| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| A confused summary on Gamergate |
| 2014-09-11 |
| This tawdry scandal boils down to a young woman who was trying to get attention for a "social justice" game she developed, who then decides to shop her product. The problem is she can't, or won't, keep her legs closed as she is doing it. When she was called on it, some gaming media decide to declare the era of the white misogynistic gamer to be over. And gamers responded. Gaming media should congratulate themselves. They have arrived: a legitimate paid media, espousing lefitst values while denigrating those who oppose those values. You really don't get a sense of the scandal in the linked article, but that is only because it is so weird, it defies description. From TFA: It was during this rising crescendo of malcontent that a sudden chorus of articles were published from numerous gaming outlets claiming, more or less, that the age of the “gamer” was over. Gamers as we knew and stereotyped them��"white, male nerds with deep-seeded fears of both reality and women��"were going extinct, and all this backlash over the Quinn scandal was a reaction to this fact. Foremost among these was a piece by Gamasutra���tm�s Leigh Alexander. Game writers claimed that all cries of corruption in media were merely thin veils to give cover to what was, essentially, a misogynistic movement. In less than two days more than ten such articles appeared around the internet, on the one hand preaching to the choir, and on the other leading many already-upset gamers to cry foul even louder. This many articles at once all saying the same thing seemed fishy to many, though I would argue it had nothing to do with coordination and everything to do with like minds feeding off of one another. I wrote a piece on the notion as well, criticizing both sides of the controversy: Game journalists for condescending their audiences and gamers themselves for their lack of diligence in how they critique the press and their insistence on focusing on Social Justice Warriors. … Relationships between various indie developers, the press, and PR representatives led to more questions and theories on everything from the validity of the IGF awards, to the overall nature of the relationship between the press and the industry it covers, which many see as far too cozy. Lots of YouTube videos have been made about this. Lots of screenshots of tweets and various websites with lines drawn between various members of the press and the industry have also been created. It���tm�s a maze of allegations and connections without a solid destination. Whether any of these theories hold water is an open question and one that, in my mind, is secondary to one very big fact: Readers have grown deeply distrustful of the gaming press. |
| Posted by: |
| #21 A nice bit of sleuthing, Secret Master. Thank you - you're very kind trailing wife. It wasn't too hard to do. Just a little digital elbow grease combined with those odd bits of knowledge only Rantburgers seem to have. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2014-09-11 16:30 |
| #20 #18..cause unlike a herd of RINOs and gaggle of college presidents, the geeks and nerds are showing a heck of a lot of backbone to those whose ammo of catch phrases and trigger words have been so effective in the past in advancing the power of the Left. Suddenly, they find their tools are firing up a resistance they're unfamiliar with and responded with the standard 'double down' behavior, only to create even greater response in return. This is entertaining. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-09-11 16:03 |
| #19 So there's your video game media: a a Temple Bar coffee shop Marxist who'se good at getting and spending sucker's money. A nice bit of sleuthing, Secret Master. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-09-11 15:40 |
| #18 And I'm supposed to care about this crap why, exactly? |
| Posted by: Barbara 2014-09-11 15:02 |
| #17 By old media I mean media in the old style after magazines and newspaper modeling of business practices. Game blogs, and blog news sites for that matter can't get away with stuff like this for any length of time. They get exposed or drive away their audience pretty quickly. With blogs there are far more gatekeepers to the publication and it is a lot harder to corrupt that many people rather than the few editors and chosen writers in the traditional model. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2014-09-11 14:20 |
| #16 Eye but there's the rub DarthVader: they're *not* the Old Media. Video gaming media is typically "new" media. But what does that mean exactly? Case in point: video game "journalist" Tadhg Kelly (he's Irish, so that probably is his real name) was educated in Dublin, Ireland - which pretty much makes him a leftist-academic, even if you haven't read his weird article. He is co-owner of something called Simple Lifeforms, which "makes games, consultant and write about games as a business and an art form." Kind of nebulous, but okay. Sure. It's had two rounds of funding. The first for 100k in 2008, and second for 40k in 2011. Let's have a look at who has done the funding, shall we? The first 100k came from EM-Media, a Beverly Hills based company that "connect to a broad range of groups [Young, Old, Male, Female, Gay, and Straight] from all over the world bringing safe and enjoyable content to the comfort of the visitors own home." Though what the actually *do* to make money is extremely elusive, at least on the front page of their website where such things are typically made very apparent. You have to call people to find that out. So: mostly likely a liberal front group for channeling some wealthy dilitant's money to left-wing causes they might not want to be directly associated with. Or possibly just a left-leaning venture capital firm of some kind. Kind of amounts to the same thing when you're giving Tadhg and his pal 100k to play with, doesn't it? After Simple Lifeforms blew through 100k of somebody else's money in three years, they got another 40K from the DCU Ryan Academy for Entrepreneurship, "A joint venture between the Ryan family (Ryanair, Tiger Airlines etc) and Dublin City University." I see. So there's your video game media: a a Temple Bar coffee shop Marxist who'se good at getting and spending sucker's money. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2014-09-11 12:43 |
| #15 More than anything it shows how far the rot has gotten in media. You can't even trust gaming mags not to screw the public over to help themselves, just like their MSM cousins. The faster old media dies the happier I will be. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2014-09-11 11:47 |
| #14 OS, Avalon Hill hex Gettysburg to start. Now, two pounds (lead not plastic) of Prussians on the painting table and Borderlands 2 in the console. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-09-11 11:41 |
| #13 As for me, all I can say is: welcome 200m sweaty international brothers to the Far Right! You have nothing to loose but your consoles! Arise... at least far enough to use the Twitter app on your cell phone! |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2014-09-11 11:14 |
| #12 (Note to Oldspook: that's actually the related industry I work in.) |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2014-09-11 11:04 |
| #11 OS my knowledge of gaming is prehistoric--goes back to the days of operations research and game theory. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-09-11 11:03 |
| #10 If you want to have a really good look at this issue and what the moderator is talking about about, have a look a this (highly biased) article: http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/07/the-gamergate-question/ I work in a related industry and know some of the people involved. My two-cents worth: while the anti-Gamergate people have some valid points (that there's a certain amount of sour grapes, sexism, and *gasp* reaction involved), you can see from the attached article above that what author Tadhg Kelly really wants to talk about is how much he hates Republicans in general, and the Tea Party specifically... though neither have anything at all to do with Gamergate. He strains VERY hard to draw an analogy between "traditional" gamers and the "far right." Hysterically so. Basically, much as the American media no longer like the American people and desperately wish to replace us with someone, anyone else, the video gaming media no longer actually wants fat men in Green Lantern shirts who, you know, like to play video games a lot as their audience. Only... that's who likes to play video games. And they can't even claim its a race thing because there's there’s "about 150-200m of them around the world." THEM being the people the video gaming media no longer likes. That's a lot of eyes on screens to not want to read your articles there Tadhg. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2014-09-11 11:02 |
| #9 And yes I am a gamer from way back in Paleolithic times of paper and pencil gaming, and wargaming (back to the old days of Avalon Hill, Strategy & Tactics lifetime subscriber under Jim Dunnigan). I'm a grognard and damn proud of it |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-09-11 10:57 |
| #8 The stereotype of a raging profane 12 year old boy is no longer applicable. I play MMOs, and the gamers in that population are very social, and a lot of that particular population is older, and female. The use of the stereotype is as accurate for gamers as is the liberal press KKK image use as a stereotype for Conservatives. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-09-11 10:53 |
| #7 It's a chance to educate a whole new set of the population on the corruption of the press, and perhaps open some eyes to the possibility what they "know" just ain't so. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2014-09-11 10:49 |
| #6 Not being a gamer, my appreciation for the article is limited. The main stream press, as an institution, is fundamentally broken. I can wholeheartedly agree with that statement by OldSpook. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-09-11 10:25 |
| #5 Gamers? This is entirely Greek to me. I sense a sporting connection. Must be something like bowls. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2014-09-11 08:32 |
| #4 Dumb, dumb, dumb. Despite pervasive stereotypes, trailing daughter #2's gaming circle is about half female, as was my D&D group back in the late '70s. And given that the majority of the population is white, one would expect the same of the gaming world. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2014-09-11 08:27 |
| #3 That would mean only 3 have read the Instaprof. The problem for the Social Justice Warriors (SJW) is most gamers can't be shamed. They have a good 'I don't give a $h!t' attitude having experienced years of on line taunting from 13 year old adolescents with personality disorders (very similar to the SJWs). The gaming companies (and allied spin offs and auxillary) which are all 'entertainment industry' need to be very careful that they don't kill off their audience (like newspaper readership and television viewership) by pandering the the SJWs. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2014-09-11 08:04 |
| #2 It worries me that at least 3 Rantburghers even know what this is about. :) |
| Posted by: Shipman 2014-09-11 06:16 |
| #1 Oh, so the gamers finally realized that in speaking out, their so-called press would would reveal the sneering "I know better than you" grade-A liberal a-hole behind the mask of "reporter" - and worse, that when the "gamers" called the press out on the sex-for-reviews, payola, and other general lefty favoritism, the gamers would be called all kinds of names by those in the press - racist, sexist, misogynist, etc. Censored. Looked down upon by the press that was supposed to be reporting objectively and honestly. It has become an advocacy press, almost a PR operation with only one "correct" view on any given issue is allowed to be heard and presented positively. All other views to be either suppressed or those who hold alternate views liead about, pilloried and slandered. Welcome to the world Conservatives have lived in for years. The main stream press, as an institution, is fundamentally broken. I guess the gaming press has grads form the same libtard schools too. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2014-09-11 03:30 |