[Mr. Vega]

"Then those who claim to care about corruption shouldn't use a name of a movement created to attack her. It kinda gives away what they're really about when they won't."

So is it only semantics that bothers you? I agree that Zoey is a minor footnote now and it is not what GG is about anymore.

And yet the doxxing on 8chan continues.

[Mr. Vega]

Hold on, I've got another article for you guys to not read, on the claims you've made on all the "gamers are dead" articles vs reality:

http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/

[666maslo666]

"And yet the doxxing on 8chan continues."

And it will continue indefinitely. What do you want to do, censor 8chan, a site that was founded on the very idea of being against censorship? Thats out of the question and you know it.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the official 8chan gamergate board does not condone or allow doxxing or death threats. It is only other boards, on a place where literally anyone can make a board, that do it. And they are much less active than gamergate board. So even going by what happens on 8chan, gamergate does not stand for doxxing and harrasment.

[AtomicClucker]

Hold on, I've got another article for you guys to not read, on the claims you've made on all the "gamers are dead" articles vs reality:

http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/

No, I've seen this before. Too damn cynical at this point to care.

[Mr. Vega]

Hold on, I've got another article for you guys to not read, on the claims you've made on all the "gamers are dead" articles vs reality:

http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/

No, I've seen this before. Too damn cynical at this point to care.

Too cynical for facts?

[AtomicClucker]

Hold on, I've got another article for you guys to not read, on the claims you've made on all the "gamers are dead" articles vs reality:

http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/

No, I've seen this before. Too damn cynical at this point to care.

Too cynical for facts?

That each side hangs on to their facts like pathetic rags of dignity. I've seen enough from both I don't care. Games journalist will continue to live in happy little clouds and gamers fume. Both refuse to resolve the issue, so I'm content to watch both burn themselves into oblivion. I've seen enough crap about "evidence" I don't give a damn anymore. You can have your Social-Make-Yourself-Feel-Better-Warrior all you want, doesn't change the fact that no one wins.

[karajorma]

*Puts moderator hat on*

If you want to discuss issues, discuss.

Speaking as someone completely neutral to the entire issue, what I've seen for the last page is pretty much AtomicClucker trying desperately to maintain some kind of middle ground while Mr Vega and 666maslo666 talk past any point made and spout party line bull**** about how the other side is feminazis or how the entire GG movement is based around harassing women and therefore can't say anything that is a valid point. This is not a discussion. And as such if I don't see a discussion on here in the next few posts I'm going to close the thread and issue warnings to certain people to never discuss Gamergate again unless they can do it in a sensible fashion.

*takes off moderator hat*

As an outsider, I think the entire situation is idiotic. Both sides can best be characterised as believing that "The ends justify the means" in that it doesn't matter what is said, done or how it will be perceived by the other side as long as it advances their goals. It doesn't matter that the other side may have some good points to make, what matters is proving that you were right so that you can get what you wanted. The entire situation would go away for both sides if anyone was remotely willing to compromise.

[Grizzly]

Hold on, I've got another article for you guys to not read, on the claims you've made on all the "gamers are dead" articles vs reality:

http://pixietalksgamergate.wordpress.com/gamers-are-dead-article-analysis/

No, I've seen this before. Too damn cynical at this point to care.

Too cynical for facts?

That each side hangs on to their facts like pathetic rags of dignity. I've seen enough from both I don't care. Games journalist will continue to live in happy little clouds and gamers fume. Both refuse to resolve the issue, so I'm content to watch both burn themselves into oblivion. I've seen enough crap about "evidence" I don't give a damn anymore. You can have your Social-Make-Yourself-Feel-Better-Warrior all you want, doesn't change the fact that no one wins.

I disagree with this reading of "Both sides" - have you even read the article and that website? Being critical of GG does not mean you immeaditily join this opposite side. It just means you are critical of GG. Dismissing something straight out of hand as extremist bull**** of the other side will not help any argument - esp. since that is a website from a person who opposes doing exactly that! Pixiejenni actively takes suggestions from Gamergaters in an attempt to document the whole thing.

I disagree in general with the both sides thing, actually. Gamergate is an actual faction with organization, spokesmen (aristocrat, sargon of akkad, Milo Youliponilious (I am quite sure I spelled that wrong), King of Pol, that sorta thing), forums, etc.
"Anti-GG" has none of that. There's not this "Anti-GG" side that is a political faction with their own idead of how things should be done. There's just people who dislike GG for whatever reason.

[666maslo666]

"Gamergate is an actual faction with organization, spokesmen (aristocrat, sargon of akkad, Milo Youliponilious (I am quite sure I spelled that wrong), King of Pol, that sorta thing), forums, etc."

Nope, both sides are similar in this. Those people are not any more of a spokesmen for gg than Anita or Zoey are spokesmen for anti-gg. And there is no organisation. There is a forum on 8chan thats heavily pro-gg (altough nobody will ban you if you go against the party line) but thats about it. Both sides are just a loose conglomerations of people with similar ideas.

[Flipside]

It needs to be said that the moment a protagonist displays a behaviour that is intended to 'represent' one subset of people, intentionally or not, it is almost certainly offending or annoying someone.

I suppose the way I see it is, imagine a game with an LGBT main character, you are left in one of two positions, you can either just state that and have the character act just like a normal human being, which is the 'realistic' method, or you can leave 'indicators' in the game such as mannerisms and dress. The advantage of number 2 is that it leaves the player no choice but to accept who that character is, the negative side is that, in order to make the situation clear in the simplest manner, the cliche toolbox is often used.

Someone who, after a battle, says in a camp voice 'Ohh, weren't you a tough one!' to indicate their sexuality, might get the message across, but does it do so in a way that is healthy? I know many people who have slightly camp voices but are not members of the LGBT community, A does not, in any sense, mean B, it's just a story-telling tool that is past its sell-by date. In this respect, FF are bang on the mark.

The problem is the fact that patriarchalism and misogyny are being identified as the source of the problem when they are in a way as much a part of the symptoms of it.

We've ended up with a situation where there are a lot of people getting annoyed at the mis-representation or stereotyping of women in games, and quite rightly so, and then pulling out comments about 'Mothers basements' and 'Neck beards' that mean they are reaching into precisely the same toolbox.

Everyone wants a nice easy target, Feminists, Girlfriends, 'Gamers' etc but it doesn't work like that, and every step where we identify 'traits' of those we stand against, we are just as guilty of building a model based on our own perceptions as those who think that women 'belong in the kitchen'.

[Hellzed]

"And yet the doxxing on 8chan continues."

And it will continue indefinitely. What do you want to do, censor 8chan, a site that was founded on the very idea of being against censorship? Thats out of the question and you know it.

In most countries, unlawful disclosure of personal data is considered a major offence, and technically not covered by freedom of speech. Same goes for hate speech : you can publicly criticise people for what they do, not what they are. Most of these laws are worded to protect categories of people who have been consistently attacked throughout history (Jewish, Black and Arab people, homosexuals, women...). Hate speech creates a climate that can lead to physical acts of violence, as some people directly or indirectly linked with hate groups will feel entitled to acting out.

Literal interpretation of freedom of speech (as in : "I can say/write anything anywhere") is wrong : it was never meant to make hate speech and harassment easier. And that's why a project like 8chan is wrong : their only grief against 4chan (what they call "censorship") is this board is starting to enforce a better moderation policy (still not "strict", but compliant with most countries' personal data protection laws).

Some good article about GamerGate :
http://deadspin.com/the-future-of-the-culture-wars-is-here-and-its-gamerga-1646145844
(and, to me, that article explains precisely why there can't be a middle ground with GamerGate)

[Luis Dias]

Regarding the Bayonetta thing, I think we could take that hint and perhaps go back to the original premises of this thread and try to analyse this game regarding its objectification or not. I think it's a great example because it is an ambiguous, controversial one even amongst feminists. Anita Sarkeesian said she is going to do a video about how it is such a dire example of "Fighting **** Toy" for men's gaze, while I also happen to know that Leigh Alexander was pretty much stating the exact opposite, that it portrayed her sexy appeal as a weapon of a sorts, as an empowering thing, not an objectifyiing thing.

I think this complete polarization is a symptom of a wider problem in this manner of analyzing games. If the same methodology produces two amazingly different results, then the method is extremely unreliable. However, the methods or the kind of analysis might differ. We might be watching two different strains of feminism, one much more Victorian, "prude", the other much more "Sex positive", libertarian. I will watch AtomicClucker's video link later on because I am actually interested in disentangling this particular question, to further understand where Anita or Leigh both come from. Perhaps we could discuss these things instead of debating if a rage movement mob in twitter is behaving mob-like and with rage?

[Flipside]

Thing is, there is an aspect of deliberate defamation in a lot of the Media I've read about Gamergate, a lot of shouting about the bad stuff and not enough taking the root complaint of the group seriously. This may be because they are taking advantage of the fact that whilst the complaints of impartiality do actually carry weight, the reason they carry weight was completely mis-judged by GG.

This has led to a situation where the Media can use that mistake to divert focus from the original question of 'Can we be certain that things like reviews in these places are impartial' and instead made it about a huge, meaningless drama. Gamergate is no more made up solely of Trolls and Misogynists than Feminism is made of Man-haters and shrews. In other words, look only at the extremes and you'll only develop extreme opinions.

There is a certain feeling of 'distraction technique' being used, the truth is, that minority has probably made it harder for genuine concerns about impartiality to be raised, I don't think that was entirely without design in the manner it has been reported.

I'm not saying that GG are 'right' or 'wrong', all I'm saying is that the Media acting like wide-eyed innocents in all of this is not indicative of the whole story.

[karajorma]

Thanks Flipside, you've summed up a lot of what I was thinking is going on in this whole mess.

@Luis, I'm not sure if people want to carry on with GamerGate or move on to discussion of Bayonetta etc. So what I'm going to do is I'll relax the rules on double posting on this thread for the time being. If you want to post on both topics post in separate threads. That way if both subjects interest people we can split the thread more easily.

[Grizzly]

Thing is, there is an aspect of deliberate defamation in a lot of the Media I've read about Gamergate, a lot of shouting about the bad stuff and not enough taking the root complaint of the group seriously.

The problem is that if you take a look at the roots of gamergate, you get to these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5-51PfwI3M&html5=1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKmy5OKg6lo&html5=1

You can state that the movement has since "moved on", but it doesn't help that this stuff actually gets brought up rather often - and that, quite simply, gamergate started here. A lot of people who work in the games industry know this, and they will always associate gamergate with this (since this is how it kicked off). It also does not help that a lot of the complaints that get thrown about are based on misconceptions.

Furthermore, even after two months, I still can't tell wether the movement is about ethics, about the increase of feminism in gaming, about being a fan of a gaming webstore or about being anti-SJW. It doesn't help that each gamergater seems to have their own ideas on what the whole thing is about either.

tl;dr: Gamergate has a massive PR problem.

This may be because they are taking advantage of the fact that whilst the complaints of impartiality do actually carry weight, the reason they carry weight was completely mis-judged by GG.

Hmm. What is it about the complaints of impartiality that carry weigth? And how have they been misjudged?

[666maslo666]

Literal interpretation of freedom of speech (as in : "I can say/write anything anywhere") is wrong : it was never meant to make hate speech and harassment easier.

I am more of a libertarian in this area so that is more or less what freedom of speech means to me. My country has hate speech laws on paper too, thankfully never enforced.

Anyway, that wasnt my point, my point was that there is nothing GamerGate can do about harrassment or doxxing, except to nicely ask people to stop (which doesnt seem very effective against the real whackos or trolls anyway). Therefore it is not representative of the whole thing.

[Flipside]

Well, that's the thing, GG has become a bandwagon that anyone with a complaint jumps on, mostly because it made itself about people rather than policy, and when they did get involved with Policies, they got the wrong end of the stick and thought it was about how Journalists/Developers behave as people, rather than publications/software houses behave as organizations.

The question of impartiality is more centered around where sites get their funding and promotional material, not who is sleeping with whom. As I've said before, reading a review on a site that carries income-generating adverts for computer games, whether it be the same computer game or even different ones, will generate a question of impartiality. Developers offering special deals for reviews that cast the game in a good light will generate a question of impartiality. These are the situations that people should be raising flags about, not passing judgement on the mating habits of developers and journalists, even if it were true (which it isn't), it would be a drop in the ocean compared to the possibility of institutionalized bias that is inherent with this kind of conflict of interest.

That doesn't automatically follow that this is what is happening, but the question deserves to be asked, and answered, but Gamergate are no longer the group to do it.

[Grizzly]

The question of impartiality is more centered around where sites get their funding and promotional material, not who is sleeping with whom. As I've said before, reading a review on a site that carries income-generating adverts for computer games, whether it be the same computer game or even different ones, will generate a question of impartiality.

This is an interesting question. Rock Paper Shotgun, for example, uses an independent add-aggegrator run via Eurogamer and one run by outbrain, so they have hardly any control over the advertisements that are displayed (unless it's silly, so they can have one removed). It *has* created questions in the past (people disliked them for positively reviewing Crysis 2 and linking it to the advertisements), but RPS and various advertisers simply don't talk to each other.

Anyway, that wasnt my point, my point was that there is nothing GamerGate can do about harrassment or doxxing, except to nicely ask people to stop (which doesnt seem very effective against the real whackos or trolls anyway). Therefore it is not representative of the whole thing.

The roots of gamergate lie in harassment and doxxing (as a result of the above vids). As long as there are people who feel that the harassment and doxxing are means that are justified by the ends, it will continue.  I think the only thing that can be done is to stop giving legitimacy to these nutjobs and reboot the movement with a clear structure (so you can keep the trolls out) under a new name.

[Mr. Vega]

*Puts moderator hat on*

If you want to discuss issues, discuss.

Speaking as someone completely neutral to the entire issue, what I've seen for the last page is pretty much AtomicClucker trying desperately to maintain some kind of middle ground while Mr Vega and 666maslo666 talk past any point made and spout party line bull**** about how the other side is feminazis or how the entire GG movement is based around harassing women and therefore can't say anything that is a valid point. This is not a discussion. And as such if I don't see a discussion on here in the next few posts I'm going to close the thread and issue warnings to certain people to never discuss Gamergate again unless they can do it in a sensible fashion.

*takes off moderator hat*

As an outsider, I think the entire situation is idiotic. Both sides can best be characterised as believing that "The ends justify the means" in that it doesn't matter what is said, done or how it will be perceived by the other side as long as it advances their goals. It doesn't matter that the other side may have some good points to make, what matters is proving that you were right so that you can get what you wanted. The entire situation would go away for both sides if anyone was remotely willing to compromise.

I attempted to start a discussion on Alexander's article and whether or not the media is really engaging in the vicious attack he claims it is, and he made it very clear he had no interest in hearing it.

As for what GG is really about, I'm stating my opinion based on what i've witnessed, which is pretty extensive. Maybe I have good reasons for believing as I do. What more do you want me to do? I just haven't seen more than a tiny fraction of gg as having the properties he claims it does. What I have seen is an awful lot of harassment using the name against the same targets that the movement was supposed to have 'moved on' from. Does it not bother you that a lot of the voices you would expect to rally around an anti-corruption movement have instead condemned Gamergate? I think what Alexander said was completely misunderstood and completely justified and that journalists have very good reasons for speaking out against GG. The vibe I'm getting here is that because "both parties" are at fault, I can't say that if there's going to be a civil conversation. I'm sorry, I think it's true! What do you want me to say?!

If someone wants to talk about corruption, yay! But GG is a name birthed in harassment and still being run in its main part as a harassment movement out of 4/8chan. If you get a new name, one without all the history and connotations gg has picked up, you'll be able to get out from the shadow of everything in gg that isn't about corruption. You won't have to say that you're a 'moderate' that doesn't like doxxing and death threats. You'll be able to focus on what actually matters to you, for real. As for us anti-GGers, it would really help if the reasonable ones would separate yourself from the 8channers so we could talk to you without waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Again, we're asking them to drop a name. If they say the name doesn't matter to them, why won't they ditch it if it's so toxic to so many people? I'd like to see actions line up with words, that's all I'm asking.

[Flipside]

Thing is, I'm a big fan of Zero Punctuation reviews, even when he's hated a game that I've enjoyed, he never raises a complaint that I feel is unjustified, it just has a different impact on his gaming experience to me, which is fine, different strokes as it were. He appears on the Escapist, which is one of the sites that I have concerns about their advertising policies.

It doesn't always follow that the possibility for bias must therefore mean that bias is present, but I understand completely if someone were to say that alarm bells ring when they read a review surrounded by game adverts.

But yes, I'll agree that Gamergate, in its current incarnation was born in flame, lives in flame and will die in flame, it took the wrong end of the stick and ran with it, anyone with a genuine concern about the relationship between game-publications and game-publishers would do well to distance themselves from it, I just hope it doesn't impair the ability to have a serious discussion over those same concerns.