Starts with 'f,' ends with 'eminism.'

(They are US conservatives with ties to Bush and concerned with Obama, you do the math)


But I'm probably overlooking their previous commitment to ethics in gaming journalism.

Quote from: Haffrung;794535That's the issue I have inclusivity in entertainment. It fails to recognize that different things appeal to different people and the tradeoffs creators face in choosing who to aim their product at. Twilight would have been much more appealing to males if it had less romance and more fighting. But I don't recall anyone chastising Stephanie Meyers for not being inclusive enough. And I see no reason to believe she would have had a more popular series on her hands if she made it more appealing to males, because any changes with that aim would probably have alienated a portion of the female audience.

An excellent point that some may not have considered.

jg

Quote from: Will;794576Starts with 'f,' ends with 'eminism.'

(They are US conservatives with ties to Bush and concerned with Obama, you do the math)


But I'm probably overlooking their previous commitment to ethics in gaming journalism.

I have trouble accepting...I don't want to believe...that neocons have such a vested interest in beating down feminist media critics. I think I'd much rather believe that videogame companies are paying AEI to handle their PR campaign for them.

Quote from: Will;794570The liberal argument is that the deck is mightily stacked and most of the people making decisions are making those decisions more on gut assumptions about what the market is than reality.

I mean, look at the growth of the 'casual' market and then the backlash of gamers saying that kind of gaming 'doesn't count,' is beneath them, is stupid, is only for girls, and so on.

If 'SJW-backed' companies start putting out a wave of games that cater to their interests and they all fail spectacularly, what's going to happen? Game companies will shrug and go back to making Call of War XI: The Bloodening featuring Exotica the War-nun.


I mean, heck, look at that bastion of liberal hippy dippy Democrats, Hollywood. It's so sad that the waves of social liberation and ideals have lead to nothing but feelgood romantic comedies over the last 20 years OH WAIT

Since I haven't seen any games dealing with social justice, with Gone Home a possible exception, what exactly are all these socially concious indie devs doing? Trying to change opinions and trends by making games that endorse their pov?

Or are they and their friends in game media spending all their time trying to fuck with a community to make a quick buck?

Answer me this Will. You claim gg is all about sexism and anti-feminism. What is your side about? Seems to be an awful lot of attack pieces written about gamers, calls for bullying, and utterly horrible actions on the anti-gg side.

Quote from: Will;794570The liberal argument is that the deck is mightily stacked and most of the people making decisions are making those decisions more on gut assumptions about what the market is than reality.

Many people believe that the market is functioning properly when it delivers the sorts of products they like, and it's distorted or manipulated when it delivers products they dislike.

But if the 'liberal' gaming pundits are right, then there's an enormous market opportunity for the sorts of games they think have broad appeal. All they need is the acumen and drive to get them released, and their fortunes are made.

Quote from: Will;794570I mean, look at the growth of the 'casual' market and then the backlash of gamers saying that kind of gaming 'doesn't count,' is beneath them, is stupid, is only for girls, and so on.

It is childish to make those criticisms of casual games. However, it seems pretty clear that casual games (mostly mobile) have opened up a new market, not supplanted the traditional core market. So both camps are wrong in that respect - casual games aren't a threat to hardcore games, and they aren't a sign that hardcore games are in decline. 'Gamers are dead' is nothing more than wishful thinking.

It comes back to the same mentality that fuels D&D edition wars. Why do people care that other people enjoy things they dislike?

Quote from: Will;794576Starts with 'f,' ends with 'eminism.'

(They are US conservatives with ties to Bush and concerned with Obama, you do the math)


But I'm probably overlooking their previous commitment to ethics in gaming journalism.

Oh you could, you know, watch the video.

Nah - her evhul Conservative voodoo mind-ray magic might damage your brain somehow. I understand.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794575Huh. I haven't been following very closely, but why is the American Enterprise Institute involved in Gamergate?

Its more about the "f" word as Will said - watch it and her previous video on the subject, if nothing else it's a nice change of pace from all the screaming on Twitter and whatnot.

Quote from: Werekoala;794590Oh you could, you know, watch the video.

Nah - her evhul Conservative voodoo mind-ray magic might damage your brain somehow. I understand.

I watched most of the video and found her counter-arguments weak. Having watched several of Sarkeesian's videos I'm struggling to see why people are so outraged. Sarkeesian's videos are pretty standard feminist media critique compared to what's studied in film schools etc. - she defines tropes, provides examples and doesn't level any accusations of misogyny against the players themselves. One of the AEI woman's counter-arguments in particular ("by far the most violence in games occurs against men") demonstrates a complete failure to comprehend what feminist media critique is actually about.

But really, I was just curious about why AEI was even involved in this geeky shit-slinging contest in the first place.

Don't know for sure, you'd have to ask her. I'm sure it's some counter-psy-op-black-DARPA-uber-projekt to enable Bush to suspend the elections and declare himself Dictator for Life.

Quote from: Warboss Squee;794580Since I haven't seen any games dealing with social justice, with Gone Home a possible exception, what exactly are all these socially concious indie devs doing? Trying to change opinions and trends by making games that endorse their pov?

Trying to be less obnoxious, I guess? Put out more inclusive stuff? I'm more familiar with tabletop gaming devs, and the movement there has been to, basically, including mild comments like 'hey, you don't have to be a straight white guy' and getting everyone wailing and rending their garments over it.

But here's the thing... if they aren't actually changing the game market, why the fuck do any of you people care? What observable impact is it having on your gaming?

Quote from: Warboss Squee;794580Or are they and their friends in game media spending all their time trying to fuck with a community to make a quick buck?

Answer me this Will. You claim gg is all about sexism and anti-feminism. What is your side about? Seems to be an awful lot of attack pieces written about gamers, calls for bullying, and utterly horrible actions on the anti-gg side.

Why do you see everything as sides? I'm not on a side. I'm not part of a 'movement.'

There's no hashtag that some other group of people are flocking to. What ideology is Wil Wheaton, Phil Brucato, and Anita Sarkeesian sharing?

As for the comments about 'attack pieces,' stuff like 'the Death of Gaming' is ... really? You guys are taking that as an attack?

When I first heard the title, before I was much aware of the rest of GG stuff, I just rolled my eyes.

Media is FILLED with dramatic doomsaying about everything. The death of social media. The death of Microsoft (or Xbox). The death of the middle class. DOOOOM.

It's, like, the most common trope of dramatic fluff journalism. Do you guys READ news?

I don't read a lot of literary/intellectual critique, but as others have mentioned, Sarkeesian's commentary and similar sounds typical to me. I honestly haven't seen much of it, because I have pretty much 0 interest in really high level theory blather.

Werekoala: So I'm right about it being about feminism, but I don't know what I'm talking about and should watch it? ... um, what?

Quote from: Will;794594Werekoala: So I'm right about it being about feminism, but I don't know what I'm talking about and should watch it? ... um, what?

I didn't say you didn't know what you were talking about it, in fact I SPECIFICALLY SAID it was about the "f" word as YOU said. But you should watch it anyway instead of just hearing other people talk about it. You know, educate yourself instead of just accepting second- or third-hand information about things.

Just sayin'.

I'll attempt it when I have time and stamina.

First, I _loath_ video blogs* (of anyone, and I've had to be very tactful in telling friends why I'm not going to watch 10 minutes of material fluffed into 2 hours of them blathering on about Pokemon or whatever).

Second, keeping focused enough to catch when someone is using weasel argumentation through an entire long speech requires particular attention and energy, particularly in video format.

Third, people have repeatedly assured me 'oh, you HAVE to see THIS' and in nearly every case my first guess as to how productive it'd be is right, so hey, I'm getting old and less enthused about watching 'the wonderful world of defectation' in Technicolor because someone thinks I might find it edifying.


* Addendum: This hatred is starting to see competition with the growing trend of Answer.com style 'hugely annoying busy page of clickbait with a thiiiiin schmear of actual material dribbled out OH YOU PICKED THE WRONG ARROW THAT'S FOR OUR SPONSOR'

I think what's happened here is that thousands of geeks without any media education received their first exposure to feminist critique through YouTube and they didn't know how to interpret it. So critiques of their favourite games were interpreted as attacks against them personally. If anything, that was Sarkeesian's big mistake; she overestimated the YouTube audience base.

Well, it was only 6 minutes, so what the heck.

(watches)

Yep, waste of time.

For what it's worth, I don't think the hardcore gamer culture leads to men being more misogynist/homophobic. I think an acceptance of misogynistic/homophobic game culture shuts out and oppresses women and others.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;794501Nobody is 100% objective, but having about a dozen gaming sites all come out with "Gamers are dead" articles within the same day was downright bizarre and troubling. It's not just one guy putting up for an indie dev here. It's a community of people with the same narrative.

More than that, those essays were hate-filled narratives against a specific stereotype. To the point that some of them sounded very similiarto racist tracts from the 50s. Both sides in this mess have really just done some head-shaking behaviour. And maybe its because of personal experience, but I tend to empathize more with those battling against the radfems than those that use the guise of feminism to hide behind while hatemongering. Doesn't make the Zoey Quinn stuff any more acceptable, but it does remove, IMO, any moral high ground on the part of the anti-GG crowd. A little research into Anita also turned up a lot of unpleasantness.

Oh well, its a clusterf***. What else do we expect from the internet these days?