GamerGate: Difference between revisions
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'''Slate''': | '''Slate''': | ||
David Auerbach- [http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...arassment_a_letter_to_a_young_male_gamer.html] | David Auerbach- [http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...arassment_a_letter_to_a_young_male_gamer.html] | ||
'''Vox''': | |||
Todd VanDerWerff- [http://www.vox.com/2014/9/2/6095939/jennifer-lawrence-women-under-attack] | |||
'''Theweek''': | '''Theweek''': | ||
Revision as of 02:32, 4 September 2014
GamerGate occurred when the seedy antics of Zoe Quinn exposed wide scale collusion in the indie game industry, benefiting developers, reviewers, journalists, and everyone else involved, except for you, the gamer.
The gaming media refused to apologize, accept accountability or in any way commit to adherence to any kind of higher standard of journalism which would (at least) include not sleeping with the subjects of their articles. Instead, they turned on the gaming community, concluding that their audience is now their enemy, so that they could continue fucking game devs which must be the only pussy they are able to get.
Zoe Quinn - why this happened
Chelsea Van Valkenburg, aka Zoe Quinn is an indie game "developer" who slept her way to the top of the indie game industry (that's like being king of the hobos) without a single recognizable skill by sleeping around with every single person who could help her get ahead.
Her crimes are so numerous that going into detail about them would take up all the space in this article. Instead, here is a list.
Things that Zoe has done include, but are not limited to:
Cheating on her boyfriend, cheating on him with at least 5 people, sleeping with her PR agent, sleeping with the judge of one contest she was a finalist in, sleeping with two judges of a contest she won, sleeping with news journalists to help her cover it up, intentionally sabotaging at least three charities for feminism and colon cancer, sabotaging a fourth and getting a major figure in the gaming industry fired, setting up a scam to replace those charities, stealing the money donated, faking a mugging to ask for donations, asking for donations for her broken computer, sleeping with her married boss to advance at her job, sending her white knights to harass people who disagree with her, getting several websites shut down that way, sexually harassing someone, using intimidation to make him apologize for exposing her, being a feminazi, raping her boyfriend according to her own definition of rape, threatening to kill herself if her boyfriend exposed her, posing naked online for money, convincing her mentally ill boyfriend he was going crazy when he suspected her of cheating, faking her own doxing and hacking, convincing various sites to suppress bad press about her using her connections, making up sob stories about abuse to keep people from exposing her, threatening to ruin peoples careers for exposing her, faking harassment to promote a game about depression, silencing people with depression when they criticize it, making the game using something that can't be considered programming, starting a raid of a site for people with depression to promote her depression game, capitalizing on the death of Robin Williams to promote the game, pretend the trolling has left her homeless, and the list goes on.
Most importantly, when all this became public, gamers began demanding more transparency in gaming journalism, to which the gaming media responded with: "Fuck You".
The media's plan, step by step
So began the long, convoluted road of retarded damage control by the gaming press. The entire thing could have been avoided, had they simply admitted fault, fired the reporters that failed to disclose their personal relationships with game devs and promised to not let it happen again.
Instead, the media went on an all out war against the gamers for whom they write, alienating its entire userbase.
First, shift the goal posts
First in the bag of cheap, journo tricks that only work in old media was "spinning", "moving the goal posts" or "framing the narrative". Basically, trying to change the topic. This will be a well they will often go to throughout this entire ordeal even though it had long since run dry.
The plan was to change the topic and make it about feminism and harassment, instead of what it was really about, corrupt journalists. Soon gaming websites were flooded with articles about how poor Zoe is being trolled by stupid, mean gamers who are only doing it because they hate strong, independent women in gaming who only occasionally drink an entire bucket of cum.
This fooled nobody. Anyone who was in on what was going on knew what this was really about, and even the feminists (who usually jump to the defense of any woman in gaming, no matter how wrong she is) were unable to preform the necessary mental gymnastics needed to make an argument of how sleeping around to get ahead was consistent with women's lib. Some of them were willing to denounce Zoe, while most chose to simply shut their mouths and go hide in the kitchen until this thing blows over.
Step two, fire anyone who toes the line
Recently one of the mods of "Shitty Webcomics Tumblr", who is an actual journalist and writes gaming news articles as a hobby in his spare time, handed in his resignation along with several other reporters to the sites they wrote for after he revealed that the entire industry is keeping a code of silence on this entire thing and anyone within the industry pressing the issue is marked as a traitor and swiftly disposed of.
Gaming sites have no problem firing their writers because for every one of them there are 20 waiting to take their place. Since gaming sites have nothing even resembling standards, no credentials are required, making the hiring pool wider than Zoe's vagina, so the ones with the loosest morals get to replaces the ones who were recently shit-canned by the end of the day.
This was made even more easy by the cross-breeding between all news sites. A big part of them is represented by a single PR firm called "SilverLine Media" or are a part of a larger parent company called "GDC". Also, of the gaming journalists that DO have work, many write for multiple site, allowing some to infiltrate some actually reputable news sources like "Forbes" and "The Guardian" as "contributes" (basically not actually a part of the paid staff, just amateurs trying to get publicity being used by the site as filler material) and create the impression that this is a view shared by everyone.
Step three, call gamers faggots
When this didn't work, the highly professional reporters turned to twitter and began calling gamers fat, nerds, neckbeards, virgins, losers, terrorists and autistic who spend all day masturbating in their mother's basement. All of which may be true, but is far from professional conduct. Try to imagine these kinds of tweets from anyone who is an actual part of the press... Now try to imagine someone who isn't from FOX News. You think Walter Cronkite ever rented out one of the back pages of a newspaper to call JFK a faggot? Probably not.
They even went so far as to create a tag called #describeagamerin4words, 50% of which was being used to laugh at journalists.
Step two and a half, be forced to apologize by your editor for calling gamers faggots
Hilariously, word got back to the editors, CEO's and sponsors of these sites and many of the "journalists" were humiliated and forced by them to make public apologies.
OH SHIT! PEOPLE ARE LEAKING INFO!
One of the oldest techniques of the journalism trade is the "Leak", only this time, it was used against them.
As would be expected, a lot of writers who wanted to tell the truth about what was going on were not happy about being told to get with the party line or join the unemployment line. They were even less happy when they were told to write articles denouncing gamers or get fired. So they did what journalists do and leaked information.
Many people working for gaming press began anonymously posting wherever they could and exposing the gaming site's strategy ahead of time. They exposed that they were planning to try and change the topic, how they were planning to do it, what they were going to change the topic to, and the reason they were doing it, which was...
OH FUCK! OUR SPONSORS ARE MAD!
Well, it's because they were all getting angry calls from sponsors who were paying attention and were not fooled by any of this so they started getting dropped by them and hemorrhaging money.
All the negative attention prompted a massive letter writing campaign where any site or reported suspect of misconduct was swiftly reported to his editor. But, since the editors were already in on this and refused to do anything, the emails were instead sent to the sponsors.
The sponsors, not wanting to be associated with sites known for sex scandals and having their reporters call their readership fat racists, started calling up the sites and demanding and explanation as to why they were being flooded by complaints telling them that one of their clients just called them a faggot on twitter. The effectiveness of this became known thanks to more leaks and only lead to more emails being sent, driving the gaming sites to go into maximum damage control mode and...
Step five (guys), "Gamer" and "Gaming" are DEAD!!!!
Finally, in a pathetic, last ditch effort to stop this, the correspondents started going on a final, coordinated PR assault between several gaming news websites that together all published about 20 articles on the same day about how the terms "Gamer" and "Gamer Culture" are officially dead. Essentially trying to stop the bleeding by saying gamers can no longer criticize them because gamers as an identity have ceased to exist overnight. But, as happy as we would have been for that to be true, it isn't. Hilariously, they even used non gaming websites that are part of the same news network to post more of these articles to create the false impression that this is the popular opinion shared by multiple people.
However, both thanks to the leaks and thanks to the fact this was all so transparently coordinated, no one bought it. Not that they would have anyway. It is unclear what the sites were trying to achieve by this unless they seriously believed that posting all those articles would immediately convince any gamer who read them that gaming has ceased to exist overnight and just go away.
Soon after, they began to plan a second wave of articles saying the same thing, but were thwarted ahead of time by another leak.
Step six, make a fake petition
In the latest sad attempt, a petition was published, signed by 600 "game developers", urging gamers to "Stop the hate". This was another see-though attempt to change the topic from corruption on the field to something else and the reported number quickly inflated to "thousand of signatures".
But who were these millions of devs trying bring back the peace? Well, aside from such esteemed names as "Adolf Hilter" and "Faggy McButts", the actual people who signed the petition, with a simple look-up, were exposed as not developers at all.
Someone went through the lists "A" count and found that the majority of people listed were either journalists, have never worked on a single game in their life or worked in an irrelevant role on maybe one or two games like publicity or being the fucking janitor or something. Of those that actually did make games, most made perhaps one game.
One man take responsibility... All of the responsibility ever
Few people actually did anything. One of them was the owner of The Escapist who returned from his long absence of running 12 other websites he owns to inform everyone that gaming is not dead and to make all his retarded columnists apologize.
But one man took it a step further.
Jonah Peretti, CEO of BuzzFeed, announced that he will be firing everyone in his company that listed "Gamer" in their hobbies and convincing other CEO's to do the same.
This is akin to swatting a fly with a bazooka. But it's still better than everyone else who went in the exact opposite direction and did nothing.
To date he insists that this is not a prank and he is 100% serious.
So what are the actual problems with game journalism?
So now you must be asking: "What's the actual problem that people are protesting?". I'm glad you asked!
Social Justice pandering
The first issue at hand is the sudden shift to political agenda in gaming press over the last few years.
The field has become overrun by tumbler feminists, white knights, social justice warriors and scam artists. Those who are not actively part of any of those while working in the gaming press are pressured by those who are from withing and from without and conform to writing most of the articles on the topic about how games hurt women. Resulting in a flood of brilliant articles like:
"How games oppress women"
"Why seeing tits in a video game id misogyny and gave me a panic attack"
"Rape in video games"
"How women are raped by video games"
"5 ways a video game raped me"
and
"Raping the rape-rape in rape town video game rape"
At the moment the various gaming sites are trying to pain these complaints as a bunch of fat guys who don't want to let girls into their clubhouse. Ignoring the fact that maybe it's easier to let them into your clubhouse when you've already stuck your meat want into every orifice in their body like these journalists seems to.
Which brings us to the next problem...
Zero distance between subject and reporter
In the wake of GamerGate columnists have been found to be:
- Befriending the people the write about
- Going to parties with the people the write about
- Dating the people the write about
- Sleeping with the people the write about
- Financially supporting the people the write about
- Being financially supported by the people the write about
- Entering business ventures with the people the write about
- Profiting from the business ventures they enter with the people the write about
- Using their position to drum up press and profit from the business ventures they enter with the people the write about
- Share their PR firms and other mother corporations with the people the write about
- Collude to take down the competition with and of the people the write about
- And countless other improprieties
The entire indie game dev scene is in bed (sometimes literally) with their reporters, conducting shady, back-door business deals to promote each other either for favors, sexual or otherwise, or under the command of a larger corporation that owns both the person being written about and the person who is doing the writing.
In spite of all evidence, the gaming press has been resolute in its refusal to institute and sort of system of disclosure or recusel for reporters found to have a conflict of interests with the subject of their piece. Neither will they take any disciplinary action against such individuals when, by contracts, in actual journalism it is enough for there to be merely an allegation of misconduct for someone to get the shaft.
Celebrity Smackdown
Even moderately famous people somehow got word of this story and happily called Zoe a slut.
Hideki Kamiya
First to the plate was the Hideki Kamiya, emperor of Japan's twitter and creator/director of such games as Resident Evil, Bayonetta, Okami, some Metal Gear and Phoenix Wright games ,Devil May Cry as well as many others, who used this opportunity to continue his destruction of Kotaku (they wrote an article about him last year and he made fum of them on twitter) by telling them they have been DISHONORED and call Zoe on playing the victim.
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Adam Baldwin
Next was Firefly star Adam Baldwin, who posted the links to the two "Five Guys" videos and then proceeded to laugh his ass off at the SJW white knights who came after him and Zoe Quinn herself who told him he's helping spread her dox and nudes (neither of which are in those videos, calk up another shitty lie for zoe) by making post after post about the issue.
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Time to bring back Firefly About missing Pics
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Christina H. Sommers
Then famous feminist Christina H. Sommers chimed in. But this is not your regular feminist, she is a feminist who hates other retarded feminists and loved by all of the internet for putting them in their place.
Milo Yiannopoulos
Last one to join so far has been one of Britain's top 100 most influential journalists for two years running, Milo Yiannopoulos. Who called out Erik Kain on twitter and replaced him as the gamers' darling after Kain joined the SJW war on them.
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Yiannopoulos slams About missing Pics
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Daniel Vávra
Creator of the "Mafia" games recently joined in and pointed out he got called a mysoginist when Anita Sarkeesian deliberetally shot women in his game and then lied and claimed it was required. Anita is under the same PR company as Zoe Quinn, the parent company of which (GDC) owns most of the news sites suppressing this story.
What can YOU do about it?
As you can see, writing to the editor in chief of any of these publications is pointless because he is probably getting a hummer under his desk as he is reading your email. But, as you can also see, writing their sponsor works. Writing to the sponsor hits them where it hurts - Their wallet.
Below is a list of news sites and internet journalists known for participating in this conspiracy and their patrons. Contact their sponsors and let them know what is going on. If you choose, you can also contact the site itself and let it know that you have contacted the sponsor and that the have a chance to take swift action before their boss calls them up on the pone.
The Escapist: Greg Tito
Gamasutra: Leigh Alexander Kris Ligman- [1]
Kotaku:
Stephen Totilo
Nathan Grayson
Luke Plunkett
Patricia Hernandez
Evan Narcisse- [2]
Kirk Hamilton- [3]
Yannick LeJacq- [4]
Forbes:
Eric Kain
Paul Tassi
Carol Pinchefsky- [5]
Badass Digest: Devin Faracy
Games.on.net: Tim Colwill-[6]
Gameranx: Stephen Daly- [7]
Vice:
Allegra Ringo- [8]
Mike Pearl- [9]
Polygon: Michael McWhertor- [10]
The Verge: Adi Robertson- [11]
DailyKos: Drewid- [12]
geekenstein: David Rhinehart- [13]
Kpopstarz: Louie Sipher- [14]
Canada.com: Patrick O' Rourke- [15]
TheGuardian:
Keith Stuart- [16]
Jenn Frank- [17]
themarysue: Victoria McNally- [18]
thefrisky: Rebecca Vipond Brink- [19]
BBC news:
Kevin Rawlinson- [20]
Kim Gittleson- [21]
IGN:
Jenna Pitcher- [22]
Paul Dean- [23]
LSU Reveille:
Gordon Brillon- [24]
Elizabeth Garcia- [25]
Uproxx:
Dan Seitz- [26]
Robo Panda- [27]
Thinkprogress:
Lauren C. Williams- [28]
Alyssa Rosenberg- [29]
International Business Times: Zoe Mintz- [30]
Screencrush:
Britt Hayes- [31]
Luke Brown- [32]
John Llewellyn Martin- [33]
Arstechnica:
Casey Johnston- [34]
Kyle Orland- [35]
Motherboard.vice: Fruzsina Eördögh- [36]
Slate: David Auerbach- [37]
Vox: Todd VanDerWerff- [38]
Theweek:
Ryan Cooper- [39]
Chris Gayomali- [40]
Eurogamer:
Dan Whitehead- [41]
Jeffrey Matulef- [42]
Daily Beast:
Tauriq Moosa- [43]
Arthur Chu- [44]
Whitenoise.gizmodo.com: Gawn Til November- [45]
Jezebel: Callie Beusman- [46]
Slog.thestranger.com: Anna Minard- [47]
Polygon: Chris Plante- [48]
Buzzfeed:
Joseph bernstein- [49]
[50]
Betabeat: Jack Smith IV- [51]
Good luck and godspeed.
Pics
Funny pics About missing Pics
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See Also
- Anita Sarkeesian - Represented by SilverString
- IGN - Doritogate!
- The Escapist
- Daily Dot
- Kotaku
- Gawker
- GiantBomb
- Gamefags
- Gamestop
- Polytron
- Nationstates
- Firefly
- Hideki Kamiya
External Links
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GamerGate is part of a series on Visit the Gaming Portal for complete coverage. |
