Some butthurt from Gawker about GG (don't worry, it's pastebin, so they don't get any hits):

How We Got Rolled by the Dishonest Fascists of Gamergate

Here's just the very first paragraph from the pastebin'd article, which honest to God reads more like troll bait than actual journalism (which isn't all that surprising since it's Gawker after all):

 

Banta, I've repeatedly told you I'm not a serious gamer. Asking for proof from me is an exercise in futility. I lack both the time and the energy to perform a comprehensive search for it. I've been answering each of your posts for the sake of politeness, but I request you to put your queries to someone better versed in this stuff. I can just give you general impressions and an opinion from what I've seen myself.

In the meantime, Forbes has some good stuff on GG:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...look-at-the-controversy-sweeping-video-games/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...-is-not-a-hate-group-its-a-consumer-movement/

The entire point about GG is that the things that have lead to the frustration being expressed aren't easily pointed out by saying, here are twenty articles where GG gets its inspiration from. It's just the general tone of the gaming press. It's treating gamers in a condescending manner. The press is traditionally liberal, and consumers are not. Hence the accusation of liberal bias. Then the mailing list of gaming journalists was uncovered which seemed to have disturbing parallels with another one discovered circa 2009(?) involving mainstream journalists. Then there came the censorship of the boards when people tried discussing things. When /v/ got involved, then everyone linked GG with misogyny. And then happened the entire Quinn and TFYC debacle, which cemented in my head, at the very least, that there was something rotten in Denmark.

It's never clearly evident in many articles. It's an undercurrent. It's not as easily dismissed as climate change denial, trust me, because it is there. You can keep asking me for proof and keep feeling vindicated when I can't give you any, 'cause you need to actually sink into the movement once and see what's going on. If it was as easy to give proof as you ask, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. But it isn't. It's an undercurrent being felt for a few years which burst forth when GG took shape.

 

Banta I am beginning to believe you are a troll.

Everything in that "tinfoil conspiracy" image is publicly available information.

I did read your post. I myself have never played Rome 2, or Aliens Colonial Marines. I am well aware that these games are god awful. Its very well documented in youtube videos and discussion.

You are denying this on that basis that you did not play the game. Thats the equivalent of putting your hands on your ears and yelling you cant hear me.

They do stink, and they were given good reviews. The Developers of Gone Home do have personal links with reviewers at Polygon. These are facts.

Now, as I understand it Gone Home is not a broken mess, and therefore we cannot definitely assume correction, it may well be a good game. I myself have not played it.

 

No, he's a shill, and it's about time people started ignoring him.

In other news, InternetAristocrat shut down his channel, unfortunately. Apparently he didn't like the popularity and thought Gamergate had gotten too watered down. Which I can't help but agree with. I preferred his Tumblrisms videos to the Gamergate stuff myself, but he was still a good voice for it while it lasted.

 

It got a better score than Civ V. Civ V didn't get a 10/10. No matter how good Gone Home is, is it better than Sid Meier's Civilization V?

 

To that person it is.

I don't buy the 'scientific method' of reviews, they're based on the individual.

I understand why some people would give Mario games near perfect scores. I can accept it. Doesn't mean I agree with it.

If they had given Gone Home and Civ their respective scores because one had a gay relationship while the other horrendously glorifies conquest and war, I'd have an issue.

I think Civ is a great game. I don't think it's a 10. I think the Last of Us is a 10.

Let's say you disagree.

Are you saying one of us is wrong? That's horseshit dude.

 

What I meant, though, was that giving a game a 10/10 is saying that the game was effin' perfect. It's sort of symbolic. I've seen many great games get a 9.5 from polygon, and I've never disagreed. But again, giving a game a 10/10 when you almost never give it out literally means that said game cannot be improved upon.

I give Civ V a 10, say, and you give the Last of Us a 10. Neither of is are wrong. But we're grading those games in a vacuum. Polygon has a list of games and scores on their website, and looking at this score in that context makes me a bit puzzled.

 

There's also grading by genre. The 10 might have been that they thought it was perfect for it's specific genre.

It's like the argument about my scoring of Dragon Age: Origins in my review thread. Or later in the thread when I scored something low because it wasn't a good example of its genre and yak called me a bastard for it.

 

Could be. I know that the game was quite critically acclaimed, so maybe I'm not able to see things properly. I haven't played it either.

 

The censorship argument is bunk. Governments are the only ones that can actually censor your free speech, not private citizens.

For example, if Raven decided that he didn't want any conversation on his forum about anime or the Dresden Files, there is nothing stopping him, and nothing wrong with him, deleting those threads and putting an embargo on the creation of new ones. He owns DLP, and as such can say what can and cannot be talked about. It isn't censorship for him to do so because he's a private citizen who owns this forum – he gets to set the policy, not us.

It's the same for any of the sites that GG says "censors" them. The owners of those websites set the policy, and its not censorship when they deleted threads or posts about GG. In those situations where it was the moderators acting on there own, any lack of action from their boss shows at least an implied approval of what they were doing, otherwise they would have been kicked from their position.

An on point XKCD comic that explains it more succinctly.

I have doubts about this, least of all because Quinn published the emails between her and TFYC that paints a completely different picture. These paint a different picture than what TFYC and GG claim.

That said, I approve of anyone who takes the piss out of the tumblr post. As willing as I am to sit down and read these things, 4K words is a bit much.

Really, that's your argument? That because the devs of Gone Home and a reviewer were friends means that there is a whiff of corruption?

Roger Ebert had close ties to directors, producers, and actors, does this mean that his reviews are now suspect?

And have you forgotten that there are political journalists that maintain relationships, even families, with politicians?

Having personal relationships with the people creating the news or the media isn't a new thing for journalists or critics. It is part and parcel of the business, and there is nothing different or special about video games that creates a higher standard.

Part of the issue is that some folks just don't consider Gone Home to be a game, same with Dear Esther or the Stanley Parable. These games aren't interactive in the same way that Mass Effect or Civ V are. They are an experience that you basically walk through to enjoy, with the only interaction really being your decision to go left or right. Since they don't conform to the same definition of 'game', their detractors fall into a No True Scotsman fallacy and claim that they aren't games.

 

I do not necessarily think that Gone Home's high reviews are a result of corruption. I was defending an image you accused of being tinfoil garbage that literally consisted of twitter screengrabs.

The censorship people were complaining about was widespread policy of shadowbanning on reddit from an admin level, as well as other gaming forums.

 

@Banta: I've seen the censorship argument before and I still consider it nitpicking. The common usage definition of the word has expanded beyond a purely governmental view point. Replacing government with the 'powers that be' might be more accurate.

GG aside, if a discussion was taking place on a forum without violating the tos or similar agreements and a mod took a personal issue with it and shut down all discussion what would you use to describe it?

EDIT: Personal relationships are fine. But of course you're going to catch flak for it when you give a game your friend developed a score that literally signifies perfection.

 

So I don't think it's been said here but thanks to OP UV the TFC it expanding and specifying disclosure requirements for online sites. I'm on a phone right now so if nobody else provides links to the stuff before I get home I'll hunt them down. Kotaku had to retro label all the link adds and things in their past articles. I'm told the articles look more like advertising then actual reviews.

 

So, to all the "It's only censorship if the government does it!" crowd...

How y'all feelin' about the GTA V Target ban? Still all smug, right?

Dipshit moralist crusaders will use any tactics available to them. The only reason it's not "censorship" yet according to your definition is that they can't bring sufficient force to bear against the government. Their goals remain the same as ever: They wish to remove art from the marketplace, because the messages they contain are "problematic." In short, despite the FemFreq bitch's claims to the contrary, they want to take our games away.

I say these *people* are problematic. Censorious? Maybe not, but if not, only because they are impotent. Suppressive? Definitely.

 

Target may not be a censor but the group which asked them to remove it definitely is.

This is the ACLU's definition of censorship, emphasis mine:

The people behind the petition are a private pressure group by my reckoning, they are engaged in the suppression 'words, images or ideas' and they are enforcing their views on others. Hence censorship.

EDIT: Obviously I'm mostly looking at the first part of that quote. The First Amendment bit doesn't apply to Australia.

 

I am not happy about anyone campaigning against any piece of art, however it is fully within the right of Target, and anyone else for that matter, to select what products they sell, and to define their parameters for that selection.

If they want to cave to a crazy bunch of morons, then more power to them.

 

Here's the thing: I have only very mild issues with Target in regards to this, and none of them are matters of principal. They caved to what they felt was popular pressure. Businesses only exist to make money.

The shits who campaigned for it in the first place, however? I have issue with them. And I have serious issue with anyone who speaks out in defense of censoring art from an ideological standpoint.

 

To put it in perspective (from an Aussie), I very much doubt Target (I think it's K-mart too) sell very many copies of video games in general, let alone GTAV. Electronics/ video games probably make up a tiny percent of their profits - poor mark-up/ low sales etc.

I doubt a petition with 40k signatures could have swayed anyone otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if the bigwigs thought 'no one comes here to buy games anyway, especially old ones. Just yank it so they keep coming here to buy baby clothes'.

They're a shitty group of people, doing shitty things to a game that's already sold 34m (i.e. they're too late).

 

And now a petition to ban GTA V in Canada.

Shit tons of people are signing up just to troll. The comments are amazing.

 

I didn't know Joss Whedon held these opinions until now: