Banta, his point was that conversation is not harassment.

"Expect to get swarmed with people disagreeing" is not harassment. Otherwise you are harassing Odran arent you?

 

So Tim Schafer presented GDC again this year.
I actually feel a bit sorry for the guy, seeing him fall that low.

 

Didn't sound like very many people liked the joke either.

 

Wait, how is it racist?

 

Not sure, I know NYS is made up of minorities and little else, something non GG supporters continue to this day to deny. That being said Tim is one of those people who like to pretend that everything is going one way when it's going another. I'm sure in his head all he heard was uproarious laughter instead of that brief spurt of noise. The audience was not amused, and that was more funny then the joke was.

 

By saying any non-white (or female) GGer is obviously a sockpuppet, Schafer is denying them any opinion that doesn't support his own. I'd call that racism.

 

As ridiculous as Tim Shceafer is, claiming that your opponents are all in fact bigots its exactly the kind of inane and ridiculous argument people used to attack gamergate in the first place.

 

Isn't this the guy who's absolutely retarded at handling money?

Oh, right.

 

Are you talking about New York State, which is 57% white?

 

He's talking about the notyourshield hashtag.

 

Okay, that makes sense. Suppose I shouldn't browse the forum right after waking up then.

EDIT: Poked around a bit, and it's a little more complex than that BTT. The sockpuppet thing came up more than once in his whole speech. He's playing on two ideas simultaneously: The first, that gamergate sockpuppeting is common, and the second is the whole "We're not to blame for what that other guy does" thing. The Not Your Shield joke is separate to the joke with the puppet.

Here's the whole thing.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20150306210254/http://glitch.tokyo/

 

Why was the website brought down?

Anyway, shit went down over the weekend. TotalBiscut posted a rant that basically asked where the actual social scientists were who studied video games and their effects.*

Bob "moviebob" Chipman, formerly of the Escapist, called him out on his rant.

He also personally insulted Total Biscuit (which admittedly happened before his response to TB's rant) and TB's fanbase**.

Both were dick-moves, but Total Biscuit's response was to sic his fans on moviebob. Equally not cool, though calling it "defending his followers" is kind of hilarious.

*He got a response on reddit from an actual social scientist. It's good reading, so go check it out.

**Admittedly, GG is actively trying to stifle any consideration of games as an art-form.

 

Getting caught up on all of this is depressing. The moderates in both camps both have reasonable points. Gaming media and publishers are tied far too tightly together and video games can be art tackling difficult themes (and we can relate to a protagonist outside of GravelyVoiced!BeardedWhiteGuy).

But I look at the hardliners and I see two camps perfectly willing to burn everything good about the medium to the ground in order to not give an inch to the 'enemy'. And I can't see an end to it. Both sides are firmly entrenched and if any side ever 'wins' they're going to keep going, burn everything on the other side and salt the earth.

 

It seems like, as all too often happens with these sorts of prolonged issues, it's now more about "winning" the fight than it is about any of the issues that actually started the confrontation.

 

Naturally. It has become, after all, a political argument using video games as a proxy with all the features thereof. Vast expanses of moronic jackasses obsessed with one-upping the enemy, heavily entrenched ideological crusaders, and marginalized/removed/radicalized voices of reason. This one's big on the last of those three.

In politics, you win or you die. Or something like that.

e: I think TotalBiscuit has finally crossed over into flat-out not giving a fuck about being even vaguely positive about the whole thing, and that's probably a bad thing.

That said, Moviebob's a bloody infantile joke. I can't honestly say I'd have reacted much better in TB's place.

 

TB's tale is a bit of a sad one. When he first got involved it was as a moderate trying to get the two sides to talk and hash things out, go back and you can find the video where he even got a talk with Totilo from Kotaku. But other then that AGG just kept spiting in his face every chance they got. What you see now is, indeed, a TB who has thrown in the towel and doesn't give them the time of day.

In other news, it's looking like that GG auto block is starting to become the industry black list that people were scared it would become...

http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2015/03/gamergate-indie-devs-blocked-by-jobs-resource-bot-using-gg-autoblocker/#gLcGHwuwQZybIcyg.99

At this rate it won't be long before someone actually does go to jail.

 

So, #AreYouBlocked? I already know I am, I have been since the GG block first went up. Take a look on the hash tag and see if you are.

 

Also of note is the whole Sad Puppies thing.
tl;dr is that a group of voters - generally right-wing, though not all of them - gamed the Hugos this year. Their motives, according to Larry Correia, one of the authors involved, is that they're exposing the circlejerk of the awards in question.
One of the groups he acts against by doing this are the SJWs; this has naturally raised quite the shitstorm, with GRRM making multiple posts about/against it.
The main question that remains now is whether there needs to be done something about this, and if so, what.

 

Honestly, Sad Puppies is wrong in their actions; but I would also argue that the Hugo Awards would need to take a long hard look at how they decide upon awards. I believe Sad Puppies points are valid, but they should have approached a different way of pointing towards the biases.

Giving awards to people based on their labels (whether that be affirmative action or more blatant racism) only causes the labels to become more ingrained into people's thinkings.