with the #notyourshield twitter bots and "investigative journalist" basement stalkers will ever compare to the malice and cowardice and betrayal and disappointment I experienced from being falsely #metooed in a facebook post the author retracted the next day and where everyone burned this site to the ground before, so far as I could tell, mostly even having read the allegation at all. Just knowing that an allegation existed was enough to act reprehensibly and unforgivably. So whatever. Talking things through is what we should've been doing the whole time, talking things through is what we desperately needed to be doing when #metoo began spiraling out of control (and I said as much and tried to intervene...), but there were extenuating circumstances and arguably misplaced motives and bad actors and extreme personalities involved en masse.

It's a good time to sit down and talk here and now, clearly.

Critically, though, It doesn't inspire personal comfort whatsoever to see people label themselves as part of the GG movement today after the stuff back then I just described. Yes. times change and movements change (just look at third wave feminism et al). So, hey, maybe if you have legitimate positions to argue as adults now primarily, now's the time to evolve the label of the movement. Consider a rebrand. Disassociate from all that initial horseshit about serial seduction sprees to influence some game for charity, and coordinated harassment against anyone speaking out about it, and a lot of general anti-women sentiment, because that shit was not cool, period. I have a long memory. I expect others share similar sentiments about the whole escapade at its peak.

This "battle" has been raging for years now, usually with NeoGAF as its primary battleground, and the target painted on my back for making fun of people obsessing over Zoe Quinn's devious feminine wiles (??) undermining the ethics in games journalism (what fucking ethics?) never went away, even if the conversation did evolve to something more substantial and reasonable along the lines of what's being debated in this thread as it seems to have. perhaps. I'm never going to support "gamergate" as a result of all of that garbage, to be clear, yet I'll still lock any threads about Anita S trying to melt my brain cells with her horrific attempts at film criticism (I haven't watched her game segments), I'm still broadly anti-censorship, pro diversity, and I still think artificially injected diversity quotas are generally worse than having a smaller subset of projects that explore Not White Bald Space Marine Guy topics in a more substantive and meaningful way. Video games are in a convenient position, on the other hand, to just, say, add in flexible character creation options a lot of times, though, and I don't agree with any pushback against something like that. Under-representation in media is a legitimate issue with complicated/imperfect/WIP solutions we're still navigating our way through, and games have better solutions available than most mediums to make some strides there with minimal effort and basically no downside if you just want your space marine dude at the end of the character creation screen.

Some of that sounds suspiciously like what a lot of people in here seem have on their minds, but this whole GG thing started out with the worst possible platform anyone could've dreamed up. I'll continue reiterating that.

Seriously. It's an irrevocably shitty movement because of all the baggage, and it acted as a trial run for the actual alt-right movement. Rebrand, Better yet, unbrand. if this is what you feel GG is about now and if you consider it to be a mature and socially integrated platform now that's about the issues for realsies; just drop the identity/label entirely and debate the positions on their own. That's my preference with just about everything I go about, and I can go on about everything (clearly). Labels beget sides and define enemies, and tend to move us toward those polarized, reductive, us vs them bubbles especially on the internet, and nothing of value results from that, clearly. Move away from "gamergate" conceptually and dial in on specific issues instead, take the high ground with less "omg those sjws and their hoop earrings are ruining mah vidyas," and drop the dismissive labeling of your opposition in general. Same goes for the "other side" calling everyone an alt-right Nazi. Some are apparently calling NeoGAF an alt-right website now. That's how dumb things have gotten. Regardless, you won't be auto-dismissed for any reasonable positions that are apparently floating around now, in time, at least not here, by staying civil and sticking to the issues over ad hominem.


P.S. I just had to delete yet another porn attack account suicide (from DarknessTear, who had been a member here since 2005 with 15,000 posts) in this thread a few minutes ago, proclaimed in the name of the virtuous and honorable ResetEra of course. We take down these attacks ASAP, usually nearly instantly (submit a report if we miss one though), and these failed attempts to disrupt and destroy NeoGAF continue to paint ResetEra in a...particular light. I will again note: you're not able to harm NeoGAF with this sort of thing anymore now that we've stabilized, and NeoGAF will not sink to your level and reciprocate to destroy you. Ideally you stick around, tbh. Keep proving you're the radicalized, socially incompatible baddies. You can be our Australia, since there needs to be somewhere for radicalized authoritarian pseudo-progressives to have their meetups and Milkshake Duck declarations and suicide porn bomb planning each week. It's not gonna be here, though, regardless of what happens to that place. Seriously, grow up. If you don't want to post on NeoGAF anymore, log out and point your browser somewhere else, or I'm going to waste my time making the attackers known. Your employer, or dean, or mom won't be pleased. Give it a rest with the porn bombs.
 
It's kind of disingenuous to suggest that ResetEra reflects poorly through that post. It's honestly just because people were and are upset about what happened.
 

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
It's kind of disingenuous to suggest that ResetEra reflects poorly through that post. It's honestly just because people were and are upset about what happened.

Which post? The latest porn bomb out of the hundreds and hundreds of account suicides that have persistently attempted to destroy NeoGAF under the rallying cry of ResetEra from day one? Or some other post? Do tell, since I had to bring in professional contractors 24/7 to prevent the sheer number of account suicides and associated attacks from completely destroying NeoGAF in November. Do tell, though.
 
Not everything is political. If I photograph a mountain, or paint a fruit basket, what is political about it?

Your understanding of the idea of politics is simply too narrow, that's all. What's political about you taking a picture of a mountain? Well, it tells me you grew up in a society that allows people to walk around and take pictures of whatever they want. It tells me you come from a society which has room for an appreciation of nature, too.

There's obviously a distinction between that level of politics and a game that is explicitly about, like, extolling the virtues of being pro-choice. But this is what I mean when I say everything is political. To ask that art not have politics is like asking that movies not feature moving images.

First of all James did make this video because he was constantly asked if he would review it. So yes he absolutely had a reason to say this on HIS channel for HIS subscribers.

WTF does "his channel" or "his subscribers" have anything to do with what I said? I repeat: people do not typically come out and announce that they aren't going to review a movie.

And it is a FACT that these kind of movies which get praised for their "representation often totally have a disconnect with actual viewers. EG rotten tomatoes score of critics and crowd.

Not true at all, and Wonder Woman and Black Panther prove it. Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't a good movie. It's totally normal and fine that people were excited to see a cast of all-female leads. Just, the movie turned out not to be good. I'm sure all of those people were excited about Wonder Woman, too. That was a good movie, and so it got better reviews. The same will be true for Black Panther's success -- people are correct to be excited about the idea of a nearly all-black superhero film. That'd be the case whether it's good or it sucks. It happens to be great, and so it'll do very well.

Also I love how the regressive left is totally disgusted by Bill Maher. Its kind of hilarious to be honest.

My number one issue with Bill Maher is that he's obscenely unfunny. I'm a George Carlin guy.

"Normal people" like ETDragon, Daniel and the rest of them.... turn on each other like piranhas.
Supported Daniel for years on twitter and when I said psvr could do 3 million lifetime he laughed at me and blocked me.
ET hardly plays games and is a social justice witch hunter and the rest are sheep or just as bad.
If you think they are "normal" , I got news for you... enjoy the groupthink over there but don't be surprised when a knife is plunged into your back.

I literally have no idea who any of those people are, nor am I responsible for anything they think or say.

You are just angry that people here are finally brave enough to voice their concerns and opinions without the threat of a dog pile and ban.

I'm being completely honest with what my issue is -- GAF used to be a place to escape from stupid dipshits who took GamerGate seriously. If you think posting on the internet is brave, something is seriously, seriously off.

No my dear,

First thing's first: You are not now, nor will you ever be, Christopher Hitchens. That is extraordiarily unnatural coming from you.

I want you here because I love diversity of opinions.

I live life with a little more nuance, in that I'm happy to parse ideas that are interesting and challenge me from ideas that are just stupid bullshit. GamerGate is stupid bullshit.
 
Which post? The latest porn bomb out of the hundreds and hundreds of account suicides that have persistently attempted to destroy NeoGAF under the rallying cry of ResetEra from day one? Or some other post? Do tell, since I had to bring in professional contractors 24/7 to prevent the sheer number of account suicides and associated attacks from completely destroying NeoGAF in November. Do tell, though.

I'm referring to the person as someone who individually did something shitty. I don't really mind account suicides, but there are wrong ways to do it. My point is that it doesn't really reflect upon ResetEra.
 

Moneal

Member
Your understanding of the idea of politics is simply too narrow, that's all. What's political about you taking a picture of a mountain? Well, it tells me you grew up in a society that allows people to walk around and take pictures of whatever they want. It tells me you come from a society which has room for an appreciation of nature, too.

There's obviously a distinction between that level of politics and a game that is explicitly about, like, extolling the virtues of being pro-choice. But this is what I mean when I say everything is political. To ask that art not have politics is like asking that movies not feature moving images.

So you move the goalposts. The picture aka the art isn't political, so you move to the ability of taking the picture is political.
 

royox

Member
First thing's first: You are not now, nor will you ever be, Christopher Hitchens. That is extraordiarily unnatural coming from you.

Oh sorry, english is not my 1st language and maybe I overdid it a bit trying to sound friendly.
I live life with a little more nuance, in that I'm happy to parse ideas that are interesting and challenge me from ideas that are just stupid bullshit. GamerGate is stupid bullshit.

Are you with me in that not everything is black or white and there are shades of gray? I've been banned from oldGaf for saying I don't like the idea of Link being female in a mainline Zelda game just because I like him being just as he has been always the same way I don't want Samus to be suddently a man...does that make me a GamerGater or a mysoginist?
 

Dunki

Member
Your understanding of the idea of politics is simply too narrow, that's all. What's political about you taking a picture of a mountain? Well, it tells me you grew up in a society that allows people to walk around and take pictures of whatever they want. It tells me you come from a society which has room for an appreciation of nature, too.

There's obviously a distinction between that level of politics and a game that is explicitly about, like, extolling the virtues of being pro-choice. But this is what I mean when I say everything is political. To ask that art not have politics is like asking that movies not feature moving images.



WTF does "his channel" or "his subscribers" have anything to do with what I said? I repeat: people do not typically come out and announce that they aren't going to review a movie.



Not true at all, and Wonder Woman and Black Panther prove it. Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't a good movie. It's totally normal and fine that people were excited to see a cast of all-female leads. Just, the movie turned out not to be good. I'm sure all of those people were excited about Wonder Woman, too. That was a good movie, and so it got better reviews. The same will be true for Black Panther's success -- people are correct to be excited about the idea of a nearly all-black superhero film. That'd be the case whether it's good or it sucks. It happens to be great, and so it'll do very well.



.
Again. HE did do it because he was asked a ton should he not have answered to his fans if he is going to review it or not?

Wonder Woman was praised to death it was the second comming same with Black Panther. And while Wonder Woman was a good movie to many and myself it was never what "journalists" critics made it ot be. With Black Panther it is the same. I have not watched it but the to me it seems that the social aspect or importance is way more important than the movie being actually good. And Honestly I get pretty turned off when something like that is done to a movie.
 

prag16

Banned
I'm referring to the person as someone who individually did something shitty. I don't really mind account suicides, but there are wrong ways to do it. My point is that it doesn't really reflect upon ResetEra.
It doesn't?

Where do you think the vast majority of the hundreds of account suiciders (temper tantrums at best, vile porn bombs at worst) now reside?

And we're still getting nonsense like this regularly, almost four months on. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Somebody in another topic told me that resetera doesn't care about gaf anymore and has simply moved on. Apparently not everybody.
 
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EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member
I'm referring to the person as someone who individually did something shitty. I don't really mind account suicides, but there are wrong ways to do it. My point is that it doesn't really reflect upon ResetEra.

I mind people who don't mind account suicides, personally. Let's part ways here before you find yourself in the mood.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
Your understanding of the idea of politics is simply too narrow, that's all. What's political about you taking a picture of a mountain? Well, it tells me you grew up in a society that allows people to walk around and take pictures of whatever they want. It tells me you come from a society which has room for an appreciation of nature, too.

There's obviously a distinction between that level of politics and a game that is explicitly about, like, extolling the virtues of being pro-choice. But this is what I mean when I say everything is political. To ask that art not have politics is like asking that movies not feature moving images.

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I am just going to point and laugh at this statement. Seriously? That's just reaching. You can make it political if you want it to be, but no a landscape painting or a still life fruit bowl is about as apolitical as you can get. The art itself is not political in any way. I'm sure that even Bob Ross would laugh at you if you asked him if he was trying to be political with his happy trees.

Also I love how the regressive left is totally disgusted by Bill Maher. Its kind of hilarious to be honest. As for Black Panther like I would care about the representation. I rather care if its a good movie or not.

This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?

Blade was a bad ass character. I don't remember anyone making a big deal about the race of Wesley Snipes at the time. Mace Windu and Nick Fury - both bad asses and black. Barrett and Sazh are two iconic characters who happen to be black. But that isn't what defines them. Kaine from Neir is Intersex, and is more than the sum of those parts. The thing is, all of them are great characters who don't exist to be one thing.
 

F0rneus

Tears in the rain
I've certainly done my research on GamerGate and my opinion still stands. It was a shitty hate movement and not much else. The more I looked into it, the more the "It was REALLY about ethics in videogames journalism!" smokescreen doesn't hold up. And I'm at the point where I am more annoyed at people seing "SJWs!!!" everywhere, then the people calling for female designs being censored in anime titty games like SNK Heroines.
 

akuda

Member
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I am just going to point and laugh at this statement. Seriously? That's just reaching. You can make it political if you want it to be, but no a landscape painting or a still life fruit bowl is about as apolitical as you can get. The art itself is not political in any way. I'm sure that even Bob Ross would laugh at you if you asked him if he was trying to be political with his happy trees.



This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?

Blade was a bad ass character. I don't remember anyone making a big deal about the race of Wesley Snipes at the time. Mace Windu and Nick Fury - both bad asses and black. Barrett and Sazh are two iconic characters who happen to be black. But that isn't what defines them. Kaine from Neir is Intersex, and is more than the sum of those parts. The thing is, all of them are great characters who don't exist to be one thing.
I think it's somewhat beating around the bush to talk about, can art with no political intent be political.

Rather, as consumers we tend to look at finished products, not intent. It's usually pretty obvious when a game with a political message comes out. There's not a lot of squinting at Mario Odyssey trying to scry something, is this art, what's the meaning.

I think the real crime is the commentary that looks at a game that had no messaging intent and determines that it was a missed opportunity. Mario isn't a missed opportunity for messaging, it's Mario. And just because it doesn't have a message on it doesn't mean it should have yours.
 
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Reyben

Member
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I am just going to point and laugh at this statement. Seriously? That's just reaching. You can make it political if you want it to be, but no a landscape painting or a still life fruit bowl is about as apolitical as you can get. The art itself is not political in any way. I'm sure that even Bob Ross would laugh at you if you asked him if he was trying to be political with his happy trees.

It's funny that you mention Bob Ross because i've interacted with people who think like that ("everything is political") and yes, they do think that his "happy trees" are political.
"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
If you look at the world through the lenses of social justice, then "Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out." is the only natural conclusion.
 
I almost feel like we're running past each other. Even here, I have to wonder if you, yourself, are arguing in bad faith.

Let me assure you that I have no horse in this race, as I want no part in this antagonistic divide, no matter what side. Hence why I don't consider myself a GamerGater. I merely tried to point out why I think so many gamers are unfairly vilified. It's just that so many issues were simply attributed to GG in order to sweep them under the rug. As a sign of good faith, allow me to build some bridges by pointing out the stuff that I agree with in principle:

It ignores the basic fact that people like seeing themselves in their media. [...] I think that specifically in the case of Black Panther, it's a movie that already just in it's name and premise appears to have more to say about race than any of the movies that you mentioned. It's a movie which is about blackness. [...] If you ask minorities, women, trans people if they feel more comfortable in the gaming community now that games that actually feature them exist, they're not going to say no.

The gist of your refutation seems to be the assertion that diverse representation in video games matters. I agree with that. It is weird, because nowhere did I state otherwise. I mean, if it's that important to some and if it makes them feel more welcome, I'm all for it. I'm going to see Black Panther, because I love engaging with different cultural settings and that's cool.

Not in a, "Yay, we're winning this argument" way, but in a "Wow, it's cool to see a black/trans person and their experience in a product" way.

That's also something I basically agree with and I'm certain that's the case for most media consumers out there. I don't take umbrage with people celebrating their representation in a piece of media, that's exactly the kind of positivism we need. What's being criticized is the growing trend to give every media product a political framework while screaming 'victory' for every piece of media that seems to reaffirm their political side. Hence why I made my case that the growing politicization of media and entertainment is reaching a hysterical fever pitch and why I take issue with the assumption that "everything is political".

As an outsider looking onto the American state of affairs, there is a lot of political hysteria (on both sides) sweeping over the country. Like, I get that people are worried, but that's something that should be decided in the political arena, not on the back of video games and gamers. There's a lot of worrisome radicalization happening on both sides, with each side trying to weaponize different social groups for political gains. I vehemently reject such instrumentalization of people, no matter how righteous the cause may seem. It's just something that leads to immense pain and suffering for the poor sods that happen to come in between these sides.

No gate is being kept closed.

If you take a quick glance at what's happened to GAF, you know as well as I do that this is not true. By banning different points of view, you basically allow people to take more and more extreme stances through a positive feedback loop. We both may not agree on everything, but by exchanging arguments, we are forced to reevaluate, differentiate and nuance our own beliefs. That's something that I value greatly.
 
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I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I am just going to point and laugh at this statement. Seriously? That's just reaching. You can make it political if you want it to be, but no a landscape painting or a still life fruit bowl is about as apolitical as you can get. The art itself is not political in any way. I'm sure that even Bob Ross would laugh at you if you asked him if he was trying to be political with his happy trees.



This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?

Blade was a bad ass character. I don't remember anyone making a big deal about the race of Wesley Snipes at the time. Mace Windu and Nick Fury - both bad asses and black. Barrett and Sazh are two iconic characters who happen to be black. But that isn't what defines them. Kaine from Neir is Intersex, and is more than the sum of those parts. The thing is, all of them are great characters who don't exist to be one thing.

"This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?" feels like a a sentiment no one really puts forward. The character and movie needs to be good, I think that's intrinsically part of the representation demand, all be it, in an unspoken way, representation in shitty movies tends not to be championed by people.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
"This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?" feels like a a sentiment no one really puts forward. The character and movie needs to be good, I think that's intrinsically part of the representation demand, all be it, in an unspoken way, representation in shitty movies tends not to be championed by people.

That is what happened with say, the Ghostbusters remake. I don't think people had issue as much with having the Ghostbusters characters be female, it was that the movie itself was goddamn awful, and any criticism of it for being awful was then turned around as them being sexist.

It is definately possible to do a female cast Ghostbusters movie and make it work, but not the way they did it.

I mean, Nick Fury was originally white, but I can't think of him being anyone other than Samuel L Jackson now because he owned the role.
 
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Dunki

Member
That is what happened with say, the Ghostbusters remake. I don't think people had issue as much with having the Ghostbusters characters be female, it was that the movie itself was goddamn awful, and any criticism of it for being awful was then turned around as them being sexist.

It is definately possible to do a female cast Ghostbusters movie and make it work, but not the way they did it.

I mean, Nick Fury was originally white, but I can't think of him being anyone other than Samuel L Jackson now because he owned the role.
What me really make me hate the new ghostbusters movie before it was released was this picture here

tdy_tren_ghostbusters_150826.jpg


This was promotion for a movie. To me this was just ridiculous and it shhowed the full politicisation of this movie.
 
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akuda

Member
"This is something that intrigues me. Why is it more important that a character "represent" a certain group than a character be "good"?" feels like a a sentiment no one really puts forward. The character and movie needs to be good, I think that's intrinsically part of the representation demand, all be it, in an unspoken way, representation in shitty movies tends not to be championed by people.
It's more that you don't see anyone demanding the inverse, but you see examples of shitty shoe-in characters all the time. That deadnaming lady from Andromeda is the most famous example, but my personal least favorite are the lesbian couple from later on in Guild Wars 2's storyline. It's like they took a page from Steven Moffat's book and made two women whose lines of dialog alternated between blindingly gay and patronizingly empowered.

I guess the best way to measure this is to say, is this character helping to develop the story, or are they just establishing a diverse presence. If the action has to stop for someone to point out what minority they represent I think it's not a good character, or at least it's not good writing.
 

Cybrwzrd

Banned
What me really make me hate the new ghostbusters movie before it was released was this picture here

tdy_tren_ghostbusters_150826.jpg


This was promotion for a movie. To me this was just ridiculous and it shhowed the full politicisation of this movie.

That's exactly the point I am making. It was more important that they were women than it was that a good movie was made.
 

KevinKeene

Banned
First of all, I appreciate the lengthier posting of Evilore above.

I will say just this to the whole label-discussion: As I said in the beginning of this thread, I'd never call myself a 'GamerGater'. When I look at what GG stands for today, I align with much of it, see the three points mentioned in the op. That strongly resonates with me.

The label itself could very well go away. However, this is where I'm admittedly childish: When wronglabel A says wronglabel B is wrong, and the masses in-between these two wrong labels give support to wronglabel A, it frustrates and angers me, from sheer injustice and blind bias.

I fully agree that any harassment crap and misogyny that took place at the beginning in the name of GG is terrible and can never be defended. Later, though, we entered a phase where feminists (and I emphasize that feminism as it was created initially was a great movement) took reign, so to speak, and made the whole of gaming simply ... less fun. Be it silencing opinions as it happened on NeoGAF. Be it pressuring developers on Twitter until someone got fired. Be it the subtle threat that if certain elements weren't changed in localized Japanese games, it would cause a huge medial outrage. Be it 'male gaze'. Be it the labeling of anyone who would argue with nuance as alt-right. Be it the hostile atmosphere during the entire Trump-election process, too often having us witness comments like 'all white men are bad' or worse variants. Be it derailing gaming discussion by applying political agenda to everything (The Last Night-threads were impossible to be had. Similar stuff now happens over 'there' in regards to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was attempted to badmouth all the time, yet is now the best selling entry in the franchise - so much for that).
And so on.

That's what GG fought against. Not always in the best ways. But matter of fact is, there was none other that dared speaking against feminists (again, I hereby mean nowaday's feminists). Evrn if someone dared to, he was automatically put into the GG camp.

I strongly feel that as of now, GG has become a bastion of reason, still often mean-sounding due to the harshness, but all in all a movement that has the right goals. I don't need GG. This kind of group think is always embarrassing and, as Evilore said, encourages a divide between people. But what I need even less is the kind of feminism as pushed by people like Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian or groups like Kotaku, Polygon or Nintendo Treehouse (the latter of which hurts me the most).

It's kind of amusing that Evilore advises people to stop using the label 'GG', because the same is oh so true for feminism. When most people hear 'feminism' these days, they just give a loud sigh and roll their eyes. Understandably so, because what the above people's feminism stands for is not a better, more equal world. It's long since become a revenge movement, throwing individuals (as happened with Evilore himself) under the bus to further their ideologies. Even if they're found out to have been wrong, it is lightly shrugged off with a 'oh well, that's just one man. Imagine how many minorities suffer constantly', perpetuating their belief that life is statistics.

I hate neonazis, I hate the current kind of feminists, and I hate dishonesty and ignorance. In the context of NeoGAF, all I want is enjoy video games without having to worry that playing cerain games is the same as joining the alt-right. Since none of the bigger websites gave any bit of nuance in their reporting of issues in gaming, GG became a magnet to all kinds of people. But I have no romantic feelings for that movement.

I just can't let all-too-proud, yet wrong themselves groups feel like they 'won'. Maybe that makes me a child. But then again, I'm playing video games :)
 
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Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
P.S. I just had to delete yet another porn attack account suicide (from DarknessTear, who had been a member here since 2005 with 15,000 posts) in this thread a few minutes ago, proclaimed in the name of the virtuous and honorable ResetEra of course. We take down these attacks ASAP, usually nearly instantly (submit a report if we miss one though), and these failed attempts to disrupt and destroy NeoGAF continue to paint ResetEra in a...particular light. I will again note: you're not able to harm NeoGAF with this sort of thing anymore now that we've stabilized, and NeoGAF will not sink to your level and reciprocate to destroy you. Ideally you stick around, tbh. Keep proving you're the radicalized, socially incompatible baddies. You can be our Australia, since there needs to be somewhere for radicalized authoritarian pseudo-progressives to have their meetups and Milkshake Duck declarations and suicide porn bomb planning each week. It's not gonna be here, though, regardless of what happens to that place. Seriously, grow up. If you don't want to post on NeoGAF anymore, log out and point your browser somewhere else, or I'm going to waste my time making the attackers known. Your employer, or dean, or mom won't be pleased. Give it a rest with the porn bombs.
I can understand your frustration and it is really shitty behaviour to make such exit postings, but I feel it is not quite fair to project it on the whole of Resetera, since there are thousands of members on Resetera, who never did such a thing and do not think it is justified at all. To my best understanding, the leaders of Resetera are not pleased about such behaviour either and do not condone it. Afterall, most of these suicide posters may be Resetera members, but they certainly are NeoGAF members as well. Therefore, I feel it is not fair to judge the whole forum they may be members of for it, but the specific subset instead.

Case in point, I am a Restera member as well and have some friends who are Resetera members as well, and we hate this kind of behaviour. If you want your account deleted, ask for it in a polite way, or if need be say how horrible you think the administration is while doing this, but don't resort to such childish and desctructive behaviour.
 
I think harassment is a legitimate thing due to how big she got. When you get that big and so many people are contacting you at the same time, it's difficult to separate genuine critique from harassment. I think also we as a community need to be better at coming up with spaces where genuine, non-disingenuous critique can occur (twitter is not that). I also think if you're a public speaker, you owe your audience debate, you owe them you addressing the arguments people put against you.
Yes, I can understand why she closed the comments section on her youtube videos, but I disagree with her decision to not engage with her critics in any shape or form afterwards. She could've made a video responding to some of the most prevalent counter-arguments, or even host a debate in a controled environment to ensure no harassment would take place. She didn't though.
 
I can understand your frustration and it is really shitty behaviour to make such exit postings, but I feel it is not quite fair to project it on the whole of Resetera GamerGate, since there are thousands of members on Resetera GamerGate, who never did such a thing and do not think it is justified at all. [...] Case in point, I am a Resetera GamerGate member as well and have some friends who are Resetera GamerGate members as well, and we hate this kind of behaviour.

While I agree with you, I find it kinda ironic that you ask a courtesy for yourself, that you are not willing to extend to others (whoever it may be).
 

Typhares

Member
I'm glad a dialogue is possible now at least. It's been years now since the initial GG movement but we haven't had an open dialogue about it on NeoGAF for most of the time since. Obviously GG remains just about the single most inflammatory and divisive subject in video game subculture, and some folks need to keep it a little more civil in the recent set of responses, but it's functional in here and I'm gleaning a lot about where people are coming from with their various positions on it as it exists in 2018 compared to back at the start.

I'm seeing people lean in the direction of GG here without coming across as the same folks who were obsessed with Zoe Quinn's alleged seduction sex spree (I will not apologize for making fun of all those people hyper-concerned about that or taking the salty ex's blog post seriously as an Important Industry Matter). And -- hopefully -- the folks who sent me thousands of harassing messages for calling that stuff out at the time and obsessively collected personal details and archived posts from my entire lifespan on the internet to prove my "sjw hypocrisy" or whatever the fuck also, I assume, aren't the same folks talking here like reasonable adults either. If you are, let me know so we can go take it outside. Well, at any rate, most of of those twitter bombs were bots created en masse by a small subset of creeper people, and one of the guys with the creepy blog about me went to jail last I heard, but it was still a real thing when it was aimed at me, and so there's no doubt in my mind that it was a real thing for the primary targets of the debacle (Zoe and Anita). The GG movement HQs at the time did coordinate objectives to that effect as per that giant Buzzfeed expose recently, and the informal "GG Leadership" did directly attack and continuously attempt to discredit me and scandalize me from that point forward as part of that agenda (e.g. Adam Baldwin callout and twitter battle; GG orchestrated Slate.com feature that defamed me and NeoGAF and Moot among others, and regular attempts to scandalize me anywhere they could find an audience or get an account through on NeoGAF to evaporate instantly).

So pardon me if I didn't go out of my way for folks on the GG side on here at the time. I'm okay with having let them burn in the mass ban shitstorms of each excruciating thread about Anita's dumb videos we had to go through. But that's the past, and none of that nonsense with the #notyourshield twitter bots and "investigative journalist" basement stalkers will ever compare to the malice and cowardice and betrayal and disappointment I experienced from being falsely #metooed in a facebook post the author retracted the next day and where everyone burned this site to the ground before, so far as I could tell, mostly even having read the allegation at all. Just knowing that an allegation existed was enough to act reprehensibly and unforgivably. So whatever. Talking things through is what we should've been doing the whole time, talking things through is what we desperately needed to be doing when #metoo began spiraling out of control (and I said as much and tried to intervene...), but there were extenuating circumstances and arguably misplaced motives and bad actors and extreme personalities involved en masse.

It's a good time to sit down and talk here and now, clearly.

Critically, though, It doesn't inspire personal comfort whatsoever to see people label themselves as part of the GG movement today after the stuff back then I just described. Yes. times change and movements change (just look at third wave feminism et al). So, hey, maybe if you have legitimate positions to argue as adults now primarily, now's the time to evolve the label of the movement. Consider a rebrand. Disassociate from all that initial horseshit about serial seduction sprees to influence some game for charity, and coordinated harassment against anyone speaking out about it, and a lot of general anti-women sentiment, because that shit was not cool, period. I have a long memory. I expect others share similar sentiments about the whole escapade at its peak.

This "battle" has been raging for years now, usually with NeoGAF as its primary battleground, and the target painted on my back for making fun of people obsessing over Zoe Quinn's devious feminine wiles (??) undermining the ethics in games journalism (what fucking ethics?) never went away, even if the conversation did evolve to something more substantial and reasonable along the lines of what's being debated in this thread as it seems to have. perhaps. I'm never going to support "gamergate" as a result of all of that garbage, to be clear, yet I'll still lock any threads about Anita S trying to melt my brain cells with her horrific attempts at film criticism (I haven't watched her game segments), I'm still broadly anti-censorship, pro diversity, and I still think artificially injected diversity quotas are generally worse than having a smaller subset of projects that explore Not White Bald Space Marine Guy topics in a more substantive and meaningful way. Video games are in a convenient position, on the other hand, to just, say, add in flexible character creation options a lot of times, though, and I don't agree with any pushback against something like that. Under-representation in media is a legitimate issue with complicated/imperfect/WIP solutions we're still navigating our way through, and games have better solutions available than most mediums to make some strides there with minimal effort and basically no downside if you just want your space marine dude at the end of the character creation screen.

Some of that sounds suspiciously like what a lot of people in here seem have on their minds, but this whole GG thing started out with the worst possible platform anyone could've dreamed up. I'll continue reiterating that.

Seriously. It's an irrevocably shitty movement because of all the baggage, and it acted as a trial run for the actual alt-right movement. Rebrand, Better yet, unbrand. if this is what you feel GG is about now and if you consider it to be a mature and socially integrated platform now that's about the issues for realsies; just drop the identity/label entirely and debate the positions on their own. That's my preference with just about everything I go about, and I can go on about everything (clearly). Labels beget sides and define enemies, and tend to move us toward those polarized, reductive, us vs them bubbles especially on the internet, and nothing of value results from that, clearly. Move away from "gamergate" conceptually and dial in on specific issues instead, take the high ground with less "omg those sjws and their hoop earrings are ruining mah vidyas," and drop the dismissive labeling of your opposition in general. Same goes for the "other side" calling everyone an alt-right Nazi. Some are apparently calling NeoGAF an alt-right website now. That's how dumb things have gotten. Regardless, you won't be auto-dismissed for any reasonable positions that are apparently floating around now, in time, at least not here, by staying civil and sticking to the issues over ad hominem.


P.S. I just had to delete yet another porn attack account suicide (from DarknessTear, who had been a member here since 2005 with 15,000 posts) in this thread a few minutes ago, proclaimed in the name of the virtuous and honorable ResetEra of course. We take down these attacks ASAP, usually nearly instantly (submit a report if we miss one though), and these failed attempts to disrupt and destroy NeoGAF continue to paint ResetEra in a...particular light. I will again note: you're not able to harm NeoGAF with this sort of thing anymore now that we've stabilized, and NeoGAF will not sink to your level and reciprocate to destroy you. Ideally you stick around, tbh. Keep proving you're the radicalized, socially incompatible baddies. You can be our Australia, since there needs to be somewhere for radicalized authoritarian pseudo-progressives to have their meetups and Milkshake Duck declarations and suicide porn bomb planning each week. It's not gonna be here, though, regardless of what happens to that place. Seriously, grow up. If you don't want to post on NeoGAF anymore, log out and point your browser somewhere else, or I'm going to waste my time making the attackers known. Your employer, or dean, or mom won't be pleased. Give it a rest with the porn bombs.

I understand where this is coming from as someone being directly (willingly or not) involved in the whole thing and a public figure.
As KevinKeene KevinKeene said I wouldn't call myself a gamergater ever.
In fact I missed the boat at the beginning I suppose as I only heard about the whole thing through GAF after a while.
GAF painted a very black and white picture of the situation and when something is presented like that to me I cannot help but be suspicious.
I tried to do some research, a lot of it was not very conclusive: so and so was harassed here are 2 twitter egg account screenshot as proof.
In the end I couldn't tell what's what so I just started listening to the messages of each side and I can't lie when I say what GG side was saying resonated with me more than the 'other side'.
I tried browsing KiA to see where the hate filled post were but I couldn't find any. It is an echo chamber of sort so I wouldn't recommend anyone to take things there as gospel but I didn't see anything outlandish.
I think anyone involved with GG would love to have the label gone to be honest as you said it's pretty much tainted forever. But these days the only ones I see using the label nonironically are the media trying to shift some blame to some kind of boogeyman when necessary.
In the end I think the GG/anti-GG dichotomy is completely outdated. It stopped being just about video games for the most part a while back and seems to be more about general societal changes and in which direction we want to move forward.
 
That is what happened with say, the Ghostbusters remake. I don't think people had issue as much with having the Ghostbusters characters be female, it was that the movie itself was goddamn awful, and any criticism of it for being awful was then turned around as them being sexist.

It is definately possible to do a female cast Ghostbusters movie and make it work, but not the way they did it.

I mean, Nick Fury was originally white, but I can't think of him being anyone other than Samuel L Jackson now because he owned the role.

Quite a lot of people ended up giving it a bad review and now no one really talks about that Ghostbusters movie now. Except us, in these meta conversations. Women haven't really mentioned the movie since it dropped.

It's more that you don't see anyone demanding the inverse, but you see examples of shitty shoe-in characters all the time. That deadnaming lady from Andromeda is the most famous example, but my personal least favorite are the lesbian couple from later on in Guild Wars 2's storyline. It's like they took a page from Steven Moffat's book and made two women whose lines of dialog alternated between blindingly gay and patronizingly empowered.

I guess the best way to measure this is to say, is this character helping to develop the story, or are they just establishing a diverse presence. If the action has to stop for someone to point out what minority they represent I think it's not a good character, or at least it's not good writing.

Andromeda is guilty of all the bad writing. I don't know if anything in there is good, including the trans character and deadnaming incident. Action stopping for someone to point out what minority they represent is lame. However, this only really happens in games with overall bad stories. Like, I hate Moffat stories full stop.
 

akuda

Member
Quite a lot of people ended up giving it a bad review and now no one really talks about that Ghostbusters movie now. Except us, in these meta conversations. Women haven't really mentioned the movie since it dropped.



Andromeda is guilty of all the bad writing. I don't know if anything in there is good, including the trans character and deadnaming incident. Action stopping for someone to point out what minority they represent is lame. However, this only really happens in games with overall bad stories. Like, I hate Moffat stories full stop.
Sure it mostly stands out in stories that are garbage, but... people like to consume garbage. I've seen plenty of examples where it's slotted in tastefully (Operator 6O having a meltdown over being turned down by another female android, which managed to accomplish a lot of goals in one scene, that stoic 2B is not necessarily the norm for YoRHa and that androids can love) but unfortunately the bad ones will always be more memorable than the good.

Also another famous bad character from Guild Wars 2, Hello, please enjoy my deadname.
 
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Airola

Member
Your understanding of the idea of politics is simply too narrow, that's all. What's political about you taking a picture of a mountain? Well, it tells me you grew up in a society that allows people to walk around and take pictures of whatever they want. It tells me you come from a society which has room for an appreciation of nature, too.

There's obviously a distinction between that level of politics and a game that is explicitly about, like, extolling the virtues of being pro-choice. But this is what I mean when I say everything is political. To ask that art not have politics is like asking that movies not feature moving images.

I kinda agree with in that most, if not all, art is political.
But I think there is a difference in taking a picture of a mountain and let the viewers read any kinds of "this tells this and that about the photographer's society" subtext to it than someone setting up the image deliberately in a way that should make people think about that.

Basically every piece of art and entertainment that depicts someone as the good guy and someone else as the bad guy is political. I would agree with you on that. Even if there aren't any deeper thoughtful layers to the message, the message still exists that there is evil and it is good to defeat that evil. That is political. There is no way around it. But I think not all art and entertainment necessarily do that. I don't think you could say Tetris is political unless you create some political messages to it on your own.

As a side note, personally I think that "real art" is supposed be as grand as trying to save souls and we don't have much of that. Art has been entertainment and entertainment has been art for decades, hell, for centuries now. So in that sense I would say art doesn't even really exist. That's my "hot take" and "controversial opinion" of it.
But I kinda think that as long as there is some politics in art, the sparkle of wanting to go to the deepest core of human soul and trying to guide it to redemption through art is still there. Without that art is just more or less well crafted images or sounds or words or whatever else. But to use those same things to grab the deepest core of human existence, that's art. An egyptian painting of a face is just that; an image. But an egyptian painting that tries to show ideas that aren't easily explainable by words - like for example trying to show the connection between human life and human death and what might lie beyond that and how to cope with that - that is art to me.


WTF does "his channel" or "his subscribers" have anything to do with what I said? I repeat: people do not typically come out and announce that they aren't going to review a movie.

People don't typically make any videos on Youtube either.

James had been talking about Ghostbusters for a long time. People were interested what he thought of the upcoming movie. He told it and he clearly explained why he thinks the way he thinks. And it was not about women. It was about his disappointment of the executives toying around with an idea after an idea and always rejecting them one way or another - even when original Ghostbusters people like Dan Aykroyd were involved in writing some of them. He didn't like the idea that they were going to do a complete "reboot" for the whole thing when there clearly were options for making a clear sequel which was something James had been hopeful for since he saw Ghostbusters 2.
People dismiss remakes and reboots all the time. They don't have to be excited about a thing they used to like but which is going to get a treatment that doesn't follow the original thing at all. And they have every right to say that. It's not as if he attacked any individuals with it - unlike those who decided to ridicule and mock James for his opinion.

That video, and James, were made into a political voodoo doll. People falsely used it to bump their own social and political agendas on social media. They used that as an example of what is wrong with whatever they thought James was representing there. While in reality James was only representing himself and only said he doesn't have to feel a need to pay for something he isn't excited about. That he is not going to put up any money for the studio that juggled with potentially way more interesting ideas by the original cast and who went for the trend of trying to reboot the whole thing. I mean, James doesn't like an idea. He doesn't want to pay for seeing that made into a movie. And for some reason it's ok to bash a person because he says he doesn't want to pay money for that and he isn't interested in seeing a movie.
 

Airola

Member
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I am just going to point and laugh at this statement. Seriously? That's just reaching. You can make it political if you want it to be, but no a landscape painting or a still life fruit bowl is about as apolitical as you can get. The art itself is not political in any way. I'm sure that even Bob Ross would laugh at you if you asked him if he was trying to be political with his happy trees.

Not sure about fruit bowls but often landscape paintings used to be things to raise people's national identity with. In Finland we have plenty of landscape paintings with the purpose of wanting to push a certain Finnish identity for people. Sometimes they wanted to copy a place that to them showed the essence of what Finland is all about. Sometimes things like that can be shown in landscape paintings. In my opinion that makes them political.

But yeah, I don't think I've heard anyone trying to show with a fruit bowl anything else than a fruit bowl :D
 

TheWatcher

Banned
I have been a long time lurker on these boards and have seen the gradual transformation of discussion here from logic and fact based towards a Marxist echo chamber. I can't pinpoint when it happened, but I would say around the end of 2011, beginning of 2012. I remember this place had members that would thoroughly investigate scammers and frauds, rather than cover and make excuses for them because of their biological sex, gender, colour of their skin, whatever. I remember a time that this place was one of the few places that was highly critical and welcomed open discussion on Triple A titles. The amount of adulation and complete lack of criticism directed towards Sony here from 2013 onwards was nothing short of disgusting. I was completely enraged about the Xbox One having online only but I felt that a lot of members here simply brushed away Sony's decision to have customers pay to play on PSN. Most of all, I remember a time when Anita Sarkeesian's word was gospel on this site despite mountains of evidence that portrays her as an agent provocateur. Many of her examples would have been destroyed had she and the people protecting her across the internet allowed an open and honest debate on the issues at hand. I smile inside when I hear 'sjws' mockingly insult gamers by saying 'Anita is invading their safe space'. In their world safe spaces are fine for everybody but their imaginary enemies.

It was refreshing to play the opening sequences of Kingdom Come last night. I can see why the left is rallying against the so-called 'Nazi' developer. The plot features the themes of family values, dedication to country, and of course it is historically accurate and in tune with the developer's vision.
 

Airola

Member
If you take a quick glance at what's happened to GAF, you know as well as I do that this is not true. By banning different points of view, you basically allow people to take more and more extreme stances through a positive feedback loop. We both may not agree on everything, but by exchanging arguments, we are forced to reevaluate, differentiate and nuance our own beliefs. That's something that I value greatly.

That's true.

And even more important than that is that it makes the other people not involved in the discussion see the whole thing for different points of view.

Often people claim it's stupid to have arguments on the internet because neither side is going to change the other side's opinion.
But that really isn't the whole picture of what internet discussions can be. There are countless of other pairs of eyes and countless of other minds reading those discussions. Most of them will never comment on anything in that discussion. Many might not even be registered in the forum they read these discussions in. And that's why a forum should accept discussions from varied points of view. They will see that there are more opinions out there than what they perhaps are accustomed to.
 

Airola

Member
It's fucking vegan agenda is what it is.

Lol, I wouldn't be surprised if some were really saying that :D

I would say though that it can't be vegan agenda if the bowl doesn't have vegetables instead of fruits.
Fruits are delicious and vegetables aren't so I won't call it an agenda if there are fruits but I will call it an agenda if there are vegetables :D
 
Let me assure you that I have no horse in this race, as I want no part in this antagonistic divide, no matter what side. Hence why I don't consider myself a GamerGater. I merely tried to point out why I think so many gamers are unfairly vilified. It's just that so many issues were simply attributed to GG in order to sweep them under the rug. As a sign of good faith, allow me to build some bridges by pointing out the stuff that I agree with in principle:



The gist of your refutation seems to be the assertion that diverse representation in video games matters. I agree with that. It is weird, because nowhere did I state otherwise. I mean, if it's that important to some and if it makes them feel more welcome, I'm all for it. I'm going to see Black Panther, because I love engaging with different cultural settings and that's cool.



That's also something I basically agree with and I'm certain that's the case for most media consumers out there. I don't take umbrage with people celebrating their representation in a piece of media, that's exactly the kind of positivism we need. What's being criticized is the growing trend to give every media product a political framework while screaming 'victory' for every piece of media that seems to reaffirm their political side. Hence why I made my case that the growing politicization of media and entertainment is reaching a hysterical fever pitch and why I take issue with the assumption that "everything is political".

As an outsider looking onto the American state of affairs, there is a lot of political hysteria (on both sides) sweeping over the country. Like, I get that people are worried, but that's something that should be decided in the political arena, not on the back of video games and gamers. There's a lot of worrisome radicalization happening on both sides, with each side trying to weaponize different social groups for political gains. I vehemently reject such instrumentalization of people, no matter how righteous the cause may seem. It's just something that leads to immense pain and suffering for the poor sods that happen to come in between these sides.



If you take a quick glance at what's happened to GAF, you know as well as I do that this is not true. By banning different points of view, you basically allow people to take more and more extreme stances through a positive feedback loop. We both may not agree on everything, but by exchanging arguments, we are forced to reevaluate, differentiate and nuance our own beliefs. That's something that I value greatly.

That's interesting.

"while screaming 'victory' for every piece of media that seems to reaffirm their political side." I just don't know if I see that happen that much within mainstream media critique.

I think it's interesting to have non-mainstream outlets critique gaming from pre-stated political agendas. It doesn't bother me to have "the right wing gamer" discuss portrayals of Conservative societies within gaming. I find that stuff interesting. I find it deepens my understanding of those political ideas, and the pointing out of potential messages and themes within a game is interesting. The debate on that stuff is to be frank awesome. And as much we talk about people like Anita (a person with a political agenda who critiques games from within that perspective) , the average gamer will gets their gaming information from whatever looks good in a store or IGN, will never hear about her or debates like this.

It feels like you don't feel confident that we as a culture can have people with political agendas comment on our culture without becoming radicalised.

I know some people may not want to view the possible themes and messages of gaming through that political lense, but I would say no one is forced to. I simply do it because it is part of the fun of partaking in any media for me. This is were things get rather complex for me. I also feel like I am compelled to do so. Let's say I play a game and interpret a lazy stereotyping within a minority character, in that moment any criticism I gave is political (I have the political viewpoint that minorities shouldn't be stereotyped by people or in media), but also on a pure "fun" level my fun has been ruined, I'll feel emotionally hurt, not without good reason. Those are the moments that make it so hard for me to buy into the idea that I could even enjoy games purely on a "fun" level.
 
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Darryl

Banned
Not sure about fruit bowls but often landscape paintings used to be things to raise people's national identity with. In Finland we have plenty of landscape paintings with the purpose of wanting to push a certain Finnish identity for people. Sometimes they wanted to copy a place that to them showed the essence of what Finland is all about. Sometimes things like that can be shown in landscape paintings. In my opinion that makes them political.

But yeah, I don't think I've heard anyone trying to show with a fruit bowl anything else than a fruit bowl :D

This is broadening the definition of what anyone means by political. We are battling with language itself here. Whenever anyone cries politics, they're always talking about active political issues. These are the issues that are topical, controversial, and are being debated. There's nothing politically topical nor controversial about you being a Fin. Just about every person will acknowledge that title or description for you, and if they're not aware of what it means to be a Fin, they'll defer to their environment and will generally accept you having that title. If the nation of Fin was in the process of being divided and Fin's were now voting on whether they wanted to be in camp Finland #1 or camp Finland #2, then attempts to sway opinion's into whether they wanted to be in camp #1 or camp #2 would be considered a topical political issue and thus would piss the "politics" crowd off.

Maybe "political" isn't the best word to use to describe the issue's that GamerGater's had since it isn't narrow enough, but it is the word they're using because it was the closest word that people seemed to latch onto. It is possible that this is the word people use because it is easy to dismiss using the tools anti-GGers were already using: things like arguing perspective and fussing over definitions. The arguments are not going to stop until they're resolved and they'll never be resolved if people won't accept what the problem was to begin with.
 

Alebrije

Member
I hate neonazis, I hate the current kind of feminists, and I hate dishonesty and ignorance. In the context of NeoGAF, all I want is enjoy video games without having to worry that playing cerain games is the same as joining the alt-right. Since none of the bigger websites gave any bit of nuance in their reporting of issues in gaming, GG became a magnet to all kinds of people. But I have no romantic feelings for that movement.

I just can't let all-too-proud, yet wrong themselves groups feel like they 'won'. Maybe that makes me a child. But then again, I'm playing video games :)


The more I read about GG the more confuse about its motivations and resonance in gaming community. But certainly most of people play videogames as a hobby the same way you go fishing or play poker. In fact for a lot of people videogames represent an escape or stress suppressor from real life problems, even coming to Gaf just read and post sometimes is part of this process. But when someone calls you pro racist or in favor of woman abuse just because you like a game and its developer put awful stuff on social media, well you hobby that supposedly will relax you becomes another stress tool. That's what GG generated in game community, an avalanche of attacks on forums , media , etc...it felt like everything about a video game needed to be relate to GG.

I do not have the knowledge to talk about GG but I am sure it's main core origin surpassed gaming community and obviously Gaf and videogame journalism were not the righ place for this "battle" because GG represented a social problem so much bigger than gaming community. Suddenly a "monster" appeared, it was so big and rare that console war discussions paled compared to it .

Not saying we just close our eyes and pretend noting was wrong , but certainly GG needed to be attacked / confronted from a more legal battleground, game community was not prepared to confront it without polarization.
 
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"while screaming 'victory' for every piece of media that seems to reaffirm their political side." I just don't know if I see that happen that much within mainstream media critique.

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It does happen.

Let's say I play a game and interpret a lazy stereotyping within a minority character, in that moment any criticism I gave is political (I have the political viewpoint that minorities shouldn't be stereotyped by people or in media), but also on a pure "fun" level my fun has been ruined, I'll feel emotionally hurt, not without good reason. Those are the moments that make it so hard for me to buy into the idea that I could even enjoy games purely on a "fun" level.
In a free society you're going to run into things you don't like. Like a stereotype you find offensive. If that's enough to ruin your fun and hurt your feelings, I don't know what to say. When I play a game, watch a movie or listen to an album, I don't expect to like every section, scene or phrase, or that I'll agree with all ideas presented within. I just ignore the stuff I don't like, and focus on that which I do like. You have to develop a personal shield that protects you from all the stuff you disagree with that you'll inevitably be faced with.
 
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