Quote from: Will;796072GG is a movement that started with slander and personal attacks, has continued to be fueled by internet rage and slander and personal attacks, and is constantly spinning lies.

Anytime you want to call out specific people or events, rather than sum up the whole thing as "Gamergate", I'll be right there with you.

QuoteIt's a movement that's attracted neo-Nazis, antisemitic cartoons, attacks on ANY woman who dares even mildly disagree with it.

And again, if you want to call out specific people or events, that'd be awesome.  But "StopGamergate2014" attracted fucking ISIS of all things.  Surely you would agree that it would be the height of stupidity to lump in any and everyone who hashtagged "StopGamergate2014" with ISIS, wouldn't you?

QuotePeople are volunteering to fly that flag _because_ it's contentious and has visibility.

All the folks wringing their hands about 'a few bad apples' and 'they don't represent us' aren't doing something ELSE precisely because those 'few bad apples' and nonrepresentatives are creating such drama and energy.

Gosh, in the thread on rolling for characters, you called out Sommerjohn for trying to dissect your motives and reasons based on what you yourself wrote, and now you want to do the same based on an answer by one lone guy in a intentionally leaderless movement.

I mean, if we're going to do that, then I suggest we have to give the same or greater value to the GamerGate Harassment Patrol.  I mean, if a group wants to use the contentious visibility of hateful harassers in order to maintain the relevance of their movement, a harassment patrol seems counterproductive.

QuoteIf anyone truly believes that small-time indie gaming journalism needs to be revamped, start a club or something and do it honestly. Do it with some group you can kick assholes out of, where you have a representative who DOES speak for you.

Until that point? You are CHOOSING to stand with horrible people. And from a distance spectators will not be able to tell the difference.

Here I'm going to have to disagree, because as a spectator it's been pretty easy to tell the difference, if you're inclined to pay attention to what people are saying, rather than just saying, "Huh, GamerGate.  Must be a hateful misogynistic asshole."  The key, you see, is judging people by what they say rather than the hashtag they use.

Quote from: Will;796079'aren't doing something else' in the sense of 'aren't in some other movement.'

QuoteAgain, if there are so many uninformed people reacting to GG with dismay because of bad apples, why not form some other group and, you know, not call yourself a GamerGater?

That question has been answered numerous times already.

Moving goal posts? I've made the same argument about four times in this thread, possibly more.

Given I'm one of the only persistent anti-GGer in the thread, you'd think someone might remember it.

Which is, btw Iosue, what doesn't super motivate me to get into long explanations -- I've probably already explained myself, people forgot in the haze of trying to be snide or funny, and then everyone seems to reset for the next round.

Disagree, fine, but hey, if you really want a long explanation reread the thread.

Quote from: Will;796086Moving goal posts? I've made the same argument about four times in this thread, possibly more.

Given I'm one of the only persistent anti-GGer in the thread, you'd think someone might remember it.

Which is, btw Iosue, what doesn't super motivate me to get into long explanations -- I've probably already explained myself, people forgot in the haze of trying to be snide or funny, and then everyone seems to reset for the next round.

Disagree, fine, but hey, if you really want a long explanation reread the thread.

Which argument? Why arent they doing something else/involved in other movements? Many of the are, as pointed out blatantly in the link in the post you responded to. Why don't they just change the name? Well I'd say common sense, but as that seems to not be common enough, I'd say reread the thread.

I am totally confused by this Islam / GG thing.

I am also confused about the vitriol vs. Will. He's been more than cool. And I have to agree with the criticism that bad apples in a movement bring the spotlight that others in the movement can use. But I would argue that's common for many movements.

It's why smashy-smashy anarchists were often tolerated at anti-war rallies. If nobody broke some windows, the TV crews might not even report that 10,000 people showed up for a rally. Of course, others of us argued that any smashy-smashy diminished the message, but even I could not argue that the media has a propensity to only spotlight where there's sensationalism.

Quote from: Will;796072Until that point? You are CHOOSING to stand with horrible people. And from a distance spectators will not be able to tell the difference.

Fuck the spectators. If others want to define me, judge me, or lump me into whatever category, they are free to go ahead. WTF would I ever care what a bunch of worthless SJWs think?

Its that old adage that someone else's opinion of me is none of my business. I know where I stand and I know what I believe. The rest of the world can suck a chode in the party zone.

Quote from: TristramEvans;796053Thats an incredibly eurocentric take on the term "historically".

Tight-knit farming communities... social control... the English countryside of a couple hundred years ago was about the least controlling rural environment in world history to that point. So you seem to have it completely back to front.

Quote from: Will;796072Until that point? You are CHOOSING to stand with horrible people.

So are you, mate.

Quote from: S'mon;796100So are you, mate.

But how are they horrible? They're the good guys right? Standing firm against a vile hate group of white men. How could they EVER be wrong? After all, it's not like a huge group of minorities they claim to speak for told them to go piss up a rope.

Quote from: Ladybird;795705No, this has always been a credible option, it's always been possible (It's what I usually tend to do; I'm sure I'm not alone). The issue is that the great majority of people don't care; sports fans want their new game so they can play with the new season content. Competitive players want their updates so they can start learning the new game. Open-world fans want a new place to run around like sociopaths in, MMO fans want those world firsts.

I did it personally, ME3 was the nail in the coffin for my release purchases of stand-alone games.  As you mentioned below, MMOs are a different deal, but there I can be in the alpha/beta and make sure it isn't terrible.  I don't think "stop buying at release" was credible as anything other than a personal option until now, because there's been only passing will to advocate for it and no sense among gamers that any sort of solidarity was needed.

Quote from: Ladybird;795705Beware of unintended consequences.

* The first few weeks of sales, currently, are really important for sequel decisions. Now, for the megafranchises, the decisions were made years ago; I'm sure Activision and Ubisoft have the dates for the next few years of CoD or AC games already marked out (Right down to the announcements that the PC version will be delayed for reasons). Saint's Row, though? Borderlands? Titanfall? Bayonetta? Those are franchises that are on the bubble; a bad launch could sink them entirely (And has, in some cases).
* Retailers aren't going to want to get stuck with inventory that doesn't shift for two weeks, and retail has a lot of power (I'm still unsure how much of the backlash against the XBone's always, always online model was fueled by agent provoceteurs from retail chains). So they'll stock up more on the previous megahits...
* Which will be bad for the few remaining mid-tier franchises and developers, like your Saint's Row's or whatever, and very bad for totally new franchises to break into. If that's not going to sell, it's not going to get stocked, which will mean it won't sell... so it won't get a sequel. Now, regardless of whether you like a particular series or genre or not (I like SR, which is why I'm using it as an example) I think we can all agree that a market with more variety of games, catering to more tastes, is better than one with less, catering to fewer.
* And if a franchise doesn't sell, it's developers won't continue to be employed. The last generation of consoles has basically gutted the middle tier of games and developers (Increasing development costs, not-similarly-increasing sales revenues - the big headline figures mostly come from a few megahits); but, as we've seen with kickstarter, there's still a market for isometric RPG's, space exploration sims, adventure games. We'll get some good indie games out of it, absolutely, but... I miss the middle tier. They were always the most interesting in terms of concepts and gameplay.
* And fair enough, legitimitely bad developers should go bust... but developers don't set out to make bad games. Something like, say, a Frozen tie-in game, is never going to have mass appeal, never going to win "game of the year" or whatever. But it should still exist, there's still a market for it, some people are still going to enjoy it. Not every game needs to be a classic for the ages.

I'm not fond of the disruption this conflict could bring to the developer side of the industry, even if I hold them responsible for a great deal of B.S. it's not the owners who really have to give a shit about all this.  Didn't observe  the reduction mid-tier developers, thanks for bringing that up.

Not surprised profits are a problem though, prices holding steady or going down while expectations are driven up can't really be sustainable.

Quote from: Ladybird;795705We're in an interesting time right now, in that we've seen a couple of waves of respectable, relatively-free citizen journalists break through... but the majors are onto it now. They're not going to let another wave appear unless they're sure they are under control.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the state of games journalism - it's very rare that an entire new form of media, like games, is developed; it's a huge disservice to not see it reported on properly, or for people to try and limit what areas games should be allowed to cover (Which is more of an issue with gamer culture) - but it's a situation that gamers have allowed to develop for a very, very long time. It's not going to get fixed quickly.

True that.. fortunately, I feel like our targets are so rickety we can make progress faster than anyone expects.  Gawker media in particular is in trouble, few wand to stand for them on account of their practice of publishing celebrity nudes, sex tapes, and other such gross invasions of privacy.

But what's this "let" you speak of, the majors are getting less say every day.

Quote from: Will;796079If I started a religious hashtag movement named Mislam and a bunch of folks declaring themselves Mislish went out and said 'yeah! black people suck!' and this kept happening, I'd be inclined to go 'welp, this was only a few months old, let's rebrand and have a tighter control over things.'

If you did that, the racists you bed down with would ask if you can make the movement more kinetic, while the multi-level marketers you bend knee to would demand that you hand over control of the alias to a woman (like her, for example) as soon as she saw that you had audience to target.

Quote from: Will;796079If I started a religious hashtag movement named Mislam and a bunch of folks declaring themselves Mislish went out and said 'yeah! black people suck!' and this kept happening, I'd be inclined to go 'welp, this was only a few months old, let's rebrand and have a tighter control over things.'

Will, I'm an atheist. I think Sam Harris is a fucking tool and his views on Islam are roughly as backwards as fundamentalist Islam's views about women. Doesn't mean I need to come up with a colorful new term for myself, it means I don't perpetuate his opinions. I spread my own opinions instead.

That's more or less what the guys around here have been doing with gamer gate. At least one actively supporting getting rid of the disruptive element that is making them look bad. Then you sit there and keep slathering them with accusations based on people who they have little to do with.

Will, how about the Quinn supporters explain why they shouted down someone who claimed to have been harassed by Quinn until he said it was a bad time to bring it up and apologized? Can we drag that out and label you with it? How you totally suppress victims so you can have your political way. As far as I'm concerned it'd be a dick thing to do to you, even if it was a massively offensive thing to have seen done in the first place.

I'll repeat it again: anyone saying that some movement or hashtag needs to "disband nao!!" because it began with allegedly horrible X or Y thing is engaging in fallacious thinking. End of story.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;796133I'll repeat it again: anyone saying that some movement or hashtag needs to "disband nao!!" because it began with allegedly horrible X or Y thing is engaging in fallacious thinking. End of story.

Except people do that all the time.

ISIS caused a company called ISIS wallet to change their name after millions were spent on Marketing to Softbank Wallet.  They even decided to get rid of the name ISIS in the TV Show Archer.

A hashtag on twitter, by its very nature, is a short-term meme.  I think too many people see too much identity in that meme, thinking it means "all gamers", which it does not--I would have to say both the pro and anti GG people are a small fraction of the gaming population--most people don't give a crap either way.  

These things don't last, so I think if people want to deal with the journalist side of things, they should form a better organization for it, if people want to deal with the political stuff, they too should create something constructive.  But tying up ones identity or trying to organize a serious long-term social movement or protest in a twitter hashtag is kind of missing the point.

Quote from: JRT;796136Except people do that all the time.

Yes, people engage in fallacious thinking all the time. I agree.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;796145Yes, people engage in fallacious thinking all the time. I agree.

Nope, I just showed an example of people moving away from confusing their identity from a toxic influence.  

Organizations do it all the time.  If the goals of some people in an associated twitter hashtag differ from others in it, it might be time to setup a new meme or hashtag or organization to separate the causes from the elements you disagree with.