What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby korvys » 01 Oct 2014, 15:58

Anyway, GG made some noise at Intel. They pulled their ads. None-GG people are making some noise. I assume the pulling was just reactionary. Advocacy campaigns are pretty common these days, I imagine most companies have a "pull the ad first, ask questions later" approach.

Like, say they hire a spokesman, who turns out to be a rapist or something, it's pretty common for them to get a bunch of complaints, and pulling the ad as quick as possible minimises the fallout. Rarely will there actually be another side to the story. I'll wait for a statement.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JackSlack » 01 Oct 2014, 18:39

Matt wrote:Gamergate are defending the status quo. Upending it is always the harder fight, as they hold the more easily defended position.

That they win some battles doesn't mean they'll win the war.


I have to disagree.

Look, the status quo is a varied thing. The AAA industry is a status quo that they want to preserve and indeed one we wish to change. The indie industry is kind of a bit of both but is generally one we want to preserve and they want to... well, from what I can see, eliminate. The gaming press is a mixed bag, but we do have a fairly liberal gaming press, so they want to make it conservative.

And I can't help but see that ... well, we've seen The Escapist goddamn pander to them. We've seen Gamasutra lose a sponsor. We've seen journalists quit.

We've seen crowdfunding limited. We don't know how much it will hurt because it's a thing over time, but it's going to hit.

And the triple AAA industry? They've just been handed big stacks of proof that yep, they should absolutely keep on targeting this one group of people, because there are lots of them and they buy the same stuff over and over.

They're winning.

And I admit, I'm really pondering just letting them have gaming. My love for games has been fucking crushed by Gamergate, can't deny it.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JackSlack » 01 Oct 2014, 18:48

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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby AdmiralMemo » 01 Oct 2014, 19:56

Yeah, the fact that THIS is what some people in the world have come to makes me sad. :(
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Crocochow » 01 Oct 2014, 21:16

Matt wrote:She was definitely created before the TFYC stuff, though I'm not entirely clear on her exact origin.

Regardless, the @vivan_games twitter account is my definitive version of Vivian James- a total subversion of the original intent, and cuttingly sharp on issues of social justice when she's not tweeting about whichever anime anthropomorphic boat girl she's crushing on at the time.

-m


Hey there, I'm your friendly neighborhood pro-GG bogeyman shill. I'm reaching out to you folks because after reading ~15 or so pages I've come to the conclusion that you're all genuinely nice people, even if sometimes a bit misinformed. I'm here extending a hand to you all because I think you're reasonable people and there's a lot of yelling and namecalling on both sides which doesn't really do anyone any good.

Vivian James was actually specifically created for the TFYC stuff. She's the $2000 goal perk. She was created on August 22nd. This is the first post on 4chan where the character is first called that https://archive.moe/v/thread/259266268/#q259269427 (There are no NSFW images, but the jargon can be, uh, colorful) 4chan by its nature gets its posts deleted. But there's a website that archives everything. This includes all the GG stuff before it was kicked off from 4chan.

I've been at ground zero since August 18th. I'm on the infamous irc logs (under a different name). Ask me anything.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JackSlack » 01 Oct 2014, 22:13

Hi Crocochow!

Alright, let's run with a few basic ones. What's gamergate about? We've heard a majority opinion of 'corruption in journalism', but as you saw before, "JacetheSJW" was very clearly of the opinion that it was about "getting rid of SJWs".

If it is about corruption, why all the focus at what we might call the 'low end', on indie games and personal relationships? We've seen plenty of reason to see the high end of this: Doritogate, the Jeff Gerstmann affair.

Basically, I'm going for an attack, and I apologise, but ... why is it that pretty much everything about Gamergate seems to go after the small players, the indie games, the personal games. Why is it that all of it reinforces the AAA games, the big blockbusters?
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Matt » 01 Oct 2014, 23:46

You are right- VJ was created with the intent of providing her to TFYC.

It had been a while since I had read the origin.

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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Crocochow » 02 Oct 2014, 00:56

Keep in mind that I cannot speak for anyone else regarding GamerGate. What I post are my opinions and mine alone. We're running this as a consumer revolt without leaders.


Gamergate at its core is about corruption in video game journalism (later on I will explain why this blew up into so many other things). There isn't really a focus on indies so much as just what we find. I have some hilariously NSFW pictures from private IGN press parties that were leaked to me. The reality is that you don't really hear a lot of high end stuff because either the journalists involved don't want to lose their already shitty jobs or the PR folks cover their tracks decently enough. If you don't speak up we obviously can't hear you.

You see a lot of stuff on indies because they're pretty much the sloppiest at covering their tracks. The connections we made about Zoe Quinn and her friends were from public tweets and patreon accounts basically. What REALLY tipped us off was the fact that on August 28th like 11 major gaming news or tech sites all wrote nearly identical articles saying that gamers are dead, gamers are over, etc.

This obviously pissed everyone off.

From there we began looking into patreons and twitter histories of the article writers and found a whole bunch of shit regarding people who they were supporting and signal boosting. They led back to Zoe and her friends, obviously. It really, really doesn't help that you see the same people leveraging their influence on big time publications like the New Yorker, The Guardian, Slate, and from there you can look through the tweets and paterons of THOSE writers and see who they are supporting. A web just kinda formed by itself and we followed that instead of the big time AAA folks, who just kept quiet or didn't have enough whistleblowers. There was one Australian writer who basically said that EA reps were having relationships with major press writers there, and this dude stepped up to leak that EA hid the fact that they were hacked and exposed 40,000 personal accounts. http://www.cinemablend.com/games/EA-Adm ... 67256.html but you won't see this on Kotaku or Polygon because they're doing their own damage control and probably because they don't want to tread on their relationship with EA.

So you end up in this kind of position where you realize that a lot of these tech writers are friends and they obviously have each others backs, but this isn't really okay when the line gets muddied financially/romantically or they decide to unequivocally side with Zoe Quinn because she's a friend of a friend, despite the fact that she's kind of a terrible person, who with a bit of fact checking becomes REALLY hard to defend.


So how does this relate to social justice warriors and crushing feminism? Well, the answer is kind of really complex.

For me personally, the demographics perspective is fucking hilarious. Because the people claiming to be protecting gaming against harassment and sexism tend to be privileged straight white college educated men and women who have degrees in liberal arts and social studies. One of the few exceptions is Leigh Alexander, who posts some of the most racist and hateful tweets from the bunch. This is part of a problem that I will address later on.

The gamergate side is much more diverse. The more prominent voices are black writers, an asian woman, a homosexual man, trans folks, an oldschool feminist, and of course the nutjob Adam Baldwin. The person who hosts the website where gamergate discussion is allowed is a disabled man who can barely take care of himself and was featured on al jazeera. In a way, what you are seeing is a passive rejection from people who are sick of being spoken for, and who don't want their identities to be used as a tool for censorship. This is the basis of #NotYourShield. Incidentally, the black guy who coined that tag was fired from his work because people found his address through his facebook page and made harassing calls. He got hired back eventually. He said some really stupid shit too, like fuck trans people.


Adam Baldwin believes it's kind of a culture war, I don't. What I see are two distinctly different subcultures protecting their own, and where those subcultures meet is the incestuous indie scene, where the line between Journalist, Writer, and Developer becomes blurred. The indies will obviously do everything in their power to get exposed. The Journalists will obviously do everything in their power to make money. Gee, what will happen? Sex for favors, secrets, coverups, corruption. And clickbait. Lot's and lots of clickbait.

SJW by itself is actually kind of a derogatory term. It's basically a label for people who in their pursuit of social justice become self serving narcissists. Calling yourself an SJW shouldn't be a *good* thing. The reason people are attacking Social Justice Warriors is because they kinda recuse the shitty behavior of their own in the name of harassment. Zoe Quinn actually has allowed her followers to harass a community of depressed men, she actually has allowed her followers to shut down The Fine Young Capitalists, and she has allowed her followers to doxx matt. She doesn't condone the terrible actions of her friends and followers, she embraces them. And that's a really big problem. Leigh Alexander has actually called herself a megaphone to someone disagreeing with her, and she has actually exposed the emails of someone wishing to have a private debate with her. They act terribly and are being protected for it. It's the ultimate privilege, and that pisses us off. There is a larger critical undertone going on that's directly related to modern day feminist ideology and social justice, and I can and will address this in a different post if you wish.


This turns into a lot of shit flinging. The community protects their own, and because they were harassed ALL PREVIOUS HORRIBLE ACTIONS, FACTS, REALITIES, ARE SOMEHOW RECUSED. The community reaches out and involves parties who don't participate in video games in the first place, then the narrative gets twisted because you are fighting the media, and on the whole you are left disadvantaged. People won't listen to you because the media calls you sexist, so you end up being heard by the people who have experience being shat on. Welcome to the wonderful world of politicized news.


This then becomes a much larger criticism of Feminists and Social Justice Warriors, with tinfoil hatters calling it a Marxist conspiracy because they can literally replace "female agency" with the "proletariat" and "patriarchy" with "bourgeois" and have the exact same argument. This is why Alexander Marxis became REALLY colorful when talking about Cultural Marxism on twitter, even going as far as recommending books on the subject, and why he eventually went back to The Escapist, looked over the evidence, and decided to revise their ethics policies.

Into this mix, throw in a shitload of trolls including SomethingAwful's Fuck You And Die, who openly organized raids on 4chan to implant false information and doxxing, screencapping that, and posting that on twitter as evidence of harassment. Throw in the GNAA (Gay Nigger Association of America), who DDoS and harass both sides for kicks and giggles, and finally the fucking Weird Twitter trolls like a_girl_irl who blatantly photoshops tweets. This just becomes a massive entertaining shitshow, and I'm along for the ride and enjoying every bit of it.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JackSlack » 02 Oct 2014, 02:16

Crocochow wrote:This just becomes a massive entertaining shitshow, and I'm along for the ride and enjoying every bit of it.


You realise how loathsome that makes you sound?
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 02:32

For what it's worth, I've been a LRR fan for years...

And...

I'm also with GamerGate. Would you like answers from me?
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Elomin Sha » 02 Oct 2014, 03:00

I am staying out of GamerGate because I have no clue what is going on.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Crocochow » 02 Oct 2014, 03:14

JackSlack wrote:
Crocochow wrote:This just becomes a massive entertaining shitshow, and I'm along for the ride and enjoying every bit of it.


You realise how loathsome that makes you sound?


I'm assuming you mean in the context of harassment?

Yeah nah. I'm not a fan. That stuff's not okay.

But take it out of context as you will, I did word it poorly.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 03:17

JackSlack, to answer some of the questions you asked Crock:

"Alright, let's run with a few basic ones. What's gamergate about? We've heard a majority opinion of 'corruption in journalism', but as you saw before, "JacetheSJW" was very clearly of the opinion that it was about "getting rid of SJWs"."

It is about Journalistic ethics. That's why the main targets of GamerGate have been Journalists. As for Jace, I cannot deny some have latched onto the movement to go after feminists. But, there are plenty of feminists in GamerGate. I for one would love to see more games with non-Steve characters. Many in GamerGate are also women themselves. The problem is, many of the most vocal antiGamerGate voices are feminist extremists, or at the very least present themselves as such.

"If it is about corruption, why all the focus at what we might call the 'low end', on indie games and personal relationships? We've seen plenty of reason to see the high end of this: Doritogate, the Jeff Gerstmann affair."

Many of the GamerGate people were the ones who were mocking The Dorito Pope, back during that fiasco. And to be fair, The reason many are acting out is actually based on residual anger from the DoritoGate fiasco. Many just see this as a continuation of that problem. Remember, people also lashed out at Gaming Publications then for having their hands tainted by the advertising as well. From what I can tell from talking to them, many had hoped DoritoGate would be a warning to the journalists involved, and were upset to see what they described as the corruption still going strong, just in different ways.

"Basically, I'm going for an attack, and I apologise, but ... why is it that pretty much everything about Gamergate seems to go after the small players, the indie games, the personal games. Why is it that all of it reinforces the AAA games, the big blockbusters?"

Because it was an indie dev who got caught. Unfortunately, that's just how it is. And let's be fair, most Gamers in Gamergate feel that the AAA industry is massively bloated, and is teetering on the edge of collapsing in on itself. 2 million copies sold and the game is still considered a failure? That's not sustainable. That problem will fix itself in time.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JayBlanc » 02 Oct 2014, 03:56

Rathkor wrote:It is about Journalistic ethics. That's why the main targets of GamerGate have been Journalists. As for Jace, I cannot deny some have latched onto the movement to go after feminists. But, there are plenty of feminists in GamerGate. I for one would love to see more games with non-Steve characters. Many in GamerGate are also women themselves. The problem is, many of the most vocal antiGamerGate voices are feminist extremists, or at the very least present themselves as such.


No. No it's not. Journalistic Ethics is a wide slate, and the targeting of GamerGate is pretty narrow. GamerGate is focused on indie games, and accusations that there are conspiracies based on personal relationships. Trying to make it about wider scoped discussions of Journalistic Ethics came later as a defence for very vicious directed attacks at a narrow group of targets.

"If it is about corruption, why all the focus at what we might call the 'low end', on indie games and personal relationships? We've seen plenty of reason to see the high end of this: Doritogate, the Jeff Gerstmann affair."

Many of the GamerGate people were the ones who were mocking The Dorito Pope, back during that fiasco. And to be fair, The reason many are acting out is actually based on residual anger from the DoritoGate fiasco. Many just see this as a continuation of that problem. Remember, people also lashed out at Gaming Publications then for having their hands tainted by the advertising as well. From what I can tell from talking to them, many had hoped DoritoGate would be a warning to the journalists involved, and were upset to see what they described as the corruption still going strong, just in different ways.


See, that's where you fail. DoritosGate changed nothing about Video Games journalism. Seriously, look at how it was then, look at it now. Nothing has changed, DoritosGate was merely the pinnacle of crass commercial tie in media. AAA distributions still regularly buy out and re-skin gaming websites for their release windows. Gaming websites regularly print press releases as if they were articles.

You have no rational claim to be making this about journalistic corruption, when you wilfully cast an blind eye to how AAA Games journalism still works. You seem to think it ended with DoritosGate. You seem to think that the only thing that 'needs to be fixed' is the much much smaller amount of media time spent on indie games.

Right now IGN has a review up for FIFA 15 that actually quotes PR Copy in the slugline while giving it a "Great" rating. The review it's self does mention that FIFA has a few 'comical glitches', but hey, it has EMOTION of SPORTS and is POLISHED. 8.3!

And of course, if a journalist ever dares to give an AAA game a less then entirely enthusiastic review, they get pilloried. Look at what happened to Journalists who dared to try appraising Grand Theft Auto V with the same level of criticism they'd give a movie. Online harassment, people trying to start campaigns to get them fired, accusations of journalistic bias...

I wonder who it was doing that huh?

"Basically, I'm going for an attack, and I apologise, but ... why is it that pretty much everything about Gamergate seems to go after the small players, the indie games, the personal games. Why is it that all of it reinforces the AAA games, the big blockbusters?"

Because it was an indie dev who got caught. Unfortunately, that's just how it is. And let's be fair, most Gamers in Gamergate feel that the AAA industry is massively bloated, and is teetering on the edge of collapsing in on itself. 2 million copies sold and the game is still considered a failure? That's not sustainable. That problem will fix itself in time.


" it was an indie dev who got caught."

And you sir, lose. Because you just admitted you bought into the lie that Zoe Quinn ever did anything wrong. No one has ever demonstrated, with any level of proof other than conspiracy theory flow charts, that Zoe Quinn did a single damn thing wrong. Seriously, if you assert that someone 'got caught' doing something, you do have to demonstrate they actually did something wrong. Zoe Quinn had a personal relationship with a journalist who never produced any positive articles and specifically never reviewed her game. Yet you run with this as your justification for your actions.

You dredge up the accusations, then recast them as an absolute fact, to defend your position on going after Indie developers instead of the AAAs. Casting yourself as the noble fact finder who is oh so disappointed in these women.

You are a common and general example of the 'If you just listened to me you'd understand I'm a nice guy really' part of Gamergate. And that's what's wrong, because you're fighting a crusade, and haven't examined on what principles your crusade is being fought. You're the nice clean polite kid standing outside the high school bathrooms, assuring everyone that the violent noises coming from inside are just your buddies having some innocent roughhousing.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 04:23

"No. No it's not. Journalistic Ethics is a wide slate, and the targeting of GamerGate is pretty narrow. GamerGate is focused on indie games, and accusations that there are conspiracies based on personal relationships. Trying to make it about wider scoped discussions of Journalistic Ethics came later as a defence for very vicious directed attacks at a narrow group of targets."

To be fair, we ARE going after journalists. It's not our fault they are friends with more indie devs than AAA devs. If it's any consolation, GamerGate went after Anthony Burch of Gearbox after he tweeted that he was friends with journalists who reviewed DLC for Borderlands 2. So, we go after AAA developers when they admit to being friends with the journalists, too.

"See, that's where you fail. DoritosGate changed nothing about Video Games journalism. Seriously, look at how it was then, look at it now. Nothing has changed, DoritosGate was merely the pinnacle of crass commercial tie in media. AAA distributions still regularly buy out and re-skin gaming websites for their release windows. Gaming websites regularly print press releases as if they were articles."

Hence why there was still anger towards journalists. This has been boiling under the surface for a long time. The Zoe Post was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.

"And of course, if a journalist ever dares to give an AAA game a less then entirely enthusiastic review, they get pilloried. Look at what happened to Journalists who dared to try appraising Grand Theft Auto V with the same level of criticism they'd give a movie. Online harassment, people trying to start campaigns to get them fired, accusations of journalistic bias..."

Do you mind if I ask how you know for sure the same people who trashed games for not getting high enough scores are the same people involved in GamerGate now?

"And you sir, lose. Because you just admitted you bought into the lie that Zoe Quinn ever did anything wrong. No one has ever demonstrated, with any level of proof other than conspiracy theory flow charts, that Zoe Quinn did a single damn thing wrong. Seriously, if you assert that someone 'got caught' doing something, you do have to demonstrate they actually did something wrong. Zoe Quinn had a personal relationship with a journalist who never produced any positive articles and specifically never reviewed her game. Yet you run with this as your justification for your actions."

Well, technically the problem was more with the journalist who slept with her 3 days after writing a story about her. Which, it's a violation of Conflict of Interest. The sexual relationship may have happened afterwards, but it was 3 days. Do you really believe he had no feelings at all for her, but then magically grew them overnight?

'If you just listened to me you'd understand I'm a nice guy really'

Personally, I don't care what you think of me. I know what I am and I don't need validation. I am simply trying to clarify my position, and the position of many other GamerGate supporters.

Now, if I may take a turn to ask a question. Harassment is wrong, yes? If you take one look over in the Escapist forums, you will probably be surprised to see that the people there outright condemn anyone who harasses someone, even if they do it in the name of GamerGate. Meanwhile, we were called worse than ISIS just a couple of days after ISIS beheaded a journalist. He were called subhuman by a prominent figure over at the escapist. The guy who started #NotYourShield got his personal information released online, and people called his job until he was fired.

Harassment happens on both sides, I will admit that. But many of us are trying to stop it from happening on our side. Why is it no one calls them out when they do it? I don't mean for that question to sound accusatory, sorry if it came out that way. I'm just asking.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Deedles » 02 Oct 2014, 04:48

Seeing as I'm not on the escapist I can't answer your question about statements there and why things were done or not. I'm just wondering, seeing as I can at least ask for your personal opinion on what you wish to achieve as a part of GamerGate; What does achieving 'ethic journalism' entail?
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 04:54

That is a good question. Basically, I would like to remind journalists about the line between writer and subject. I'm not saying a journalist can't be friends with a dev. Just that if they are, they recuse themselves. They should also refrain from writing a story about someone who is supporting them on Patreon. They should avoid writing stories about people they live with. We would like to see Editors actually enforce a code of Journalistic Ethics similar to ones people working in journalism outside of gaming are held to.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Duckay » 02 Oct 2014, 05:27

Would you be satisfied by a policy of full-disclosure?
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 05:34

Full disclosure would also be absolutely great. LoadingReadyRun does that all the time. I have never had a problem with them promoting something, because they will usually explicitly tell you they are promoting something, and if it's a business transaction (Like Card Kingdom or Wizard of the Coast), or if it's because they know the people who worked on it (That screen watcher game Alex played on stream.) If LRR can disclose their connections to a project they are promoting, I don't see why a journalist couldn't.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JayBlanc » 02 Oct 2014, 05:36

Rathkor wrote:To be fair, we ARE going after journalists. It's not our fault they are friends with more indie devs than AAA devs. If it's any consolation, GamerGate went after Anthony Burch of Gearbox after he tweeted that he was friends with journalists who reviewed DLC for Borderlands 2. So, we go after AAA developers when they admit to being friends with the journalists, too.


See, you're giving a confused mesage here. Are you going after journalists, or are you going after developers? Are you going after people who've abused their contacts, or are you piling on someone who criticised Gamergate because they *declared* their friendships.

I mean, you're not an idiot, you wouldn't be demanding that Journalist and Game Devs must never be friends or have any social contact right? You understand that would be a horrible and stupid and unworkable thing to demand of someone right? You understand that it's possible for someone to declare they have friends who are journalists, and not actually be part of some conspiracy.

What exactly do you think you gained by attacking Anthony Burch. Here's a developer, who comes out and acknowledges friendships with some journalists to identify a minor borderline possibility of conflict. And instead of praising this openness, you attack him?

Sorry, but all I see here is you being irrational and wanting to attack someone for something because there's something wrong. But there's no clear links between who you attack, the problems that exist, and practical solutions to issues.

Gamergate is doing nothing serious to make gaming journalism better.

Hence why there was still anger towards journalists. This has been boiling under the surface for a long time. The Zoe Post was simply the straw that broke the camel's back.


But how is it that anger at AAA control of gamers has all been directed at tiny indie developers who can't possibly have the resources to be the real problem here? And how is it that the online harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn started before "The Zoe Post" was published.

You're making excuses for targeting the people you want to target.

Well, technically the problem was more with the journalist who slept with her 3 days after writing a story about her. Which, it's a violation of Conflict of Interest. The sexual relationship may have happened afterwards, but it was 3 days. Do you really believe he had no feelings at all for her, but then magically grew them overnight?


Your argument here equates to "Well, maybe she didn't sleep with him to get a good review. BUT STILL!". And then you pull something out of your ass, to say that "Oh, well, yes but he wrote a good article about her in order to get her to sleep with him."

But here's the thing. Nathan Greyson's "Article about Zoe" isn't an article about Zoe. It's an Article about the disaster of "Game Jam" which only mentions Zoe as one of the participants. And you know what, everyone was writing about that back then, it was a big deal. And obviously someone is going to say to Greyson, "You know those guys, get in contact to get a statement from them about what happened there." It was even one of those times where the corrupt business relationships between AAA Distributors, Product Placement and Media were highlighted.

But no, you don't actually care about that. You come here, and spin this as being some kind of positive press piece Greyson wrote about Zoe to get her to sleep with him.

Well, actually, I don't think you do. I think you just read someone else on 4chan saying that he did. And never bothered to check that they weren't talking out of their ass, because you know that those SJW journalists are all corrupt right?

This really really annoys me, becaue Kotaku investigated this, and cleared Greyson of any journalistic ethics charges. Other, professional journalists investigated this, and couldn't fault Greyson on journalistic ethics grounds. Established broadsheet print media newspapers investigated this, and didn't see any journalistic ethics ground to fault Greyson.

But still you repeat the slur, and you repeat it against Zoe rather than the journalist.

Now, if I may take a turn to ask a question. Harassment is wrong, yes? If you take one look over in the Escapist forums, you will probably be surprised to see that the people there outright condemn anyone who harasses someone, even if they do it in the name of GamerGate. Meanwhile, we were called worse than ISIS just a couple of days after ISIS beheaded a journalist. He were called subhuman by a prominent figure over at the escapist. The guy who started #NotYourShield got his personal information released online, and people called his job until he was fired.


Would that be the guy who set up tons of fake twitter accounts using photos of women they found on the internet, and used them as sock puppets to flood their opponents with replies and 'rebuttals'? How horrible for him, to discover that he can't really be the puppet master of harassment without some risk to his personal reputation and status if he's found out. To imagine that someone discovered to be behind a widespread and dishonestly organised harassment campaign might lose their job? I feel almost as bad for him as for the guy who was outed as being in charge of the up-skirt photos board on 4chan. ie, not that much.

Harassment happens on both sides, I will admit that. But many of us are trying to stop it from happening on our side. Why is it no one calls them out when they do it? I don't mean for that question to sound accusatory, sorry if it came out that way. I'm just asking.


Because the raison d'être of "your side" is to harass and harangue those targeted, and again this has next to nothing to do with real journalistic ethics. Gamergate is a harassment campaign with a fringe of reasonable people sucked in who swallowed the bait. The reaction against Gamergate is reasonable people trying to debunk and discredit the attacks, with a small fringe of retaliation.

Saying both sides are as bad as each other, is like saying there's no difference between a glass of water with a drop of vinegar, and a glass of vinegar with a drop of water.

And see above, you're not "harassing" anyone, you're just repeating the same unproven slurs over and over about certain individuals. And you don't see anything wrong with that.

Personally, I don't care what you think of me. I know what I am and I don't need validation. I am simply trying to clarify my position, and the position of many other GamerGate supporters.


See, again, I'm going to make it clear.

I don't think you're the bully. You're not the one directly harassing people. You're not threatening people's jobs, or posting their addresses. You're using very polite language with me, and being almost but not quite respectful.

You're the guy who tells other people that the drunken bully is okay, and it's not fair to ask him to leave the party. You're the guy who would never draw threatening racist graffiti in the hallway, but you won't rat out the people who did it because they might get in trouble. You're the guy who sees women having to identify their harassers to protect themselves, and accuses them of publicly humiliating the harasser. You're the guy who wouldn't say that cheerleader is a slut, but you repeat the rumour that she had an abortion.

You're standing with the monkeys throwing shit, and you get upset when some lands on your shoes. But you're still hanging around those shit throwing monkeys. And eventually it's going to be hard to see how clean and respectable you are.
Last edited by JayBlanc on 02 Oct 2014, 06:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby JackSlack » 02 Oct 2014, 05:37

Crocochow wrote:
JackSlack wrote:
I'm assuming you mean in the context of harassment?

Yeah nah. I'm not a fan. That stuff's not okay.

But take it out of context as you will, I did word it poorly.


I do appreciate that, honestly.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Deedles » 02 Oct 2014, 05:52

The main difference between journalism outside of gaming is that gaming journalism is in large part make up of enthusiastic journalism, and really it has to be, because if you want to be a games journalist you generally have a go a period without even being paid for what you do, so if you have no passion for it you won't keep doing it for long. Not to mention that games journalism doesn't work the same way as journalism outside of gaming, since you don't get news reports sold to you by freelancers who were on location(like a freelancing journalist in, lets say, Iraq.), you can actually speak to witnesses of incidents, you can go to press conferences to get more information, etc.

Meanwhile in gaming journalism what you know really depends on who you know, because if you want to interview someone you either manage to grab them on the floor of a con(and just get what their demos already shows repeated to you), or you manage to get a meeting set up with a developer, which will depend on if you are credible or not, which will really depend if you know someone who knows someone who can get you that meeting. It is entirely built on contacts, on who you know, and who can you report on if you know someone within most companies, but you're not allowed to?

A lot of game journalists became such because they love gaming, and that's why you can see several reporting on things that they support on kickstarter and such, because they genuinely think this could be a cool game and they want others to know about it, and in the end if gaming isn't about getting fun, interesting, cool and engaging new games then what is it?

This is not to say that journalists should just report on whatever they want without doing anything about it, I firmly stand behind the idea that they should be transparent if they know someone at the company who's game they're reporting on, or that if they're making a youtube video that they've been paid to do there should be a disclaimer included in the video. Because that is really all the information gamers need to be able to pass judgement on if they find the article or video too biased.

As for journalism ethics in other fields of journalism outside of gaming, if they exist they're not doing that great of a job. Look at any nation and you will find newspapers with bias as they have obvious political leanings, which means that people who disagree with those political leanings simply pick up the newspaper that suits them, and same goes for news channels. They are far from unbiased, even if many try to claim that they are. That is the state of our media, as cynical as it may sound, but the way you get around it is by being aware of which is what. Is this newspaper leaned in the direction of right wing? Am I interested in that? If not then I won't buy it, and I'll look for a newspaper that I do want to read.

It really should be the same for gaming journalism. If there is a gaming journalism site that you do not agree with most of the time and you don't really feel like questioning them, but simply read things that you agree with, then go find a different gaming journalism site to read. Or if you tend to only enjoy articles from particular writers on a site then just read their stuff. That's how normal news outlets work, so why isn't that good enough for gaming when, unlike other news outlets, it's often written by gamers for gamers('gamers' being a very broad term as not all gamers enjoy the same games. I, for example, am not an FPS fan, so someone who writes a lot of FPS games isn't going to be to my taste, instead I'd probably look for someone who covers more RPGs, adventure games and such). I don't want to claim that GamerGate is trying to silence anyone who disagrees with them, because as reasonable people like yourself Rathkor show, is that isn't your goal, so I apologize if it ever came across that way, but I personally can't see a realistic way to achieve unbiased game journalism. At best(which I personally find to be enough) you can achieve transparent gaming journalism, and let the gamers decide from there.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 06:15

"See, you're giving a confused mesage here. Are you going after journalists, or are you going after developers? Are you going after people who've abused their contacts, or are you piling on someone who criticised Gamergate because they *declared* their friendships."

Journalists. But because they are friends with indie devs, they seem to be caught in the crossfire. But it is the journalists responsibility to recuse themselves from writing stories there the CoI has been compromised. Had they done that from the beginning, then there would have been no need for GamerGate.

"I mean, you're not an idiot, you wouldn't be demanding that Journalist and Game Devs must never be friends or have any social contact right? You understand that would be a horrible and stupid and unworkable thing to demand of someone right? You understand that it's possible for someone to declare they have friends who are journalists, and not actually be part of some conspiracy."

Pretty sure I explicitly said they CAN be friends, as long as the journalist recuses from any assignment involving their friend.

"What exactly do you think you gained by attacking Anthony Burch. Here's a developer, who comes out and acknowledges friendships with some journalists to identify a minor borderline possibility of conflict. And instead of praising this openness, you attack him?"

To be fair, context is key. He didn't come clean out of a desire to be transparent. He angrily accused us of only caring about it when a woman is involved, then claimed his friendships as proof. He had never been attacked for his friendships with journalists, so it had to be because he was a man. Thing is, no one KNEW about those friendships. So since he brought it up in a hostile manner, many people reacted in kind. So GamerGate was willing to go after him, a man, with as much fervor as they went after anyone else. Was this the right way to go about going after him? No. But it shows that gender doesn't matter as much as the ethics do.

"But how is it that anger at AAA control of gamers has all been directed at tiny indie developers who can't possibly have the resources to be the real problem here? And how is it that the online harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn started before "The Zoe Post" was published."

That I can't answer. I joined GamerGate a few weeks after the Zoe Post, and had never even heard of her until I started looking into GamerGate. I was told about everything by a friend. I decided to look into it to form my own opinion, and saw that even so much as mentioning anything about all this led to people getting banned. Then I found the Escapist's forum topic and found out which sites were banning discussions of it and possible reasons why. That's what got me into GamerGate.

"Your argument here equates to "Well, maybe she didn't sleep with him to get a good review. BUT STILL!"."

Again, my arguement was feeling of attraction don't just pop up overnight. Assuming they were not sleeping together at the time, it is possible that he had feelings for her at the time, which would have clouded his objectivity. See how this is still about journalists acting like professionals? At least for me it is.

"But here's the thing. Nathan Greyson's "Article about Zoe" isn't an article about Zoe. It's an Article about the disaster of "Game Jam" which only mentions Zoe as one of the participants."

It also massively downplayed Zoe's part in helping to crash the Game Jam. So, her part in a scandal was downplayed by a journalist who would go on to sleep with Zoe Quinn mere days after writing the article in which he downplayed her role in a scandal. I'm just saying, it is suspect. And in journalism, the mere appearance of impropriety is as bad as impropriety itself.

"Would that be the guy who set up tons of fake twitter accounts using photos of women they found on the internet, and used them as sock puppets to flood their opponents with replies and 'rebuttals'? How horrible for him, to discover that he can't really be the puppet master of harassment without some risk to his personal reputation and status if he's found out. To imagine that someone discovered to be behind a widespread and dishonestly organised harassment campaign might lose their job? I feel almost as bad for him as for the guy who was outed as being in charge of the up-skirt photos board on 4chan. ie, not that much."

No, turns out the guy was a bona fide black guy who didn't like people using him as a shield to push their ideologies. Did you just read somewhere that he was a white guy and assumed it was real without checking because you KNOW all Gamergate supporters are racist and sexist?


Because the raison d'être of "your side" is to harass and harangue those targeted, and again this has next to nothing to do with real journalistic ethics. Gamergate is a harassment campaign with a fringe of reasonable people sucked in who swallowed the bait. The reaction against Gamergate is reasonable people trying to debunk and discredit the attacks, with a small fringe of retaliation."

Assuming that's true, which it's not, but still, you're saying it's okay to use harassment and threats as long as you're one of the "good guys"? Shouldn't the people on the "right side" be above using harassment and threats to get their way? Like I say, it's happening on both sides. At least we TRY to call it out from people on our side when we see it.

"You're the guy who tells other people that the drunken bully is okay, and it's not fair to ask him to leave the party."

To be fair, having been a bouncer at one point, I have actually LITERALLY asked the guy who got too drunk and became a nuisance to leave the party, just for the record.

"You're the guy who sees women having to identify their harassers to protect themselves, and accuses them of publicly humiliating the harasser."

Again, to be fair, I can go pull quotes from the Escapist thread from a week ago asking the others there to help in stopping harassment from happening to a woman who was getting harassed by GamerGate people. We DO NOT condone harassment. If we see it, we will call it out. We will shame our own harassers, because harassment is BAD.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Rathkor » 02 Oct 2014, 06:21

"Meanwhile in gaming journalism what you know really depends on who you know, because if you want to interview someone you either manage to grab them on the floor of a con(and just get what their demos already shows repeated to you), or you manage to get a meeting set up with a developer, which will depend on if you are credible or not, which will really depend if you know someone who knows someone who can get you that meeting. It is entirely built on contacts, on who you know, and who can you report on if you know someone within most companies, but you're not allowed to?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-7RLxrsJ04

That video is an interview with a professional when it comes to journalistic ethics. The very first question relates to your above statement. He admits it is a FINE LINE between a contact and a friend, and that it is the journalists responsibility to make sure that fine line is not crossed.
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Re: What is Adam Baldwin thinking?

Postby Deedles » 02 Oct 2014, 06:26

But why? If you make a contact with someone and they turn out to be someone you get along with and could be friends with, why do you have to choose between your job and a friendship? If that friendship is brought up whenever relevant(like if you're reporting on a game that said friend is making, or that a company they're part of is making) then why is it necessary to have to close yourself off from potential friendships? Especially in a time and place in history where loneliness and being alone is a big issue? That doesn't seem very ethical to ask of anyone, if you ask me.
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