Clarkson gone! [Archive]

InsaneApache

03-27-2015, 10:49

Proof that the people who run the BBC live in a precious world of their own was supplied this week when Alan Yentob — whose title at the corporation is ‘creative director’ — told Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis that ‘there are quite a lot of programmes which reach out to audiences which are C2s, DEs, which aren’t the metropolitan elite’.

In other words, he seemed to be saying that Jeremy Clarkson may have been sacked by the BBC ‘but common people will still find something to watch’.

How simply outrageous! And how very, very kind of the BBC to make a few programmes ‘reaching out’ to the non-metropolitan elite (as if they live on Mars) — those downmarket low-earners who live in places outside London and the South-East.

Anyone listening might have thought Yentob was talking about a vanishing tribe or a special needs group, instead of those millions of ordinary people who (unlike him and his pals, with their trendy artworks and minimalist designer sofas) live in normal homes and want to watch decent TV programmes.

People who live in small houses and flats, who don’t drink Terroir Series Malbec wine from Argentina and eat tapas.

People who don’t holiday in Tuscany or rent nice houses in Devon and Cornwall. But people who manage to be happy, despite living outside sought-after Islington and Notting Hill postcodes, where most of our political leaders, media chiefs and the chattering classes seem to reside.

In his hamfisted way, by talking about social classes ‘C2s, DEs’, Yentob was referring to the large majority of Britons — the kind of people the BBC top brass and most politicians tend not to mix with on a daily basis, unless they are partaking in a rare public meeting.

With Clarkson heading off into the sunset, taking his millions of male and female fans with him — probably to a new home at ITV, who must be ecstatic — what evidence exists, apart from Yentob’s patronising remark about the lower social classes, that the BBC has any idea how to engage with these millions of licence fee-payers?

Having spent nearly a decade working as a top executive at the BBC, I can vouch that it’s run by a bunch of smug, self-satisfied, over-educated types (nearly all graduates of the same universities) who communicate in an opaque language and conform to a very limited set of beliefs.

These Polenta People (as I like to think of them, since they enjoy eating the fancy Italian cornmeal) embody Left-wing Hampstead talking to trendy, Left-leaning Barnes. Everyone else seems to be excluded.

They make simple — and arrogant — assumptions about what viewers and listeners will enjoy, based on their own narrow experiences.

Alan Yentob — whom I love dearly, despite his failings — has never worked anywhere else apart from the BBC, starting as a trainee in 1968.

Is there any other billion-pound business with such a narrow gene pool at the top?

In typical corporate-speak, BBC executives talk of ‘delivery’ and ‘accountability’, and worry about ‘programme reach’.

But outside work they inhabit an incestuous world, cocooned away from this target audience.

They congregate at weekends, swapping in-jokes over bottles of Waitrose wine at kitchen suppers (that epitome of the chattering-class meal).

Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values.

They loathe people such as Clarkson — a rare beacon of political incorrectness — which makes it even more remarkable that he lasted so long at the BBC.

Just how inward-looking BBC bosses have become was illustrated this week with the fallout from the Top Gear debacle.

The story of Clarkson’s sacking was the lead item on the 5pm news on Radio 4, ahead of the plane crash in the Alps in which 150 people died.

How predictable that, in the rarefied atmosphere of the BBC, a millionaire TV host is deemed more newsworthy than a major aviation disaster.

As part of a PR damage-limitation exercise after the BBC had sacked one of its most popular presenters, Yentob popped up on several programmes, from Steve Hewlett’s Media Show to Radio 4’s PM and BBC2’s Newsnight, talking about his ‘pal’ Clarkson and what a shame the whole story was.
“
Their best pals inevitably write for The Guardian and they share the same set of leftish, liberal and politically correct values”

Surely, if this BBC nabob had been more honest, he would have admitted the real disaster for the BBC was that the Clarkson episode had exposed its management as dangerously out of touch with a huge section of the people who fund them: licence fee-payers on lower incomes.

For anyone on the minimum wage, paying the annual TV licence represents a far higher proportion of their weekly budget than it does for someone living in a nice flat in Primrose Hill or Notting Hill.

The truth is that the BBC has increasingly, over the years, represented the metropolitan elite (and become blander in the process).

However, Top Gear was a rare example of a format which appealed to the sort of audience the BBC cannot afford to lose — viewers who are switching away from BBC1 and watching more programmes on Sky and Channel 5.

The tragedy is that it is not only BBC top brass who live in this out-of-touch bubble. The same applies to our political leaders.

David Cameron, with his well-heeled pals in the Cotswolds (who, ironically, include Clarkson), knows no more about white van man and ordinary women than his nemesis, Ed ‘Two Kitchens’ Miliband, who lives in a £2 million home in London.

They might talk about ‘hard-working men and women’ — political code for ‘C2s, DEs’ — but they don’t know any.

No wonder a survey of voters this week found that the three attributes they thought best described Cameron were ‘out of touch’, ‘smug’ and ‘arrogant’. Miliband was ‘weird’, while Nick Clegg was also ‘out of touch'

What’s more, there is an unhealthy nexus between politicians and influential figures at the BBC and in other parts of the media.

For example, there was Ed Richards, a quintessential New Labour man who was an adviser to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before becoming, for 11 years, the head of the media watchdog Ofcom.

Let’s not forget former Labour minister James Purnell, the BBC’s so-called head of strategy who was alleged to have been behind an odious smear against Clarkson in which he was compared to serial paedophile Jimmy Savile. Purnell strenuously denied being involved.

Then there is Ian Katz, who left The Guardian to run Newsnight. Not far away in Islington lives Tom Baldwin (married to an heiress, living in a very posh house), who quit The Times to work for Ed Miliband as his spin doctor.

They are typical of the metropolitan crew who claim to know about social deprivation and the working class but don’t have a clue how real people live.
“
The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time”

When I worked at the BBC, I was the only person in management without a university degree. I was also the only one with an Estuary accent — and things have changed very little since then.

This week, a new quiz started on BBC4 which sums up the problem. Called The Quizeum, it’s chaired by Mr Smug, Griff Rhys Jones, and broadcast from a different museum each week.

I watched the first episode. There wasn’t a studio audience to give the show any life. As one critic observed, ‘perhaps no one wanted to come’.

With all the will in the world, I can’t imagine any Darrens from Doncaster tuning in to such a programme.

Nor would they find much in common with the horribly precious historian Lucy Worsley (queen of the simper) who presents programmes about royal palaces.

The BBC is packed full of programmes that educate us with a small ‘e’ but manage to slightly patronise us at the same time.

There’s Michael Portillo and his train journeys. Clare Balding walking around Britain. Stephen Fry presenting everything from quiz shows to documentaries.

The BBC should reflect the diversity and richness of British culture — not just the tastes of those who read The Guardian, drive eco-friendly cars, despise Clarkson and make their own sourdough bread.

Goofy in the Mail today.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3013946/Arrogant-smug-sneering-JANET-STREET-PORTER-spent-years-senior-BBC-boss-excoriates-incestuous-luvvie-clique-run-it.html

Furunculus

03-28-2015, 12:20

I have no objection to sacking clarkson if HR think his action is sufficiently bad.

That said, the death of top gear (I don't believe the beeb for a second when they say the rude and irreverent style will continue), is a tragedy.

For two reasons:

Generally - The clarkson obnoxiousness is a necessary antidote to the prissy hypersensitivity that infects society. Poisonous bilge encouraged by stupid incitement to 'x' hatred laws.

Personally - I love the fact that beeb staff, as the priesthood of prissy hypersensitivity, feel physically ill every time they pass clarkson in the corridor. Tolerating clarkson is good for their souls.

I hope May and Hammond jump ship, join Netflix with clarkson for a new show called Bottom Crank, and bury the now emasculated Top Gear in the ratings.

Again personally; I want beeb staff to feel the pain of knowing their world view does not exist without challenge.

Visor

03-28-2015, 15:43

Used to be one of my favourite shows when I had a tv. Shame.

Don't know that there is much else to do when you hit a producer so no problem with the punishment.

15039

Pannonian

03-28-2015, 16:18

For some people, Jeremy Clarkson is what they want society to be more like. Personally, I prefer David Attenborough. Zero obnoxiousness, maximum education.

InsaneApache

03-28-2015, 17:01

The guy who thinks that there's too many people on the planet and we should get rid of them. Not him obviously. That guy?

Pannonian

03-28-2015, 17:12

The guy who thinks that there's too many people on the planet and we should get rid of them. Not him obviously. That guy?

Exactly the guy. And typical of you to resort to the HIGNFY-style "not blablabla...somevieworother...blablabla" in lieu of wit or thought.

Greyblades

03-28-2015, 17:58

To me Clarkson always came off as unedited; devoid of the self correction most of us do in public so as to conform to society's ideals that, while good, does not always come automatically. I dont know if I should consider such honesty admirable, but in combination with clarkson's sense of humor it certainly made him endearing in a George Carlin sort of way.

He turned himself in when the producer wanted to let it slide, In my experience such an assumption of responsibility is depressingly rare among those in the public eye and should be point in his favour to even our resident critics.

Husar

03-28-2015, 18:14

I'm personally more in favor of David Icke. :shrug:

Sarmatian

03-28-2015, 22:40

Why are you lot making such a big deal out of it? I mean who the freak cares if we watch Top Gear on BBC or Top Gear Twin on some other tv station?

Greyblades

03-29-2015, 09:29

Sarmatian

03-29-2015, 15:22

We're making a big deal of it because most of us watch top gear for the specific combination of Clarkson, Hammond and May. Right now it's uncertain if they will reunite now that Clarkson has to find a new job.

Didn't both Hammond and May confirm that they are following Clarkson, though?

So, you'll get exactly the same show, with a different title on a different channel.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

03-29-2015, 19:59

Didn't both Hammond and May confirm that they are following Clarkson, though?

So, you'll get exactly the same show, with a different title on a different channel.

They said they wouldn't do Top Gear without him afaik.

The fact that the BBC even entertained the idea that they would stay suggests the people running it are borderline sociopathic.

Sarmatian

03-29-2015, 22:14

They said they wouldn't do Top Gear without him afaik.

The fact that the BBC even entertained the idea that they would stay suggests the people running it are borderline sociopathic.

You may be right. I'm not following it that closely, but I do remember reading that both Hammond and May referred to themselves on the internet as "unemployed TV presenters", or some such.

drone

03-30-2015, 15:24

edyzmedieval

03-30-2015, 16:36

What I loved about those 3 was the way they balanced each other out when it came to present it - it was one of the funniest shows around, and just as others have said, cars were cars, but the presenters made up more than half the appeal of the show.

I'm gonna miss Top Gear. :shame:

I do hope those 3 crazy heads find a way to revive it under a different name...

a completely inoffensive name

03-30-2015, 19:09

If they really wanted to, they could easily make another show. At this point, it may not be worth the trouble and the drama. I'm sure they all have enough money in the bank to enter early retirement.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-01-2015, 20:08

If I remember correctly, all three had contracts expiring at the end of the month. Chances are Hammond and May just won't renew (any word on the Stig? :tongue:).

I've said it before on these boards, Clarkson is a national treasure and deserves an knighthood. Completely non-PC, and totally unapologetic about it. I wonder if my cable company gets ITV America... :inquisitive:

One of the most interesting things I read was a woman saying "there wouldn't be all this fuss if he had punched a woman (sic)", not realising that Clarkson is the sort of sexist pig who would never hit a woman.

Well, that's how this journo saw him, as a pig.

Greyblades

04-11-2015, 19:32

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KASgSBfY1k

Husar

04-11-2015, 20:37

A few f-bombs in that one and I only watched the first four minutes.
I think this asks for a really sophisticated philosopher who can tackle the gender issues in an intellectual way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNURDy_uGu8

:creep:

Greyblades

04-12-2015, 03:23

You dissapoint me Husar.

Husar

04-12-2015, 09:46

You dissapoint me Husar.

A man does what he can, but sometimes it may not be enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh9jl9x1MDs

Your guy and my guy are apparently friends, so why can't we?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHXOUxSaxkk

I really enjoy the constant flashing of that "Sargon logo" in this video while they talk about improving channels, it's classy and absolutely not irritating at all.

Greyblades

04-12-2015, 15:51

A man does what he can, but sometimes it may not be enough.

Your guy and my guy are apparently friends, so why can't we?

We talked about this the night before I posted that video and you said in sarkeesian's defense to the effect of: "if it is a nazi that says the sky is blue, being a nazi doesnt make him wrong".

Then you pull this.

Again husar you dissapoint me.

Husar

04-12-2015, 16:29

We talked about this the night before I posted that video and you said in sarkeesian's defense to the effect of: "if it is a nazi that says the sky is blue, being a nazi doesnt make him wrong".

Then you pull this.

Again husar you dissapoint me.

It's not that they are friends that makes them wrong, it's that I generally don't buy a lot of the "oh, but we men are also victims"-story.
Even if there is also some merit to it, and in some cases there is, it does not invalidate the point of anyone else, or make feminism superfluous as a whole. The idea that a man is seriously angry about the topic is already grounds for me to take him less seriously. And the equivalent example would be a nazi telling me that the sky is deep purple the entire day. The title "feminism is the establishment" already sets the tone and makes me roll my eyes a little.

Here's a loosely related video on "gender war" that I can mostly agree with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KplCqjUKs4M

Viking

04-12-2015, 16:49

From one Armenian to another. :inquisitive:

Greyblades

04-12-2015, 17:30

It's not that they are friends that makes them wrong, it's that I generally don't buy a lot of the "oh, but we men are also victims"-story.

Which is largely the problem, people treat the "oh but we men are also victims" as were nothing more than a bid for attention even when it is a legitimate complaint. Even beyond the general Tumblr idiotry who hates everything white, straight and male, British and American society has become in places tipped against men. There is a trend of trivialisation of female on male rape especially statutory rape of young boys by women. Courts are overwhelmingly favouring women in child custody battles. False rape claims against women are non existant while men are being made pariahs by an overzealous media at the faintest hint of them raping a woman, innocent before proven guilty be damned.

We walk in fear of a random woman brushing us when they pass and shouting "he groped me". We steer clear of areas frequented by chldren in case we are accused of being potential predators. We look at marriage as a trap where one wrong move will get us stripped of all our money belongings and even children at the word of a disgruntled partner. We fear because we are told again and again stories of these things happening and every time it is clear that men cannot truly win, ever. Legitimate or not these fears are real and permiate our day to day lives and colour our thinking.

These are problems that are constantly overlooked and denied by the mainstream regardless of evidence and men are expected to shut up and take it while everyone else is free to complain about problems. Even while we deal with a suicide rate 3 times larger than that of women. (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2012/index.html)

Even if there is also some merit to it, and in some cases there is, it does not invalidate the point of anyone else, or make feminism superfluous as a whole. The idea that a man is seriously angry about the topic is already grounds for me to take him less seriously. And the equivalent example would be a nazi telling me that the sky is deep purple the entire day. The title "feminism is the establishment" already sets the tone and makes me roll my eyes a little.

He is angry, his rhetoric is harsh, abrasive, he uses terminology alien to those unfamiliar to the subject, his personal narritive has devolved into an Us vs Them mentality and he is clearly frustrated. This is common among protestors who are being ignored and trivialized, which you are doing, and history tells us they dont go away with time.

His logic is largely sound and his points are sourced, he is not saying the sky is deep purple, he's saying its overcast in spite of your protestations of a clear sky. If you keep dismissing him, turning off his videos 4 minutes in due to something so petty as swearing, he and his fellows are going to turn to the only people who will listen, the MRA and the actual nazis. Some of them are already beginning to, as you have shown.

Oh, another thing.

I really enjoy the constant flashing of that "Sargon logo" in this video while they talk about improving channels, it's classy and absolutely not irritating at all.

The flashing of the logo is a part of the format he uses. He has several videos where he converses with other people, both on his and the opposing side of his topics, and many of them do not have a video stream. They instead have thier logos show up when they talk and it is supposed to let the watcher differentiate between voices that are not distinct.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-12-2015, 22:35

It's not that they are friends that makes them wrong, it's that I generally don't buy a lot of the "oh, but we men are also victims"-story.
Even if there is also some merit to it, and in some cases there is, it does not invalidate the point of anyone else, or make feminism superfluous as a whole. The idea that a man is seriously angry about the topic is already grounds for me to take him less seriously. And the equivalent example would be a nazi telling me that the sky is deep purple the entire day. The title "feminism is the establishment" already sets the tone and makes me roll my eyes a little.

Here's a loosely related video on "gender war" that I can mostly agree with:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KplCqjUKs4M

Invalid, that level of manspreading is the result of too-tight jeans or non-cotton underwear, both of which are themselves unmanly.

Having said that, crushed bollocks are not a matter of "comfort".

Husar

04-12-2015, 23:23

Which is largely the problem, people treat the "oh but we men are also victims" as were nothing more than a bid for attention even when it is a legitimate complaint. Even beyond the general Tumblr idiotry who hates everything white, straight and male, British and American society has become in places tipped against men. There is a trend of trivialisation of female on male rape especially statutory rape of young boys by women. Courts are overwhelmingly favouring women in child custody battles. False rape claims against women are non existant while men are being made pariahs by an overzealous media at the faintest hint of them raping a woman, innocent before proven guilty be damned.

Yeah, that's a general problem, not one that only men who are accused of rape have. Remember how that American girl who was accused of murder in Italy was guilty for almost everyone because of her "cold eyes"? The courts haven't found sufficient evidence and people largely still consider her guilty, what happened to "innocent until proven guilty" in that case? The reverse where people assume that a woman is making up a rape charge because they like the guy or dislike the woman also happens quite often.

We walk in fear of a random woman brushing us when they pass and shouting "he groped me". We steer clear of areas frequented by chldren in case we are accused of being potential predators. We look at marriage as a trap where one wrong move will get us stripped of all our money belongings and even children at the word of a disgruntled partner. We fear because we are told again and again stories of these things happening and every time it is clear that men cannot truly win, ever. Legitimate or not these fears are real and permiate our day to day lives and colour our thinking.

And we also can't sleep our way up in companies as often as women can, the world is really unfair.
Have you ever heard stories of women actually being sexually assaulted, groped, have men beat them at home etc.?
I'm pretty sure these problems for women are quite numerous while you can probably count the incidents where a woman shouts "he groped me" for no good reason on one hand. Maybe the reason it colours your thinking is in your own head. I've accidentally touched plenty of women in areas one might consider inappropriate while dancing or moving about and not once have I been accused of anything. I also live next to a kindergarten and not once has anyone sent the police here.

These are problems that are constantly overlooked and denied by the mainstream regardless of evidence and men are expected to shut up and take it while everyone else is free to complain about problems. Even while we deal with a suicide rate 3 times larger than that of women. (http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2012/index.html)

The problem is that the men often come across as though they think they actually have more or bigger problems than the women do, which is simply not the case. Of course there are some injustices against men

He is angry, his rhetoric is harsh, abrasive, he uses terminology alien to those unfamiliar to the subject, his personal narritive has devolved into an Us vs Them mentality and he is clearly frustrated. This is common among protestors who are being ignored and trivialized, which you are doing, and history tells us they dont go away with time.

And Osama protested in the streets but became sad when America didn't listen, I assume that makes his little outbursts okay.
Oh I know, can't compare that, because words ain't bombs, but it's still just a lazy excuse. There are plenty of people who go through hardships or aren't heard and don't turn into bitter, angry people. I also like how I contribute to the problem now.

His logic is largely sound and his points are sourced, he is not saying the sky is deep purple, he's saying its overcast in spite of your protestations of a clear sky. If you keep dismissing him, turning off his videos 4 minutes in due to something so petty as swearing, he and his fellows are going to turn to the only people who will listen, the MRA and the actual nazis. Some of them are already beginning to, as you have shown.

Wait, what? I don't think Aurini is a nazi, I've just actually listened to some of his thoughts and think he is a complete fool who tries to be a cool philosopher. If you're rating him simply on the way he looks then you shouldn't blame me for watching only 4 minutes in which I didn't just dislike the swearwords but the entire tone of the message and the incredibly annoying and distracting popups of his stupid logo that he uses because he is too afraid to show his face while he has apparently no problem with showing pictures of the people he derides and discredits in his videos.

The flashing of the logo is a part of the format he uses. He has several videos where he converses with other people, both on his and the opposing side of his topics, and many of them do not have a video stream. They instead have thier logos show up when they talk and it is supposed to let the watcher differentiate between voices that are not distinct.

Maybe, in the Aurini interview it seems to flash up every time he breathes out, as though it's automatically linked to his microphone input. That he does not realize how annoying, distracting and silly this "format" is in the respective video does not make him look like a great thinker to me, it's part of the overall impression.

CrossLOPER

04-13-2015, 02:17

really sophisticated philosopher who can tackle the gender issues in an intellectual way

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YD8xLYHyCAc

Greyblades

04-13-2015, 03:18

Yeah, that's a general problem, not one that only men who are accused of rape have. Remember how that American girl who was accused of murder in Italy was guilty for almost everyone because of her "cold eyes"? The courts haven't found sufficient evidence and people largely still consider her guilty, what happened to "innocent until proven guilty" in that case? The reverse where people assume that a woman is making up a rape charge because they like the guy or dislike the woman also happens quite often.
I did not say that women do not have these problems, I am saying that when men complain about these problems they get ignored and frequently derided.

And we also can't sleep our way up in companies as often as women can, the world is really unfair.
Have you ever heard stories of women actually being sexually assaulted, groped, have men beat them at home etc.?
I'm pretty sure these problems for women are quite numerous while you can probably count the incidents where a woman shouts "he groped me" for no good reason on one hand. Maybe the reason it colours your thinking is in your own head. I've accidentally touched plenty of women in areas one might consider inappropriate while dancing or moving about and not once have I been accused of anything. I also live next to a kindergarten and not once has anyone sent the police here.

The problem is that the men often come across as though they think they actually have more or bigger problems than the women do, which is simply not the case. Of course there are some injustices against men The weight of the problems I described isn't the number, it is the severity of the result and the fact that there is no defense. What do you do if you get that 1 in a million insane person who falsely cries rape? With one word and a headline your life comes crashing down around you.
Then comes the issue of divorce and custody where women are highly favoured, one session in court and we are stripped of all our money, belongings and even children. But when we express any worry about these things it is always responded with "someone else has it worse" which soothes our fears as well as "women might have a 1 in 4 chance of getting raped but there are starving kids in africa" soothes the fears of women.

And Osama protested in the streets but became sad when America didn't listen, I assume that makes his little outbursts okay.
Oh I know, can't compare that, because words ain't bombs, but it's still just a lazy excuse. There are plenty of people who go through hardships or aren't heard and don't turn into bitter, angry people. I also like how I contribute to the problem now. Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I condone the outcome? Of course its not ok, but it is absurd to say the USA had nothing to do with the man he became. Extremism rarely starts out extreme, France, Russia and China all saw legitimate discontent exacerbated by a percieved ridicule and denial of relevance by the opposition. Real or not that ridicule and denial repeatedly pushed these historical resistance movments further and further into extremism and I am saying it will here.

I'm saying be the better man. Exhibit the lesson I am slowly trying to learn and understand you arent going to gain any converts by answering legitimate complaints through pointing at the craziest members and saying the entire group is like that, you're just going to reinforce their convictions and drive them further into the fringe.

Wait, what? I don't think Aurini is a nazi, I've just actually listened to some of his thoughts and think he is a complete fool who tries to be a cool philosopher. If you're rating him simply on the way he looks then you shouldn't blame me for watching only 4 minutes in which I didn't just dislike the swearwords but the entire tone of the message and the incredibly annoying and distracting popups of his stupid logo that he uses because he is too afraid to show his face while he has apparently no problem with showing pictures of the people he derides and discredits in his videos.

Maybe, in the Aurini interview it seems to flash up every time he breathes out, as though it's automatically linked to his microphone input. That he does not realize how annoying, distracting and silly this "format" is in the respective video does not make him look like a great thinker to me, it's part of the overall impression. Implying you think he is a nazi was not my intention, it is my impression that the man is slowly pushing his way further towards the political right.

Sargon of Akkad is has the air of the preacher who aims his diatribe at the choir. My impression is that his videos are made less to combat his opponants but to reinforce his side's convictions and this is depressingly common among... well... everything. As you have shown no matter how much truth he might say it will not be heard by anyone who dont already share his opinion.
And yes it has occured to me that the reason I listen to him is because he says what I want to hear: "yeah, you're right, these people say that because I like games I am a horrible sexist, they are indeed full of crap" went through my mind a couple of times.

a completely inoffensive name

04-13-2015, 04:57

The manspreading issue wouldn't even exist if the transit authority simply expanded the capacity of their service. But then that would require taxes and proper funding.

Most tax-cutting Republicans are white males, so this policy is not feminism in action but rather blowback from dumb men.

Husar

04-13-2015, 10:39

I did not say that women do not have these problems, I am saying that when men complain about these problems they get ignored and frequently derided.
The weight of the problems I described isn't the number, it is the severity of the result and the fact that there is no defense. What do you do if you get that 1 in a million insane person who falsely cries rape? With one word and a headline your life comes crashing down around you.
Then comes the issue of divorce and custody where women are highly favoured, one session in court and we are stripped of all our money, belongings and even children. But when we express any worry about these things it is always responded with "someone else has it worse" which soothes our fears as well as "women might have a 1 in 4 chance of getting raped but there are starving kids in africa" soothes the fears of women.

Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I condone the outcome?

Maybe because you posted his video (the outcome) here as your argument?

Of course its not ok, but it is absurd to say the USA had nothing to do with the man he became. Extremism rarely starts out extreme, France, Russia and China all saw legitimate discontent exacerbated by a percieved ridicule and denial of relevance by the opposition. Real or not that ridicule and denial repeatedly pushed these historical resistance movments further and further into extremism and I am saying it will here.

Maybe, but just because our secularism may push islamists further into extremism we do not just introduce shariah law. Yes, there are legitimate issues where men draw the short stick, but there are the same for women. If you think the extremism of men is understandable then xsurely you also find the attitude of feminazis understandable because all your arguments apply to them in the same way. My opinion is simply that both extremes are wrong.

I'm saying be the better man. Exhibit the lesson I am slowly trying to learn and understand you arent going to gain any converts by answering legitimate complaints through pointing at the craziest members and saying the entire group is like that, you're just going to reinforce their convictions and drive them further into the fringe.

I didn't say an entire group is like that, you posted a video of a crazy member and I said he's crazy, what did you expect?
Don't you realize that by posting the videos of the craziest members you're pushing me further into the feminist fringe? :rolleyes:

Sargon of Akkad is has the air of the preacher who aims his diatribe at the choir. My impression is that his videos are made less to combat his opponants but to reinforce his side's convictions and this is depressingly common among... well... everything. As you have shown no matter how much truth he might say it will not be heard by anyone who dont already share his opinion.

So he basically lacks the means and the will to reach out to the other side, not a positive trait.

And yes it has occured to me that the reason I listen to him is because he says what I want to hear: "yeah, you're right, these people say that because I like games I am a horrible sexist, they are indeed full of crap" went through my mind a couple of times.

That's not exactly the argument though, the argument is more that video games contain sexist things to attract more people and then may make this sexism seem more normal for these people. Or at least that's the more sane part of the argument that has some merit to it.

Greyblades

04-13-2015, 16:52

Maybe because you posted his video (the outcome) here as your argument?

I find it somewhat disturbing that a higly educated German believes that a mere series of self confirming commentary videos is the final outcome of this mode of thought.

Maybe, but just because our secularism may push islamists further into extremism we do not just introduce shariah law. Yes, there are legitimate issues where men draw the short stick, but there are the same for women. If you think the extremism of men is understandable then surely you also find the attitude of feminazis understandable because all your arguments apply to them in the same way. My opinion is simply that both extremes are wrong. I would think you would be sympathetic to islamists, with all the bitching you do about how british imperialism causing all thier problems.

I didn't say an entire group is like that, you posted a video of a crazy member and I said he's crazy, what did you expect?
Don't you realize that by posting the videos of the craziest members you're pushing me further into the feminist fringe? :rolleyes: No, if I responded in such a manner that makes my opponant think I only attack the points I know I could win in while ignored those I cannot, while insulting my opponants language and calling his influences crazy, that would put cement upon your beliefs and push you to look for people who will actually listen to what you have to say.
Considering that it is increasingly evident that the only people who will provide that willing ear are the sort of people that you have been recieving a guilt trip about since 1945, I would think you would be a bit more concerned where these people are going.

So he basically lacks the means and the will to reach out to the other side, not a positive trait. One shared by the entire board and most of humanity.

That's not exactly the argument though, the argument is more that video games contain sexist things to attract more people and then may make this sexism seem more normal for these people. Or at least that's the more sane part of the argument that has some merit to it. It would have merit if they didnt shoot whatever credibility they had in the foot by exhibiting a blatant ignorance of the gaming scene. A fault further exacerbated by cherrypicking content so blatantly that even I, ignorant, young and gullible as I am, could call BS upon first watching without it being explained to me.

Husar

04-13-2015, 17:53

I find it somewhat disturbing that a higly educated German believes that a mere series of self confirming commentary videos is the final outcome of this mode of thought.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here but maybe that's because I don't have the time to watch all of these videos.

I would think you would be sympathetic to islamists, with all the bitching you do about how british imperialism causing all thier problems.

I find it somewhat disturbing that a highly educated Englander believes that a mere series of self confirming comments is the final outcome of this mode of thought.

No, if I responded in such a manner that makes my opponant think I only attack the points I know I could win in while ignored those I cannot, while insulting my opponants language and calling his influences crazy, that would put cement upon your beliefs and push you to look for people who will actually listen to what you have to say.
Considering that it is increasingly evident that the only people who will provide that willing ear are the sort of people that you have been recieving a guilt trip about since 1945, I would think you would be a bit more concerned where these people are going.

Who are you to tell me what would cement my opinions?
And I'm not very worried about a few men joining the nazis to fight female oppression because a buddy of their uncle's best friend told their niece a story about the friend of their buddies' grandmothers' uncle that he heard from the wife of his priest about how a woman once screamed she was groped when the friend of her aunt's baby's father once walked casually through the city.
By the same type of argument our justice system also works purely in favor of criminals.

One shared by the entire board and most of humanity.

That might be why we have all these problems in the first place.
And how does that lead you to expect me to understand the guy in the first place?

It would have merit if they didnt shoot whatever credibility they had in the foot by exhibiting a blatant ignorance of the gaming scene. A fault further exacerbated by cherrypicking content so blatantly that even I, ignorant, young and gullible as I am, could call BS upon first watching without it being explained to me.

How does that not apply to a lot of the commentary you get about feminism? They cherry-pick a few "feminazis" and extrapolate that to feminism as a whole, claiming that men suffer oh so much as well and are really the ones who can't do anything anymore. When you say men just have to take it nowadays I can only roll my eyes. The only chance for you to be right is if this is a purely british problem but then you can hardly expect me to have made the same experiences since I do not live in Britain. every time you claim that men "have to be" afraid of this or that I can think of a few things that women "have to be" afraid of, which are in many cases actually more likely to happen to them and therefore might just take precedence in terms of what we should deal with first/faster as a society.

Greyblades

04-13-2015, 21:25

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here but maybe that's because I don't have the time to watch all of these videos. I mean producing these videos are at the start not the end of radicalization.

I find it somewhat disturbing that a highly educated Englander believes that a mere series of self confirming comments is the final outcome of this mode of thought. Not even sure what you mean here.

Who are you to tell me what would cement my opinions?I am a human beaing. I work under the assume that human beings have similar reaction to the same stimuli. The result of the stimuli you exposed me to was to devalue what doubt had formed in my mind of the correctness of my position. Thus I assume the same thing would happen to you. Do you need any more?

And I'm not very worried about a few men joining the nazis to fight female oppression because a buddy of their uncle's best friend told their niece a story about the friend of their buddies' grandmothers' uncle that he heard from the wife of his priest about how a woman once screamed she was groped when the friend of her aunt's baby's father once walked casually through the city.

You might not be worried but your government is. Golden Dawn. BNP. The National Front. Ukip These far right nationalistic groups are growing in numbers by the day and they do not grow on thier own. They grow by recruiting those who are disillusioned, dissaffected, ignorant and scared.

Now, I assume as a german you are well versed in what happens when these movments gets too much power, correct? It seems that it would be in your best interests to counter act these. So what do you do?
Do you endeavour to reassure those with doubts?
Do you attempt to teach, disprove the misconceptions that they hold?
Do you even try to assure them that thier fears are unfounded?

No.

As I said you responded in such a manner that makes your opponant think you ignore their points because you dont want to admit they are right.
You dismiss the sources of thier distress as crazy or irrelevant while giving the impression that you have no idea what you are talking about.

These people believe they are being oppressed and responses like yours does nothing but confirm thier beliefs.

Oh and before you say something along the lines of "It's not my job to baby them" if you are not willing to do something that might actually make things better in the long run, please refrain from doing things to make it worse.

By the same type of argument our justice system also works purely in favor of criminals.

Gonna have to explain that one

That might be why we have all these problems in the first place.
And how does that lead you to expect me to understand the guy in the first place?
It doesnt. It leads me to realize that if I react to them as you react to me I never will. So I endeavour to do better in the future. I can only hope I can persuade others to do the same.

How does that not apply to a lot of the commentary you get about feminism? They cherry-pick a few "feminazis" and extrapolate that to feminism as a whole, claiming that men suffer oh so much as well and are really the ones who can't do anything anymore.

Yeah, if you havent noticed I had been having doubts about the femenism thing since post 38 (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148857-Clarkson-gone!&p=2053632299&viewfull=1#post2053632299). Since then my posts have been about how counterproductive your efforts to persuade me are.

When you say men just have to take it nowadays I can only roll my eyes. The only chance for you to be right is if this is a purely british problem but then you can hardly expect me to have made the same experiences since I do not live in Britain. every time you claim that men "have to be" afraid of this or that I can think of a few things that women "have to be" afraid of, which are in many cases actually more likely to happen to them and therefore might just take precedence in terms of what we should deal with first/faster as a society.

I didnt say "have to be", I said "are". Yes, look at the numbers and much of the fears of society come up as extremely unlikely, but unlike women a man who expresses thier fears in public gets variations on your reaction. I tell you, right now, it's not going to persuade any of them that thier fears and insecurities are unfounded.

Nor is the current trend on the internet to respond to any complaints with crap like this (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/920/620/e5b.png). But I have greater hope of changing the public and intellectual response to men's complaints than the GIFT one.

a completely inoffensive name

04-13-2015, 23:04

Obviously, you people don't want to indulge my sudden exploration of Marxism by constructing this scenario as class warfare... go ahead with your lame gender warfare.

Husar

04-13-2015, 23:08

I mean producing these videos are at the start not the end of radicalization.

Not even sure what you mean here.

Neither was I. You need to relax a little.

I am a human beaing. I work under the assume that human beings have similar reaction to the same stimuli. The result of the stimuli you exposed me to was to devalue what doubt had formed in my mind of the correctness of my position. Thus I assume the same thing would happen to you. Do you need any more?

I can assure you that the reactions to similar stimuli can vary a lot because the current state of mind is also influenced by all previous stimuli. So unless all previous stimuli led to a similar state of mind, reactions can vary a whole lot.

These people believe they are being oppressed and responses like yours does nothing but confirm thier beliefs.

I'm responding to you here, not him, unless you're saying that you're about to join the BNP if I make fun of Sargon, I think we are relatively safe for now.

Oh and before you say something along the lines of "It's not my job to baby them" if you are not willing to do something that might actually make things better in the long run, please refrain from doing things to make it worse.

So we should stop making videos that call feminists crazy because it might make the extreme feminists more radical?

Gonna have to explain that one

Plenty of people are afraid that if they ever need to defend themselves from a criminal, the criminal is going to be declared the victim in court while they will be punished.

It doesnt. It leads me to realize that if I react to them as you react to me I never will. So I endeavour to do better in the future. I can only hope I can persuade others to do the same.

You could try to persuade the video guy to stop radicalizing feminists with his aggressive videos.

Yeah, if you havent noticed I had been having doubts about the femenism thing since post 38 (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148857-Clarkson-gone!&p=2053632299&viewfull=1#post2053632299). Since then my posts have been about how counterproductive your efforts to persuade me are.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "feminism thing", I thought you had doubts about feminism since quite a while, or does "feminism thing" refer to the things Sargon of Akkad says about feminism in his videos? In the latter case I would have really missed it, in the former case I'm not sure what I would have missed since we're arguing about that the entire time.

I didnt say "have to be", I said "are". Yes, look at the numbers and much of the fears of society come up as extremely unlikely, but unlike women a man who expresses thier fears in public gets variations on your reaction. I tell you, right now, it's not going to persuade any of them that thier fears and insecurities are unfounded.

Again, I'm not arguing with "them" right now unless we are actually talking about you.

Nor is the current trend on the internet to respond to any complaints with crap like this (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/920/620/e5b.png). But I have greater hope of changing the public and intellectual response to men's complaints than the GIFT one.

I would consider myself largely as cisgender if it means what I just looked up and it has to be a very special subculture where such things are posted. You will always have very special subcultures though. I don't think we can get rid of nazis and islamists by being much nicer to them either. What do they want? That politicians declare a commitment to the safety of straight men from persecution or something like that?

Ironside

04-14-2015, 06:08

It would have merit if they didnt shoot whatever credibility they had in the foot by exhibiting a blatant ignorance of the gaming scene. A fault further exacerbated by cherrypicking content so blatantly that even I, ignorant, young and gullible as I am, could call BS upon first watching without it being explained to me.

Now I'm curious. Is this what you call cherrypicking, taking examples that contain the thing in question, rather than making a random sample? Because taking the two examples in history isn't a trend, taking 30 AAA titles from the last 10 years is showing a trend on the other hand.

Greyblades

04-14-2015, 16:22

Now I'm curious. Is this what you call cherrypicking, taking examples that contain the thing in question, rather than making a random sample? Because taking the two examples in history isn't a trend, taking 30 AAA titles from the last 10 years is showing a trend on the other hand.

No I mean taking footage of people using the freedom of the games to do violent things to women as an example of the game encouraging and rewarding misogyny is cherry picking.

For example: You can beat up hookers and steal thier money in GTA, You can use the takedown system in Deus Ex human revolution to brutalize a streetwalker. In her videos she shows both to be included in her argument that games are promoting sexism. But she neglects to mention that you can do that to anyone in the game, man or women, you can brutalized cops, firemen, soldiers, buisnessmen, anyone of any gender or occupation in those games can be targets of a player's beatdown. So why did feminist Frequency not mention that?

That was the part that convinced me personally that this was not a reasonable critique of gaming and that ms sarkeesian was not acting in good faith. But it was only the tip of the iceberg of how wrong her videos turned out, and looking back over a year later I feel that her misteps may have caused damage far beyond causing herself to look stupid.
Any critique of the gaming industry would make the community defensive, we have put up with so many attacks from outsiders calling us racist, homophobic, calling our hobbies murder simulators and all that good stuff that it has become instinct to question any criticism. But what Sarkeesian did was what jack thompson did: It got major attention while being blatantly wrong and selfserving and it gave legitimacy to anyone who wanted to dismiss the critique.
If femenist frequency was a reasonable analysis of the gaming scene from someone a part of the community with proper fact checking (and gained the same media attention as FF. as FF is criticized as owing its fame to sensationalizing that would be unlikely, but still...) it might have gained traction. Instead it was yet another outsider with a moralising agenda taking a cursory glance at gaming, declaring it bad in one way or another, and dismissing all criticism as trolling.

Their actions have poisoned the well for anyone who wants to tackle the issue in the future because, regardless of legitimacy of the argument, all the detractors need to do is point at the last guy who tried and claim any new information is the same.

Obviously, you people don't want to indulge my sudden exploration of Marxism by constructing this scenario as class warfare... go ahead with your lame gender warfare.

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/166/143/131422510899.gif

Ironside

04-14-2015, 20:08

No I mean taking footage of people using the freedom of the games to do violent things to women as an example of the game encouraging and rewarding misogyny is cherry picking.

For example: You can beat up hookers and steal thier money in GTA, You can use the takedown system in Deus Ex human revolution to brutalize a streetwalker. In her videos she shows both to be included in her argument that games are promoting sexism. But she neglects to mention that you can do that to anyone in the game, man or women, you can brutalized cops, firemen, soldiers, buisnessmen, anyone of any gender or occupation in those games can be targets of a player's beatdown. So why did feminist Frequency not mention that?

IIRC the thing was that you can beat up the hookers you just payed for sex and get your money back. Free of charge healing. You also have the sex+shoot interaction, while the rest of the NPC:s only got shoot interaction.

Typically all the non-essential characters in sandbox style games are killable, but it’s the sexualized women whose instrumentality and brutalization is gendered and eroticized in ways that men never are. The visual language attached to male NPCs is very different since they are rarely designed to be sexually inviting or arousing, and they are not coded to interact with the player in ways meant to reaffirm a heterosexual fantasy about being a stud.

Firemen aren't in, buissnessmen are fairly generic, police I grant you (even if they're also enemies sometimes) and military are often the enemy.

If you want to be picky, it's the fact that they are a sort of background side effect is sort of the point that the producer never sat down and thought about it. It's too ingrained to think about it.

That was the part that convinced me personally that this was not a reasonable critique of gaming and that ms sarkeesian was not acting in good faith. But it was only the tip of the iceberg of how wrong her videos turned out, and looking back over a year later I feel that her misteps may have caused damage far beyond causing herself to look stupid.

It's around being a woman and saying anything critical of video games. Or being a woman and having to do with sex (the origin of GG or Quinnspiracy that it was called then).

The videos aren't flawless, but it is notable that the counter critics are doing as sort "that example aren't a good one, thus all other ones are invalid", in particular when the argument are about trends (which means that you'll have golden examples mixed with partial matches).

Any critique of the gaming industry would make the community defensive, we have put up with so many attacks from outsiders calling us racist, homophobic, calling our hobbies murder simulators and all that good stuff that it has become instinct to question any criticism. But what Sarkeesian did was what jack thompson did: It got major attention while being blatantly wrong and selfserving and it gave legitimacy to anyone who wanted to dismiss the critique.

That is sort of a thing. With video games being as general and common as movies, getting similar criticism is sort of expected.

She got major attention because of the response. That's slightly different from jack thompson, unless his fame was from being threatened with rape and murder by a lot of people. And that while most people are sort of wondering exactly what would trigger such a harsh response.

If femenist frequency was a reasonable analysis of the gaming scene from someone a part of the community with proper fact checking (and gained the same media attention as FF. as FF is criticized as owing its fame to sensationalizing that would be unlikely, but still...) it might have gained traction. Instead it was yet another outsider with a moralising agenda taking a cursory glance at gaming, declaring it bad in one way or another, and dismissing all criticism as trolling.

Their actions have poisoned the well for anyone who wants to tackle the issue in the future because, regardless of legitimacy of the argument, all the detractors need to do is point at the last guy who tried and claim any new information is the same.

Eh not really. There's enough raw misogyny among a sub group of gamers to poison any well about this. Even if Women as Background Decoration contains parts that can be controversial, the nature and amount of the previous criticism (or threats) on things that are really basic and mostly very obvious, is sort of showing that it's not a fair debate, but something more vicious. I mean, you are aware that

Nor is the current trend on the internet to respond to any complaints with crap like this (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/920/620/e5b.png). But I have greater hope of changing the public and intellectual response to men's complaints than the GIFT one.
is a parody of a lot (most) of the "criticism" against outspoken women and minorities?

Men's issues has the problem that misogynous MRA:s jumps on those and infect the whole issue, since they don't really care about the issues, but rather want to "score" against women, making the women aggressive in response, since they're familiar with the arguments being used as a distraction or an attack.

Have that misogynous core and combine it with the category that takes criticism of anything they like as a personal attack and are a bit touchy about it (partly because they will fill up on having been attacked or been perceived as being attacked more than once). Then you'll get a nice explosion, with the right triggers.

Greyblades

04-14-2015, 21:14

IIRC the thing was that you can beat up the hookers you just payed for sex and get your money back. Free of charge healing. You also have the sex+shoot interaction, while the rest of the NPC:s only got shoot interaction.
That's a side effect of the game tracking how much money each character has on them, if you shoot a man who just came from an ATM he will drop more money than if you shot him before.
You also get free of charge healing if you buy a bunch of food items, eat them, then rob the food store to get your money back.

Firemen aren't in, buissnessmen are fairly generic, police I grant you (even if they're also enemies sometimes) and military are often the enemy.
Have you played these games? Because firemen are most certainly in the game, as are paramedics, lawyers, deli owners, grannies, drug dealers and pigeons and you can shoot them all, the only thing you cant find in these games that you couldnt find in a real city are children.

And the choice is all the players, you can shoot them, you can run them over, you can set them on fire or you can just let them go on with thier lives; Even the enemies will leave you alone if you leave them alone. It's all the player's choice and the game would suffer if such a range of choice was lessened to soothe the feelings of those who aren't even playing it.

If you want to be picky, it's the fact that they are a sort of background side effect is sort of the point that the producer never sat down and thought about it. It's too ingrained to think about it. Except signs point to them actually thinking about it and deciding the players would enjoy the amount of detail they put in. They probably knew that the only people who would refuse to buy a GTA game because of that feature werent going to buy the games in teh first place and thus werent worth pandering to.

Actually why are we arguing about GTA's implications? The entire premise of video games affecting people's behavior is long disproven.

http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/this-doesnt-make-me-a-murderer.jpg

If you want to talk about the sexism in the gamer community that's fine, but leave the games themselves out of it.

It's around being a woman and saying anything critical of video games. Or being a woman and having to do with sex (the origin of GG or Quinnspiracy that it was called then). What is?

The videos aren't flawless, but it is notable that the counter critics are doing as sort "that example aren't a good one, thus all other ones are invalid", in particular when the argument are about trends (which means that you'll have golden examples mixed with partial matches). Yeah, as I said that's what happens when the complaints are done so incompetently. Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I like the outcome?

That is sort of a thing. With video games being as general and common as movies, getting similar criticism is sort of expected. Yeah, and when gamers look at the examples of TV, Films and comic books they see periods where the criticisms of moral guardians results in rampant censorship that takes decades shake off, they fear the same thing happening to thier hobby, and when her videos failed to prove these fears wrong it is Sarkeesian's responsibility.

She got major attention because of the response. That's slightly different from jack thompson, unless his fame was from being threatened with rape and murder by a lot of people. And that while most people are sort of wondering exactly what would trigger such a harsh response. The differing methods of thier ascend to mainstream is rather irrelevant to my point. They got attention but any legitimate point or message they might have wanted to impart to gamers overshadowed by an ignorance of the community they were commentating on. The end result is that now any attempt to press that message is lumped in with the crazy.

Eh not really. There's enough raw misogyny among a sub group of gamers to poison any well about this.up. Ironside I am not blind, the group we call gamers encompass a good chunk of the entire world, the chances of us having no mysogynists is nil but to say that there is enough poison to make the rest of the community immune to the arguments of feminists is frankly wrong.
You and Husar are testiment to that if nothing else.
However when sarkeesian came along with such a shoddy video series that reek of ignorance and laziness, tells us the things we like are sexist and then gets declared as the face of feminism in gaming, it just gave fodder to her movment's detractors.

If Sakeesian couldnt do enough research to not so easily proven wrong then she shouldnt have tried at all, because in doing so she did more damage to the idea of feminist gaming than a thousand 4chan trolls.

Even if Women as Background Decoration contains parts that can be controversial, the nature and amount of the previous criticism (or threats) on things that are really basic and mostly very obvious, is sort of showing that it's not a fair debate, but something more vicious. I mean, you are aware that
is a parody of a lot (most) of the "criticism" against outspoken women and minorities? You're gonna have to prove that one, cause while most of them are long gone this one (http://memetriarchy.tumblr.com/post/50683269911/he-was-a-boy-she-was-a-girl-they-were-cisgender) is still here and there is no indication that it was all made up.

I mean if you're going to claim all those are fake and not provide proof then I will just as easily claim the MRA's you refer to are just 4chan trolls.

Though rhetoric aside I am fairly convinced that a lot of them are.

Greyblades

04-14-2015, 22:18

Oh and I forgot to mention Hitman Absolution, Sarkeesian blatantly lies:

Edit: for some reason I cant get it to load at a specific time so skip to 2:30 exactly if you dont want to listen to this guy go on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI&feature=player_detailpage#t=150

Ironside

04-14-2015, 22:58

I'll do a proper response when I got time, but the quick response was about lack of firemen in DE:HR (from memory I admit) since you took it up, rather then the general genre.

Oh and I forgot to mention Hitman Absolution, Sarkeesian blatantly lies:

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't. To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes?

You can disagree with this construction, but she doesn't lie. Which are an example on the nature of the criticism. Its base assumption is that she lies, rather than being consistent with a position you might disagree with.

Kralizec

04-14-2015, 23:48

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't. To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes?

You can disagree with this construction, but she doesn't lie. Which are an example on the nature of the criticism. Its base assumption is that she lies, rather than being consistent with a position you might disagree with.

I haven't followed the rest of the discussion, but the Hitman example is a dishonest one, or at best grossly misinformed. I've only played the previous installments of this series, but what the video shows is pretty standard: you can murder innocent people, but are discouraged to do so in every game (by different means in every installment)
That you can move the bodies around is a game mechanic meant for hiding the bodies, so that other NPC's don't discover them and alarm the guards. Yes, you can move them around for sheer entertainment, but you're not encouraged to do so.

The argument, as far as that segment is concerned, seems to be about that there are scantily clothed women in it which aren't treated differently from any other NPC. Meaning: you can kill them just like anybody else, and toss their bodies around. It's a strip club, which FYI exist in real life. Other places you visit during these games include bars, office buildings, casinos, factories, military installations, et cetera...in every case a background for the target, who usually is a shady character himself.

Come to think of it, in the Hitman games that I've played I think it was not possible to remove clothing from female victims (most NPC's are male, anyway). That function was to enable your character to change disguise, which obviously does not work with the opposite gender.

EDIT: to answer your point, I suppose it would have been possible to make it impossible to harm the strippers specifically, but why? It would only have been a move to prevent criticism from feminist activists. It would be inconsistent with the rest of the game.

Greyblades

04-15-2015, 00:07

I'll do a proper response when I got time, but the quick response was about lack of firemen in DE:HR (from memory I admit) since you took it up, rather then the general genre. I assumed GTA was the main point of contention but in Deus ex human revolution the npcs of all status', races and creeds are all represented. You can help, ignore or kill them at your leisure and noone is excluded from this and the absence of firefighters is irrelevant.

Eh no. Her narrative, that she does take time to explain is more or less that people are encouraged to explore/exploit the game. Basically, if something is possible in the game, it's encouraged by the producers to the players to do it, even if most people don't.She lied.

She says: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters"
She said they are "meant to", but this is wrong, it is wrong in GTA, it is wrong in Deus Ex, but it is excruciatingly wrong here for one simple reason: the game explicitly punishes you for killing these women.
She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.
The only way her statment is true is if the definition of the word meant is now reversed.
It isn't, she lied.

To reverse the point, what is the point of having even the possibility to do this in the game? Does it add something important? (apparently no, it's quite possible it is to satisfy "that" producer guy). Then why have the possibility? To have the freedom to be the guy Sarkeesian describes? Flippant: because just because you dont like the game doesnt mean that it should be censored to accomidate you.

Serious: Why? Because the gamer is allowed to do it to everyone else. You are a hitman, you are tasked with killing people and you are scored on how clean your kill is. The score goes down every time you kill a person who is not your target and if their bodies are found the game gets harder so the game allows you to hide the body by dragging it by it's foot it to a hiding place.
If women were magically excluded from being dragged around or even killed the game would become inconsistent, and even become unwinnable. You might as well remove the game's women alltogether.
And I know you would like that even less.

Sarkeesian lies.
She has other problems, her narrative is only a swear and a raised voice from being the equivilent of Sargon of Akkad.
But it is her lies that condemn her.

With her lies, her arguments become worthless.

If feminism wants to make any progress with the game industry it cannot be associated with this sort of misdirection. To win they must be able to convert the other side's followers and they cannot do that if they allow this person to be thier face.

As long as people so blatantly manipulative and dishonest as she is are seen as the leaders people will think non-egalitarian feminism deserves to be sidelined and ridiculed.
And if anita truly is the leader, then they will be right to think it.

Husar

04-15-2015, 13:59

She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.

I think that part was a bit unclear in the video since to me it looked like killing a female gave a negative score of 1xx or 2xx while killing the (male) civilian gave a few thousands in negative score. Therefore one could say the women are not valued as highly as other civilians in the game.
I will agree however that her criticism of the game is quite a bit inflated in general and not everything she claims to be incentivized actually is.

Ironside

04-15-2015, 20:38

That's a side effect of the game tracking how much money each character has on them, if you shoot a man who just came from an ATM he will drop more money than if you shot him before.
You also get free of charge healing if you buy a bunch of food items, eat them, then rob the food store to get your money back.

I'm curious. Is that as easy and got the penalty as killing a prostitute? I've only played GTA IV, so I'm not familiar with the details.

Actually why are we arguing about GTA's implications? The entire premise of video games affecting people's behavior is long disproven.

That's violence. Which has quite a different mechanisms to follow. Media is one information source and not the strongest one (friends and family are). The problem occurs when it's persistent and aren't balanced by other sources. Do you consider that you're close to reality to determine the odds of car explosions? I don't know if the UK got something similar, but the American dream is almost entirely media driven.

The counter point would be that media never has any influence at anything. Which are fairly ridiculous.

I really don't have time to write another huge post and dig up all the sources, but video games do affect people's thoughts and behaviour, even violence (world perception iirc, people seeing the world as a dark place will see the world as more violent if they consume violent media). Tropes vs. Women do actually spend to explain those concepts when going through them, but I do got the feeling that you reject some of them as a whole and not in the details.

If you want to talk about the sexism in the gamer community that's fine, but leave the games themselves out of it.
And if you have games that actively enforces the sexism within the community? Fighting games are pretty bad on this, even if it's been a diversification on that market.

Yeah, as I said that's what happens when the complaints are done so incompetently. Why is it whenever I explain causation people assume I like the outcome?

Because a competent complaint on the same matter would contain the same thing, only use a better example and explain itself better?

Yeah, and when gamers look at the examples of TV, Films and comic books they see periods where the criticisms of moral guardians results in rampant censorship that takes decades shake off, they fear the same thing happening to thier hobby, and when her videos failed to prove these fears wrong it is Sarkeesian's responsibility.

The differing methods of thier ascend to mainstream is rather irrelevant to my point. They got attention but any legitimate point or message they might have wanted to impart to gamers overshadowed by an ignorance of the community they were commentating on. The end result is that now any attempt to press that message is lumped in with the crazy.

About the harassment. This is one week (http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter) twitter harassment for FF. At that point, FF haven't posted anything in a while, so it's low harassment season.

Thing is, that's normal (http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/22/5926193/women-gaming-harassment) for a woman in the gaming industry daring to have an opinion.

This is what I'm talking about when I mention poison. Any feminist criticism of games, no matter how well done, would create a shitstorm on the net, in particular if made by a woman. And yes it's a huge issue and drowns out any more reasonable discussions, but it's having this in

You're gonna have to prove that one, cause while most of them are long gone this one (http://memetriarchy.tumblr.com/post/50683269911/he-was-a-boy-she-was-a-girl-they-were-cisgender) is still here and there is no indication that it was all made up.

I mean if you're going to claim all those are fake and not provide proof then I will just as easily claim the MRA's you refer to are just 4chan trolls.

Though rhetoric aside I am fairly convinced that a lot of them are.

Can't really prove it, but see above on what happens with people that threatens the norm. It has some parody vibes in the first and second post and the third is certainly a reference to how those internet debates looks like.

Some are trolling. The persistence of a lot there do show something worse.

However when sarkeesian came along with such a shoddy video series that reek of ignorance and laziness, tells us the things we like are sexist and then gets declared as the face of feminism in gaming, it just gave fodder to her movment's detractors.

If Sakeesian couldnt do enough research to not so easily proven wrong then she shouldnt have tried at all, because in doing so she did more damage to the idea of feminist gaming than a thousand 4chan trolls.

The games mentioned are having sexist tropes. Any feminist talking about it, would have to say the same thing. I'll go into more further down, but that the games contains sexualised women (and only women) and allows violence against everyone. As a consequence, you get sexualised violence against (only) women. The reasons and details might need a further discussion, but that is the baseline. How much and how common sexism should be are also debates that are worth taking. Getting zero sexism is sort of hard, as a lot of tropes are meta situation dependent, ok in each individual case, but not ok as a aggregate. Lack of female protagonists are an example of this. And frankly, having some games heavy on it is not much of an issue. Persistence is worse.

You honestly think she's the first woman that thought about the idea? What do you think happened to the others? She got the leading position by endurance.

EDIT: to answer your point, I suppose it would have been possible to make it impossible to harm the strippers specifically, but why? It would only have been a move to prevent criticism from feminist activists. It would be inconsistent with the rest of the game.

It is a side effect of having normal game mechanics applied to sexualised female characters. It's more on how common it is. Having a strip club/prostitutes aren't plot important in any way (DE:HR has one part where prostitutes are getting forced to augment. That's an example on it being really plot important), it's treated as to show that this is a dark world or as background decoration for a setting.

The game wouldn't really lose anything on not having a strip club, correct? It's a critique on every dark game has to have strip club (for the leering, don't pretend otherwise. I admit, sometimes I do like doing that in games), with strippers as background decoration, which you the player are supposed to enjoy. Then add the killing interaction on top of that.

She says: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters"
She said they are "meant to", but this is wrong, it is wrong in GTA, it is wrong in Deus Ex, but it is excruciatingly wrong here for one simple reason: the game explicitly punishes you for killing these women.
She herself neglects to show it but the video I posted shows at 2:59 the game explicitly reducing the score for killing an NPC. Worse, at 3:06 it shows the reduction in score is hugely inflated for civilian deaths, which the women in the game count as.
The only way her statment is true is if the definition of the word meant is now reversed.
It isn't, she lied.

It's a minor "easter egg" that you have search for if I got it correct. It's certainly made to be meant to you to be able to sneak around strippers. They're also meant to be treated as any NPC (aka killable). So they are both treated not like any NPC (by being sexualised) and like any NPC (killable, but in this game not recommendable for the highest score). And there's so many sandbox games that insists on this. It's a norm for most AAA titles. That is sort of interesting part, since there's no need for that.

It is certainly made as a provokable statement, but anything that is not considered a bug in a game is meant to be possible.

Flippant: because just because you dont like the game doesnt mean that it should be censored to accomidate you.

I say we introduce male on male rape into the TW series, to reach higher realism (it is fairly common in war. But very little spoken about). Or are you one of those censorists? We do that stuff all the time.

If feminism wants to make any progress with the game industry it cannot be associated with this sort of misdirection. To win they must be able to convert the other side's followers and they cannot do that if they allow this person to be their face.

As long as people so blatantly manipulative and dishonest as she is are seen as the leaders people will think non-egalitarian feminism deserves to be sidelined and ridiculed.
And if anita truly is the leader, then they will be right to think it.

It's done more progress in short order compared to what was before. Silence from a weak position often get you nowhere. It's now an open and active issue and the condensate makes it more obvious (I mean watch her videos as an agglomerate, even if some details might be wrong, the sheer number of examples is staggering). More consideration about if mr. Strip Club producer guy should do his pet project. Admittedly, some will give him a larger role and miss the point that sometimes you can fully embrace it as well.

The shock waves of harassment noise that will linger for years could be better though.

Greyblades

04-15-2015, 20:51

I think that part was a bit unclear in the video since to me it looked like killing a female gave a negative score of 1xx or 2xx while killing the (male) civilian gave a few thousands in negative score. Therefore one could say the women are not valued as highly as other civilians in the game.Which is wrong. Here's proof:

http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716412589789178334/5C8408B998EC8ECB9B7EAF2D0D00F1F8C2F07CBA/
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716412589789207786/105A60F0B48C974B187FE36D85EAF08CC9546D52/

These are my own screenshots, I made them just now and as you can see both the stripper and the man in the courtroom lobby lost me a very similar amount of points when I shot them.
You have the game husar, you can check this if you want. It was a falsehood and in 2+ years she has yet to publically acknowledge it.

I am not exactly sure why the game took off less points for killing this random male civillian than the stripper, I think it was something to do with the difficulty modifier, I mean it affected the spotted bit too and that really shouldnt have anything to do with it.

I will agree however that her criticism of the game is quite a bit inflated in general and not everything she claims to be incentivized actually is.She makes an excessive amount of fuss from mere speculation, like Akkad, but it is specifically the lies that makes her argument unacceptable by the viewers not already biased towards believing her.
It's made worse by the fact that she appeared to be actively avoiding critiscism by disabling the comments.

The feminist movment should have disassociated itself with anita and found a more honest person to be thier figurehead, or at least found a person who was a better liar; I mean hitman had freaking latex nuns, the lowest hanging fruit and she still screwed up?

Husar

04-15-2015, 21:22

You have the game husar, you can check this if you want.

This is wrong, my gaming computer is broken, but I believe you.

Greyblades

04-15-2015, 21:52

Ah, I didnt know, steam put you on the "you have # friends who play hitman absolution" and I assumed.

I'm curious. Is that as easy and got the penalty as killing a prostitute? I've only played GTA IV, so I'm not familiar with the details. Depends on the store, some of them have storekeeps that are armed and will shoot you in the back if you let them live after you rob them, others just call the police, it varies like in real life. I dont know if there are armed prostitutes but I wouldnt be adverse to the idea of having some of them armed.

That's violence. Which has quite a different mechanisms to follow. Media is one information source and not the strongest one (friends and family are). The problem occurs when it's persistent and aren't balanced by other sources. Do you consider that you're close to reality to determine the odds of car explosions? I don't know if the UK got something similar, but the American dream is almost entirely media driven. Violent fantasy causing violence and sexist fantasy causing sexism; both run under the assumption that the average human is incapable of observing or interacting with something they know is not real without being influenced by it and I find the implication both wrong and somewhat insulting to my intelligence.

I can see the argument for children not being exposed to these things: that children are less capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality (that's why I stopped railing against age ratings when I exceeded them) but there has to be a point where we stop treating people as gullible children. Censoring things that are clearly marketed towards adults is going too far under a false pretense.

Now, if the feminist movment's message was: we need more alternatives to the stupid male fantasies of nubile women and powerful men then I think you would get more people agreeing with you, bring on the male strippers and the practically armoured warrior women.

However my observations of the movment from the outside is that feminism just wants to get rid of these fantasies altogether. That is not only impractical it is absolutely abhorrent.

If that observation is incorrect then I think the people running it need to seriously consider why those outside are getting the wrong idea and rework thier image to fix that. They can start by fact checking thier points and toning down or eliminating the rhetoric. Oh and ditch sarkeesian's feminist frequency. Actually ditch sarkeesian altogether, her actions will hang like an albatross on feminism's neck for years and I dont see it being worth the effort to salvage her credibility.

Side note: I also would agree that we should stop producing games that are actually maliciously sexist. The thing is that these games are few and far between to begin with. (hell, the last mainstream game that I remember actually being such is duke nukem forever, and that was a massive flop.)
The impression I get is that feminists are lumping the stupid male fantasies in with the outright attacks on women, for whatever reason. They need to stop doing that or they'll get nowhere.

Husar

04-15-2015, 22:55

If that observation is incorrect then I think the people running it need to seriously consider why those outside are getting the wrong idea and rework thier image to fix that. They can start by fact checking thier points and toning down or eliminating the rhetoric. Oh and ditch sarkeesian's feminist frequency. Actually ditch sarkeesian altogether, her actions will hang like an albatross on feminism's neck for years and I dont see it being worth the effort to salvage her credibility.

Who are "thew people running it"? You say that as though feminism were an organization with a clearly defined leadership.
And this accusation could just as well be brought up against the ones who claim males are the bigger victims.

Greyblades

04-15-2015, 23:15

Who are "thew people running it"? You say that as though feminism were an organization with a clearly defined leadership.

You mean they aren't?..

...Well. You guys, or gals or whatever, you might want to get onto that, 'cause right now any random idiot can claim/be claimed to speak for you. I mean look at sarkeesian, yeesh.

There's gotta be someone who can play MLK jr to her Lil' wayne, right?

This person seems like a good candidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w

And this accusation could just as well be brought up against the ones who claim males are the bigger victims. Yep.

...What? Just because I think one side is right on a few things doesn't mean I also think they are well organised. Someone should tell Sargon to cut that crap out, shape up man, anyone could think you are an accurate representation of the entire group or something.

a completely inoffensive name

04-16-2015, 04:54

This is literally like reading Reddit.

Husar

04-16-2015, 08:33

Someone should tell Sargon to cut that crap out, shape up man, anyone could think you are an accurate representation of the entire group or something.

Now you're bringing in those gender stereotypes that tell men to behave in a certain way or they aren't real men...

Sir Moody

04-16-2015, 11:02

wow I never thought we would see a thread like this here but seems I was wrong.

A few points which seem to be glazed over entirely - lets start with Hitman.

In previous games (the better ones) Penalties for killing civilians remained and in fact you were incentivised to only kill your targets in a lot of ways - this was all thrown out the window in Absolution.

Yes you are penalized with a negative score for killing civilians BUT by simply hiding the bodies the penalty is negated and your score is "refunded" - so unlike previous games where the penalty was permanent and thus disincentivized killing civilians, Absolution does the opposite - it encourages you to kill as long as you clean up after yourself.

This directly leads into Sarkeesian's point - the strippers on this level are simply there to be window dressing - for the player to observe or "play" with as they see fit - they serve no point to the plot other than to set up the whole "the boss is a bad guy" by over hearing their conversation. Actually I would go further and slate the entire mission - it served no point to the plot other than as a "ooo look how gritty we are we have a strip club mission" and was frankly a pointless grind (much like the entire game tbh).

Id also like to bring up Sarkeesian's stated motivations since ole Jack Thompson has been brought up - unlike Jack she isn't calling for a ban on games or for plots to be radically altered - she in fact states at the start of every video that using them as examples does not make them bad games or make them unenjoyable - she is simply highlighting sexist tropes and encouraging writers to produce better written plots - something most gamers should get behind because there has been a MASSIVE decline in the quality of plots in games and they are starting to get so cliched its laughable - any improvement would be VERY welcome.

---edit---

Oh and another point on Jack Thompson - he is an open supporter of GG and opponent of Sarkeesian... yeah... that one shocked me considering how much hate was thrown at him back in the day by Gamers everywhere...

Greyblades

04-16-2015, 18:57

wow I never thought we would see a thread like this here but seems I was wrong.frankly I am surprised how long we lasted myself. At least it hasnt turned into another ukraine thread.

A few points which seem to be glazed over entirely - lets start with Hitman.

In previous games (the better ones) Penalties for killing civilians remained and in fact you were incentivised to only kill your targets in a lot of ways - this was all thrown out the window in Absolution.

Yes you are penalized with a negative score for killing civilians BUT by simply hiding the bodies the penalty is negated and your score is "refunded" - so unlike previous games where the penalty was permanent and thus disincentivized killing civilians, Absolution does the opposite - it encourages you to kill as long as you clean up after yourself.

No.
You do get a refund but that refund is 150.
http://cloud-4.steamusercontent.com/ugc/716412701472910392/FCA0D2F5DEFF60BC0B2A2855142553B0F6DCF624/
150. Out of 4,000. Nowhere near enough to cover civilian deaths.

As for the rest of your points, see post #62.

Husar

04-16-2015, 19:56

frankly I am surprised how long we lasted myself. At least it hasnt turned into another ukraine thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqz--Rf6IIo&t=55s

Greyblades

04-16-2015, 19:58

Wow, he has aged really well. I hope I look that good at 50.

Ironside

04-16-2015, 20:59

Greyblades, linky for you for a test. Well for everyone. Go through them one by one. Question in the end.
http://eu.battle.net/overwatch/en/

She makes an excessive amount of fuss from mere speculation, like Akkad, but it is specifically the lies that makes her argument unacceptable by the viewers not already biased towards believing her.
It's made worse by the fact that she appeared to be actively avoiding critiscism by disabling the comments.

Seen the twitter feed summary I linked? Let just say that any decent criticism would be drowned out by harassment by the thousands.

The feminist movment should have disassociated itself with anita and found a more honest person to be thier figurehead, or at least found a person who was a better liar; I mean hitman had freaking latex nuns, the lowest hanging fruit and she still screwed up?

The latex nuns are another trope. The Sexy Villainess. Of course they wouldn't show up in women as background decoration.

Depends on the store, some of them have storekeeps that are armed and will shoot you in the back if you let them live after you rob them, others just call the police, it varies like in real life. I dont know if there are armed prostitutes but I wouldnt be adverse to the idea of having some of them armed.

So prostitutes are the easiest one to murder/rob. No incentives there. Your suggestion could certainly be one solution, but it would never been suggested unless someone said, "hey wait a minute".

Now, if the feminist movment's message was: we need more alternatives to the stupid male fantasies of nubile women and powerful men then I think you would get more people agreeing with you, bring on the male strippers and the practically armoured warrior women.

However my observations of the movment from the outside is that feminism just wants to get rid of these fantasies altogether. That is not only impractical it is absolutely abhorrent.

The position is mostly to make the public aware of it, reduce some of it and very importantly diversify. It's the prevalence of several tropes that are the problem, not that they exist. And the casual sexism. Or the importance of male gaze butt shots, while saving the galaxy (ME2). They got their place, but they do seem to spread to thing not relevant for them.

The thing is that:

This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it’s more problematic or pernicious aspects. is both read and even more, actively spun as promoting censorship, that needs to be silenced, because it will have so totally massive influence otherwise.

A critique will be critic about the work, that's sort of the point and also what she got the original crowd funding for.

I mean I do get feeling that criticism in this case mean a little criticism and a lot of apologising for giving it for it to feel fair. It's the "here's 30 examples of it, and it's the amount of it, while each individual example can be justified, as a trend it's disturbing".
YOU LIAR, you uses this example wrong, it's totally justified thus you're totally wrong on everything.

Side note: I also would agree that we should stop producing games that are actually maliciously sexist. The thing is that these games are few and far between to begin with. (hell, the last mainstream game that I remember actually being such is duke nukem forever, and that was a massive flop.) The impression I get is that feminists are lumping the stupid male fantasies in with the outright attacks on women, for whatever reason. They need to stop doing that or they'll get nowhere.

Yeah, they are rare. Duke Nukem Forever got less of (both malicious and normal) sexism than Red Dead Redemption and GTAV btw. Most games with sexism are casually sexist. Now the really interesting part, why are they casually sexist (like strippers and prostitutes being quite common)? If this is true:

both run under the assumption that the average human is incapable of observing or interacting with something they know is not real without being influenced by it and I find the implication both wrong and somewhat insulting to my intelligence.

Then it would mean that most of the game industry are driven by casually sexist agenda. Or maybe they picked it up more or less subconsciously, like most culture perceptions (http://inthesetimes.com/article/16157/our_feminized_society) are picked up. Violence on the other hand is not a subconscious act. Shooting strippers in a game aren't going to make one shoot strippers in real life, but are you entirely sure that it'll keep your normal position about them entirely the same?
In particular if your contact with them will be only those games and maybe one night out, where you certainly did not spend thinking about what they do on their spare time (well one possible exception, involving "afterwork" related activities).

You mean they aren't?..

This person seems like a good candidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w

Are you serious or not? :inquisitive: I mean, she's a GG apologist (who shown massive, massive misogyny, dribbled into racism, been major jerks and basically shown all the wrong things about gamer culture), who proudly start out with saying that she haven't played any video games regularly ever and haven't played any game for decades. Diversity is increasing. Equality is comming. Look here's an example from 2009 (ffxiii) and 2008 (mirror's edge), (I can't pick the other examples from, so none are top fame, even if the might be pearls). And here's the classic from 2003 (Beyond Good and Evil). I mean, at least pick Tomb Raider reboot (2013).

And the question following the link on top.
So how many did feel that the about 50% women crew in Overwatch made it feel crowded with women first time you went through it? I did. Funny that.

a completely inoffensive name

04-16-2015, 22:45

You stereotype a group of people (gamers) for 20 years as misunderstood, nerdy, angry, white males and then suddenly it is shocking to find out that's what they have become.

What's ironic is that the sub-culture of fighting games has possibly the largest amount of diversity by far (in terms of race), and yet it is also one of the most sexist sub-cultures. So of course, we just won't mention them.

Also, video games do have shittier writing. And yes, they are sexist.

Greyblades

04-16-2015, 22:49

Seen the twitter feed summary I linked? Let just say that any decent criticism would be drowned out by harassment by the thousands.
That's the internet, to get to the good bits you have to dig through the rubble of GIFT. If she didnt want to deal with that she could just not have read them, but by disabling the comments she didnt even give anyone else a chance to dig and find the valid critiscisms. Whether or not that was the intent is impossible for us to determine but the effect was that she gave the impression that she wouldnt risk allowing any criticism on the same page as her video in case they proved her wrong and/or dishonest. Which as I have exhibited she was.

The latex nuns are another trope. The Sexy Villainess. Of course they wouldn't show up in women as background decoration.The point I was making is that she had an actual argument that the game exhibited actual tones of sexism, yet she still felt the need to lie.

This person is not competent enough to be worth defending. Feminists need to find someone else to champion, one who doesnt lie.

So prostitutes are the easiest one to murder/rob. No incentives there. Your suggestion could certainly be one solution, but it would never been suggested unless someone said, "hey wait a minute".

Indeed, I conceed the point that it is incentivising in the game.

However as I said in #62 I reject the implication that such an incentivisation could significantly affect the real life attitude and behavior of the average adult.
There are children who would be affected, there are mentally ill people who would be affected, but society has already made it so that neither can get access to such media without intervention, or lack of it, by a sane adult.

Also my main argument stays the same: sarkeesian did a terrible job at it and should be replaced in the eyes of the media by someone who doesnt lie and is less obvious and abrasive in thier agenda.

The position is mostly to make the public aware of it, reduce some of it and very importantly diversify. It's the prevalence of several tropes that are the problem, not that they exist. And the casual sexism. Or the importance of male gaze butt shots, while saving the galaxy (ME2). They got their place, but they do seem to spread to thing not relevant for them.

The thing is that:
is both read and even more, actively spun as promoting censorship, that needs to be silenced, because it will have so totally massive influence otherwise.

A critique will be critic about the work, that's sort of the point and also what she got the original crowd funding for.

I mean I do get feeling that criticism in this case mean a little criticism and a lot of apologising for giving it for it to feel fair. It's the "here's 30 examples of it, and it's the amount of it, while each individual example can be justified, as a trend it's disturbing".
YOU LIAR, you uses this example wrong, it's totally justified thus you're totally wrong on everything.
Correction: YOU LIAR, this example has been shown to be the opposite of what you said it was, It's totally justified thus that your argument cannot be considered unbiased and the truth of your other points cannot be assumed.

It does not matter if everything else is the purest truth, this one lie made in ill faith was enough to for gamers to dismiss her as lying, crazy or both. As you said:

The position is mostly to make the public aware of it, reduce some of it and very importantly diversify.
Sarkeesian's video did the exact opposite: it served to reduce and discredit that which you wish to make people aware. it's tone put viewing gamers on the defensive and it's lies gave it's detractors more ammunition than a thousand 4chan trolls.l so in the end she just hardened gaming to her ideas.

She set back your position, I argue that there should be a sane alternative to her, and that sane alternative must be sèn to call it's own followers out on thier behavior.

Yeah, they are rare. Most games with sexism are casually sexist. Now the really interesting part, why are they casually sexist (like strippers and prostitutes being quite common)? If this is true:

Then it would mean that most of the game industry are driven by casually sexist agenda. Or maybe they picked it up more or less subconsciously, like most culture perceptions (http://inthesetimes.com/article/16157/our_feminized_society) are picked up. Violence on the other hand is not a subconscious act. Shooting strippers in a game aren't going to make one shoot strippers in real life, but are you entirely sure that it'll keep your normal position about them entirely the same?
In particular if your contact with them will be only those games and maybe one night out, where you certainly did not spend thinking about what they do on their spare time (well one possible exception, involving "afterwork" related activities). At the time I was under the impression that it was femenism that was driven by a casually sexist agenda, all that talk of leaders and such.
Now I find myself realizing (or at least thinking along the lines of, seing as the word "realizing" indicates the new viewpoint is true and I dont know if it is) that I was focusing upon a vocal minority. The issue now is that this vocal minority needs to be supplanted by the sane side of the movment. I am arguing that sarkeesian is most certainly not the one to do it.

Are you serious or not? :inquisitive: Deadly. Unlike sarkeesian, it's already proven that gamers are actually willing to listen to what she says, She may sound like she says what we want to hear but she is listened to because she talks to us, not at us and that is more than can be said for most of the anti gamergate dreck.

I mean, she's a GG apologist (who shown massive, massive misogyny, dribbled into racism, been major jerks and basically shown all the wrong things about gamer culture), Ah gamer gate, what a mess. A fight over journalistic integrity that turned into a storm when neither side could keep thier crazies in line.

Remember when I mentioned I mistook your vocal minority for leadership? It was because my opinion on the performance of social movments came from observing that particular mess.

Anti gg had leadership gg didnt and it showed, the gamers were unable to maintain a united front so when the journalists smeared their accusers there wasn't anyone who could renounce them. In the mean time Both sides flung videos articles and tweets at eachother but too many times were they made not to persuade the enemy but to make thier side feel better about themselves. Protect your own over all else seems to be the motto these days.

I do not believe that gamerGate is only an issue with gamer culture, i think it's an issue of culture in general just amplified by GIFT. Death threats were claimed on both sides, not just Anti. The racists, sexists and jerks of all varieties scream behind thier anonymity at every provocation and the internet is full of trolls who love to poke them into a frenzy for giggles.

Both sides let their vocal minority speak unchallenged by thier peers, now neither side wants anything to do with eachother. republicans and democrats, socialists and capitalists, and now GG and anti GG, they all hate eachother because the sane cant or wont correct their stupid.

As for being an apologist as you call her. It is exaxtly that which wiĺl mean when she points out sexism in games she won't be written off as yet another "femenazi"

who proudly start out with saying that she haven't played any video games regularly ever and haven't played any game for decades.
Not much of a step down from sarkeesian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI

Diversity is increasing. Equality is comming. Look here's an example from 2009 (ffxiii) and 2008 (mirror's edge), (I can't pick the other examples from, so none are top fame, even if the might be pearls). And here's the classic from 2003 (Beyond Good and Evil). I mean, at least pick Tomb Raider reboot (2013). Consider that there are estimated 5 million individual video games currently in existance. In the face of so many there is little difference between her amount and sarkeesian's.

And the question following the link on top.
So how many did feel that the about 50% women crew in Overwatch made it feel crowded with women first time you went through it? I did. Funny that.
Then you are a funny person because all noticed was a feeling of deja-vu before I realized I had seen that bodybuilder woman before circling the escher girls tumblr. An example of a women in a game done right, I believe.

Husar

04-16-2015, 23:30

This thread needs more inspiring philosophy (no offense intended).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPBe09g3ALw

Greyblades

04-18-2015, 06:27

So prostitutes are the easiest one to murder/rob. No incentives there. Your suggestion could certainly be one solution, but it would never been suggested unless someone said, "hey wait a minute".

Indeed, I conceed the point that it is incentivising in the game.
I'd like to retract this statment. I've been distracted recently with the death throes of a worthless university course and didnt give it much thought.

No, the prostitutes are not incentivised, they are not the best method of regaining health.

Firstly the process of getting a prostitute is so inconvenient so as to make any material benefit pointless. The women only show up in certain areas, they only appear at night and they wont interact with the player unless he is out of combat and doesnt have a wanted level, which in that case they might as well just go eat something and not waste the time tracking down one and waiting the 1 minute of the animations to end.

There's not even a point in saving money robbing them as food items rarely cost more than 5 ingame dollars. Regardless of it being easier to directly regain the losses from a prostitute than a convinient store, the cost of the game's legal method of health replenishment is so little that by any measure prostitutes are the less appealing option because there's never going to be a time when a player is going to be in the position where he both cant afford to buy food and yet still have the $25 to initiate relations with a prostitute.

Heck, if a player needs cash for food, he could just mug an npc, it's easier to do that than killing a prostitute or robbing a store, you dont even need to kill them, just point your weapon at them until they drop the cash and run. There is no ingame incentive to killing a prostitute.

Ironside

04-19-2015, 12:50

That's the internet, to get to the good bits you have to dig through the rubble of GIFT. If she didnt want to deal with that she could just not have read them, but by disabling the comments she didnt even give anyone else a chance to dig and find the valid critiscisms. Whether or not that was the intent is impossible for us to determine but the effect was that she gave the impression that she wouldnt risk allowing any criticism on the same page as her video in case they proved her wrong and/or dishonest. Which as I have exhibited she was.

The noise to signal ratio would be way, way worse than normal youtube comments (which are quite bad). The harassment is a real and possible the most significant factor that influences everything when it comes to this. That's how Sarkeesian ended up publicly known. That's why no other woman does it. That's partially why there's low criticism against her (the other reason would be that it's mostly related to details and packaging, not core points).

Correction: YOU LIAR, this example has been shown to be the opposite of what you said it was, It's totally justified thus that your argument cannot be considered unbiased and the truth of your other points cannot be assumed.

It does not matter if everything else is the purest truth, this one lie made in ill faith was enough to for gamers to dismiss her as lying, crazy or both. As you said:

Big quote incoming.

...Their status as disposable objects is reinforced by the fact that in most games discarded bodies will simply vanish into thin air a short time after being killed.

I should note that this kind of misogynistic behavior isn’t always mandatory; often it’s player-directed, but it is always implicitly encouraged.

In order to understand how this works, let’s take a moment to examine how video game systems operate as playgrounds for player engagement. Games ask us to play with them. Now that may seem obvious, but bear with me. Game developers set up a series of rules and then within those rules we are invited to test the mechanics to see what we can do, and what we can’t do. We are encouraged to experiment with how the system will react or respond to our inputs and discover which of our actions are permitted and which are not. The play comes from figuring out the boundaries and possibilities within the gamespace.

So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.

The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.

It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.

In-game consequences for these violations are trivial at best and rarely lead to any sort of “fail state” or “game over”. Sometimes areas may go on high-alert for a few minutes during which players have to lay low or hide before the game and its characters “forget” that you just murdered a sexualized woman in cold blood.

...If caught by the police, the screen will fade to black, and 5 seconds later your character will be standing outside the police station, minus a few dollars or items, but free to go about your business as if nothing happened. Other popular sandbox games employ similar character revival methods.

In this way these systems work to facilitate male violence against women by turning it into a form of play, something constructed to be amusing and entertaining.

Now inevitably whenever these game mechanics are criticized, some gamers try to dismiss and distance themselves from the issue by insisting that they don’t personally partake in the provided options for exploiting virtual women. But whether or not an individual player chooses to use an object for its intended purpose is irrelevant, because that object was still designed and placed in the game environment to fulfill its function.

A toaster is still a toaster regardless of whether or not you choose to make toast with it. It’s still designed for the express purpose of toasting bread. And it still communicates that fact even while sitting unused on your kitchen counter.

Likewise a sex object is still a sex object regardless of whether or not you personally choose to use and abuse her. And that fact, in and of itself, still communicates extremely regressive ideas about women.

Indeed nothing about the design, behaviors or mechanics associated with female characters that serve as background decoration encourages or engenders any sort of human empathy. In fact, quite the opposite, the rudimentary algorithms governing interactions lead the player to interface with these characters in ways that can only be dehumanizing and exploitative. As sexual automata, they don’t have any individuality, they don’t have their own stories, players are never supposed to identify with them or care about them, outside of what they can offer either sexually or materially. They exist on the outskirts of humanity, placed beyond the reach of empathy by their creators.

Typically all the non-essential characters in sandbox style games are killable, but it’s the sexualized women whose instrumentality and brutalization is gendered and eroticized in ways that men never are. The visual language attached to male NPCs is very different since they are rarely designed to be sexually inviting or arousing, and they are not coded to interact with the player in ways meant to reaffirm a heterosexual fantasy about being a stud.

Why I'm posting the big quotes is because if you read the position she takes with it, the Hitman comment is no lie. Personally, I'm I'm not embracing it, but it has a point.

She probably picked it because it's one of the few games were you can and are rewarded to mess around with the body.

Sarkeesian's video did the exact opposite: it served to reduce and discredit that which you wish to make people aware. it's tone put viewing gamers on the defensive and it's lies gave it's detractors more ammunition than a thousand 4chan trolls.l so in the end she just hardened gaming to her ideas.

For some gamers, yes. For game developers? No.

She set back your position, I argue that there should be a sane alternative to her, and that sane alternative must be sèn to call it's own followers out on thier behavior.

At the time I was under the impression that it was femenism that was driven by a casually sexist agenda, all that talk of leaders and such.
Now I find myself realizing (or at least thinking along the lines of, seing as the word "realizing" indicates the new viewpoint is true and I dont know if it is) that I was focusing upon a vocal minority. The issue now is that this vocal minority needs to be supplanted by the sane side of the movment. I am arguing that sarkeesian is most certainly not the one to do it.

Any sane alternative will face an harassment campaign from a certain sexist gamer subculture. That's the sad fundamental rule, which drives the whole thing. She's the leading face because she has endured it (and it has kicked her upwards) and that her message isn't controversial among feminists. There's some details that are off, but denunciation and then repeating the same message in a different package?

Also, may I remind you that you reject that continuous sexist messages in game would have any influence at all? That's sort of a baseline here, so any feminist talking about game will smash into that one.

Deadly. Unlike sarkeesian, it's already proven that gamers are actually willing to listen to what she says, She may sound like she says what we want to hear but she is listened to because she talks to us, not at us and that is more than can be said for most of the anti gamergate dreck.

You can do it nicer than what Sarkeesian does (she uses overwhelming and hammering in techniques), but you can't advocate change with that soft approach. You might be able to do a two step version, one step to give it notice and the second to give criticism, but

Ah gamer gate, what a mess. A fight over journalistic integrity that turned into a storm when neither side could keep thier crazies in line.

Remember when I mentioned I mistook your vocal minority for leadership? It was because my opinion on the performance of social movments came from observing that particular mess.

Nah, GG is way worse than that. It originated from a disgruntled boyfriend who implied that indie game developer Zoe Quinn had slept around with game reporters. This evolved into Ethics in Journalism, since she obviously slept around for better game reviews (The Quinnspiracy, later renamed Gamergate). A clear case of significant and problematic corruption. The obvious solution to this problem was to harass Zoe Quinn (and not the reporter she actually slept with). A bunch of game journalists did collection pieces on on that gamer harassment culture and gamers now start to include everyone (That's the point of the "Gamers are dead article"). And it exploded. Mixing is up, Sarkeesian got her latest video out at somewhere around here.

That harassment core never went away, but did end up banned from 4chan. And continued it on 8chan. That's the closest thing to leadership gg had. None wanted to take responsibility, but the tactics came from there. It's hard to be secret when your secret group are in public threads.

Anti gg had leadership gg didnt and it showed, the gamers were unable to maintain a united front so when the journalists smeared their accusers there wasn't anyone who could renounce them. In the mean time Both sides flung videos articles and tweets at eachother but too many times were they made not to persuade the enemy but to make thier side feel better about themselves. Protect your own over all else seems to be the motto these days.

GG never found people wanting to take responsibility for an harassment campaign, with a thin patina of legitimacy. That's why actual Ethics of Game Journalism never gained momentum or focus. It had way more about increasing corruption in game journalism rather than the opposite.

I do not believe that gamerGate is only an issue with gamer culture, i think it's an issue of culture in general just amplified by GIFT. Death threats were claimed on both sides, not just Anti. The racists, sexists and jerks of all varieties scream behind thier anonymity at every provocation and the internet is full of trolls who love to poke them into a frenzy for giggles.

It's interwoven. GG got lots of its style from 4chan, and a lot of it was territorial defense. But the harassment core was a bit too dedicated to be called trolls.

As for being an apologist as you call her. It is exaxtly that which wiĺl mean when she points out sexism in games she won't be written off as yet another "femenazi"

Nope, that comes with the territory. Daring to give any sniff of criticism would set it off. GG was pretty good at harassing away female GG supporters, because they were female.

Not much of a step down from sarkeesian:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI

Her pacifism streak and her tendency to say that it is a feminine value haven't showed up yet. If she brings it up, that probably one place were the feminists will give her a lot more criticism.

She played as a child, had a break for a decade or something, then came back and started to play and noted the issues the games have.

Consider that there are estimated 5 million individual video games currently in existance. In the face of so many there is little difference between her amount and sarkeesian's.

The thing is that there's so many new major titles coming out and so few with a female main character. If your point is that diversity is increasing, then taking the old classic cases aren't proving your point. Rather the opposite. "I couldn't find any new examples, so here are the old ones that exist, proving this new trend".

Then you are a funny person because all noticed was a feeling of deja-vu before I realized I had seen that bodybuilder woman before circling the escher girls tumblr. An example of a women in a game done right, I believe.

I didn't have any previous encounter and got a "that's alot of girls characters" response. It wasn't hostile, but it was clear that the back on my brain did not consider that a norm in this situation.

Overwatch in general are doing pretty good actually. Only big complaints were lack of variation of female body types (which that bodybuilder woman fixes) and widow maker (both backstory and presentation). And she passes due to the existence of variation. Proud Blizzard daddy not being able to proudly present any Blizzard game for his daughter was a major drive btw.

Which is sort of telling.

Greyblades

04-19-2015, 23:07

I've spent the last day or so enjoying not having to worry about another essay on the horison and have been browsing the /gamergatehq/ tab on 8chan, it's surprising how badly I was mistaken about them.
Purposefully avoiding a heirachy to avoid someone coopting the message for thier own ends with the side effect of being immune to individual harrassment, how they've taken thier bad reputation and used it as a shield, man did I get it wrong. There's a scandal brewing right now about a calgary expo and seeing how they respond is fascinating.

The noise to signal ratio would be way, way worse than normal youtube comments (which are quite bad). The harassment is a real and possible the most significant factor that influences everything when it comes to this. That's how Sarkeesian ended up publicly known. That's why no other woman does it. That's partially why there's low criticism against her (the other reason would be that it's mostly related to details and packaging, not core points).Harassment is real, it's not nearly omnidirectional towards femenists, or anti-gg for that matter, but it's real. Doesnt make her refual to allow comments less detrimental to her image.

Why I'm posting the big quotes is because if you read the position she takes with it, the Hitman comment is no lie. Personally, I'm I'm not embracing it, but it has a point.

She probably picked it because it's one of the few games were you can and are rewarded to mess around with the body. Mess around? You're rewarded for it's disposal with no regard for how much you exploit the game's physics for sexual jollies. Add to that the reward being so low as to be nigh irrelevant I fail to see how: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" is any less of a lie.

For some gamers, yes. For game developers? No. So? It just means other people wanting to make a buck will come along and fill the holes your converting those developers left. There's a demand, a very big one, and unless you lessen that demand converting the providers in a free market is a wasted effort and sarkeesian is counter productive to lessening said demand.

Any sane alternative will face an harassment campaign from a certain sexist gamer subculture. That's the sad fundamental rule, which drives the whole thing.She's the leading face because she has endured it (and it has kicked her upwards) and that her message isn't controversial among feminists. There's some details that are off, but denunciation and then repeating the same message in a different package?

Also, may I remind you that you reject that continuous sexist messages in game would have any influence at all? That's sort of a baseline here, so any feminist talking about game will smash into that one.

And if they cant persuade thier way through that wall they will lose. See here's the thing: I'm not on your side, I could have been but that ship sailed a week ago. What I'm doing here isnt trying to explain why you are wrong in your beliefs, I am trying to explain how you are failing to convince me and others like me.
The big part is not being able to get past the trolls, if you cant take the slings and arrows of he internet you wont reach enough people to matter and you may as well give up. The second biggest part is the moral highground, stumbling at the trolls is detrimental but going to thier level is fatal. Letting yourself be represented by a unrepentant liar will lose you followers not gain you.

You can do it nicer than what Sarkeesian does (she uses overwhelming and hammering in techniques), but you can't advocate change with that soft approach. Someone hasn't been studying the greats. I reccomend you look up how Ghandi, Mandela and King won change, it wasnt by letting lies and slander be spoken in thier name unchallenged.

Nah, GG is way worse than that. It originated from a disgruntled boyfriend who implied that indie game developer Zoe Quinn had slept around with game reporters. This evolved into Ethics in Journalism, since she obviously slept around for better game reviews (The Quinnspiracy, later renamed Gamergate). A clear case of significant and problematic corruption. The obvious solution to this problem was to harass Zoe Quinn (and not the reporter she actually slept with). A bunch of game journalists did collection pieces on on that gamer harassment culture and gamers now start to include everyone (That's the point of the "Gamers are dead article"). And it exploded. Mixing is up, Sarkeesian got her latest video out at somewhere around here.
That harassment core never went away, but did end up banned from 4chan. And continued it on 8chan. That's the closest thing to leadership gg had. None wanted to take responsibility, but the tactics came from there. It's hard to be secret when your secret group are in public threads. Interesting, I was curious how the other side explained it.

Your opponants record a copyright takedown by ms quinn (http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/815/645/df0.jpg) against a person who had commented on the boyfriend's allegations.

This wasnt unusual. Such takedowns against reviewers by disgruntled devs are common and, usually, shown as tantrums for bad reviews. Regardless of the intent the takedown gained attention(at this point the name gamergate was coined by Adam Baldwin). That attention uncovered a Polygon editor Ben Kuchera who had been paying into ms quinns patreon account, Mr Kuchera had been paying for several weeks before he wrote an article on Quinn's game depression quest. He failed to mention such in the article.

When journalists promote someone's product and fail to mention a previous relationship there will inevitably arise questions of intergrity, is this journalist review objective or is he coloured by affection? It doenst matter if it is sexual or platonic such relationships will colour opinion and reduce objectivity, for this reason the public expects journalists to at the very least to mention a prior relationship with the people they write on.

Ben Kuchera did not.

Further digging produced similar instances, Patricia Hernandez, Robin Arnott and others suspected of such relations with game devs. At first the reaction was reasonable; polygon and kotaku announced changes to thier codes of ethics, Kotaku to ban patreon payments between thier journalists and game devs, and polygon to always announce previous relations. People weren't exactly satisfied with this but it was a step in the right direction.

Then this happened: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/820/941/a84.jpg A series of articles decrying gamers all on the same day. Thus was the Anti-gamergate movment started, with gaming journalists lashing out at gamers right as thier credibility was under scrutiny.

That is how the Gamergate proponants record how the gamergate fiasco started. You can see for yourself this is thier narrative (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate) and if anti-gamergate was working optimally it would be attacking that, challenging the points, the evidence collected etc, trying to disprove the accusation of collusions.

Instead it is pointing at the trolls and the fools and going "look how awful gamers are" while ignoring the rational arguers. I think that is less a strategy and more a stopgap measure, but it might have worked if anti gamergate could keep the moral highground, be seen as the mature party.
Language warning:
Alas, they are showing again (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/861/903/eef.jpg) and (https://media.8ch.net/gamergatehq/src/1429240335901.png) again (https://twitter.com/Iordjoey/status/530194809017749504) they (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/941/017/f1e.jpg) cant (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/818/963/046.jpg).

That's why they will lose if they dont change. When gamers do things like this noone cares, it's expected and they dont have a reputation to lose, but when those who decry them for it start doing it themselves they show themselves as hypocrites. Worse would be if, as has been claimed, they are truly doing it on purpose as irony, that would mean they are giving things for those gamers you decry to throw it in Anti-GG's face for a cheap laugh.

There is no audience left anymore that hasnt already heard everything in the book applied to gamers. Smearing doesn't hurt anymore and if Anti-GG keep trying it will keep backfireing.
As far as I can see the only way forward for Anti GG is to change tactics and start converting the enemy, and they dont seem to want to.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-20-2015, 02:01

Greyblades, have you seriously expended pages on GamerGate.

dude - seriously - go out and meet some actual female gamers. There was literally no "scandal" the whole thing was completely manufactured, by a jealous ex-boyfriend if memory serves. You need an online life outside the Backroom if you think the suggestion that an Indy dev sleeping with a journalist for good reviews is news when EA, SEGA, Zenimax etc. just PAY for good reviews with gifts etc.

The suggestion that GamerGate has no "leadership" is a steaming pile of shit as well, people said that about Anonymous but the fact was it was the Lulzsec crew running everything and manipulating useful fools on 4Chan to download their botnet clients.

Greyblades

04-20-2015, 03:16

Greyblades, have you seriously expended pages on GamerGate.

dude - seriously - go out and meet some actual female gamers. There was literally no "scandal" the whole thing was completely manufactured, by a jealous ex-boyfriend if memory serves. .Prove it.
That's all that needed to be done, all anti-GG needed to do was restrain the bashing and shaming and prove the allegations were all wrong.
Had they done that from the start, let someone look into thier buisness and root out any collusion this could have all blown over, but no.

Look, if you want this specific conversation to end stop responding, I'm not likely to stop from disinterest anytime soon; not only because I have been winning thus far with the hitman thing, but I feel like I am learning a lot from this.
But if you want gamergate to go away, prove it's nothing. I sincerely wish you good luck, but expect little now that 8 months has passed and with all the deletions the original event has become impossible to prove either way.

You need an online life outside the Backroom if you think the suggestion that an Indy dev sleeping with a journalist for good reviews is news when EA, SEGA, Zenimax etc. just PAY for good reviews with gifts etc.So? Just because someone else is doing worse doesnt mean that this wrong gets a free pass.

God knows I wouldnt be doing this if (like EA, SEGA and Zenimax) Anti-GG didn't have people willing to argue in thier defense on the Org. And unlike those companies these arguments wont dissapear with everyone giving up once the uncaring, unoticing and unassailable nature of a multi million corporation becomes apparant.

The suggestion that GamerGate has no "leadership" is a steaming pile of shit as well, people said that about Anonymous but the fact was it was the Lulzsec crew running everything and manipulating useful fools on 4Chan to download their botnet clients.

So? This is a media war not a hacking one. GamerGate couldn't be done with botnet clients and the ways they've been fighting hasnt been terrorism.

You know the major way that gamergate fights right now? By recording what the important people in AntiGG says and showing them to their sponsering companies in the hopes that these advertisers will pull funding due to bad press, and it's been working.
See that's why I dont think GG will lose if things keep going on as they have been; GG has weaponized their opponants own capacity for being offensive.

The rules of engagment are legal and on the internet right now, free for all to see. GG doesn't rely on debators, pundits and journalists like Anti does, anyone can do the work and it wont end if a couple of people are arrested or censored.

Also, useful fools? Both sides have been accusing eachother of that since the beginning, it's become rather meaningless in this case.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-20-2015, 15:44

Ex-Boyfriend says "she's a slut who slept with loads of journo's for good reviews" and she's expected to prove she didn't do it? That's 4Chan logic for you.

Do you know anything about Watergate? It was a scandal where people were caught, not where someone threw mud and then tried to make it stick with threats and character assassination.

GamerGate is about misogynist pigs, and stupidity.

Let's take a look at the Zoe Quinn thing, shall we, starting with the fact that here new boyfriend, the journalist, (not a random hookup) NEVER reviewed the game in question. Her Ex was just a jerk, as exes often are. You may not know this, but a prime reason that women break up with men is because they're arse holes.

As to the whole "legal" thing, well, doxing, hacking and rape/death threats are not legal.

The question over whether Anita Sarkeesian was a "real gamer" wasn't entirely baseless, but is someone starts a kickstarter to bug consoles and games that implies they don't already have their own gear, doesn't it? As to her points, well, limited value to be honest, but the backlash against her was largely perpetrated by people who just want more titties in games.

Now, let's be clear here, this is a general problem with media today, you only have to watch Game of Thrones to see that a lot of big budget mass-media is directed to hook the lowest common denominator, and GoT is really just a mix of softcore porn and soap opera now, which is not a terrible thing but the big budget doesn't make it a big piece of art.

A final thought for you, the original "Quinspiracy" is pretty much the plot of a 90's Playboy/Skinemax softcore porno, without the final denouncement where the seductress (Quinn) is finally caught out and gets bad reviews for the game.

Beskar

04-20-2015, 17:19

Only thing about the Quinn-Conspiracy worth any salt was the bust-up with The Fine Young Capitalists, from all appearances.

Greyblades

04-20-2015, 18:45

*cracks fingers*

Ex-Boyfriend says "she's a slut who slept with loads of journo's for good reviews" and she's expected to prove she didn't do it? That's 4Chan logic for you.I can see how that would be an impossible task, good thing that was not what I was referring to: Prove that Nathan grayson wasnt in a relationship with zoe quinn before or during the writing of this article (https://archive.today/bsfJb), or prove that he clearly stated his relationship in said article.

If either of those was proven at the start and maybe gamergate would still be the petty internet drama Anti GG want you to think it is. Alas it remained ambiguous long enough for the investigations of the internet to uncover more instances like it and now you have a whole list of suspected collaberations between journalists and developers to disprove if you want it to go away.

Hey Husar, remember when I told you this:

No, if I responded in such a manner that makes my opponant think I only attack the points I know I could win in while ignored those I cannot, while insulting my opponants language and calling his influences crazy, that would put cement upon your beliefs and push you to look for people who will actually listen to what you have to say.

Take out the insults on language, add in a dose of swearing and misrepresentation, intentional or otherwise. With that I give you exhibit A:

Do you know anything about Watergate? It was a scandal where people were caught, not where someone threw mud and then tried to make it stick with threats and character assassination.

GamerGate is about misogynist pigs, and stupidity.

Let's take a look at the Zoe Quinn thing, shall we, starting with the fact that here new boyfriend, the journalist, (not a random hookup) NEVER reviewed the game in question. Her Ex was just a jerk, as exes often are. You may not know this, but a prime reason that women break up with men is because they're arse holes.To give him credit the rest is somewhat less counterproductive:

The question over whether Anita Sarkeesian was a "real gamer" wasn't entirely baseless, but is someone starts a kickstarter to bug consoles and games that implies they don't already have their own gear, doesn't it? I assume you meant to say buy and not bug. To be new to the scene is not an issue, it's that she made a false claim on a game she herself apparantly played and not admit to it when caught that encompasses the main problem with her, makes the audience think she's full of it.

I think she is but that's a matter of opinion.

As to her points, well, limited value to be honest, but the backlash against her was largely perpetrated by people who just want more titties in games.Dude, dont generalize, whether or not that appraisal is true makes no difference to the situation she created.

Now, let's be clear here, this is a general problem with media today, you only have to watch Game of Thrones to see that a lot of big budget mass-media is directed to hook the lowest common denominator, and GoT is really just a mix of softcore porn and soap opera now, which is not a terrible thing but the big budget doesn't make it a big piece of art. I dont care about it being art, I care that someone is calling for change in an entire industry over petty social politics and using underhanded tactics to make it happen.

A final thought for you, the original "Quinspiracy" is pretty much the plot of a 90's Playboy/Skinemax softcore porno, without the final denouncement where the seductress (Quinn) is finally caught out and gets bad reviews for the game

As much as the Anti's like to use the term in irony, a lot of GG is actually about gamer ethics. Notice that those attacking GG rarely want to actually address it, either to confirm or deny such occurances. Using deflection to steer the conversation away, sometimes arguing the relevance but never arguing the content.

Both sides do it, I dare say every side in every controvertial political debate does, but the anti side is the one that wants everyone to think it upright and good while GG are a bunch of uncooth thugs, yet they keep going to thier opponants level again (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/861/903/eef.jpg) and (https://media.8ch.net/gamergatehq/src/1429240335901.png) again (https://twitter.com/Iordjoey/status/530194809017749504) and (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/941/017/f1e.jpg) again (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/818/963/046.jpg).

Only thing about the Quinn-Conspiracy worth any salt was the bust-up with The Fine Young Capitalists, from all appearances.

If I may, who do you hear your information about GamerGate from?

Ironside

04-20-2015, 21:32

There's a scandal brewing right now about a calgary expo and seeing how they respond is fascinating.

It sort of adopting the tactics and not getting the point of it. Get in through a lie, then go in with active derailment tactics. That's sort a check list on how to get banned from that type of expo. Then claim victory to show the evil and hypocrisy of their opponents. It was a funded kickstarter with that specific purpose.

Harassment is real, it's not nearly omnidirectional towards femenists, or anti-gg for that matter, but it's real. Doesnt make her refual to allow comments less detrimental to her image.

The edge of harassment is towards feminists. It heavily outnumber the average harassment noise. It's underlying the entire conversation.

Disabling comments one of the things that get mostly ignored, unless you have an axe to grind.

Mess around? You're rewarded for it's disposal with no regard for how much you exploit the game's physics for sexual jollies. Add to that the reward being so low as to be nigh irrelevant I fail to see how: "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" is any less of a lie.

Mess around= Move around in this case. Makes a stronger visual imagery.

It is drawn from a specific narrative. You can reject that narrative and thus rejecting the point it would make (making it incorrect in your mind), but from that narrative it's not a lie. The combined work of the game developers put it in there for a reason.

So? It just means other people wanting to make a buck will come along and fill the holes your converting those developers left. There's a demand, a very big one, and unless you lessen that demand converting the providers in a free market is a wasted effort and sarkeesian is counter productive to lessening said demand.

It would diversify the market. Some games would have more. Most less. That would be a good thing.

And if they cant persuade thier way through that wall they will lose. See here's the thing: I'm not on your side, I could have been but that ship sailed a week ago. What I'm doing here isnt trying to explain why you are wrong in your beliefs, I am trying to explain how you are failing to convince me and others like me.
The big part is not being able to get past the trolls, if you cant take the slings and arrows of he internet you wont reach enough people to matter and you may as well give up.

Getting only trolls would be a vast improvement. That is of an issue. When the trolls have upgraded to harassers (who don't disappear by being ignored) and there's no system to take care of them, what do you do then? Let them win of course. That won't ever become a problem later on.

The second biggest part is the moral highground, stumbling at the trolls is detrimental but going to thier level is fatal. Letting yourself be represented by a unrepentant liar will lose you followers not gain you.

Someone hasn't been studying the greats. I reccomend you look up how Ghandi, Mandela and King won change, it wasnt by letting lies and slander be spoken in thier name unchallenged.

I suspect the new Positive Female Characters is a response to that. Since the focus are mostly on positive things, it's way less aggressive.

When journalists promote someone's product and fail to mention a previous relationship there will inevitably arise questions of intergrity, is this journalist review objective or is he coloured by affection? It doenst matter if it is sexual or platonic such relationships will colour opinion and reduce objectivity, for this reason the public expects journalists to at the very least to mention a prior relationship with the people they write on.

Ben Kuchera did not.

Further digging produced similar instances, Patricia Hernandez, Robin Arnott and others suspected of such relations with game devs. At first the reaction was reasonable; polygon and kotaku announced changes to thier codes of ethics, Kotaku to ban patreon payments between thier journalists and game devs, and polygon to always announce previous relations. People weren't exactly satisfied with this but it was a step in the right direction.

IIRC Ben's article was basically that here's some indie games that you can find to be interesting. I might be mixing him up with Grayson on that though.

It's worth remembering that at this point, something like 99% of the active harassment is still towards Zoe.

We’ve done a really good job there. But, for various reasons, we didn’t do a good enough job taking those same steps with indie developers, and some of us weren’t clear enough about our personal connections while writing about games or stories we found interesting. We fucked up there, and we’ll all learn from it and move on.

But if GamerGate were a movement that solely said “hey, you guys didn’t disclose this this and this” and called out journalists when they did shitty things, we’d be living in a different world entirely (http://kotaku.com/gamergate-booth-kicked-out-of-canadian-comic-expo-1698538297)

Then this happened: http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/820/941/a84.jpg A series of articles decrying gamers all on the same day. Thus was the Anti-gamergate movment started, with gaming journalists lashing out at gamers right as thier credibility was under scrutiny.

That is how the Gamergate proponants record how the gamergate fiasco started. You can see for yourself this is thier narrative (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate) and if anti-gamergate was working optimally it would be attacking that, challenging the points, the evidence collected etc, trying to disprove the accusation of collusions.

It's sort of hard to prove that you don't have a collusion, from someone that wants you to have one, when you're open with that you are in contact with them and do a theme piece. The summary, consisting of two things, if you read the articles is that the gamer is becoming dead the same way a movier is. When everyone does it, it's no longer an identifier,even if some people are more into it than others.

The second and more important part is the massive criticism of an active harassment campaign. Not trolling, major harassment way beyond the regular internet trolling noise. That got the explosion.

The narrative that's pushed that you ignore and that the entire world notices are the massive harassment, way, way beyond trolling. There's a reason why GG got kicked out of 4chan and why the official GG supporters are almost entirely consisting of people with hateful and dubious reputation.

It gets ignored into trolls will be trolls and thus it "disappears".
"Why do you find those guys evil?"
"They kidnap children and eat them."
"Psh, boys will be boys. Show me something bad about them."

Instead it is pointing at the trolls and the fools and going "look how awful gamers are" while ignoring the rational arguers. I think that is less a strategy and more a stopgap measure, but it might have worked if anti gamergate could keep the moral highground, be seen as the mature party.
Language warning:
Alas, they are showing again (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/861/903/eef.jpg) and (https://media.8ch.net/gamergatehq/src/1429240335901.png) again (https://twitter.com/Iordjoey/status/530194809017749504) they (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/941/017/f1e.jpg) cant (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/818/963/046.jpg).

That's why they will lose if they dont change. When gamers do things like this noone cares, it's expected and they dont have a reputation to lose, but when those who decry them for it start doing it themselves they show themselves as hypocrites. Worse would be if, as has been claimed, they are truly doing it on purpose as irony, that would mean they are giving things for those gamers you decry to throw it in Anti-GG's face for a cheap laugh.

That is a an example of disorganisation (since anti GG isn't exactly a movement as such) and the internet. Some degree of trolling on the net seems to be the norm on many sites. Then again, you run with 5 mighty examples. I can't post the content of the FF twitter link (http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter) with more than 100 posts without getting a warning. "Get cancer" is a nicer one from the list. Have you read it?

There is no audience left anymore that hasnt already heard everything in the book applied to gamers. Smearing doesn't hurt anymore and if Anti-GG keep trying it will keep backfireing.
As far as I can see the only way forward for Anti GG is to change tactics and start converting the enemy, and they dont seem to want to.

That would require them to read the tiny areas were something that could be called an organised Anti GG really exist. A well thought out argument has to be read first. And the heavy spinners are pretty much beyond salvation.

You know the major way that gamergate fights right now? By recording what the important people in AntiGG says and showing them to their sponsering companies in the hopes that these advertisers will pull funding due to bad press, and it's been working.
See that's why I dont think GG will lose if things keep going on as they have been; GG has weaponized their opponants own capacity for being offensive.

It worked once, until the context were provided afaik. They are fond of the method though, they also use it against reviews they don't like. Because ethics and free speech, you know.

Beskar

04-20-2015, 21:49

If I may, who do you hear your information about GamerGate from?

I read articles from 'both sides', but it seems whatever the actual valid points actually were got lost in the wades of sewage which made the only logical response of 'stay away from it or get covered in it'.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-20-2015, 22:49

*cracks fingers*
I can see how that would be an impossible task, good thing that was not what I was referring to: Prove that Nathan grayson wasnt in a relationship with zoe quinn before or during the writing of this article (https://archive.today/bsfJb), or prove that he clearly stated his relationship in said article.

What are you, 12?

He said he wasn't, Quinn doesn't get mentioned until roughly the middle of the article and she gets about as much "air-time" as everyone else. so, to summarise, I see no evidence of bias in the article, there's no evidence they were in a relationship at the time, the article is not about Quinn but (partly) about Pepsi pushing a sexist angle and he's not written anything else about her since.

As far as Anita Sarkeesian goes, I'm not a big fan but what she says about games is broadly correct, in GTA you can beat prostitutes to death, steal all their cash and then if you get caught the cops confiscate some cash, you lose the car you were driving and that's it.

Her point is that while you can chose not to use that baseball bat, there's little incentive not to. You can actually be a "good" guy in GTA, murder a few prozies, get nicked and then go back the main plot where you agonise over the morals of being a "decent criminal"

CrossLOPER

04-20-2015, 23:18

As far as Anita Sarkeesian goes, I'm not a big fan but what she says about games is broadly correct, in GTA you can beat prostitutes to death, steal all their cash and then if you get caught the cops confiscate some cash, you lose the car you were driving and that's it.
I wonder how many guys I ruthlessly gunned down with little to no repercussions. Oh wait, no one actually cared about that because its a video game and the only people who complained were people who didn't actually play games.

Nothing that Sarkeesian actually says is particularly enlightening or interesting. She bluntly refuses to address any rebuttals, and often repeats points that are either subjective or circumstantial. She's basically the Food Babe (http://foodbabe.com/) of the gaming industry.

Sarmatian

04-21-2015, 18:34

Sarkeesian does seem like a bit of a fruitcake, which is sad, because, let's face it, there's a quite a bit of sexism in games and it is an issue that should be at least discussed. Most gamers, unfortunately, refuse flat out to admit there's an issue at all.

CrossLOPER

04-21-2015, 19:45

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-21-2015, 21:52

I wonder how many guys I ruthlessly gunned down with little to no repercussions. Oh wait, no one actually cared about that because its a video game and the only people who complained were people who didn't actually play games.

Nothing that Sarkeesian actually says is particularly enlightening or interesting. She bluntly refuses to address any rebuttals, and often repeats points that are either subjective or circumstantial. She's basically the Food Babe (http://foodbabe.com/) of the gaming industry.

I think you rather miss the point, nobody's saying that GTA turns the average player into a sociopathic killer, the argument is that it fosters a callous attitude to other people, especially women.

It's like in Crusader Kings II when the game asks you to consider "should I kill newborn Henry and then his Dad so I can inherit the throne".

It's not a healthy thought process, if you emotionally invest in games (many gamers do) then it raises questions about whether you should be confronted with/offered such choices.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-21-2015, 21:55

Just curious, what examples do you have?

In Mass Effect the well written female character all have fantastic buttocks, all wear skin tight pants and are often shot from behind, at waist level, when talking to the PC.

When was the last time you saw a fat female character in a computer game who have significant dialogue?

Kralizec

04-21-2015, 22:26

I think you rather miss the point, nobody's saying that GTA turns the average player into a sociopathic killer, the argument is that it fosters a callous attitude to other people, especially women.

It's like in Crusader Kings II when the game asks you to consider "should I kill newborn Henry and then his Dad so I can inherit the throne".

It's not a healthy thought process, if you emotionally invest in games (many gamers do) then it raises questions about whether you should be confronted with/offered such choices.

I don't agree with your position, but to be fair you make a good case.

I think it would be highly inappropriate to compell the gaming industry to make their products comply with pedagogical standards. They're not responsible for fostering civic virtues. It might seem odd to call video games "art", but I definitely think that artistic freedom should apply. If a game clearly encourages or endorses criminal/unethical behaviour, that's another thing. And I would definitely support measures aimed at preventing children from playing GTA V or similar games, which is a no-brainer for pretty much everyone.

I vaguely recall you said you've played Skyrim (and presumably liked it). I'm a big fan of that series as well, and to me, an Elder Scrolls game where you can't roleplay as a sociopathic Dark Brotherhood assassin doesn't deserve the title.*

(*except Morrowind)

Beskar

04-21-2015, 23:32

When was the last time you saw a fat female character in a computer game who have significant dialogue?

Borderlands 2. (http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Ellie)

Yes, was one of those rare examples where it occurs in a 'popular' title. :sad: If you said "name 3", I would be really stuck, as I cannot even think of a second...

CrossLOPER

04-22-2015, 00:31

I think you rather miss the point, nobody's saying that GTA turns the average player into a sociopathic killer, the argument is that it fosters a callous attitude to other people, especially women.
Does playing GTA turn you into a callous neckbeard, or does being a callous neckbeard turn you to GTA?

It's like in Crusader Kings II when the game asks you to consider "should I kill newborn Henry and then his Dad so I can inherit the throne".

It's not a healthy thought process, if you emotionally invest in games (many gamers do) then it raises questions about whether you should be confronted with/offered such choices.

Kinda like you are confronted with difficult choices IN REAL LIFE? I guess we wouldn't want anyone developing critical thinking skills in a simulated environment. Also, the middle ages were well know for being kind and completely lacking in morally questionable actions taking place.

In Mass Effect the well written female character all have fantastic buttocks, all wear skin tight pants and are often shot from behind, at waist level, when talking to the PC.
I was kind of with you until:

When was the last time you saw a fat female character in a computer game who have significant dialogue?
About as many times I saw a fat male character have anything significant to say. Wait, I have one for that. There was this serial killer/rapist in SWAT 4. He went quietly mumbling something about "his darlings". I assume he meant the teenager I dug out of his dungeon and the other lady tied up on the mattress.

Greyblades

04-22-2015, 00:36

Edit:I think we need a way to automatically shift the first line in a paragraph a few spaces away from the post border.

I notice I have made a mistake; my last post was hypocritical. Itself an example of the same debate methods I have been railing against. It is a failure of my own philosophy; I let what objectivity I had been trying to maintain slip and devolved into party rhetoric. As you can see I placed unnecessary ammunition in my opponent’s hands for little more than a false sense of satisfaction that quickly evaporated.
I failed myself and I must acknowledge my failure and increase my efforts to avoid doing so again else I stop calling myself a man.

Also I realize that pointing out the duplicitous debate strategies of the opposition is itself counterproductive due to its universal in all debates. It's only use is for countering accusations phrased to imply innocent of said issues on the speaker’s side, to use it myself will merely allow the opposition to do the same.

What are you, 12?When I was twelve I was accused on the internet of being a fifteen year old and I somehow ended up taking that as a indication of my advanced maturity.
I'm still here talking on forums, so evidently not much has changed. In a way I am indeed twelve, maybe younger, body be damned.

He said he wasn't, Quinn doesn't get mentioned until roughly the middle of the article and she gets about as much "air-time" as everyone else. so, to summarise, I see no evidence of bias in the article, there's no evidence they were in a relationship at the time, the article is not about Quinn but (partly) about Pepsi pushing a sexist angle and he's not written anything else about her since.It doesnt matter if the bias is clear, in any other journalistic field if a journalist is told to report on a person he was in a relationship with he is expected to recuse himself to avoid bias and in other fields a reporter who hides his relationship to report on the article can be fired for collusion. Nathan Grayson did not recuse himself nor did he state his relationship so when he went on a tirade against his ex Girlfriend he unintentionally proved that he had violated journalistic ethics.

Had this been a one off thing it would not have gone anywhere, the public who cared about journalistic intergrity would have been satisfied with a small policy change and maybe Nathan's blacklisting. Unfotunately digging uncovered more and more examples of this going on, starting with zoe quinn it was found Ben kuchera was paying ms quinn's patreon before writing this (https://archive.today/iuDHi) about her, Patrica Hernandez was found inviting zoe quinn to a meeting a year before writing this (https://archive.today/NWiFa)and this (https://archive.today/WhAKI). Soon there were cases found that didnt include zoe quinn; patricia hernandez giving favourable coverage to her roomate Anna Anthropy (http://talkingship.com/wp/2014/08/26/patricia-hernandez-anna-anthropy-kotaku-controversy/), Lauren WainWright penning a number (https://archive.today/QZopb) of (https://archive.today/Gf3dT) articles (https://archive.today/5TnDf) on her own employer square-enix (https://i.imgur.com/5iaJJ8I.jpg) without confiding the information on the page.

These connections kept being exposed and the reaction was to either try to cover it up through deletions or by diverting attention towards the people pointing it out with attacks on them. Evidently it has worked as you are now defending them while not knowing of these specific collusions.

I cannot explain why this is the issue that got people up in arms instead of the previous scandals. I highly suspect it is because AAA developers have PR departments to keep the public outrage to a minimum, departments that indie developers dont have; had Sony, activision, or EA in thier scandals reacted with the blatant contempt of the indies here I believe that this sort of consumer revolt would have happened years ago.
However it is largely immaterial why this is happening now instead of another time, it is happening and if it succeeds gaming media will become forced to adhier to the standards of other fields of journalism.

As far as Anita Sarkeesian goes, I'm not a big fan but what she says about games is broadly correct, in GTA you can beat prostitutes to death, steal all their cash and then if you get caught the cops confiscate some cash, you lose the car you were driving and that's it.

Her point is that while you can chose not to use that baseball bat, there's little incentive not to. You can actually be a "good" guy in GTA, murder a few prozies, get nicked and then go back the main plot where you agonise over the morals of being a "decent criminal"
And I argue that it is a pointless argument because there is no harm in allowing grown adults the freedom to do that in thier games. Whether the argument is more violent or sexist the core is that games will influence how people think in significant amounts and if thompson was proven wrong why is it any different for sarkeesian.

But that's not the only issue; It is in the interest of those that shares her views to dissassociate themselves from her and find a champion who is harder to dismiss. As husar's reaction to sargon of akkad a few weeks ago exhibited: every imperfection be it swearing, tone or presentation will be siezed upon as an excuse to dismiss the entire argument.
It is the arguer's responsibility if they wish to get thier point across to answer those criticisms by correcting accordingly until there is no criticism remaining that can be objectively proven. This way those who wish to ignore the message have to either, engage the argument directly, or admit to themselves that they are ignoring this person because they just dont want to deal with it, which will be counted as a flaw of the person and not the thing they ignore.

Ms sarkeesian shows herself as not willing to answer critiscisms valid or otherwise, to the point of shutting down the avenues of communication. Those who agree with her might be able to get past that but everyone else not already invested will just dismiss her as another idealogue preaching to the choir.

It sort of adopting the tactics and not getting the point of it. Get in through a lie, then go in with active derailment tactics. That's sort a check list on how to get banned from that type of expo. Then claim victory to show the evil and hypocrisy of their opponents. It was a funded kickstarter with that specific purpose.

That is the anti story, GG's story is that they were kicked out for asking questions in a civil manner during a pannel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBfJuvopPg) (full recording here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkIiGRvtBg))and later the expo called the police on them while they were peacefully congregating outside (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqv78wABm00).

I'll leave determining which is right to the viewer.

The edge of harassment is towards feminists. It heavily outnumber the average harassment noise. It's underlying the entire conversation.

IIRC Ben's article was basically that here's some indie games that you can find to be interesting. I might be mixing him up with Grayson on that though.

It's worth remembering that at this point, something like 99% of the active harassment is still towards Zoe.

Getting only trolls would be a vast improvement. That is of an issue. When the trolls have upgraded to harassers (who don't disappear by being ignored) and there's no system to take care of them, what do you do then? Let them win of course. That won't ever become a problem later on.

To quote a wise and ancient sage (who exresses this in a depressingly more conscise way that I ever could) by the name of Razorfist:

"...and has harrasment and even worse taken place in the name of this movment? Absolutely. Harrassment and grotesque unconscionable violations of privacy have taken place in defense of figures targeted by the movment as well, proving only that there is not a party in existance that assholes dont turn up to. It doesnt mean you call off the party folks.

"The 2000 democratic national convention was penned in by rioting and protests, there were sweeping riots across all of LA but you simply do not halt the nomination process simply because rage against the machine needs to promote thier new albu-I mean social change. I mean heck I seem to remember back in 2004 during the 'hate bush' protests seeing a load of busted out windows in downtown Phoenix courtesy of fringe elements of the protest movment. I dont remember these folks calling for the end of that movment.

"Accusations of harassment are not invalid, not at all, but your problem, may I suggest, is not actually with the movment but with the act of harassment itself[...]The pont is that we see the same behavior at every societal subset and debate from radical femenism to my little pony so why would a divisive issue like gamergate be any different?"

Quoted from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mYXk_wfG-I

Disabling comments one of the things that get mostly ignored, unless you have an axe to grind.

Debating the circumstances of a criticism can also be considered a derailment tactic as it doesn't dispute the content. In this case it reinforces an impression that Anita is refusing to accept critiscism, for whatever reason. That impression is rooted from a general lack of acknowlegement of her mistakes and not focused entirely on her comments section.

Mess around= Move around in this case. Makes a stronger visual imagery.

It is drawn from a specific narrative. You can reject that narrative and thus rejecting the point it would make (making it incorrect in your mind), but from that narrative it's not a lie. The combined work of the game developers put it in there for a reason.

The mere presence of the ability to move around a body does not in and of itself imply any intent of what the players are supposed to do with it. If ms sarkeesian is going to state as fact "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" and is proven absolutely wrong you'll be dissapointed if you expect me or anyone else to pay attention to narrative when presented with such an unacknowledged falsehood.

It would diversify the market. Some games would have more. Most less. That would be a good thing.

Questionable, these developers are dissassociating themselves with thier core costumer base for the promise of a new one. Sure, for a time there will be greater diversity but unless the new customer base proves itself as profitable as the old one the developers will be faced with the choice of switching back or accept being outpaced by the competition and made irrelevant.
Unless you can pad this customer base with enough people to become as profitable as the old base, people willing to keep paying for new products for years to come and wont leave after a fasion, it will devolve to another niche market and become largely ignored by the mainstream.

The people most suited to pad that base are the same people Anti-GG keeps alienating.

I suspect the new Positive Female Characters is a response to that. Since the focus are mostly on positive things, it's way less aggressive.

Good, but their peaceful success hinged on the support of the people who were directly linked to the ones they suffered under and they got that support by being the rational alternative to the violent mob. You need to be seen to disassociate yourself with the people saying gamers are dead/inheritly sexist. Every time you see these (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/861/903/eef.jpg) things (https://media.8ch.net/gamergatehq/src/1429240335901.png) happening (https://twitter.com/Iordjoey/status/530194809017749504), every time they are presented (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/941/017/f1e.jpg) to (http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/818/963/046.jpg) you, you need to be seen as rejecting this attitude, not making excuses for it. Do that and you will find it will propel you further than any eloquent argument could without it.

Do not stand by and allow yourself to be painted as another "rabid femenazi out to rip joy from your hobby with no regard for the desires of the consumer" any more than MLK didnt allow himself to be painted as another "spiteful n***** who wants to wreak vengeance on the whites with no regard for individual innocence".

It's sort of hard to prove that you don't have a collusion, from someone that wants you to have one, when you're open with that you are in contact with them and do a theme piece. The summary, consisting of two things, if you read the articles is that the gamer is becoming dead the same way a movier is. When everyone does it, it's no longer an identifier,even if some people are more into it than others.
Of course it's hard to prove you dont have a bias when you do.

Journalists are supposed to be objective, in any other field they are supposed to recuse themselves when the bias is too much to stay objecive. Now there is leeway, if it is believed that there isnt a conflict of interest they might be allowed to comment as a journalist, but in those cases they are expected to reveal any association between themselves and those they comment upon, regardless of the briefness of the association.

For a long time the gaming press did not do this, left to thier own devices a lot of them were found colluding and when it was exposed the companies hiring them did a horrendous job responding; and too many of them responded to valid critiscism with vitriol and contempt and the consumer riot that ensued is hardly surprising and well earned.

The second and more important part is the massive criticism of an active harassment campaign. Not trolling, major harassment way beyond the regular internet trolling noise. That got the explosion.

On the Anti-side perhaps, pointing out the otherside's harrassers is a good way to accrue support, but despite all the harassment there was truth, evidence that has mounted that implicates these people as disregarding the Journalistic code of ethics and when the anti side started focused soley on attacking the harrassers it was simple for the Pro side to simply give thier evidence, point to the attacks on the harrassers and say "these people coordinating a smear campaign to distract the population from reading our evidence in the hope that it will save thier skins."

With evidence like this (http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/820/941/a84.jpg) combined with deletions of prevfious articles that justscreamed coverup it became undisputable.

The narrative that's pushed that you ignore and that the entire world notices are the massive harassment, way, way beyond trolling. There's a reason why GG got kicked out of 4chan and why the official GG supporters are almost entirely consisting of people with hateful and dubious reputation. GG got kicked out of 4chan through the moderators deleting every post someone made on the topic.

This was unheard of. Normally, every time something like Gamergate happened the mods would merely comb through and remove the illegal stuff (child porn, doxx and swat threads), they did it for chanology, they did it for luzsec, they did it for every operation and anonymous activity before that has been accused of harassment. But this time they were killing all discussion on the subject at the root regardless of if it was a doxxing thread or merely a thread asking what gamergate was.

See, every now and then mods would go nuts and censor left and right and most of the time m00t, the owner, would respond by replacing the moderator with someone less banhappy. But this time it was rampant and m00t said it was his idea (http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/832/349/1f2.png) and in the face of this most of the site defected to 8chan, which is almost identical but not run by a man who had apparantly only grown a conscience just as gamergate was starting to gain ground.

That is a an example of disorganisation (since anti GG isn't exactly a movement as such) and the internet. Some degree of trolling on the net seems to be the norm on many sites. Then again, you run with 5 mighty examples. I can't post the content of the FF twitter link (http://femfreq.tumblr.com/post/109319269825/one-week-of-harassment-on-twitter) with more than 100 posts without getting a warning. "Get cancer" is a nicer one from the list. Have you read it?
Yup have you read this? (http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/854/256/de9.png) Or this? (http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/870/933/405.png)

Crazies be universal. We must strive to see past them because they wont go away if we keep hitting them and ignoring those who have legitimate grievences.

That would require them to read the tiny areas were something that could be called an organised Anti GG really exist. A well thought out argument has to be read first. And the heavy spinners are pretty much beyond salvation.

It worked once, until the context were provided afaik. They are fond of the method though, they also use it against reviews they don't like. Because ethics and free speech, you know.

Ugh, As I mentioned was being an idiot when I said the things these are replying to. To find out the intended reaction actually happened makes me feel worse.

If you havent noticed, and I doubt you haven't, both side spins. Both sides detracts and both sides accuses the other of misrepresentation while doing a fair bit of misrepresenting themselves. Both sides also doxx and swat eachother, pointing out when the other side does it but forgetting when it's thier side acting out. That's what happens when you get a group, there's allways some asshole. But every time a member starts to voice doubts those on thier side come to reaffirm thier convictions, first through reason then, if and when that doesnt work, through peer preassure.

Yet the freak accidents of history shows that both sides doing the same things doesnt automatically make both sides equally wrong or equally right; sometimes we're all goddamn idiots beating our chests at eachother over nothing, other times one side who has been tricked to want to kill everyone else. Most of the time it's somewhere between those, one side is right and one side is wrong, but through the fog of self affirmation, propaganda and outright peer preassure those who have already joined a side are nigh incapable of objectively knowing which side is right and wrong.

People's views become contaminated, much in the same way that these journalists are accused of being, and that contamination can permanently colour a person's viewpoint. Even if it is minor acquaintance or full indoctrination it seems there is no foolproof way to truly recapture the objectivity that comes with initial ignorance. So when we look to something to impart the news of the day whether it is wars of video games we want our sources to be as objective as possible, and when the provider of the news is unable to be objective we want him to hand over to someone who is objective.

Now these days noone can be truly objective, and I doubt there was a time when it was otherwise. Whether one side is right and another wrong, the second you hear them out you can't help but be swayed however slighty and that influence will never become truly neutral again. To counter this we ask journalists to assess themselves, and even if they can be objective we ask them to provide a record of their influences in the hope that it will inform the reader when the journalist is being factual and opinionated.

Then evidence is presented that these people who call themselves objective are in fact biased, that the journalists have been witholding that bias from the public. When the newspaper in response ignores the evidence and uses the assumption of objectivity to call the accuser lairs, sexists and worse, how can you still believe that the journalist is unbiased? Indeed how can you ignore the accuser when they tell you the newspaper is protecting the journalist in fear of being proven wrong and being punished for a crime they actually commit?

A question that I have been wrestling with for the last month is: which side is correct? I will likely be wrestling with that question for my entire life over every conflict I engage in as I am long contaminated. On the political scale I started ignorant and thus had the potential to be objective, and when I came to understand the ideas of nationalism, of all the good that my country has done, I was shifted to the right. As I grew up I became influenced with the propaganda of the liberals which showed me the extreme of the right and in recoil my political outlook shifted to the left. Now, in response to this I am back to middle again as in my mind the liberal political left has shown itself as the same self affirming arrogant hippocrytes that they allways accuse the right of being. I now think both sides extremes are as bad as eachother just with opposite casting in the role of master and slave.

Sad thing is, it was when condemning the other side for thier own groupthink that made me realize my side's own.

Greyblades

04-22-2015, 00:45

In response to the fat women in gaming: we need more of them. We need better writted females too, but that's because we need better writing in gaming in general.

Men or women, too many times do our game characters get written with the skill of teenager made lemon fanfics.

Dont yell at mario for princess peach because that's not expected to be smart. Noones thinks it is worth taking life lessons from.

Do yell at the recent final fantasy's for making thier characters boring melodramatic stiff idiots, 'cause I know from real life experience that there are some people who think they are supposed to be deep and meaningful.

Calling for the elimination of fanservice however is dumb, reduction of it in serious works is fine and calling for more female directed fanservice is a great idea, but eliminating it altogether will just piss people off and validate accusations of censorship.

CrossLOPER

04-22-2015, 01:22

In response to the fat women in gaming: we need more of them.
Pick from this list of types of individuals you would like to appear in your video games:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/the-identity-project/

Greyblades

04-22-2015, 01:25

Pick from this list of types of individuals you would like to appear in your video games:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/01/the-identity-project/

I'll take anyone as long as the person writing it is likely to tell a good story and not sacrifice quality to make a point. If I wanted to read theoretical philosophy and politics I'll read theoretical philosophy and politics, but I dont want it shoehorned into my games at the expense of my entertainment.

I had to read coetzee's disgrace 4 months ago, he's great at social commentary but he's a shit writer, guess which part of that made me hate his work.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-22-2015, 01:26

Does playing GTA turn you into a callous neckbeard, or does being a callous neckbeard turn you to GTA?

GTA 3 was the last game I played, there were three standout "clutter" NPC's in the game, ordinary citizens you could rob, kill etc - they were the hooker, the homo and the old guy in the trenchcoat.

The game rewarded you for beating these people to death and not getting caught.

Kinda like you are confronted with difficult choices IN REAL LIFE? I guess we wouldn't want anyone developing critical thinking skills in a simulated environment. Also, the middle ages were well know for being kind and completely lacking in morally questionable actions taking place.

In my country, I have never asked myself if I should kill my uncle or cousin for his share of the family fortune. To be fair most of the family fortune is gone and I'm the only son of our Patriarch anyway, so maybe me cousin is plotting to kill me.

What do you think?

About as many times I saw a fat male character have anything significant to say. Wait, I have one for that. There was this serial killer/rapist in SWAT 4. He went quietly mumbling something about "his darlings". I assume he meant the teenager I dug out of his dungeon and the other lady tied up on the mattress.

Fat car mechanic/mobster who issues missions in GTA 3, fat PC in Fable I (if you choose) fat NPC boss (Twin Blade) also in Fable I..., Fat Inkeepers and thugs in The Witcher, fat noble in the opening to the Witcher, Fat brother in Freedom Fighters, Mario in Mario....

Top 25 fat guys in games: http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/05/25-fat-guys-in-games/

How much more do you want?

Greyblades

04-22-2015, 01:39

Top 25 fat guys in games: http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2011/05/25-fat-guys-in-games/

How much more do you want?

Yeesh, that list is painful, half of those are so one note as to barely count as characters. And really? The best fat character list doesnt have LA Noir's Rusty or Heavy Rain's Scott Shelby?

Christ man if you're going to make a point fine just dont use a list whose first shown character isn't fat.

Sarmatian

04-22-2015, 07:20

Just curious, what examples do you have?

It is hard for me to remember specific examples as I don't play games as much as I used to, and most often I play strategy games, which are less likely to feature it. I do play RPG also, and I remember a few cases of bikini armour on females, while the males had more complete pieces.

Even in strategy games, one could find an example or two. In Civilization IV, AI Catherine the Great is openly flirting during diplomacy.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-22-2015, 13:10

It is hard for me to remember specific examples as I don't play games as much as I used to, and most often I play strategy games, which are less likely to feature it. I do play RPG also, and I remember a few cases of bikini armour on females, while the males had more complete pieces.

Even in strategy games, one could find an example or two. In Civilization IV, AI Catherine the Great is openly flirting during diplomacy.

Dragon Age and the TES series both regularly feature female armours which while not "bikinis" compromise protection for titilation, usually by removing the gorget and then dropping the neck line of the armour, or by replacing the male breast-and-back with what is essentially an over-bust corset.

What's upsetting about this is that you can make attractive armour for men AND women without compromising it, but male versions are usually the blandly functional whilst female versions are just cosplay.

CrossLOPER

04-23-2015, 01:36

GTA 3 was the last game I played, there were three standout "clutter" NPC's in the game, ordinary citizens you could rob, kill etc - they were the hooker, the homo and the old guy in the trenchcoat.

The game rewarded you for beating these people to death and not getting caught.

Yes. It's almost as if there is some sort of goal or challenge in this game. Quite unusual for games to have goals or challenges flavored to match the setting.

In my country, I have never asked myself if I should kill my uncle or cousin for his share of the family fortune. To be fair most of the family fortune is gone and I'm the only son of our Patriarch anyway, so maybe me cousin is plotting to kill me.

What do you think?
I think you somehow managed to sneak nationalist elitism into a conversation about a game where inbred medieval monarchs conspire offing each other.

What would you have them do?

I'll take anyone as long as the person writing it is likely to tell a good story and not sacrifice quality to make a point.
This is why this will never work. The only game I have ever played where homosexuality/bisexuality was inserted in a non-obtrusive way is Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of the Flesh. That is pathetic.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

04-23-2015, 15:57

I think you somehow managed to sneak nationalist elitism into a conversation about a game where inbred medieval monarchs conspire offing each other.

What would you have them do?

I have to amuse myself somehow, but my point stands. None of us is going to be standing in for King Herod any time soon, so there's little the game has to teach us which is relevant to real life.

Unless, like me, you enjoy creating a kingdom of Peace and Love whilst everyone else collapses into fratricidal infighting.

Ironside

04-23-2015, 22:24

I cannot explain why this is the issue that got people up in arms instead of the previous scandals. I highly suspect it is because AAA developers have PR departments to keep the public outrage to a minimum, departments that indie developers dont have; had Sony, activision, or EA in thier scandals reacted with the blatant contempt of the indies here I believe that this sort of consumer revolt would have happened years ago.
However it is largely immaterial why this is happening now instead of another time, it is happening and if it succeeds gaming media will become forced to adhier to the standards of other fields of journalism.

That's because the digging was a retaliation for being targeted by complains of that the harassment had reached previously unseen levels. You can see it in the combined article series. Every single one of them takes it up in that matter. At this point, two of the women involved had gotten threats of the severe character that they felt the need to leave their homes. One, who's been harassed for years before, so hardly unused to the average threat or harassment.

Looking at it, the complaints about lack of ethics in game journalism was usually leveraged about AAA getting bought reviews and similar stuff. Smaller magazines having connections with indie reviewers is small potato compared to this. That is mainly why it went unnoticed for years before this came up. It is indeed something that should be noted about and that is the reason for the policy changes that came.

One of the fuses are probably the indie games (with female developers...) that are stretching the concept of what a game are (like "Gone Home") and that they got praised in media, since their exploring did expand on what you can achieve with a game (movie reviewer likes that as well). Why exactly this is really upsetting is another question though.

And I argue that it is a pointless argument because there is no harm in allowing grown adults the freedom to do that in thier games. Whether the argument is more violent or sexist the core is that games will influence how people think in significant amounts and if thompson was proven wrong why is it any different for sarkeesian.

Are you familiar with the concept of norms? Norms are what you feel are normal and won't react to. Say that the queen decided to speak Cockney one day, that would feel very weird and probably cause a public outrage. The ones complaining about just wanting to play videogames/watch movies/ read books without politics are in reality referring to the those items should keep to the norm, rather than going outside it (thus becoming "politics"). Media can be created that are intentionally outside the norms, and are less influential on the since you think about it and it's in the open.

Now, how are those norms established? Very few norms are spelled out in the open. And we're hardly born with them. We'll pick them up through friends, family, media etc, etc. The Queen speaking Cockney is a media example for the wast majority of Brits for example. Video games are a media.

Violence in media isn't connected to norms in that way, usually the opposite, the breaking of it is in the open. Now the risk of creating a norm in relation to rescue the princess, isn't rescuing the princess of course. It's a very simple plot, yet is effective (it's lazy and derivative rather than stupid and silly).

Why? You're supposed to care about a loved one of course. The one the hero always ends up with. He always gets the girl. That's in the movies as well. So if you're going to identify yourself as a hero, you better have a girl. Her personality matters way less. And if you don't get a girl, what are you then? The hard part is to get a hold of how much this influences you.

Here's another question, how do you reach the place where concepts such as "Fake geek girls" and "white knight" are sort normalised into valid concepts?

But that's not the only issue; It is in the interest of those that shares her views to dissassociate themselves from her and find a champion who is harder to dismiss. As husar's reaction to sargon of akkad a few weeks ago exhibited: every imperfection be it swearing, tone or presentation will be siezed upon as an excuse to dismiss the entire argument.

Remember that harassment issue? That is a sort of stifling effect. The general criticism on these series are that she's getting the occasional detail wrong and sometimes driving an issue too hard, while at the same time, it's good to have the issue in the open, some points are actually quite good and seeing the sheer numbers are eye opening. She's basically on the level where you'll get some some praise and a fair bit of criticism in a climate where criticism are not controlled by outside factors.

Pulling your neck out will make you life a living hell in many ways, no matter how good you are. That is because the most active ones are mostly either misogynists or very emotionally driven. So that makes it hard for someone wanting to do that.

That is the anti story, GG's story is that they were kicked out for asking questions in a civil manner during a pannel (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyBfJuvopPg) (full recording here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymkIiGRvtBg))and later the expo called the police on them while they were peacefully congregating outside (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sqv78wABm00).

I'll leave determining which is right to the viewer.

Derailment as in taking over the floor and ask questions that aren't fully relevant for the issue at hand. That is quite possible while still being polite. The kickstarter funding and lying to get in are facts.

"...and has harrasment and even worse taken place in the name of this movment? Absolutely. Harrassment and grotesque unconscionable violations of privacy have taken place in defense of figures targeted by the movment as well, proving only that there is not a party in existance that assholes dont turn up to. It doesnt mean you call off the party folks.

"Accusations of harassment are not invalid, not at all, but your problem, may I suggest, is not actually with the movment but with the act of harassment itself[...]The pont is that we see the same behavior at every societal subset and debate from radical femenism to my little pony so why would a divisive issue like gamergate be any different?"

Humour me. If you encounter one of the worst cases of harassment you've ever seen on your sphere of the internet, what should you do? Confront it? Or stay silent on it, while raging in general that internet harassment is bad. If you want to stop it, where do you start?

Yes, I'm implying that this was the case in proto- GG. Its still a relevant question, even if you think its different.

The mere presence of the ability to move around a body does not in and of itself imply any intent of what the players are supposed to do with it. If ms sarkeesian is going to state as fact "players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" and is proven absolutely wrong you'll be dissapointed if you expect me or anyone else to pay attention to narrative when presented with such an unacknowledged falsehood.

Let me break it down.
Do you agree that it a game designer choice to make everyone killable? I've been playing more than one shooter or sandbox game where you can find unkillable allies, or get a game over for killing the wrong civilian, so it's not something essential to the game play.
I haven't played the Hitman series, so I need to ask. Can you loose enough points to get a game over that way? Or is going gunzerker also a valid play style, although not optimal?
Are the strippers there to derive pleasure? Cheesecake if you like.
Are you rewarded, although only a minor reward if you move around a body after you've killed the person in question?

If you do place sexualised women (whom you derive pleasure from) in a game where killing them are a valid choice, what are the players meant to do?

Questionable, these developers are dissassociating themselves with thier core costumer base for the promise of a new one. Sure, for a time there will be greater diversity but unless the new customer base proves itself as profitable as the old one the developers will be faced with the choice of switching back or accept being outpaced by the competition and made irrelevant.
Unless you can pad this customer base with enough people to become as profitable as the old base, people willing to keep paying for new products for years to come and wont leave after a fasion, it will devolve to another niche market and become largely ignored by the mainstream.

Games influenced by this and the more general inclusive trend are Saints Row IV, Borderlands II (it had one major issue)+ the Presequel, Farcry 4, as examples. I'm not even sure the consumer base has even noticed this.

A lot of the casual sexism has the same feel as a movie trend where you always has to have a tragic death scene, even in movies were it makes no sense. Embracing it and allowing for that its not for everyone (don't say that you find the sexism in GTA V a bit too much for your taste unless you want a shitstorm), while reducing it when its casual would be a diversification.

For a long time the gaming press did not do this, left to thier own devices a lot of them were found colluding and when it was exposed the companies hiring them did a horrendous job responding; and too many of them responded to valid critiscism with vitriol and contempt and the consumer riot that ensued is hardly surprising and well earned.

Now you're deep into spinning territory. Ignoring the previous chapters of the story are sort of making it obvious.
In particular calling it a consumer riot over ethics in game journalism. Even you are referring to that the major underlying motive is a defensive reaction out of an perceived attack and fear of censorship.

I mean, you started with that Zoe Quinn had taken down a video that pretty much accused her of sleeping around for good game reviews, was a sign of censorship. If someone is slandering me, I'm sort of not going to be nice to that person. But the focus is the CENSORSHIP, not the slandering.

I mean even the starting point of discussing the sex life of someone you don't know is sort of low brow.

GG got kicked out of 4chan through the moderators deleting every post someone made on the topic.

This was unheard of. Normally, every time something like Gamergate happened the mods would merely comb through and remove the illegal stuff (child porn, doxx and swat threads), they did it for chanology, they did it for luzsec, they did it for every operation and anonymous activity before that has been accused of harassment. But this time they were killing all discussion on the subject at the root regardless of if it was a doxxing thread or merely a thread asking what gamergate was.

See, every now and then mods would go nuts and censor left and right and most of the time m00t, the owner, would respond by replacing the moderator with someone less banhappy. But this time it was rampant and m00t said it was his idea (http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/832/349/1f2.png) and in the face of this most of the site defected to 8chan, which is almost identical but not run by a man who had apparantly only grown a conscience just as gamergate was starting to gain ground.

4chan has kicked out more dubious groups before. So it depends on the narrative. Were GG a group with mostly grievances toward ethics in journalist with some rotten apples, that some unknown journalist called in a favour to m00t to remove or were GG toxic enough for him to go "ehh better not"?

Yup have you read this? (http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/854/256/de9.png) Or this? (http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/870/933/405.png)

Crazies be universal. We must strive to see past them because they wont go away if we keep hitting them and ignoring those who have legitimate grievences.

And what do you do if the crazies are running the show? That is sort of the narrative issue with GG. The big names are professional trolls or worse. The most organised part of it are heavily involved in the harassment.

Sad thing is, it was when condemning the other side for thier own groupthink that made me realize my side's own.

Sure, I agree on that the groupthink blinds the perspective. And the spinning, which actually presents the biggest challenge. To avoid the spinning, you need to go outside your regular sources, which is something people dislike to do.

And things like you said about disassociation. It's very relevant, but it also creates a problem. How often do you need to do it and to what? I mean, your links are showing people with shitty behaviour, but at the same time you're equalising a boxing fight between Mike Tyson and a ten year old. "Pick the higher road, ignore the boxer (since no valid alternative methods are in practice). Stating it all the time will take up all the time, while on the other hand even several good statements gets ignored, or a single casual statement aren't really enough (mine here aren't for example).

Calling for the elimination of fanservice however is dumb, reduction of it in serious works is fine and calling for more female directed fanservice is a great idea, but eliminating it altogether will just piss people off and validate accusations of censorship.

And here is sort of a core issue. None of the more prominent has ever said that in this debate. But that is the perception you have taken. If "here is issues that you need to think about and consider and here's why it is an issue" are heard as censorship, how do you hold a debate on the matter?

This is why this will never work. The only game I have ever played where homosexuality/bisexuality was inserted in a non-obtrusive way is Phantasmagoria 2: A Puzzle of the Flesh. That is pathetic.

It's very possible to have it inserted a non-obtrusive way in the background. Simply have it as a offhand reference without anyone thinking it special. Having sexuality as a theme in the game makes it harder though.

Greyblades

04-24-2015, 03:51

CrossLOPER

04-24-2015, 04:56

It's very possible to have it inserted a non-obtrusive way in the background. Simply have it as a offhand reference without anyone thinking it special. Having sexuality as a theme in the game makes it harder though.
It had two dudes nearly making out. TWO REAL DUDES.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuhPJgvHYlE

I have to amuse myself somehow, but my point stands. None of us is going to be standing in for King Herod any time soon, so there's little the game has to teach us which is relevant to real life.

Unless, like me, you enjoy creating a kingdom of Peace and Love whilst everyone else collapses into fratricidal infighting.

I think my original post got swallowed or something.

You are telling me that you do not see any value in learning to prioritizing objectives? You don't see any value in dealing with the ambitions of others and balancing them against your own goals? You don't see any value in learning how to balance logistics with dynamically expanding long-term planning?

Kralizec

04-24-2015, 14:02

I haven't played the Hitman series, so I need to ask. Can you loose enough points to get a game over that way? Or is going gunzerker also a valid play style, although not optimal?
Are the strippers there to derive pleasure? Cheesecake if you like.
Are you rewarded, although only a minor reward if you move around a body after you've killed the person in question?

In the original Hitman game, killing civilians or policemen (not criminal henchmen, which were considered fair game) resulted in huge writeoffs on the monetary reward you'd get at the end of a mission. This was described in the game as cleaning costs (removing evidence, bribing officials, etc)
You could end a mission with a negative reward this way (IIRC) but if your bank account ever went negative you would receive a message that "your services are no longer required" or something of that effect, and you'd either have to start over or load an earlier savegame.

In the second game of the series the only effect was that the score window at the end of a mission described you as a "sociopath" or a "mass murderer" but there were no penalties otherwise. However to get certain bonus weapons you were required to finish multiple missions as a "Silent Assassin" which was extremely difficult on some missions.

The third game was the same as the second game in this respect, IIRC. To be honest I still think the original game was by far the best, it had some features that should never have been abandoned in the sequels IMO.

Sir Moody

04-24-2015, 17:33

In the original Hitman game, killing civilians or policemen (not criminal henchmen, which were considered fair game) resulted in huge writeoffs on the monetary reward you'd get at the end of a mission. This was described in the game as cleaning costs (removing evidence, bribing officials, etc)
You could end a mission with a negative reward this way (IIRC) but if your bank account ever went negative you would receive a message that "your services are no longer required" or something of that effect, and you'd either have to start over or load an earlier savegame.

In the second game of the series the only effect was that the score window at the end of a mission described you as a "sociopath" or a "mass murderer" but there were no penalties otherwise. However to get certain bonus weapons you were required to finish multiple missions as a "Silent Assassin" which was extremely difficult on some missions.

The third game was the same as the second game in this respect, IIRC. To be honest I still think the original game was by far the best, it had some features that should never have been abandoned in the sequels IMO.

To Expand on this a touch - Blood Money (the 4th installment and imo the best) introduced a system where by your score on previous levels determined the "Security" on following levels. If you were as quiet as a mouse security would be reduced - go in loud and security will be enhanced (with one caveat - if you kill every witness (ie the whole map) it would not raise the alert level).

The 5th game Absolution (and the worst imo) is back to score being a bragging right - and even includes online leaderboards - it has zero effect on the game.

Greyblades

04-25-2015, 03:15

Yeah absolution wasnt a good hitman game, it was a good game on it's own but it cant stand up to it's predecessors.

Oh and the points might not have an influence on the game but it does have an influence on the player, weak though it is, enough to give an indication on the game's intentions. Still waiting on you Ironside.

Ironside

04-25-2015, 13:14

Ironside, before I reply I wonder if you would be willing to take this one topic at a time? I am fully willing to continue this conversation as we have, but with pvc's lack of response my last big post I'm concerned it is getting too convoluted to follow.

I suggest we pick one of the topics in your last post and focus on it until we reach either a consensus or impass, then we choose another. One quote and one cohesive response would be best. Choice should probably be alternating so as to remain fair and I'm willling to conceed the first choice to you.

The mega posts takes a while to compile, so I agree. I think we can divide it into a few major issues and a few semi major. I'll be taking a few quotes on some issues, since they're heavily linked.

One is how deep did the harassment go in the GG movement.
One is why Sarkeesian is the most publically known face and why she is defended on that position.
One is how to deal with spinning and disinformation.
One is whatever Sarkeesian lied about Hitman. Minor, but popular topic, based on the responses.
One is why sexism is supposed to have an influence even on adult people, while violence do not.

If you feel I missed an issue, feel free to mention it.

I say we start with whatever Sarkeesian lied about Hitman, to get it done with, and then proceed with how deep did the harassment go in the GG movement (the most important point).

So:

Let me break it down.
Do you agree that it a game designer choice to make everyone killable? I've been playing more than one shooter or sandbox game where you can find unkillable allies, or get a game over for killing the wrong civilian, so it's not something essential to the game play.
I haven't played the Hitman series, so I need to ask. Can you loose enough points to get a game over that way? Or is going gunzerker also a valid play style, although not optimal?
Are the strippers there to derive pleasure? Cheesecake if you like.
Are you rewarded, although only a minor reward if you move around a body after you've killed the person in question?

If you do place sexualised women (whom you derive pleasure from) in a game where killing them are a valid choice, what are the players meant to do when encountering them? (Whatever they want).
Is an enabling an encouragement or not?

I'm going to add that from what she previously said, she's pushing it as a concept rather than an absolute truth, similar to say the idea of tickle down economics or marxist history. It's obvious that the game isn't "murder stripper simulator 4". But on the other hand, it is enabling it for players who do want to do it, without any major downsides (like game over), are encouraging that behaviour, even if most won't do it.

Yeah absolution wasnt a good hitman game, it was a good game on it's own but it cant stand up to it's predecessors.

Oh and the points might not have an influence on the game but it does have an influence on the player, weak though it is, enough to give an indication on the game's intentions.

Is that less or more than in the previous games? What does that tell you about the game's intentions? I can answer that question for you. That means that going on a killing spree has became a more valid play style. In Hitman 1 it wasn't. In the rest they are, to a different degree (Blood Money encourages you to not mixing them up, as an example).

Sarmatian

04-25-2015, 18:44

One is how deep did the harassment go in the GG movement.
One is why Sarkeesian is the most publically known face and why she is defended on that position.
One is how to deal with spinning and disinformation.
One is whatever Sarkeesian lied about Hitman. Minor, but popular topic, based on the responses.
One is why sexism is supposed to have an influence even on adult people, while violence do not.

Without going into any of that point by point, I just want say that gamers inherently react badly to criticism of their favourite pass time.

That is partly a remnant of a time when gaming was still in its infancy. After the very first batch of games which were family oriented mostly (from Pong to Tetris), the next batch allowed gamers to get personally involved. There was often a storyline (however rudimentary), a hero, an enemy or enemies to defeat. It was much more immersive, and, most importantly, it involved gamers committing virtual violence.

Since games are different from other mediums by the fact that you, as a player, have influence on what happens, some started saying that is much more dangerous than other types of entertainment. In movies, irrespective how involved you are with a certain character, you're still a passive observer to that character committing imaginary violence. In games, you're actually committing that imaginary violence. You need to press the button to pull the trigger or swing a sword.

Even before it was expertly scrutinized, conservative voices started a campaign to either limit games availability or even totally ban them.
As gaming was still in its infancy, there was a fear that they may be successful, and gamers fought aggressively, and for a long time, to prove otherwise. That's a big part (imho, the primary reason) why gamers tend to dismiss any criticism out of hand. It helps that gamers are now one of the most well connected social groups globally, and it is fairly easy to "unite" them in defence of gaming, and, likewise, it is extremely difficult to penetrate that group.

I believe that is the reason why other people feel they need to be more sensationalist to get heard, like that Sarkeesian lady. I've seen her giving an interview to Jon Stewart at Daily Show. She was actually likeable and well spoken. She doesn't attack games, in fact, she admitted during that interview that she is a passionate gamer, but she wants games to be less sexist. That's the impression I got.

We are far beyond the point where games could have been taken away from us. The gaming industry has surpassed movie and music industry in size. Games are here to stay and will probably become even a more important part of human life in the future. That means we need at least to allow the discussion about some aspect of games and gaming to be had.

Greyblades

04-26-2015, 04:45

We are far beyond the point where games could have been taken away from us. The gaming industry has surpassed movie and music industry in size. Games are here to stay and will probably become even a more important part of human life in the future. That means we need at least to allow the discussion about some aspect of games and gaming to be had.

Perhaps but for such a discussion to occur on a meaningful level we have to feel like we will be listened to, and currently the people who try to initiate fair discussions are being drowned out by people like sarkeesian who are most certainly not listening to us. Gamers can try to keep our own crazies from interrupting but unless the same happens on the other side, as long as the preachers conn-men and spin doctors are allowed to keep poisoning the debate, you will not get anywhere.

'cause here's the thing: sarkeesian and co, the people we rail against, are doing the same things that those conservative voices from long ago were doing. They censor and ridicule thier opponants, use leverage in the popular media to make sure people think gamers are bad, they focus on the minority of idiots and ignore the majority of sane gamners. Thier message might be different but thier methods are the same; shame the enemy into thinking your way. As is thier percived goal: making people change thier creatve works to fit thier percieved view of what is right. The reasoning is different but the goal of this far left movment now is the same as the far right then.

The history of the far right wing attacking gaming has brought the far left a large unquestioning support base among the gaming scene, that's why there's a divide instead of a united front, but a greater popular support doesnt make them any more correct when they try to impose thier world view on a medium people care about.

Sorry ironside, your question deserves the application of a calm mind over a long period of time and at this second I am somewhat... I want to say distracted but it's more like incensed, by the milk thread. I'll get to you by the end of tomorrow.

Kralizec

04-26-2015, 21:44

The 5th game Absolution (and the worst imo) is back to score being a bragging right - and even includes online leaderboards - it has zero effect on the game.

That sounds awful.

I might give the 4th installment a shot, the 'security' mechanic you described sounds like a good feature.

Greyblades

04-27-2015, 06:31

Let me break it down.
Do you agree that it a game designer choice to make everyone killable? I've been playing more than one shooter or sandbox game where you can find unkillable allies, or get a game over for killing the wrong civilian, so it's not something essential to the game play.
I haven't played the Hitman series, so I need to ask. Can you loose enough points to get a game over that way? Or is going gunzerker also a valid play style, although not optimal?
Are the strippers there to derive pleasure? Cheesecake if you like.
Are you rewarded, although only a minor reward if you move around a body after you've killed the person in question?

If you do place sexualised women (whom you derive pleasure from) in a game where killing them are a valid choice, what are the players meant to do when encountering them? (Whatever they want).
Is an enabling an encouragement or not?

I'm going to add that from what she previously said, she's pushing it as a concept rather than an absolute truth, similar to say the idea of tickle down economics or marxist history. It's obvious that the game isn't "murder stripper simulator 4". But on the other hand, it is enabling it for players who do want to do it, without any major downsides (like game over), are encouraging that behaviour, even if most won't do it.

Is that less or more than in the previous games? What does that tell you about the game's intentions? I can answer that question for you. That means that going on a killing spree has became a more valid play style. In Hitman 1 it wasn't. In the rest they are, to a different degree (Blood Money encourages you to not mixing them up, as an example).
1. I agree it is the creator's choice, but in this case I do not see an alternative. Making civillians invincible would a) ruin the immersion and b) mean that the player would have to restart every time one of them detected him or have to run away from the entire level's armed guards of which there are usually upwards of 30 and heavily armed and armoured, immensely frustrating when shooting the witness before he/she can scream is the logical option yet denied. Removing the civillians completly would also ruin the immersion as most of the levels are set in places that make no sense for thier absence, why would the streets of hongkong have be empty of civillians at all times?
2. Going a gunzerker route is only a valid option when you are able to do it, most levels you start out with a single pistol and 6 rounds, any attempt to go rambo with that will end with you dead quickly and the weaponry available in most levels are on the guards or hidden soemwhat deep into the level making the ability hard to achieve. Running around shooting willy nilly from the offset is a dangerous proposition on all but the easiest difficulties. And no you cannot lose due to a lack of points.
3. Dont know, ask the devs, the level is set in a strip club and it would be an odd strip club without them. You dont need to kill any of them to advance and you can go through the entire level without any of them even knowing you are there.
4. You are rewarded for taking the body to a crate or a cabinate and placing it in there. There is no direct reward or penalty for what you do with it in the mean time but practically the longer you mess around the more likely someone will come across you and raise the alarm.

Inclusion of ability is not inherently encouragement. To prove that you are meant to do something there has to be more the mere absence of built in restriction.

What does going on a killing spree becoming a more valid play style tell me about the game's intentions? Nothing, it only tells me the result not the cause.

The observation tells me capacity has changed, however it tells me nothing concrete about the reasoning or intent. We can insinuate all we want but until there is something certain the idea that the game wants you to kill indiscriminately, or worse discriminatorialy, is no more valid than the idea that the creators are so incompetent that they made the game that way because they were too stupid to make it otherwise.

If you could prove intent through insinuation the gate would be open to no end of absurdities from "you can kill a judge, you dont have to, you're not encouraged to, but you can thus this game encourages killing judges" to "you can kill every man in the game's existance and stand on a pile of thier bodies, you dont have to, you are certainly not encouraged to, but you can thus this game encourages killing all men and piling up thier bodies because it wanst the player to satisfy a primal desire for dominance."

There has to be more than capacity to kill and move npc's to prove the player is meant to "derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" and the game does not provide more.

To become truth sarkeesian's idea requires more than mere insinuation and she does not have it thus making her proclimation that it is "meant" a falsehood.
That is the case for a lot of sarkeesian's objections to the gaming industry and a lot of the far left wing political correctness in general, but the hitman thing is the one that got me to realize how flimsy it all is.

Sir Moody

04-27-2015, 11:06

To be honest while I do agree with Anita on the Hitman issue I do think she focused on the lesser of 2 scenes from that mission - the scene immediately prior to that one was far better for her point.

To give some narrative to the people who haven't played it - Agent 47 infiltrates the Strip club to kill the manager and then reach the managers office to acquire some intel. Unlike previous games there is less focus on "creative" killing and it is generally quite linear - in this mission you generally kill a guard in the toilet to get his uniform and gun and then ambush the manager in a private booth. You then sneak past 2 hookers into the private section of the club to climb up to the managers office (sneaking past more hookers and gangsters). Anita focuses on the the 2 hookers prior to the private section while I think the private booth is a much better example of the trope.

Players are encouraged to enter the booth and wait for the manager - when he arrives he proceeds to sexually and then physically assault a hooker - all with the player acting as voyeur. He then is left alone in the booth and the player shoots him through the 1 way mirror. This whole scene is narratively a setup to show you how bad the manager is but also acts to "excite" the player in the act of voyeurism - the hooker is merely background dressing to the entire thing. I think this fits Anitas point FAR better than the 2 hookers you sneak past directly after this.

Inclusion of ability is not inherently encouragement.

I would disagree here - especially in the context of this Hitman mission.

The room in question has 2 places to hide bodies and coincidentally 2 hookers... someone specifically set up the room so that if someone did kill the hookers there would be enough places to hide them without any trouble - thus encouraging players who would do that to do as they please.

Greyblades

04-27-2015, 11:55

I would disagree here - especially in the context of this Hitman mission.

The room in question has 2 places to hide bodies and coincidentally 2 hookers... someone specifically set up the room so that if someone did kill the hookers there would be enough places to hide them without any trouble - thus encouraging players who would do that to do as they please.

Sir moody, I fear you are showing a certain ignorance with the game itself:

1. Each crate can take 2 bodies
2. Aside from the 2 strippers (not hookers), there is a guard who patrols the room.
3. In the rooms adjacent where the guard also patrols contain another crate and a closet
4. You do not need to kill a npc to put them in the crate, knocking them out has the same effect however the main downside is that it is a comparatively drawn out choke hold and if a second npc stumbles upon it your cover is blown immediately.
5. The crate is also usable as your own hiding place, the player can climb inside them, meaning they have utility outside of body removal.

I also dont think you are giving the game enough credit towards linearity, I know of two other methods of covert elimination in the level that the player could partake in: either wait for him to go under a faulty disco ball and turn it on to drop it on him, or you can just knock out the guard in the urinal, hide him in the broom closet, garotte the manager when he comes to take a piss and put his body in with the guard. Both methods are just as covert and both are no harder to pull off than the hidden room.

I would mention that the disco ball option becomes very hard if you try a "silent assassin" run, trying to get to the disco ball without being spotted is rather hit or miss, yet the other 2 options are technically impossible to SA.

"This whole scene is narratively a setup to show you how bad the manager is but also acts to "excite" the player in the act of voyeurism" That excitement is an outcome not an intent (it's also highly subjective, not every straight man gets a thrill watching a greasy slob feel up a stripper against her will). The creator could just as easily only wanted to creep out the player and give them impetus to kill the man, the titilation merely an unimportant side effect, what makes your interpritation any more correct than the one I just proposed?

Edit: For the longest time I thought you were ironside. one of you guys might want to change one of your avatars

Sir Moody

04-27-2015, 13:17

Sir moody, I fear you are showing a certain ignorance with the game itself:

1. Each crate can take 2 bodies
2. Aside from the 2 strippers (not hookers), there is a guard who patrols the room.
3. In the rooms adjacent where the guard also patrols contain another crate and a closet
4. You do not need to kill a npc to put them in the crate, knocking them out has the same effect however the main downside is that it is a comparatively drawn out choke hold and if a second npc stumbles upon it your cover is blown immediately.
5. The crate is also usable as your own hiding place, the player can climb inside them, meaning they have utility outside of body removal.

I am well aware you can hide 2 in each place which is why I said places to hide 2 - the fact I had forgotten the cupboard (which means 4 places for 3 people) actually proves my point even more - there are more slots for hiding than NPC's which enter the area which implicitly tells the players its ok to cut loose...

That excitement is an outcome not an intent (it's also highly subjective, not every straight man gets a thrill watching a greasy slob feel up a stripper against her will). The creator could just as easily only wanted to creep out the player and give them impetus to kill the man, the titilation merely an unimportant side effect, what makes your interpritation any more correct than the one I just proposed?

You are correct that not everyone will be exited by the act of Voyeurism - I found it creepy as you seem to have as well - but the very fact it is on offer says someone thought it was a good idea to add - meaning the intent was to provide the "enjoyment" of the scene - and more importantly the complete lack of agency on the hookers part illustrates the trope in question.

Greyblades

04-27-2015, 18:03

I am well aware you can hide 2 in each place which is why I said places to hide 2 - the fact I had forgotten the cupboard (which means 4 places for 3 people) actually proves my point even more - there are more slots for hiding than NPC's which enter the area which implicitly tells the players its ok to cut loose...

You are correct that not everyone will be exited by the act of Voyeurism - I found it creepy as you seem to have as well - but the very fact it is on offer says someone thought it was a good idea to add - meaning the intent was to provide the "enjoyment" of the scene - and more importantly the complete lack of agency on the hookers part illustrates the trope in question.

Someone's interpritation of a product is not enough to determine the intent of the creator. With the right wording anything a person can do can be seen as having whatever implication you can imagine. There must be more evidence than someone's opinion before you can determine the intention of a person or creative product with any degree of credible certainty.

Ironside

04-27-2015, 20:56

I believe that is the reason why other people feel they need to be more sensationalist to get heard, like that Sarkeesian lady. I've seen her giving an interview to Jon Stewart at Daily Show. She was actually likeable and well spoken. She doesn't attack games, in fact, she admitted during that interview that she is a passionate gamer, but she wants games to be less sexist. That's the impression I got.

We are far beyond the point where games could have been taken away from us. The gaming industry has surpassed movie and music industry in size. Games are here to stay and will probably become even a more important part of human life in the future. That means we need at least to allow the discussion about some aspect of games and gaming to be had.

True, some of it has the origin from when games were seen as suspect. Some of it has the origin of a sort of internal victimhood among some geeks and heavy self- identification with gamer as a term. Some of it is a general culture clash between academics and people who aren't familiar with the terms and what concepts they stand for. Privilege is an example. Norms another.

But Sarkeesian isn't really sensationalist compared to the language in academics for example. In general, she's mediocre. Some concepts are driven a bit too hard (like the one we're talking about) and she does some small mistakes here and there. On the pro-side, she a good aggregator in showing how common something is and is finding some tropes that are surprisingly common (having a female begging you to kill her because its too late for her is one example) and not exactly healthy when common. One issue is that she's talking at a basic academics level, while a lot of the viewers are street level on this.

And there's also the issue complaints about sexism in video games makes some batshit insane. This is the incident that spawned the idea of objective game reviews (http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/gamers-petition-for-sacking-of-gamespot-writer-who-criticised-gtav-for-misogyny/0121238) (like know the way that all movie reviews give the same score to a movie).
Short version. Female game reviewer on Gamespot gave the game GTA V only a 9/10 because she felt that it was too much sexism in it for her. Such ideas should be responded by sacking, according to some very loud gamers.

1. I agree it is the creator's choice, but in this case I do not see an alternative. Making civillians invincible would a) ruin the immersion and b) mean that the player would have to restart every time one of them detected him or have to run away from the entire level's armed guards of which there are usually upwards of 30 and heavily armed and armoured, immensely frustrating when shooting the witness before he/she can scream is the logical option yet denied. Removing the civillians completly would also ruin the immersion as most of the levels are set in places that make no sense for thier absence, why would the streets of hongkong have be empty of civillians at all times?
2. Going a gunzerker route is only a valid option when you are able to do it, most levels you start out with a single pistol and 6 rounds, any attempt to go rambo with that will end with you dead quickly and the weaponry available in most levels are on the guards or hidden soemwhat deep into the level making the ability hard to achieve. Running around shooting willy nilly from the offset is a dangerous proposition on all but the easiest difficulties. And no you cannot lose due to a lack of points.

So in summary, occasional deaths are ok. And more accepted than in the original game. Gameplay is a major part on how it ended up like that.

3. Dont know, ask the devs, the level is set in a strip club and it would be an odd strip club without them. You dont need to kill any of them to advance and you can go through the entire level without any of them even knowing you are there.

I would say yes. The choice of a strip club as the level is sort of demanding strippers. And a major reason for why strippers/prostitutes are so popular is that you can get sex while also setting the mood (as in "gritty mood").

The observation tells me capacity has changed, however it tells me nothing concrete about the reasoning or intent. We can insinuate all we want but until there is something certain the idea that the game wants you to kill indiscriminately, or worse discriminatorialy, is no more valid than the idea that the creators are so incompetent that they made the game that way because they were too stupid to make it otherwise.

Most sexism are in the category of them being too non-reflective to make it otherwise.

If you could prove intent through insinuation the gate would be open to no end of absurdities from "you can kill a judge, you dont have to, you're not encouraged to, but you can thus this game encourages killing judges" to "you can kill every man in the game's existance and stand on a pile of thier bodies, you dont have to, you are certainly not encouraged to, but you can thus this game encourages killing all men and piling up thier bodies because it wanst the player to satisfy a primal desire for dominance."

If it would be unique, sure. If that would be a big trend, its an odd coincidence though. Even if each individual game has valid reasons for doing so. And she talking very much in trends with examples, rather than each game for itself.

To become truth sarkeesian's idea requires more than mere insinuation and she does not have it thus making her proclimation that it is "meant" a falsehood.
That is the case for a lot of sarkeesian's objections to the gaming industry and a lot of the far left wing political correctness in general, but the hitman thing is the one that got me to realize how flimsy it all is.

Social science. "This theory is correct because of this and that.
Nope, you've totally gotten this and that wrong. It means something else."

It's a messy field and most of it is going to end up as being called wrong in the end.

Someone's interpritation of a product is not enough to determine the intent of the creator. With the right wording anything a person can do can be seen as having whatever implication you can imagine. There must be more evidence than someone's opinion before you can determine the intention of a person or creative product with any degree of credible certainty.

Depends on what level you're asking the question. The level you are talking: Their concious intent. Or the level where their intent starts to become less relevant. In that one, the question aren't if the intent was voyeurism or the make you creeped out. It was why choosing that scene in either case? "Meant" is supposed to be read at this level, not at the concious intent. Or at least that the concious intent doesn't need to be stronger than finding out that this was possible and then go "working as intended". She's setting that interpretation up previously.
Hmm, this is actually a core thing, you're on the blunt level, while the argument is mostly on the more blurry levels like symbolism and subconscious thinking.

It is a weak argument as you pointed out with the insinuations and a weaker statement would've been better, but it's a difference between finding your opponents argument weak/wrong and that it would be an outright lie.

It's blurry as heck, but it also something there. The culture thing that make nationalists talk about "British culture", while trying to define it ends up in a mess.

Greyblades

04-27-2015, 20:57

1 quote 1 answer remember?
I'll still reply in a day or two, but as I said I would prefer to keep it simple.

Also could you change one of your avatars? I'm getting you mixed up with sir moody and I'd rather not get mixed up who said what.

Sir Moody

04-27-2015, 23:26

Greyblades

04-29-2015, 17:00

Thanks.

I'll address the rest tomorrow as I have been extremely distracted by the milk thread and now I have family matters to attend to, but this is rather pertinent:

It's blurry as heck, but it also something there. The culture thing that make nationalists talk about "British culture", while trying to define it ends up in a mess.

Being called a Brit isnt considered an insult except to the irish, being called sexist is an insult to everyone (British culture can also be whatever we are willing to make it be. Rather an apropriate comparison to what sexism has become, but I digress.) and the societal effects of being accused have become extremely damaging.

The accusation of sexist is a verbal nuke. Sarkeesian and many liker have been throwing it about incessantly on the blurry, messy and outright flimsy foundation that is a selective interpritation of a wide subset of media.

It gives a similar effect as the boy crying wolf; any credibility the accusation might once have had is diminished by it's repeated utterance on such a weak platform. The point doesnt have enough proof to stick while at the same time the subject of the accusation and those who associate with them not already a believer becomes polarised against it.

That is why ms sarkeesian's arguments, above all else, are counterproductive to her very movment, when the sexism button is falsely pressed so often people stop believeing the legitimate cases.

Sarmatian

04-29-2015, 17:37

Yes, but you are dodging the real issue. You're arguing how she was wrong to label that part of the game sexist, not whether there is sexism in game industry.

Greyblades

04-29-2015, 17:40

Yes, but you are dodging the real issue. You're arguing how she was wrong to label that part of the game sexist, not whether there is sexism in game industry.

Ahem:

Ironside, before I reply I wonder if you would be willing to take this one topic at a time? I am fully willing to continue this conversation as we have, but with pvc's lack of response my last big post I'm concerned it is getting too convoluted to follow.

I suggest we pick one of the topics in your last post and focus on it until we reach either a consensus or impass, then we choose another. One quote and one cohesive response would be best. Choice should probably be alternating so as to remain fair and I'm willling to conceed the first choice to you.

One thing at a time, and he chose this first. Plus, burden of proof is upon the accuser, gamers dont have to prove anything merely successfully refute the case laid against us.

Greyblades

04-30-2015, 09:03

Well I said I'd respond to the rest today, and so I will:

Short version. Female game reviewer on Gamespot gave the game GTA V only a 9/10 because she felt that it was too much sexism in it for her. Such ideas should be responded by sacking, according to some very loud gamers. Anonyminity on the internet means that anyone can essentially claim to be anything, but despite the claims the harassers are not a fair representation of gamers,a community in the 100's of millions of people, or even of the supporters of gamergate, whose only real criteria for entry is "want to stop the people we rely on for news and reviews colluding for cash"

So in summary, occasional deaths are ok. And more accepted than in the original game. Gameplay is a major part on how it ended up like that. We cannot gain any sense that the creator considered it "ok" from the mere fact that it is not a fail state, the points system indicates the opposite.

I would say yes. The choice of a strip club as the level is sort of demanding strippers. And a major reason for why strippers/prostitutes are so popular is that you can get sex while also setting the mood (as in "gritty mood"). Which is false because strip clubs are not bordellos, "look dont touch", the strippers in a legal strip club have no obligation to have sex with anyone.

Most sexism are in the category of them being too non-reflective to make it otherwise. And too obtuse to catch without rigerous training apparantly. Subliminal might be a thing, but a lot of this is on the far end of so imperceptable as to be asbsurd.

If it would be unique, sure. If that would be a big trend, its an odd coincidence though. Even if each individual game has valid reasons for doing so. And she talking very much in trends with examples, rather than each game for itself. Trends which are neither strong or widespread enough to make concrete value judgments on a buisness sector larger than hollywood and a worldwide community with a population around that of india, yet she does it anyway and her evidence is obviously shakey.

Social science. "This theory is correct because of this and that.
Nope, you've totally gotten this and that wrong. It means something else."

It's a messy field and most of it is going to end up as being called wrong in the end. So, why is this theory being so clung to?

Depends on what level you're asking the question. The level you are talking: Their concious intent. Or the level where their intent starts to become less relevant. In that one, the question aren't if the intent was voyeurism or the make you creeped out. It was why choosing that scene in either case? "Meant" is supposed to be read at this level, not at the concious intent. Or at least that the concious intent doesn't need to be stronger than finding out that this was possible and then go "working as intended". She's setting that interpretation up previously.

Hmm, this is actually a core thing, you're on the blunt level, while the argument is mostly on the more blurry levels like symbolism and subconscious thinking. It is a weak argument as you pointed out with the insinuations and a weaker statement would've been better, but it's a difference between finding your opponents argument weak/wrong and that it would be an outright lie. The blurriness does not excuse such a flagrant misrepresentation of the game. All her arguments are weak but the hitman one is the most objectively wrong and dishonest: the game/developer cannot be proven to want you to kill and manipulate these women, the score system is quite clear in it's opposition to that and not preventing the possibility of the player doing something cannot be a deciding indication of the devs' intending the player to do anything.

Of a 20 mission game she picks out the 1 mission with a strip club, she goes out of her own way to beat up those strippers and drag around the bodies for a 20 second clip, it didnt come from another player's lets play or anything it was her footage. The game is very clear with the points system that it doesn't condone the player doing anything to them.

She wants us to conclude that "the player cannot help but treat these female bodes as things to be acted upon because they were designed constucted and placed in the enviroment for that singular purpose, the player is meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" but when her clip is compared to the actual game and the multitude of lets plays of the level on youtube at the time it does not corroberate her viewpoint in the least. Her statements shows she either missed the game's point completely or she went out of her way to make a clip that she knew was misrepresenting the game in an attempt to support her point.

Ironside

05-01-2015, 19:50

Well I said I'd respond to the rest today, and so I will:
Anonyminity on the internet means that anyone can essentially claim to be anything, but despite the claims the harassers are not a fair representation of gamers,a community in the 100's of millions of people, or even of the supporters of gamergate, whose only real criteria for entry is "want to stop the people we rely on for news and reviews colluding for cash"

Certainly. But that group exists, is very noisy and is one part of the atmosphere when talking about these issues.

We cannot gain any sense that the creator considered it "ok" from the mere fact that it is not a fail state, the points system indicates the opposite.

We can gain the sense that it's quite a bit above intolerable, since you normally don't include things you're borderline with and certainly not things you find intolerable.

Which is false because strip clubs are not bordellos, "look dont touch", the strippers in a legal strip club have no obligation to have sex with anyone.

It's in a computer game. Unless you have some super-special equipment on your gaming rig, it's only "look dont touch" there.

I admit I phrased it poorly, "get sex" should've been "get the sexy", as in making sexually titillating women in a game is intended to be sexually titillating.

The accusation of sexist is a verbal nuke. Sarkeesian and many liker have been throwing it about incessantly on the blurry, messy and outright flimsy foundation that is a selective interpritation of a wide subset of media.

It gives a similar effect as the boy crying wolf; any credibility the accusation might once have had is diminished by it's repeated utterance on such a weak platform. The point doesnt have enough proof to stick while at the same time the subject of the accusation and those who associate with them not already a believer becomes polarised against it.

That is why ms sarkeesian's arguments, above all else, are counterproductive to her very movment, when the sexism button is falsely pressed so often people stop believeing the legitimate cases.

A major issue is that people want to have things that they like to be non-problematic even when they are problematic.
Take the chainmail bikini as an example. Is it sexist? Yes. If you disagree with that part, would you say that if that's the only gear for female characters, would that be sexist? Can you find a woman in chainmail bikini attractive without being a sexist? Yes, but a lot of people act like they think its impossible (Sarkeesian doesn't, that's why she states that it's ok to like problematic media all the time). And since people don't want to feel like they could possibly be sexist (and a lot of the time they aren't), they resort to chainmail bikinis aren't sexist (because they like them).

It's a scale, yet a lot of people act like the lower scale is completely unrelated to the upper scale. Part of the problem is that the chainmail bikini is something else than simply sexy, yet the only word that are on that scale is sexist.

Trends which are neither strong or widespread enough to make concrete value judgments on a buisness sector larger than hollywood and a worldwide community with a population around that of india, yet she does it anyway and her evidence is obviously shakey.

In general? It blatantly obvious that it's there. It's not universal, but it's there. And not really sublime, unless you choose to overlook it. Take the original art for Divinity: Original Sin. It did not occur to the maker that having a chainmail bikini warrior (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/Divinity_Original_Sin_cover.png) next to a armoured male warrior is sort of sexist. It got changed (http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-images/DIVINITYOS.jpg)after PC brigade complaints.

So, why is this theory being so clung to?

Because it's the details rather than the general theory that's blurry. The direct influence of killing prostitutes in a video game is hard to measure. But the general media exposure is notable.

Role models are an actual thing and people will take after, even if they're glorified eye candy (Italy got an issue with this after Berlusconi).
Chainmail bikinis as normal is talked about above.
Media is shown to be a major part of influencing norm behaviour.
Add in some facts that females are generally considered as less normative (thus creating that 66% male 33% female are seen as the fair 50/50) are facing a lot more harassment in general, in particular the sexual harassment.
It's coming from somewhere.

The blurriness does not excuse such a flagrant misrepresentation of the game. All her arguments are weak but the hitman one is the most objectively wrong and dishonest: the game/developer cannot be proven to want you to kill and manipulate these women, the score system is quite clear in it's opposition to that and not preventing the possibility of the player doing something cannot be a deciding indication of the devs' intending the player to do anything.

We're starting to go in circles. But this is mixing up intentional sexism and casual sexism again. The argument she does in the context she's made before is that we are on casual sexism level, even if the statement by itself would be red as intentional sexism (which I agree would be incorrect. Parts of it is intentional, but the whole is not).

To take an example. Having a female protagonist are very rare compared to a male protagonist (we'll exclude the "pick you gender" type here) and has never been equal in number. Clearly there is a selection process here, even if it is unconscious. This influences marketing. Since women protags are rare, clearly the market doesn't want female protags (this thinking is real and affects funding). This thinking creates gender discrimination, yet no single game is to blame. So without any intentional move, you have discrimination.

To show this and to counter it, it's pretty much impossible to talk about the devs' proven intentions, since each case you look at won't show gender discrimination. It's only taken as a whole and in context, it becomes obvious.

Beskar

05-02-2015, 23:27

In general? It blatantly obvious that it's there. It's not universal, but it's there. And not really sublime, unless you choose to overlook it. Take the original art for Divinity: Original Sin. It did not occur to the maker that having a chainmail bikini warrior (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/Divinity_Original_Sin_cover.png) next to a armoured male warrior is sort of sexist. It got changed (http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-images/DIVINITYOS.jpg)after PC brigade complaints. .

The second picture looks far better in my opinion aesthetically as well.

Greyblades

05-05-2015, 13:27

*sigh* Ok I see this is getting nowhere. The hitman thing was to prove that anita sarkeesian is a liar, if she was a liar she was useless to the feminist cause due to being considered as irreperably biased by gamers.

However the definition of lie has apparantly become subjective these days, and there is an easier way to show how she alienates the people feminism must convert.

Thus:
1. She has shown herself ignorant of the things she preaches about:
http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/851/661/2f1.jpg
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/521781974017388544

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/907/852/45d.jpg
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/561761720834592768

2. She used a tragedy to push her agenda:
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/853/688/c5b.png
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/525793436025118721
Said on the same day as a mass shooting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marysville_Pilchuck_High_School_shooting

3. She has shown disrespect for the dead.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B3ziqd7CAAEYnlS.jpg:large
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/148217327236808704
Christopher hitchens had died three days before.

4. She has stated she believes men cannot be disciminated against:
https://feelsandreals.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/unnamed1.jpg?w=1024&h=611
https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/533445611543363585

I could go on but the point is clear: ms sarkeesian has no concept of Public Relations and is a detriment to the goal of presuading gamers to your side. I am once again annoyed that it took this bloody long for me to figure out arguing the minutia is pointless.

Sir Moody

05-05-2015, 15:28

1a) The fact the character was designed by a Woman doesn't change the fact Bayonetta is the personification of several Male fantasies - I am really unsure what are you are driving at here?

1b) Again she is stating a fact. Peach saves Mario a few times only to be relegated to DiD sometimes in the very same game... so she is 2 for 2 on stating obvious facts...

2) Shes actually right here - the fact we don't see Women mass shooters does suggest we have a problem in Male culture which is creating these monsters - I don't agree with her that it is "Toxic Masculinity" (primarily because thats far to generic a term for way too many cultural facets) but the point stands.

3) And? Hitchens was all she said - just because they are dead doesn't mean we should revere them and ignore their faults... I am pretty sure you have criticised a number of dead people in any number of threads - does this make all your arguments invalid? even when they are totally unrelated?

4) this one is difficult - technically she is right, she is using the technical definition of Sexism - she is not saying Men cannot be discriminated against only that any Discriminations men suffer cannot be Sexist as they hold the power. Personally I think the term Sexist has grown beyond its technical definition and now means any Discrimination which is purely based on Sex.

Greyblades

05-05-2015, 17:15

I am really unsure what are you are driving at here?Bother.

I wasnt driving at anthing in particular with the first 2, I was baiting, and I am somewhat dissapointed that I hooked the moderate and not the fringe.

Still, while we're here, why is it a bad thing that the damsel in distress exist? Why would the fact that bayonetta is as she is be worth of comment?

2) Shes actually right here - the fact we don't see Women mass shooters does suggest we have a problem in Male culture which is creating these monsters - I don't agree with her that is is "Toxic Masculinity" (primarily because thats far to generic a term for way too many cultural facets) but the point stands. Your point, not hers, and her point is a rather blatant correlation equals causation fallacy, combine that with the date coinciding with a massacre it tells the people reading "I have an agenda and I dont care if I anger people who are mourning this tragedy by using it to prove a petty (in comparison) point"

Which is a very counterproductive thing to do if she had any wish to persuade anyone outside her followers.

3) And? Hitchens was all she said - just because they are dead doesn't mean we should revere them and ignore their faults... I am pretty sure you have criticised a number of dead people in any number of threads - does this make all your arguments invalid? even when they are totally unrelated? Hitchens was dead not 3 days and this woman comes out and blasts him, true or not it is highly disrespectful

And again a very counterproductive thing to do if she had any wish to persuade anyone outside her followers.

4) this one is difficult - technically she is right, she is using the technical definition of Sexism - she is not saying Men cannot be discriminated against only that any Discriminations men suffer cannot be Sexist as they hold the power. Personally I think the term Sexist has grown beyond its technical definition and now means any Discrimination which is purely based on Sex.
The oxford English dictionary defines sexism as: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex. (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sexism)
Typically but not exclusively, and there's nothing about this prejudice+power in it, by claiming otherwise ms sarkeesian is validating the often mentioned idea that feminists are attempting to rewrite language to suit their purposes... Actually now that I think about it why is there be any need for the "Typically women" bit?

The intent of the last 3 was to establish how little ms sarkeesian seems to care about avoiding the stereotypes of the crazy feminist.

See I dont mind the moderate stuff, I wouldnt mind seeing more games geared towards women, I like equality, I shouldnt have to say it but I do, however the impression we get from anita is that she wont stop at equality, she keeps attacking things geared towards men as if they must be eliminated.

She keeps reading too far into things and assuming the worst intent; "no its not a cliche that comes from the natural desire of young men to be a hero and by doing so earn the affection of a mamber of the oppsite sex, it's an insulting convention that is made to degrade women." "No it's not the creator trying to pander to immature young men by giving them some pretty women, it must be the male developers systematically objectifying women and making young men think of the opposite sex as objects. "

It's as if she's willfully misintepriting companies pandering to male immaturity as oppressing women.

Instead of asking for more to be made for women she is shaming people with the seeming intent that less be made for men, and surely, cant the market grow to accomidate both?

If most Feminists want equality, that's great, I'd love to see it, but to uplift themselves they shouldnt have to drag men down to do it, and the impression that is given when people like sarkeesian keep showing up in the news or on television instead of moderates is that all feminists want to do so.

Sarmatian

05-05-2015, 18:35

Bother.

I wasnt driving at anthing in particular with the first 2, I was baiting, and I am somewhat dissapointed that I hooked the moderate and not the fringe.

I don't understand who you actually wanted to bait. The Org is generally a moderate discussion board. I would have answered it in the same way as Moody, but he saved me the trouble.

If most Feminists want equality, that's great, I'd love to see it, but to uplift themselves they shouldnt have to drag men down to do it, and the impression that is given when people like sarkeesian keep showing up in the news or on television instead of moderates is that all feminists want to do so.

It's very hard to be a moderate when most people don't even perceive a problem. You have been consistently arguing "how she says stuff" instead of "why she says stuff". You didn't acknowledge that there is an issue to discuss here - you tried to discredit her rather than admit it. Since that failed, you've been consistently "upping the ante", coming with all new ways to show just how wrong her examples were. That just put you on a downward spiral.

When we reach the point that majority of people understand that there is a problem, there won't be need for people like Sarkeesian any more, and moderates will take over.

Greyblades

05-05-2015, 19:40

I don't understand who you actually wanted to bait. The Org is generally a moderate discussion board. I would have answered it in the same way as Moody, but he saved me the trouble. And it seems my bait has worked in a roundabout fashion: hanging back and showing up only when it seems that the moderates have put the opposition on the defensive. Congratulations, despite your belief, you are the fringe.

It's very hard to be a moderate when most people don't even perceive a problem. You have been consistently arguing "how she says stuff" instead of "why she says stuff". You didn't acknowledge that there is an issue to discuss here - you tried to discredit her rather than admit it.
Or maybe I did that because the idea that games can affect human behavior is a false assumption that was discredited in the age of jack thompson and I no longer felt like bashing my head against the brick wall that was proving a lie to ironside. Thus did I attempt something to end the monotony and caught a rather smug fish.

Of course, neither your explanation, or mine, of my action's intent can be proven to the level of satisfaction that will break through any observer's particular prejudices, which funnily enough was my point during my bout with ironside.

When we reach the point that majority of people understand that there is a problem, there won't be need for people like Sarkeesian any more, and moderates will take over.

You got precident for that assumption? 'cause way I see it if you keep letting her get center stage you wont ever get to that point.

To explain I must modify something I said earlier:

"For the gaming industry to shift the developers cannot just dissassociate themselves with thier core costumer base for the promise of a new one. Sure, for a time there will be greater diversity but unless the new customer base proves itself as profitable as the old one the developers will be faced with the choice of switching back or accept being outpaced by the competition and made irrelevant.
Unless you can pad this customer base with enough people to become as profitable as the old base, people willing to keep paying for new products for years to come and wont leave after a fasion, it will devolve to another niche market and become largely ignored by the mainstream."

The people most suited to pad that base are the preexisting gamers, the same people Sarkeesian is apparantly uninterested in talking with, though for that matter she seems uninterested in talking to anyone who doesn't already believe.

Good cop-Bad cop requires an actual good cop, and only the bad cop has reached mainstrean television.

Sorry Ironside, but Husar has made me tired of arguing minutia, and this guy had been bugging me all thead.

Sarmatian

05-05-2015, 21:20

And it seems my bait has worked in a roundabout fashion: hanging back and showing up only when it seems that the moderates have put the opposition on the defensive. Congratulations, despite your belief, you are the fringe.

Que?

Or maybe I did that because the idea that games can affect human behavior is a false assumption that was discredited in the age of jack thompson and I no longer felt like bashing my head against the brick wall that was proving a lie to ironside. Thus did I attempt something to end the monotony and caught a rather smug fish.

Everything affects human behavior. The time I spend as a kid playing a game called Civilization got me interested into history, geography, politics and economy, personally.

Of course, neither your explanation, or mine, of my action's intent can be proven to the level of satisfaction that will break through any observer's particular prejudices, which funnily enough was my point during my bout with ironside.

Nonsense. Prejudices break all the time, when society awareness becomes large enough.

You got precident for that assumption? 'cause way I see it if you keep letting her get center stage you wont ever get to that point.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with some friends about Gay Pride parade in Serbia a couple of years ago. They were all understanding of gay people, at least that's how they tried to portray themselves but in reality were intolerant.

"I don't mind gay people, but why do they have to have a parade?"

That question is actually the reason why they have to have a parade. When we get to a point when a parade is announced and everybody goes "Meh, I don't care" and go about their business, that will be the last Gay Pride parade.

History is full of precedents. Whenever a movement is excluded from the main stream and ignored, it tends to radicalize.

To explain I must modify something I said earlier:

"For the gaming industry to shift the developers cannot just dissassociate themselves with thier core costumer base for the promise of a new one. Sure, for a time there will be greater diversity but unless the new customer base proves itself as profitable as the old one the developers will be faced with the choice of switching back or accept being outpaced by the competition and made irrelevant.
Unless you can pad this customer base with enough people to become as profitable as the old base, people willing to keep paying for new products for years to come and wont leave after a fasion, it will devolve to another niche market and become largely ignored by the mainstream."

And that would be wrong.

It assumes gamers play games because there is sexism in them.

The people most suited to pad that base are the preexisting gamers, the same people Sarkeesian is apparantly uninterested in talking with, though for that matter she seems uninterested in talking to anyone who doesn't already believe.

I don't care about Sarkeesian. Why are you under this assumption that this is about her? You don't like the messenger, so you're ignoring the message?

Sorry Ironside, but Husar has made me tired of arguing minutia, and this guy had been bugging me all thead.

Who is "this guy"? Me? I've been bugging you all thread?

Greyblades

05-06-2015, 16:05

Que?
Well, fringe, or maybe a person less prone to pedantry, I can't tell these days but oddly enough it is refreshing, I think I am going to enjoy this more than husar and ironside.

Everything affects human behavior. The time I spend as a kid playing a game called Civilization got me interested into history, geography, politics and economy, personally. And did it give you an instictual hatred of Ghandi's india?
Did it make you believe that all the other nationalities in the world serve only as vassals or targets of conquest?
Because the idea that games like bayonetta encourages sexism is based upon the same logic that civilization encourages nationalism, and the idea of altering civilization to take out the nationalist "elements" is just as absurd.

Nonsense. Prejudices break all the time, when society awareness becomes large enough. Perhaps a better word would have been preconceptions, less of the overly negative connotations prejudice has earned over the years as an accusation.

This reminded me of a conversation I had with some friends about Gay Pride parade in Serbia a couple of years ago. They were all understanding of gay people, at least that's how they tried to portray themselves but in reality were intolerant.

"I don't mind gay people, but why do they have to have a parade?"

That question is actually the reason why they have to have a parade. When we get to a point when a parade is announced and everybody goes "Meh, I don't care" and go about their business, that will be the last Gay Pride parade.

History is full of precedents. Whenever a movement is excluded from the main stream and ignored, it tends to radicalize.
When a group is fighting for equal rights under the law everyone who believes in equal rights cheers, but once the equal rights issue has ended in thier success and they go on to demand more, that people themselves change thier own views to conform with thiers, that's when the support evaporates.
People are entitled to thier opinion, despite the derision that phrase has endured, and when the only proof of the need for a parade is that people question "Why do they have to have a parade" instead of a legitimate injustice, the people doing it come off not as a wronged party but a bunch of agitators looking for any reason to protest no matter how petty

Not giving up until everyone thinks like you, tell me if you didnt agree with them, would you tolerate such things?
Would you tolerate without protest, say, a vegan group who wont stop protesting until everyone stops disagreeing that meat is murder? Or an animal Right's group that wont go away until everyone says they agree that fur and leather are evil? Or perhaps a Yugoslavian Nationalist who wont stop getting in your face?

Also, isn't, "meh, I dont care" only said when someone wants to ignore something?

And that would be wrong.

It assumes gamers play games because there is sexism in them. Tell me, are you sure it is sexist because you could see it on your own or did you need someone else to explain why it is sexist? And if you needed for it to be explained to you, what makes you think the people who consume it are any more aware of the connotations? The Jack Thompson debacle put to rest the idea that games can affect behavior subliminaly so if they are not aware of it, why does it matter?

What you call sexist the rest of the world calls pandering to adolescence and immaturity in men, which despite the protests is not inheriently oppressive to women.

I don't care about Sarkeesian. Why are you under this assumption that this is about her? You don't like the messenger, so you're ignoring the message? If the message is that male orientated games should be neutered to accomodate women then I most certainly have not been ignoring the message.

Strawman aside I dont see the interpriations of tropes as reason to edit games popular fiction shouldnt be censored to accomidate those the fiction isnt targeting and I find it abhorrant to shame creators into carrying out that censorship or to shame people for enjoying something that is literaly harmless.

I believe the problem is that the gaming industry does not produce enough material directed at women and needs to make more, the gaming industry can grow to accomidate that just like the movie industry and like the movie industry it does not have to ditch the stuff directed towards men to do it.

My understanding of the industry is that right now a large part of the gaming industry is geared towards men because men are it's main moneymaker, they concist of a majority of the consumer base and buy the most games. With time and encouragment the gaming industry can grow to accomidate womens interests as well but currently the female part of the consumer base is not large enough to make the same amount of money as the male. Most gaming devs wont make games if they would be unprofitable and to make female orientated games as profitable as male ones the gaming industry has to draw in more women into gaming.

That will be a slow process and the games that bring them in will still have to sell enough copies to keep the makers afloat and interested, and to do that the first projects will need to also attract some men just to break even.

You should care about sarkeesian because she is actively sabotaging this, attacking men's media with absurd assertions that games want the player "to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters" based on mere interpritation, combine that with a lack self control in exploiting tragedy and an attitude bordering on mysandry resulting in a talking head that alienates the consumer base and in doing so making the growth she apparantly wants harder to accomplish.

I would say you need a MLK to this Malcom X, but I fear malcom would take it as an insult.

Husar

05-06-2015, 16:18

If I may ask this random unrelated question: How many male prostitutes does GTA have?

Greyblades

05-06-2015, 16:34

None, that I know of and I predict your intepritation of the reason why is going to be full of bad implications that you will think is the only reason.

I wouldnt mind seeing some included, but neither the creator or consumer deserves to be judged as anything for it's lack, nor is the idea that thier absence inadverntently encourages homophobia or whatever correct.

Sarmatian

05-06-2015, 16:49

And did it give you an instictual hatred of Ghandi's india?
Did it make you believe that all the other nationalities in the world serve only as vassals or targets of conquest?
Because the idea that games like bayonetta encourages sexism is based upon the same logic that civilization encourages nationalism, and the idea of altering civilization to take out the nationalist "elements" is just as absurd.

No, because the game doesn't encourage you to hate Gandhi. Strategy games are less personal.

When a group is fighting for equal rights under the law everyone who believes in equal rights cheers, but once the equal rights issue has ended in thier success and they go on to demand more, that people themselves change thier own views to conform with thiers, that's when the support evaporates.
People are entitled to thier opinion, despite the derision that phrase has endured, and when the only proof of the need for a parade is that people question "Why do they have to have a parade" instead of a legitimate injustice, the people doing it come off not as a wronged party but a bunch of agitators looking for any reason to protest no matter how petty

It is harder to notice when you're not experiencing it yourself.

Also, isn't, "meh, I dont care" only said when someone wants to ignore something?

In this case, with "I don't care" I meant the literal meaning.

Tell me, are you sure it is sexist because you could see it on your own or did you need someone else to explain why it is sexist? And if you needed for it to be explained to you, what makes you think the people who consume it are any more aware of the connotations? The Jack Thompson debacle put to rest the idea that games can affect behavior subliminaly so if they are not aware of it, why does it matter?

There are three cases (that I know of, maybe there's more) in which murders were committed by kids or adolescent males where they themselves admitted they did because they were inspired by GTA.

In 2003, Devin Smith, a 16 year old, was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle. After being taken into custody, he took the gun from police officers, shot and killed three. He showed no remorse later and said "Life is a game. You've got to die sometimes." GTA fan.

An 8 year old played GTA in 2013, and shot his grandmother in the back of her head. Investigators discovered that just prior to the shooting, he was playing GTA.

A 14 year old boy, Eldon Samuel, admitted to a premeditated murder of his father and brother. He shot his father three times in the head and shot his brother four times with a shotgun and failed to kill him. After that, he stabbed his brother several times. He later admitted he was inspired by Trevor from GTA V, and wanted to emulate him.

Also, The American Psychological Association, The American Medical Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Psychiatric Association and The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, all believe there is a causal link between violent virtual behavior and real world violence.

If there is a link between violence in games and violence in real life, it is logical enough to assume there is a link between sexism in games and sexism in real life.

Maybe all those cases are coincidences, maybe top medical and psychiatry association got it all wrong, but it is enough for me to seriously consider what they have to say.

Greyblades

05-06-2015, 17:10

No, because the game doesn't encourage you to hate Gandhi. Strategy games are less personal. I recind my assensment, you are fringe. Drinking the "games make you violent and sexist, except the ones I play" Kool-aid with gusto.

It is harder to notice when you're not experiencing it yourself. Hi, gamer here.
Our community has been constantly threatened by a moarlistic minority who have been trying to censor my media, something I care about, for decades.

We were and still are judged for liking something other people dont, the right used to call us murderers in waiting and now the left call us mysogynists.

The only thing keeping censorship away has been an earnest effort by the majority of our community to dispell the fearmongering that has seeped into the mass media and only recently are we being accepted by the mainstream as something other than a tickng timebomb, we still have to work on the mysigynistic pigs thing but we'll get there all the same. .

In this case, with "I don't care" I meant the literal meaning. And he goes and ignores everything I have been saying

Hey, Ironside, Husar, Sir Moody, you know when I mentioned the Horseshoe theory? That the far right and far left are closer related to eachother than the center? This is what I meant.:

There are three cases (that I know of, maybe there's more) in which murders were committed by kids or adolescent males where they themselves admitted they did because they were inspired by GTA.

In 2003, Devin Smith, a 16 year old, was arrested for driving a stolen vehicle. After being taken into custody, he took the gun from police officers, shot and killed three. He showed no remorse later and said "Life is a game. You've got to die sometimes." GTA fan.

An 8 year old played GTA in 2013, and shot his grandmother in the back of her head. Investigators discovered that just prior to the shooting, he was playing GTA.

A 14 year old boy, Eldon Samuel, admitted to a premeditated murder of his father and brother. He shot his father three times in the head and shot his brother four times with a shotgun and failed to kill him. After that, he stabbed his brother several times. He later admitted he was inspired by Trevor from GTA V, and wanted to emulate him.

Also, The American Psychological Association, The American Medical Association, The American Academy of Pediatrics, The American Psychiatric Association and The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, all believe there is a causal link between violent virtual behavior and real world violence.

If there is a link between violence in games and violence in real life, it is logical enough to assume there is a link between sexism in games and sexism in real life.

Maybe all those cases are coincidences, maybe top medical and psychiatry association got it all wrong, but it is enough for me to seriously consider what they have to say.

The guy who has been supporting you with thanks and snide comments has just gone full Jack Thompson.

I cant believe my bait actually worked, holy crap.

Husar

05-06-2015, 17:12

Sarmatian

05-06-2015, 17:20

I recind my assensment, you are fringe. Drinking the "games make you violent and sexist, except the ones I play" Kool-aid with gusto.

I don't know if you're trying to practice your debate skills and are trying to work out if ignoring the point and making another one make you appear right or smart, but I can tell you that it is failing, at least with me. Maybe it works on some of those reading this, though.

Not all games have sexism in them, just like not all games are violent.

Also, a "causal link" between violence/sexism in games and in real life doesn't mean that everyone playing violent/sexist games will commit violence or be a sexist

Hi, gamer here.
Our community has been constantly threatened by a moarlistic society who has been trying to censor my media, something I care about, for decades.

So? Now you want to disregard valid criticism because it threatens your (and mine) favourite hobby? Cry me a river.

We were and still are judged for liking something other people dont, the right used to call us murderers in waiting and now the left call us mysogynists.

The only thing keeping censorship away has been an earnest effort by the majority of our community to dispell the fearmongering that has seeped into the mass media and only recently are we being accepted by the mainstream as something other than a tickng timebomb, we still have to work on the mysigynistic pigs thing but we'll get there all the same.

A lot of resentment in those words. I think we are approaching the crux of the issue. How old were you when your parents tried to limit your gaming time? How did it make you feel.

The guy who has been supporting you with thanks and snide comments has just gone full Jack Thompson.

I cant believe my bait actually worked, holly crap.

And Jack Thompson is...?

Husar

05-06-2015, 17:20

Hey, Ironside, Husar, Sir Moody, you know when I mentioned the Horseshoe theory? That the far right and far left are closer related to eachother than the center? This is what I meant.:
[...]
The guy who has been supporting you with thanks and snide comments has just gone full Jack Thompson.

I cant believe my bait actually worked, holy crap.

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-over-an-Obsession

Greyblades

05-06-2015, 17:25

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-over-an-Obsessioncute.

Sir Moody

05-06-2015, 18:56

And Jack Thompson is...?

A prominent game Critic from the 90's and early 00's who called for a ban on violent games.

Ironically enough he is now a major supporter of the Gamergate moment... I kid you not...

Sarmatian

05-06-2015, 19:12

A prominent game Critic from the 90's and early 00's who called for a ban on violent games.

Ironically enough he is now a major supporter of the Gamergate moment... I kid you not...

I read a wikipedia article just now.

So, Greyblades, anyone who disagrees with you is Jack Thompson? :laugh4: You're cute, indeed.

Philippus Flavius Homovallumus

05-06-2015, 19:34

A prominent game Critic from the 90's and early 00's who called for a ban on violent games.

Ironically enough he is now a major supporter of the Gamergate moment... I kid you not...

So you mean he finally played some computer games and the DID break him?

Sir Moody

05-06-2015, 19:58

So you mean he finally played some computer games and the DID break him?

nope he still calls for a ban on violent games - he just hates Feminists more than Gamers...

Greyblades

05-07-2015, 18:47

I'm not sure if I am surprised by that.

I read a wikipedia article just now.

So, Greyblades, anyone who disagrees with you is Jack Thompson? :laugh4: You're cute, indeed.

No, you're just repeating his arguments while also supporting sarkeesian's arguments for the same reasons.

My impression is that Moody and Ironside seem to be operating upon the idea that what they advocate is different to what he did because it's the left saying sexism and not the right saying violence, I beleive they are allowing political affiliation to override any objections they have against censorship and they need a wakeup call. So I gambled and attempted to provoke a reaction that I could use prove my point.

And here you are coming out of the sidelines; advocating both side's censorship with no political idealism to hide a belief that full grown adults cannot be trusted to view fiction without being negatively affected by it.

When I saw it happen I was giddy that it worked out better than I had ever imagined.

Now I am depressed that a single gamble did more to prove my point than hours of thought and effort.

Sir Moody

05-07-2015, 19:04

No, you're just repeating his arguments while also supporting sarkeesian's arguments for the same reasons.

My impression is that Moody and Ironside seem to be operating upon the idea that what they advocate is different to what he did because it's the left saying sexism and not the right saying violence, I beleive they are allowing political affiliation to override any objections they have against censorship and they need a wakeup call. So I gambled and attempted to provoke a reaction that I could use prove my point.

And here you are coming out of the sidelines; advocating both side's censorship with no political idealism to hide a belief that full grown adults cannot be trusted to view fiction without being negatively affected by it.

I was frankly giddy that it worked out better than I had ever imagined.

Who exactly is calling for censorship?

Anita isn't, Ironside isn't, I am not and I haven't seen Sarmatian calling for it either (unless I am misreading him).

Sarmatian is arguing there is a link between Violence and Violent games but he hasn't suggested banning them...

I am on the fence on the issue - I don't believe Violent games create violent people but I do believe it desensitises people to violence (and I think that is true of all media not just games) - we aren't as shocked at graphic violence as we used to be (I can remember watching the opening of Saving Private Ryan and being openly horrified - now I don't bat an eyelid).

I think the same is true of sexism in games (and other media) - while it wont make gamers sexist it does reinforce sexist ideas within our culture which makes people less likely to question them.

Greyblades

05-07-2015, 19:30

Who exactly is calling for censorship?

Anita isn't, Ironside isn't, I am not and I haven't seen Sarmatian calling for it either (unless I am misreading him).I must congratulate sarkeesian for not taking the suicidal route and going to the courts, using shame to coerce the consumers to stop buying games they like is a big step up in effective agenda pushing. A different method does not change the same lack of credibility.

Sarmatian is arguing there is a link between Violence and Violent games but he hasn't suggested banning them...

I am on the fence on the issue - I don't believe Violent games create violent people but I do believe it desensitises people to violence (and I think that is true of all media not just games) - we aren't as shocked at graphic violence as we used to be (I can remember watching the opening of Saving Private Ryan and being openly horrified - now I don't bat an eyelid).

I think the same is true of sexism in games (and other media) - while it wont make gamers sexist it does reinforce sexist ideas within our culture which makes people less likely to question them.
It might sound right to you, but being desensitized to fictional violence does not translate to being desensitized to real life violence, when Jack Thompson attempted to prove otherwise to the american courts it was dismissed as baseless. He tried again and failed again, doing it so many times so many times that he was disbarred.

The sexism argument works on the same logic, as samaritan exhibits, so why would it be any more legitimate?

Greyblades

05-07-2015, 21:26

I'd like to correct this part:

Who exactly is calling for censorship?

Anita isn't, Ironside isn't, I am not and I haven't seen Sarmatian calling for it either (unless I am misreading him).I must congratulate sarkeesian for not taking the suicidal route and going to the courts, using shame to coerce the consumers to stop buying games they like is a big step up in effective agenda pushing. A different method does not change the same lack of credibility.I think I got a bit carried away there.

She isnt and you arent, these guys are:http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/820/941/a84.jpg

Sarkeesian's ideas are unsubstantial and rather counterproductive as I explained but they are being used by these guys to shame and coerce the consumers to stop buying games this group doesnt like.

Sarkeesian is like ayn rand, her ideas are unsubstantiated and imo wrong, but they're just an opinion. However like rand she gains ire she doesnt deserve (including mine, sadly) due to others using thier ideas to justify deplorable behavior, like Ayn Rand is used to justify tax dodging these are used to shame men for likeing juvinile materiel they are painting as sexist.

Now, as to why the gaming news websites exhibited are being so blatant about their agenda, that comes down to gamergate and another discussion altogether.

Sir Moody

05-07-2015, 21:57

none of those articles are calling for a ban on games - they are (in a very hamfisted way) saying is that the gaming identity (i.e. the community) has a problem - that problem being harassment.

These articles date back to the beginning of Gamersgate (these articles actually gave it its name) - basically the whole Quinnsipricary nonsense led to attacks on the Gaming press (under the now proven wrong accusation she slept with reporters to get good reviews) - in a typical response the gaming press circled the wagons and responded with the articles above - basically a knee jerk attack at those they saw turning on them - this of course blew up in their faces and turned into what we know as Gamersgate today.

Not one article talked about censoring games - a lot bemoaned the "death" of the gamer identity (basically they were nostalgically longing for the 90's when the gaming community was FAR more niche and not as openly hostile to each other) but that isn't a call for censorship

Sarmatian

05-07-2015, 22:25

It might sound right to you, but being desensitized to fictional violence does not translate to being desensitized to real life violence, when Jack Thompson attempted to prove otherwise to the american courts it was dismissed as baseless. He tried again and failed again, doing it so many times so many times that he was disbarred.

The sexism argument works on the same logic, as samaritan exhibits, so why would it be any more legitimate?

As Moody explained, I didn't call for a ban on games. I pointed out to examples where games influenced behavior and findings of some respectable associations of experts claiming there is a causal link. You rejected it out of hand, without any logical explanation. "It was an attack on games and I like games" is not valid argument if you're older than three. It's not valid even then, but you can be forgiven.

If you read the first post I wrote in the thread, my point is that sticking your head in the sand just because you are a gamer is wrong. Gaming community tends to act like you, refusing to even allow a discussion to be had.

You're not even reading what was written. Instead, you are equating any criticism of status quo with an extreme criticism. What is next? If I say I like some communist ideals, you're gonna equate me with Pol Pot? And be happy how smart you are because you proved I'm a violent, murdering dictator?

If you are interested in a serious discussion instead of juvenile exercise in self-aggrandizement, get back to me. Until then, so long.

Ironside

05-07-2015, 22:42

Been busy and the thread has moved a lot since then.

The guy who has been supporting you with thanks and snide comments has just gone full Jack Thompson.

I cant believe my bait actually worked, holy crap.

Age 8, 14, 16. On games with age restriction 15. And you could see the reason for the age restrictions. It's a few steps below Jack Thompson.

I got the feeling we should move on to that sexism in video games (and other forms of media) can have an influence on adult people? It seems to have moved in that direction and since you reject that notion and a lot of the debate is based on that it does have an influence...

Does media exposure have any influence at all? Of course not, that's why all commercials are only informative and quite rare and not a major business. Are still busy, so digging through the research papers are going to take a while.

For a starter: Huge quote incoming from "Keeping Abreast of Hypersexuality: A Video Game Character Content Analysis", since it's behind a paywall unless you have access.

Typically, children spend an hour per day playing, with girls devoting an average of 53 min and boys 68 min (KFF 2002). Another nationwide KFF survey (Roberts et al. 1999) found that 8- to 18-year-olds play video games 27 min a day, with boys spending considerably more time gaming than girls (41 min vs. 12 min, respectively). Thus, children may likely be exposed to many sexualized portrayals very early in their socio-emotional development.
If video game content were sexualized in nature, what type of impact would portrayals of sexuality in video games have on youth? The growing body of literature on the influence of television on sexual socialization and stereotyping can give us some idea. Studies have shown that children begin to develop attitudes toward body types between the ages of six and seven years and as children get older these attitudes become stronger (Spitzer et al. 1999). Differences between female body sizes in the media and actual body sizes have been linked to eating disorders (Field et al. 1999), low self-esteem (Polce-Lynch et al. 2001), body dissatisfaction (Harrison and Cantor 1997), feelings of objectification (Frederickson and Roberts 1997), and to the attitude that women’s bodies are projects that need to be worked on (Brumberg 1997, c.f. Murnen et al. 2003). With effects such as these it should come as no surprise that one study noticed an inverse relationship between playing video/computer games and girls’ self-esteem scores (Funk and Buchman 1996).
Females are not the only ones affected by unrealistic body images in the media. Portrayals of muscle-bound men may also set standards for male gamers. Such depictions may contribute to body dissatisfaction among some men, as well as such risky behaviors as steroid use (Labre 2002). Sexualized portrayals of women in the media have been linked to objectification, leading some males to view women and their bodies as possessions (Frederickson and Roberts 1997). Adolescent males’ learning to objectify women from media may lead to negative social, legal, and relational damage.
Because hypersexualized video game characters may encourage or reinforce these negative effects, it is necessary to understand how this may occur. Social cognitive theory (Bandura 2002) provides a theoretical framework to understand how children and adolescents can learn attitudes and beliefs from exposure to video game characters. Bandura (2002) proposed that attention, retention, production, and motivation are processes that govern our ability to learn through observation.
Attentional processes are those that determine which information and observed actions are extracted from a modeled, learning environment. Attractiveness is one variable that affects attentional processing. If a game character is perceived as attractive, observers may be more likely to find them socially acceptable and influential (Bandura 2002). A recent quote from a game reviewer suggests: “There’s no arguing that sex sells. And with the typical gamer a young adult male, you can’t really blame the industry for catering to their target audience” (Morris 2002, n.p.). Overtly sexual, provocatively dressed, or partially naked male or female characters may be very attractive, attention-getting attributes of video game play.
Getting a gamer’s attention is not enough to invoke learning. Without the ability to symbolically code and retain information, Bandura argues (2002, p. 127) observational learning would not be possible. Retention processes involve restructuring modeled events into rules for memory (Bandura 2002). In video games, a player has the ability to witness how characters present themselves and interact with other characters over and over again. Recalling that 8- to 18-year-old males typically play video games for 41 min per day (Kaiser Family Foundation 2002), repeated exposure through extended play should make it very easy for a video game player to create, rehearse, and strengthen symbolic representations of events. Gender schema theory suggests (Calvert and Huston 1987) and subsequent research reveals that exposure to stereotyped, sexual interactions on television can provoke schema that categorize women as sexual, submissive, and less intelligent than their male counterparts (Thompson and Pleck 1986). As such, repeated exposure to attractive, scantly clad female characters may be problematic for young, male gamers’ sexual and relational development.
Production processes “guide the construction and execution of behavior patterns” (Bandura 2002, p.129) which can then be compared to the symbolic representations stored in memory. In using a symbolic representation of a modeled act, a person can adapt it for use in a variety of different situations. Gamers could learn attitudes and beliefs about sex roles and gender stereotyping and apply them to real world situations they find themselves in each day. For example, if a game player notices that males in video games are active, problem-solving heroes and women are incapable and always needing help from men, sex-based stereotypes may manifest themselves in the home, school, or in other social circles.
Motivational processes (Bandura 2002, pp. 129–130) revolve around a person’s ability to create, change, and modify his or her behavior within a social structure. If attitudes are shared by a peer group or reinforced the schemata are likely to be strengthened. Studies generally support this rationale in the violence domain. Children and adults who are exposed to models that are rewarded or not punished for violent actions are more likely to be aggressive immediately after viewing (Bandura 1965; Lando and Donnerstein 1978; Paik and Comstock 1994). Video games certainly contain reward mechanisms. Increases in scores, extra lives, or access to passwords or codes can serve as agents of reinforcement. In the game BMX XXX, players who successfully accomplish the missions are rewarded with codes to view real video clips of exotic dancers performing a strip-tease.
To summarize, video game players, through repeated exposure to attractive, overtly sexualized characters, may begin to develop scripts about gender stereotypes. When sex is used as a reward, players may assume that this type of activity is reinforced and sanctioned by society. Because of this, it is important to examine sexuality in video games.

Bolded part is how sexism differs from violence. When was the last time you got punished for say male gazing? And while most of the article talks about youth, notice the children and adults part.

Frederickson and Roberts 1997 "Objectification theory: toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks" is apparently the starting article talking about objectification of women. It's free but also 36 pages so.

edyzmedieval

05-07-2015, 23:35

On a side note, Clarkson is actually working on a car show, but AFAIK no details yet.

Greyblades

05-08-2015, 01:39

Hurrah

none of those articles are calling for a ban on games - they are (in a very hamfisted way) saying is that the gaming identity (i.e. the community) has a problem - that problem being harassment.

These articles date back to the beginning of Gamersgate (these articles actually gave it its name) - basically the whole Quinnsipricary nonsense led to attacks on the Gaming press (under the now proven wrong accusation she slept with reporters to get good reviews) - in a typical response the gaming press circled the wagons and responded with the articles above - basically a knee jerk attack at those they saw turning on them - this of course blew up in their faces and turned into what we know as Gamersgate today.

Not one article talked about censoring games - a lot bemoaned the "death" of the gamer identity (basically they were nostalgically longing for the 90's when the gaming community was FAR more niche and not as openly hostile to each other) but that isn't a call for censorship
I must say you are better informed that I thought, however:

1. Technically Alan Baldwin coined the term the day before.

2. The quinspiracy was internet drama, Gamergate was started from the fallout of it. During the drama Nathan grayson revealed was in a relationship with zoe quinn before or during the writing of this (https://archive.today/bsfJb)article among others and hadnt revealed it.

This was in breach of journalistic ethics (as this guy explains (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miTHUdV6MBo)) this wasn't an egreigeously biased article but the lack of response from his employers, be it discipline or even acknowledgement, gained attention and with digging several other breaches were found like:

Ben kuchera was paying ms quinn's patreon before writing this (https://archive.today/iuDHi) about her, Patrica Hernandez was found inviting zoe quinn to a meeting a year before writing this (https://archive.today/NWiFa)and this (https://archive.today/WhAKI). Soon there were cases found that didnt include zoe quinn; patricia hernandez giving favourable coverage to her roomate Anna Anthropy (http://talkingship.com/wp/2014/08/26/patricia-hernandez-anna-anthropy-kotaku-controversy/), Lauren WainWright penning a number (https://archive.today/QZopb) of (https://archive.today/Gf3dT) articles (https://archive.today/5TnDf) on her own employer square-enix (https://i.imgur.com/5iaJJ8I.jpg) without confiding the information on the page.
Questions were asked and in response the gaming press indeed "circled the wagons and responded with the articles above" which touched off a consumer revolt long in the making, the highlight being these (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/17/exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite/) articles (http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/09/21/gamejournopros-we-reveal-every-journalist-on-the-list/), linking a large swath of gaming journalists together in one mailing list.

3. The articles expressed a false implication; that the harrassment were inherent to the gamers themselves. Harrassment is an internet wide problem, one that plagues everywhere from MLP fandoms to Stormfront. Without consequences the GIFT reigns and to imply it as a problem with gamer culture specifically is highly disingenuous and, as you probably already noticed, a dodge to avoid a real issue.

Why do I believe that this is censorship?
Well, you dont need government action to censor if you control the media.

During the quinnspiracy it was shown through that mailing list that miss quinn had enough influence that journalists were being kept from reporting on it negatively, I believe that is censorship in itself.

In the sarkeesian issue, all those articles pointed to the harassers while none even acknowledged the existance of legitimate critics of sarkeesian. I feel it is enough to convince me that these two people, two women who cry about the toxicity of masculinity, have (or had) influence over gaming journalism and I do believe they were using it to push an effort to keep thier critics out of the limelight.

Then we have all these journalists trying to redefine the term gamer as another variant of undesirable; telling the creators they dont need to be the audience, insisting they are being left behind, declaring gamers are over.

Combined it's enough to make me think there was and still is an attempt to push the idea that liking juvinile materiel makes you sexist and the media was being used to silence anyone who dissented.

But that's my opinion and as ms sarkeesian has shown, an opinion does not have to be based in reality.

Sorry, Ironside, but I'm trying to limit myself to one long post a day and this seemed more urgent. I'll answer you on saturday.