Thanks for typing all this out Adder. It really adds some context to the reactions. I may not agree with your dislike of the current "gamer" metaphorical debate... but I certainly can't begrudge you your intense feelings.
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Games Journalism! Wainwright/Florence/Tomb Raider/Eurogamer/Libel Threats/Doritos
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Thanks for typing all this out Adder. It really adds some context to the reactions. I may not agree with your dislike of the current "gamer" metaphorical debate... but I certainly can't begrudge you your intense feelings.
Not every minority candidate is a useless person who has no background and experience. It's also much tougher for said minorities to get said background and experience then a white male.
These are all things that should be examined during the interview process. Hiring a minority who happens to have a wee bit less experience isn't a bad thing.
Moon_frogger
Member
I've only watched the most recent video and while a have a couple points of contention most of what she discusses is grounded in sound logic, some of it so obvious that I can't believe I needed her to point it out to me.
I think her major issue is that she doesn't present evidence very well, but I do think what she's doing is ultimately good. I don't personally like her videos, but i like that we can look at gaming through a lens and point out things like this.
She also has improved mightily from her first video. But I would like others to go about this too in a well informed way.
You're treading familiar ground in the affirmative action tussles that occasionally crop up on places like my dad's facebook. (no offense
)Affirmative action laws are not about hiring minorities to save face, they're about ensuring qualified minority candidates have the same access to jobs that qualified non-minority candidates do. The inherent biases of the hiring process that already be clearly defined in this thread should've address this point.
That's... not the sentence you should have focused on.
I don't think he learned anything.
Moon_frogger
Member
Wait I didn't say this all. What the actual fuck, man. I'm getting the hell out of this discussion.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
Anyone is qualified to talk about it. You don't need a degree to point out what's wrong with something if you feel it discriminates against you. However, that doesn't guarantee that every argument she puts forward is a valid one. The whole thing about gender representations like Ms. Pac-Man didn't take into account the technical limitations of the hardware, such as the amount of memory for sprites, or how detailed they could make the sprites. Of course when you have such limited tech, you have to cut corners such as giving Mario a hat (to avoid animating his hair) or giving Ms. Pac-Man a bow / lipstick to differentiate her from Pac-Man. It also ignores that these designers were following in the footsteps of Disney cartoons like Mickey / Minnie Mouse and Donald / Daisy Duck, or even the symbols for male/female bathrooms. They have a very limited amount of memory to use, a very small number of pixels with which to illustrate gender, and so they have very little choice but to rely on simple, immediately obvious and understandable gender identifiers. Yet she tries to paint these representations as part of a wider sexist agenda!
Giant Bomb's audience is 97% male according to their recent Bombcast survey.
MHWilliams
Member
That's generally the best way if you want a pure meritocracy. Take out any defining information and just have them read submitted articles.
The problem is that's rarely how any hiring process works.
And the issue isn't with the Giant Bomb guys in particular. The problem is they don't exist alone. When viewed across the entire industry, it's just one more in a long line of similar hires.
This is frequently the same problem you have with games with useless sexual content or collectathon open-world games or whatever else bothers you. Frequently, that one game isn't the issue, that's the one at the end of the line, because content doesn't exist alone.
Another key point about GB that I myself raised was that people who mentioned the nepotism argument when the site: a) hires their friends, and b) has such enormous ties to developers, were enveloped in a hailstorm of shit--yet now that so many people are allegedly concerned with how these ties are indicative of an enormous corruption within gaming journalism, they're for some reason avoiding discussing GB.
EDIT:
Which is a good reason to hire women, to expand their audience. That's a major, artificial skew.
EDIT 2:
Squidofman: At least on GAF the only people I've seen starting a discussion about them in this context have been Lime and myself.
Lowlander2
Banned
Just give it three days!
Squidofman
Member
Uncle Rupee
Banned
Her videos wouldn't really hold up very well if put through the peer review process, she claims that it's a myth that men are physically stronger than women when it's a scientific fact that on average men are stronger. If the genders were equal in physical strength we would not divide sports by gender, and female olympians would have matched records set by males in all categories.
The cats have a rigorous selection methodology.
Well, is that actually what she claimed? Here's the quote:
<<
The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective or entirely incapable also has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves and the specific games they inhabit. We have to remember that these games do not exist in a vacuum, they are an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem.
The reality is that this troupe is being used in a real-world context where backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant. Its a sad fact that a large percentage of the worlds population still clings to the deeply sexist belief that women as a group need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by men.
The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth, which of course is completely false- but the notion is reinforced and perpetuated when women are continuously portrayed as frail, fragile, and vulnerable creatures.
>>
Inflammable Slinky
Member
Sarkeesian's stuff is honestly pretty trite and kinda disappointing on an analysis front but compared to the shitstorm she gets you kinda have to support her.
I wish she'd move to more nuanced criticism though. Or at least produce more content
e: the one thing she does that is genuinely wrong is use the website TVTropes for anything remotely serious. that site is one of the worst parts of the internet
I wish she'd move to more nuanced criticism though. Or at least produce more content
e: the one thing she does that is genuinely wrong is use the website TVTropes for anything remotely serious. that site is one of the worst parts of the internet
So then what is the solution? I wasn't saying people should be forced to hide who they are. But if we are arguing there is an inherent bias when people know I. The race of the applicant. II. The gender of the applicant, then we are also saying that it's impossible for any hiring to ever be fair, because that bias will exist.
Outside of hiring purely based on the work submitted, the only other thing is having a quota for how many of each demographic is needed in a company.
I 100% agree it's a problem across the industry. I guess it's just hard for me, because on an individual level, I want to say that some companies/people could be capable of not having that bias. But I guess if we are accepting it's a sub-concision bias that no one can avoid, then I guess their hiring process wasn't fair (even if they thought it was fair). But then I don't know what the solution is, outside of mandatory quotas. Or them deciding ahead of time, that they are going to value the female gender over everything else. But isn't that then a skewed hiring process itself (with regards to everyone else applying that isn't of that gender)? But I guess if the hiring process is already skewed by the inherent bias, then it takes steps to even it?
But you are right, if this is this is a problem across the entire industry, then it speaks for itself. If you try to rationalize it, then you could say every single individual company that makes up the greater whole (of this problem), is capable of not being biased and hiring fair and square. But the fact that this IS a problem industry wide, pretty much debunks that. But I still wonder what is the right way to hire then. Because on a surface level, I don't think it's right to hire someone that is less qualified then someone else, because they fill a quota. (But then if that bias is making it seem like they are less qualified..bleh *brain explodes*
No she doesn't mean physically weak. She means the stereotype that women are emotionally and mentally weak. Look up the origins of Hysteria. It was believed that women would inherently become unstable due to the weak nature of their sex. It is a nasty little stereotype that is still around in many places.
I actually had course work on this. There has never been a great solution put forward. I think the last thing I read was the belief that creating a strong education and support structure for minority and impoverished students would lead them to excel in fields and cause them to be so qualified they could not be passed over. Of course this is not always going to work because many people will think stupid shit like well that black person wouldn't really fit into the office with only white people. Also I still meet many educated people who admit to feeling uncomfortable around minorities because self segregation still exists in many places in the US and so they have never been around them for extended periods of time.
Pinko Marx
Banned
Why is everyone focused on GB of all the sites? Well...I kind of get why but it just seems to me to be missing the point somewhat.
Yes, Giant Bomb hired a friend that they knew in the industry. But I see it like this; Giant Bomb, more than any other gaming focus website is more about the personalities on the site. The feeling I get from GB, and why I like them, is because they seem to be really just a bunch of friends that were in the industry and decided to go out and do their own thing. The chemistry they have together is what makes the site. The majority of their content is about them playing games together, talking about games and/or life, and just goofing off. You aren't going to get them from methodically interviewing and picking some random applicants. You get that from hiring people who you know will fit into what GB is about.
Yes, Giant Bomb hired a friend that they knew in the industry. But I see it like this; Giant Bomb, more than any other gaming focus website is more about the personalities on the site. The feeling I get from GB, and why I like them, is because they seem to be really just a bunch of friends that were in the industry and decided to go out and do their own thing. The chemistry they have together is what makes the site. The majority of their content is about them playing games together, talking about games and/or life, and just goofing off. You aren't going to get them from methodically interviewing and picking some random applicants. You get that from hiring people who you know will fit into what GB is about.
Inflammable Slinky
Member
this is completely true by the way. Systemic bias and all the bigotry/discrimination that goes along with it is pretty much grafted to the core of most industries.
this doesn't mean it's impossible to be rid of it so give up, it just means you gotta fight hard whenever this sort of thing comes up.
Uncle Rupee
Banned
I'm not saying that women are frail, fragile, or need to be protected by men (far from it) but in terms of physical size and strength there is an argument to be made that they are in fact the naturally weaker gender, on average. It is not just a "socially constructed myth", but based on obvious differences between men and women that have not gone unnoticed since the dawn of time.
I see what you're saying, but the fact that women are on average physically smaller and weaker than men certainly plays a role here.
Yes but that doesn't mean they want or need protecting. Some women do like to feel safe and protected and so they seek out partners who give them that feeling but it is not an inherent part of their identity. Many single women look out for themselves without any concern for physical size through the use of pepper spray or other forms of self defense.
I feel like you're setting up a false dichotomy here; either we're hiring the best available candidates or we're hiring according to a quota.
Modern affirmative action in hiring mostly doesn't look like a quota. At the extremely tame end, there are "binders full of women". When you've got a position to fill you go out of your way to make sure you're looking at female candidates. You try not to rely on existing employees' social networks for finding people and making them aware of the position, and so on.
There's plain old mindfulness. If people making hiring decisions hold firmly in mind that they've likely got these biases, they presumably have less of an impact. Asking themselves at every step "would I be treating this person the same if their gender were different?" can help.
Neither of those seem like they'd be objectionable to anybody. If something stronger is needed, we can still stop short of a quota by using an implicit or explicit points system. Gender or race can amount to "a thumb on the scale". And it's important to realize that the idea here doesn't have to be to admit a less-qualified minority candidate - the idea is to admit the actually more-qualified minority candidate who would otherwise be passed over because of unrecognized bias. Studies like the ones that have brought up suggest that this would be overall fairer. You're really concerned about the downside risk - maybe it means that a white male loses out to a less-qualified minority - but you've got to account for the upside too, given that the studies are showing that a person making hiring decisions is probably bad at determining whether a white male is actually more qualified than a roughly similar minority candidate.
Well, I appreciate you guys having this discussion with me. I'll admit my view was wrong. I was trying to rationalize something, when the evidence overall points to an overall problem. Or rather, I wasn't looking at the bigger picture. I honestly wasn't paying attention during the Giant Bomb debacle. I knew about it briefly, so I didn't really understand how it was an issue.
I'm still torn on it though, just because I think a person CAN be better qualified then someone else. The problem is the subjectivity of this analysis. And now that you guys bring up the inherent slant/bias towards white/males when it comes to highly qualified applicants when compared to other highly qualified applicants. I just on some level, hate the idea of hiring an applicant over someone that is better qualified, because of their gender. That goes both ways. (Hiring an under qualified male over a female applicant...because he's male. Or hiring an under qualified female applicant over a male, because she's a female).
I guess the one way I can look at this that makes more sense to me, is that I think any company should strive for diversity. Because diversity always makes a company better. So I can understand selectively seeking gender/diversity applicants.
Fair enough.
I'm still torn on it though, just because I think a person CAN be better qualified then someone else. The problem is the subjectivity of this analysis. And now that you guys bring up the inherent slant/bias towards white/males when it comes to highly qualified applicants when compared to other highly qualified applicants. I just on some level, hate the idea of hiring an applicant over someone that is better qualified, because of their gender. That goes both ways. (Hiring an under qualified male over a female applicant...because he's male. Or hiring an under qualified female applicant over a male, because she's a female).
I guess the one way I can look at this that makes more sense to me, is that I think any company should strive for diversity. Because diversity always makes a company better. So I can understand selectively seeking gender/diversity applicants.
Fair enough.
Moon_frogger
Member
sorry if I was unclear, I understand what affermative action is about and I agree with it entirely. I didn't think we were discussing that in the context of why giant bomb hired the personalities they hired. It makes me wonder, is every single employee at giant bomb a white male? If so, fucked up. Should they feel obligated to hire someone black/female/whatever to be on their podcast for the sake of diversity? Hell no. I'm trying to imagine leigh alexander as a permanent member of the bombcasr crew. Hilarious.You're treading familiar ground in the affirmative action tussles that occasionally crop up on places like my dad's facebook. (no offense
Affirmative action laws are not about hiring minorities to save face, they're about ensuring qualified minority candidates have the same access to jobs that qualified non-minority candidates do. The inherent biases of the hiring process that already be clearly defined in this thread should've address this point.
That's... not the sentence you should have focused on.
I don't think he learned anything.
MHWilliams
Member
Welcome to the reason behind affirmative action.
There are ways to work around it, they just tend to be harder than just doing the standard hiring process.
For the most part, the more you remove people from the interview process and the great effort you make to find diverse candidates, the more of an actual meritocracy you'll have. The problem is a sort of catch-22, because people still eventually have to work to together. There's a decent middle ground which allows more diverse applicants, while still finding people who will fit within your team.
I'll read all of this. Thanks for linking. I can accept my view point is wrong. I think you've guys have supplied enough material, that I can see where my thinking wasn't looking at things in the right way.
Funny, this just came up in my feed: Towards inclusive organizations
I mean your viewpoint is nice and in an ideal world we would all hire based on merit alone but due to the way we are as humans the perception of merit can be changed depending on factors like race and gender. It would be great if the world were colorblind and gender blind but it probably won't happen in our lifetime if ever.
MHWilliams
Member
It's cool.
And it's worth noting, that these are all issues that would exist with any race or in-group, it just happens in this case that the power structure here currently favors white dudes. It's less, "you're a horrible person" and more "you need to be mindful on this stuff."
Well there's two things. First, she didn't say "it's a myth that men are physically stronger," as you claimed, and this irked me because you were trying to make the argument that her comments wouldn't pass some level of "peer review." Second, I think she pretty clearly explains at least where she's coming from in the context of that quote: that it is a socially-constructed myth to say women as a gender are delicate and fragile and in need of protection from big strong men.
From my own perspective though, as an aside, I'd say that there's a whole lot more to "strength" than just howmuchyabench*--longevity and susceptibility to disease being two far more important factors. And then of course there's also pain threshold.
*
Me? A hair under 300#
call_kotaku
Member
Attacking Giant Bomb for their new hires did the general perception of the "diversity in gaming" cause no favors, though, because a ton of people felt like they had a personal connection with the people involved and treated it as an attack on their friends, sort of like the controversy around Zoe Quinn and the indie "illuminati" and gaming press. Also, people came to the conclusion that what the activists really wanted was a token girl in a group of guys, which really colored the discussion poorly and led to a lot of misconceptions about the goals of diversity.
In general I think there needs to be more effective means of protest within gaming, whether it be protests against publisher practices, ethics in gaming journalism, or misogyny/racism in nerd culture. An effective protest is trying to fight ignorance, not ignorant people, and heaping tons of personal attacks against individuals or even against large anonymous (and possibly fictitious) groups actively undermines any possibility of change. It's why I take issue with Leigh Alexander and people who do similar things in their articles and on twitter, because they use it as an outlet for their own personal frustrations rather than a means of educating people on the rationale of their beliefs or the need for collective action. Yelling at people and saying mean things out of anger, even if the anger is justified, does nothing but diminish the tone and drive people away until you've created an echo chamber for your venting.
In general I think there needs to be more effective means of protest within gaming, whether it be protests against publisher practices, ethics in gaming journalism, or misogyny/racism in nerd culture. An effective protest is trying to fight ignorance, not ignorant people, and heaping tons of personal attacks against individuals or even against large anonymous (and possibly fictitious) groups actively undermines any possibility of change. It's why I take issue with Leigh Alexander and people who do similar things in their articles and on twitter, because they use it as an outlet for their own personal frustrations rather than a means of educating people on the rationale of their beliefs or the need for collective action. Yelling at people and saying mean things out of anger, even if the anger is justified, does nothing but diminish the tone and drive people away until you've created an echo chamber for your venting.
Of course. To be clear, I wasn't trying to act defensive or say the white male is risking being victimized. I was just trying to approach this from a "who is better qualified" perspective. And if that happened to be a white male, then that person should be hired. That said, I was ignorant to the inherent slant/bias in hiring. So I appreciate you guys giving me the material to read, and giving me the conversation to educate me on these issues.
I was looking at this from the wrong perspective. I always go into something with an open mind, and accepting that I am ignorant. If someone can show me that I'm wrong, then I will gladly accept that I'm wrong. I want to learn.
That said, I also think it's lazy to expect others to do the work for you. I admit, sometimes I could be a better person and actively learn this stuff on my own. But I do appreciate GAF for these conversations.
Had to get it out of my system anyways.
Gsak
Member
That's true. I was talking to her earlier and she's very sad and angry about it. I plan to email them about it.
They appear to be intentionally shallow and simple. That has been the purpose of all her video work even before the video game series from what I have seen.
JesseEwiak
Member
I think it's interesting Leigh Alexander, for all the hate she got is going to be on Grantland's Girls in Hoodies Podcast, which is in their Pop Culture stream which is a Top 10 podcast stream in TV & film and is probably a top 100-ish podcast on the day it releases and is a podcast that appeals to women, especially women in the mid and late 20's.
Well, she is one of the more interesting games writers and one of the most notable female games writers are well. When she isn't drunk she's pretty good on podcasts, even when she is it's bizarrely fascinating.
Gsak
Member
I am not comparing here in any way but just as a counter example, Rush Limbaugh has a huge following and recognition and we all know he gets a LOT of hate.
This is just one of the saddest things I've read in this whole mess:
https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507279806254174208
Time for me to get a Patreon account and start sponsoring.
https://twitter.com/jennatar/status/507279806254174208
Time for me to get a Patreon account and start sponsoring.
This is an issue that exists in horror movies with their "black guy dies first" convention.
The thorny part of these sorts of issues is that it's structural. It's not fair to pick out one incident and say "this is a problem" unless you have slam-dunk evidence. Yes, maybe they hired a white guy because of nepotism or bias, but maybe he was the best guy. Unless you have evidence that it's wrong you can't say that it's wrong.
What you can say is that a string of decisions like that becoming a clear pattern is wrong. But then that diffuses responsibility.
The problem with criticism of the GB hiring was that it was articulated in a petty, personal way and centered around "oh look, a white guy" and not "hmm...it seems like the hiring process was structured not to account for systemic bias."
The issue isn't that Dan is white as much as it seemed like he was always going to be hired and the process was just for show. Other candidates, including minority candidates, didn't have a realistic shot. And since the GB guys are a bunch of white guys with white friends that type of hiring means minorities get short shrift systemically.
Unfortunately the criticism came out as "well I didn't apply and I wasn't hired, and my friend who did apply, who would have been a horrible hire and just wrote a blog post proving that, also wasn't hired!"
Samantha's friend wasn't hired. Ok. She probably shouldn't have been. That's not the issue. The issue isn't even that no woman or minority was hired. The issue is more that no non-white male had a reasonable shot of being hired.
JesseEwiak
Member
The difference is, Limbaugh is explicitly political. Girls in Hoodies mostly talks about how awesome Miley Cyrus is, weird Internet things they were into in the early 00's, and other random podcast stuff. Lambert did write a piece about GTA V (http://grantland.com/hollywood-pros...gamers-like-roadkill-with-latest-installment/), but I think it's interesting in a good way that Alexander is going around the usual gaming sites and talking to a whole different audience.
Yup. But hey, when I think of people who don't know anything about video games, I think about Jenn Frank.
Gsak
Member
You know what? All I wish for is that after this whole shit-storm ends, something positive to come out from it. Just once dammit.
I think it's more of a problem that people pass of assumptions as fact when it comes to a hiring process that is not public knowledge.
What positive do you expect to come from all this? There is no focus or main goal at this point.
Thanks for posting that.
Well, in the book specifically she advances studies like that as evidence that process-oriented affirmative action is not good enough, because of these unconscious biases, and that we also need to engage in goal-oriented affirmative action, which would mean favoring candidates which move an organization closer to its diversity goals. I'm personally supportive of that, but it's much more politically contentious than making sure that there is an open process.
I think it ought to help to have more institutional awareness of these biases. For instance, the fact is that the applicants in that experiment did have equal transcripts. This means that if we compared the two side-by-side absent information about the race of the applicants, they should look identical to us. It is in the presence of racial information that study participants began to overvalue the transcript accomplishments of the white applicant relative to the black applicant. I do think that a blind application process is a good idea, but even where this is an option this doesn't really help when it comes to evaluating performance for promotions after you have begun hiring more minority candidates. Those biases don't just go away after you hire them! So, I think you'd also have try to make sure that people responsible for both hiring and promotion in your company are aware of how these biases manifest, how they occur at a subconscious level, and try to ameliorate them by being aware of discrepancies in how, say, you interpret the same actions from different people (i.e. this recent topic about discrepancies in women's and men's performance reviews) and doing the work of examining your own thinking.
I wonder to what extent racial minorities are subject to the same biases. I know in some cases you see the same biases, but less pronounced, as you do with white people. Perhaps the simple act of changing the workplace to include more minority candidates will have an effect on that workplace's culture and evaluations of minority candidates over time? The fact that black supervisors were perceived as less competent by white subordinates is problematic, but (I'm hoping) that over time that would cease to subconsciously feel out of the ordinary.
Dan was dropping a lot of hints about his hiring while the process was still ostensibly unfolding. The outward appearance is that he knew basically the whole time that he was going to get the job, which makes the process look like a sham.
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