What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

[AdmiralMemo]

Whether they are or are not, the real question should be "Would it be bad if they did?"

And I think the answer is still "No."

[empath]

See, the perception that 'feminists are taking over gaming' sprouts from this frankly childish mentality that 'not everything is about me anymore' - the mere presence of ANY games or gaming that doesn't cater to one's own segment means 'you're stealing finite development resources away from MY focus!'

...gee, how many ways is that last statement fallacious?

But yeah, it all comes down to new, extra things coming along, and some people Chicken Littling regarding change, and then (and this is the utterly mind-boggling part) thinking that acts that border on terrorism (especially under this wonderful Patriot Act) ARE APPROPRIATE RESPONSES.


When it all comes down to it, apart from the stalking, potentially criminal defamation, invasion of privacy and assault, I'm really disappointed that the 'doomsday proclamations' that "mainstream, AAA gaming is dying" are NOT true, because I feel that would be just punishment for a clot of undeveloped children who have acted up in a long, strident series of infantile tantrums - to have their precious toys taken away from them.

[CiderMuffin]

People actually think feminists are taking over gaming? Where is this absurd idea coming fr- oh right Gamergate.

[Lord Hosk]

Yes, there are some people speaking in their own echo chambers who feel that "gaming" is a limited pool, with a finite amount of resources and by the development of anything feminist "their" experience gets reduced.

Even if that where true which it demonstrably is not, it wouldnt impact the standards Halo would still come out every 2-3 years, COD would still come out every year, Battlefield will still come out every year Madden will come out every year, NBA Live and NBA 2k will come out EVERY YEAR.


A change to video games will not change the current top tier for the next 10 years, it will change the mid tier and has already changed the indie scene which is great.

I think part of GamerGate is being fueled by AAA developers who dont want to have to compete for a diverse market even if it increases the overall markets share. Its easy to be lazy, its easy to put big boobs and depth-less dialog into females if you can get away with it, which AAA devs do now, its harder to think about all people as people. AAA teams are already having trouble of their own creation which they dont understand. "We put guns and explosions into this game why didnt it sell 500 million copies? 300 million copies doesnt turn us our projected profit!" They dont want another problem to have to think about. If you look at the whole "why no female playable character in Assasins creed" to which the publisher said "it cant be done too many resources" and the developer said "it would have been easy we had rough models they told us not do devote the resources"

[Dominic Appleguard]

Made a thing, haven't yet decided if it is funny.
Apologies for shitty image quality.

Click to Expand

[JustAName]

I like it.

[RedNightmare]

Hearing their voices say it in my head makes it at least 3 times funnier.

[Dominic Appleguard]

To be honest, I could have worked harder to match Mitchell's cadence. I feel pretty good about Webb though.

[JustAName]

Yeah, it fits pretty well.

[Matt]

Call of duty totes has girls in it.

-m

[Deedles]

I mostly dislike the idea that 'feminists are taking over the gaming industry' because really there is -nothing- spectacular about feminists. They are women and men who want equality between the genders, and to get rid of the gender stereotypes. So when someone says 'feminists are taking over the gaming industry' all I hear is 'people who want equality are taking over the gaming industry' and to that my only reply is; Well, about fucking time.

[AdmiralMemo]

Exactly why I asked the question "Would it be bad if they did?" and answered "No."

[JackSlack]

Look, this is one of my two big takeaways from all this, even if I feel it's now too late to learn them.

We really did wind up on an elitist 'strategy' for whatever strategy existed, which was none. But the effect produced was the same. News Sites like Kotaku, Polygon and The Escapist, etc. began running social justicey critiques because good media criticism finds the best critiques, and gaming had lots of goddamn issues available to critique. The end result was that these sites had the best journalism, attracted readers, and became attractive to subscribers. They became the legitimate alternative to IGN/Gamespot doing so. What makes it elitist? Well, we never actually bothered to try and convince the gaming public along the way. The end result was this split we can now see: Most gamers hated all this shit. And we can see this even today; seriously, look at IGN's hit counts vs. Kotaku's. It's not like people were jumping ship to other sources. They stayed where they were happy, and it looks to me like about 3:1 they want their gaming reviews to be treated like technical reports.

We never bothered to win over the gaming public with this kind of commentary and way of looking at games. I cannot stress this enough: To me, this whole incident definitely reflects that the vast majority of gamers do not want their games to be an art form, and are angry at attempts to elevate it to one.

And frankly... shit. That. THAT is the realisation that makes me want to quit gaming. Because I've realised it's not going anywhere. The backlashes will keep on happening, dragging us backward every time. Because its fanbase doesn't want it to go anywhere. Even if it winds up killing the industry to do so, they want, and will demand, that it remain static, cater to their whims, and be the same boring bland thing until death.

[Matt]

Eh. Yeah, a lot of bland boring status quo shit will continue to be produced, but not to the exclusion or continued marginalization of art / indie / progressive / subversive games.

If anything, we should take away from this the fact that a huge, and now very vocal portion of the industry, even if still a minority overall, does want to elevate games. That portion of gamers is marketable and serviceable.

The overwhelming majority of moviegoers just want familiar Bayformer popcorn action flicks, but that hasn't stopped the production of art house or indie films.

And while it's true that we often decry Hollywood as stale, and out of ideas, that hasn't stopped the advancement of film, nor the elevation of film as a serious art form.

-m

[JackSlack]

And yet look at what we've seen! This effort is targeted and well organised. They understood exactly where to hit; as I've said, it's not a coincidence crowd-funding was a big part of their targeting. These fucks don't just want to ignore indie; they want to burn it to the ground.

I'm probably catastrophising. I know I usually do. But this is some twisted, evil bullshit going on, the worst elements of geekdom on display, a tantrum chucking 'my way or no way' shitfest. And it does stand to damage smaller games, in a big way.

As others have pointed out, the blood's been drawn already. We lost Jenn Frank! She is an amazing writer, and she's done with the hobby now. That hurts. And it won't be the last loss.

[Matt]

For sure - there is a battle happening right now. But it's growing pains, in my opinion.

The losses hurt. But they aren't insurmountable.

-m

[JayBlanc]

The popular proliferation of Penny Dreadfuls does not diminish the existence of Great Expectations.

[Valkyrie-Lemons]

I’m generally not a betting guy, but I bet in 20 years we’ll look back on this series of events and say to ourselves, “Was this really a thing? Did we really hold these attitudes back then?”


Now, seeing how last time I posted in this thread people had issue with what I wrote, I’d like to make the following clarifications:

Click to Expand

1.1. The number chosen (20 Years) was picked arbitrarily and does not reflect any research of societal trends that would suggest that this is when gender equality in video games occurs.

1.2. The timeframe of 20 years does not suggest the belief that equality is impossible before the time stated.

1.3.1. The us of ‘we’ when stating who will be looking back is referring to the video game community as a whole.

1.3.2. It is not suggested that the video game community as a whole has a singular view, and that people that are part of the video game community will not diverge from the stated opinion.

1.4.1. It is not suggested that betting on equality means that it is not a serious issue.

1.4.2. The term ‘betting’ is used in a metaphorical sense, and no monetary value would be exchanged.

2.1. The term ‘series of events’ does not infer that these series of events are equitable to other ‘series of events’ that are not as serious, and/or do not cause harassment to individuals, and/or a community, and/or a section of society.

2.2. The ‘series of events’ encompasses not only the ‘#Gamergate’ affair but also the previous, and ongoing, events that are related to this present thread.

3.1.1. ‘A thing’ is used in a flippant and partially amusing manner and is not used to suggest any unimportance of the issues.

3.1.2. ‘A thing’ is used to represent a summation of the current discourses surrounding the ‘#Gamergate’ and related issues.

3.2.1. The inference that certain attitudes were held does not suggest that these views were shared by everyone in the gaming community.

3.2.2. It is not inferred that there is an absolute threshold to an attitude in regards to equality, and therefore there is no ‘end to the battle’.

4.1. This statement is meant to infer the hope that in the future the videogame industry will hold attitudes of equality and that issues over female inequality won’t exist.

4.2. This statement is not suggesting that achieving equality will be easy and not a ‘hard won victory’.

4.3. This statement is not a suggested reflection of everyone who defines themselves as a gamer.

4.4. This statement does not suggest that misogyny, sexism, and inequality could not exist, or the attitude could not exist, in the future that this statement alludes to.

4.5. This statement is not a predication, and cannot be used as definite example of the failure or success of the prediction when the suggested timeframe occurs.

5. This statement was posted with the knowledge that the author of the statement may have been wrong with what they posted previously and a period of reflection has allowed the author to consider what they wrote. The author hopes the community will not impose any sanctions or embargos for what the author has previously posted.

[Deedles]

I do hope you're right, or that we get to that point even sooner.

[JackSlack]

I note it's all died down a ton. A couple posts here and there, but Twitter's stopped being a feed of unending hatred, and the whole thing seems to have simmered. Unfortunately, the timing is ambiguous to me.

Did it all die down because:

1. They accomplished their objectives? Polygon, Kotaku and The Escapist all adopted policies that might potentially harm indie gaming. They ultimately won the narrative and forced the 'gaming journalism corruption' angle as a legitimate concept. They Fox Newsed the shit out of the debate and created a brand new avenue of discussing games and game journalism, one that I consider completely fallacious. But there it is.
2. Destiny came out and they stopped being bored.

[korvys]

Almost certainly the second one, combined with Zoe posting the IRC logs. I doubt there will be any that will admit to it, but I imagine there are some people sheepishly deleting sockpuppet twitter accounts.

[JackSlack]

No, I disagree. Zoe's posting the logs increased, not decreased, the pitch. And ultimately did nothing, stunningly. (Except perhaps with law enforcement that we've not seen yet.)

I'm leaning to the former with some of the latter. I think gamergate really did win this one, and we'll see the ill effects as the years roll on.

[korvys]

I find this fascinating. It almost seems like we're watching completely different events. And it's not that I don't believe you are genuine, but I just can't understand how you can come that that conclusion. And I assume the same is true for you looking at me.

This has reached main stream outlets like The Guardian, The New Yorker, and others, each with near universal condemnation of gamegate. The opposition? Briebart and sockpuppet twitter accounts who don't know what a fact checking department is.

A few outlets kowtowing to demands for transparency is bad, but those policies are going to have far less impact on the future of this industry than the number of people who are opposed to that, especially icons like Tim Shafer and Joss Wheddon.

[Deedles]

Not to mention that Jim Sterling mentioned in his latest video that he has spoken to the Escapist and he was satisfied with the plans for the future, so I can't imagine that what the Escapist is planning to do can be THAT bad.

[JackSlack]

Much as I thank god for Jim Sterling, I disagree with him here.