A healthy dose of cynicism a day keeps the eventual crushing depression away.

 

The hell? That whole article made me cringe. Whenever i see "research shows" and no research cited, i roll my eyes.

But unfortunately, it is true. I had the wonderful experience of hearing my old boss talk about a new hire that had, well, "ass-ets".

 

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn...sts_declare_the_gamers_are_over_but_they.html

Slate article.

Gaming "Journalism" shooting themselves in the foot. Than again... maybe they've realized that a long time ago and have finally decided to just become a more broadbased avenue. By alienating their once core audience.

 

Lordkat has just accused the IGF and Phil Fish of racketeering.

http://www.lordkat.com/igf-and-indiecade-racketeering.html

 

Well shit, If there's any truth to that it's gonna stir the pot even more.

 

It's going to be really hard to prove anything, especially considering the games mentioned are genuinely excellent (the ones I've heard of anyway...).

Shattered that J.Blow is attached to all this shit. I hope it's incidental :-/

 

It would help if they actually explained things instead of playing the quite game. It just ends up making them look guilty as hell. Like the reason they won't talk is because it is true and they have no other way to defend themselves.

 

Jonathan Blow basically did respond to this one:

He hasn't really tweeted much since posting that, so it's still near the top.

 

There, was that so hard? Now we have a statement from one person that's willing to defend himself.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM_Z5YTop7g&list=UUVt7ujK-9TT9KByzL9g_2QQ

The video with the alleged proof about the IGF and Indiecade stuff, the evidence against IGF isn't fool proof but it still raises a fair amount of questions. The Indiecade stuff is a whole lot more damning though.

 

Honestly, there are so many monkeys flinging poop in this shit storm that unless you like the taste of faeces, keeping your mouth shut is probably the best policy.

This shit has been blown out of all proportion and reason.

The matter at hand here is this:

If you are a critic and have a personal relationship with someone that extends beyond the merely cordial, you should not use your professional platform to further their career.

Bam, done. Problem solved. Next case please.

 

Not calling all gamers misogynistic terrorists for rightfully being critical of said practices when the target happens to be a female would be nice.

 

Really thoughtful article that covers a lot of the recent issues/ controversies:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...ublisher-Issues-Public-Statement-on-Gamergate

I doubt we'll ever get op-eds saying, respectfully, why they think someone like Anita Sarkeesian is 'wrong', but this comes pretty close to covering the feelings of the non-trolls.

 

At least it should, although I don't think you'd find many mainstream gaming sites (and especially most non-gaming websites) that would find a problem with Sarkeesian, or the fact she's making a show covering elements in games that could have sexist connotations. In fact, the fact her name keeps getting dragged into this baffles me - I thought GamerGate was about journalistic ethics between devs and writers, not an editorial creator who is not a member of the gaming press and has the right to make her show however she wants.

I'm not saying I agree with her or am a fan - I find her presentation astoundingly flat, her argumentation lightweight, and her particular brand of feminist theory not to my taste (hers seems more 2nd wave while mine is 3rd) - but I appreciate she's contributing the conversation with a modicum of intellect and temperance. It sure as hell isn't worth the titanic wave of hatred, bile, death threats, rape threats, and all the rest of the bullshit that's tried to drive her off the air - if anything, it's made her stronger.

Because let's face it, the only reason her Kickstarter and show got anywhere near the traction it did was thanks to the massive hatred and trolling, so everyone still piling onto her and keeping her name circulating are only helping. If everyone had ignored it - like the majority of other 'gender studies' related videos online - Feminist Frequency would have had its tiny audience in its corner of the internet and nobody would care.

I know, tangential point, but every time I see her name getting dragged up with regards to GamerGate, I don't get why.

 

It seems like a well written piece, and I'm glad to see that the Escapist is moving towards transparency. Time will tell how well they keep to it though.

Edit:

I think it's mainly because her Kickstarter is, by a large amount of people, considered a scam. Her Kickstarter raised somewhere over $100,000 to produce a series of video presentations about misogyny in video games and I think they should have all already been out by now. Instead she's released two that are, supposedly, of such poor quality that people really want to know just why these things called for so much money, and it seems she hasn't given a good enough answer to that.

She also has a large number of white knights and SJWs to throw fuel on the flames. Internet Aristocrat has a vid or two on her so you can watch them if you want, but he might or might not be a bit bias.

 

Is he related to Becky Blow from Videogames Awesome? Would suck, since I love those guys and don't want them involved in any way.

 

Not that I'm aware of. Mundanematt has a vid out where he talks to Jordan Owens, one of the guys trying to make a documentary on corruption in game journalism about Anita, who will be covered by the documentary.

That vid is here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcCBbNNpy8Y#aid=P80Gjndq-5A

Aristocrats vid on her is here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqJCCnued6c&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ

Take from it what you will.

 

I've seen the Internet Aristocrat videos... honestly, while they can be well-researched, they have a lot of the exact same reasoning problems I'd say Sarkeesian's videos have in making conjectures that are not supported by much evidence, especially in recent weeks. He probably doesn't intend on it, but he can really come across as a conspiracy theorist and some of his conclusions are pretty damn shaky the second you look at them more closely.

As for Sarkeesian, it's apparently six videos now on this project, and... okay, yeah, I have no idea why the hell she asked for $100,000. She'd probably have made her case a fair bit better if she just monetized her vids like everyone else on YouTube (probably she couldn't because of all of the copyrighted game footage), but I can see the complaints where they don't see where the money's going.

But then again, I reckon that's an issue between those who gave money to her Kickstarter and her: if they feel they're getting robbed, I suspect we would have had heard something along that line and yet that's never come up.

 

She didn't. She only asked for $6000. Because of the controversy surrounding her kickstarter, she got an absolute shitload more money than she asked for.

 

IA definitely goes off the deep end in his videos, so much so that I stopped watching when he starts throwing around baseless, harmful accusations.

I don't appreciate 'radicals' of any persuasion.

They are still well researched. And pretty damning.