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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
My general rule is the Off-topic section is a very bad place to be or at least if you're in a political thread.

Then why are you here?

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Is it sad that cracked.com has become so bad i actually have thought about writing articles for them (whereas before i thought i could never match that level of skill and talent)? I can be a funny guy at times but i don't have detailed info on events. I could probably write like a couple articles but it'd be more based on personal experience than detailed info displayed anywhere.

It's not sad that you want to contribute to something you used to enjoy. It's sad they probably wouldn't accept it, if it didn't follow their, ah, current narrative guidelines

 Peregrine wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
My general rule is the Off-topic section is a very bad place to be or at least if you're in a political thread.

Then why are you here?

I would ask you the same question.

I was originally here because i think hotsauceman or somebody else commented and like a curious mouse near a mouse trap i took the bait. I'm rather sad i did actually.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I would ask you the same question.

You could ask it, but it would make about as much sense as asking "WHY IS RLRGJREOIJGOIREJGOIREJGOIREJGOIWEJROIGJRGJOIR?!?!?!?!? WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?". I'm not the one who said "the off-topic section is a bad place to be" and then continued to read and post in the off-topic section.

Sining wrote:
So your argument is that what? Death threats in this instance invalidates something?

My argument is what I’ve already typed, here it copy and pasted for you;
“And what's more, we have cases in the past with actual evidence of trading favourable reviews for advertising purchases between major software labels and major review sites... and yet we're supposed to believe that this instance, in which an evidence free accusation against an indie game maker and one game journalist who's possible ethical breaches were unknown to management caused a massive retaliation.

The difference is that this time the story had sex, women and progressive politics involved. And those things caused a massive freak out among a certain part of the gaming community.”

Again, you provided one photo of one person on twitter who's both a SP3 and GG member. ONE person. By that logic, since Arthur Chu is offering guys 40 usd to vote no-award on twitter, obviously, those people who are going to vote no award are just being bribed. See how that works?

You know Vox Day was a key early member of gamergate, yeah? It isn’t just some weird coincidence that he’s happened to claim a central role among the puppy – he brought numbers, and guess where he brought them from?

I mean sebster, I know your forum life revolves around me responding to you but it's not like I check the forum every hour and not like I go through every post. If your feelingz were hurt cause I didn't respond to you, I apologise. No need to be tsun tsun

People drop in and out of threads all the time. I come and go from this place and when I do conversations that I had been in the middle of just end and I accept the same from others, that’s just how forum posting works.

But of course, that isn’t what you did, and there’s no point pretending otherwise. You asked for evidence, and when it was provided you just stopped that line of discussion flat, while continuing to post in the thread. Arguing that’s because you just happened to miss that one post is a bit sad, really.

It continues.

Markos Kloos has withdrawn his Hugo Award-nominated novel Lines of Departure (47North) from consideration for this year’s award. Kloos explains in a blog post:

"It has come to my attention that “Lines of Departure” was one of the nomination suggestions in Vox Day’s “Rabid Puppies” campaign. Therefore — and regardless of who else has recommended the novel for award consideration — the presence of “Lines of Departure” on the shortlist is almost certainly due to my inclusion on the “Rabid Puppies” slate. For that reason, I had no choice but to withdraw my acceptance of the nomination. I cannot in good conscience accept an award nomination that I feel I may not have earned solely with the quality of the nominated work."

Annie Bellet has withdrawn her nominated story “Goodnight Stars” (The End is Now) from consideration. On her blog, she explains:

"I am withdrawing because this has become about something very different than great science fiction. I find my story, and by extension myself, stuck in a game of political dodge ball, where I’m both a conscripted player and also a ball. (Wrap your head around that analogy, if you can, ha!) All joy that might have come from this nomination has been co-opted, ruined, or sapped away. This is not about celebrating good writing anymore, and I don’t want to be a part of what it has become."

This childish cry for acceptance from Correia, Day et al is way past the point of being just amusing to watch from a distance.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Okay, what actual examples of journalism corruption has been uncovered by Gamergate? With evidence, please.

GameJournoPros: It is later revealed in one of the GameJournoPro Email List Leaks that the Escapist's Editor Greg Tito was put under considerable pressure to shut down the Escapist forum discussion by other members of the secret mailing list, including Ben Kuchera of Polygon, and Kyle Orland of Ars Technica.

Despite their editor's previous statements,[80] Kotaku is revealed to be breaking their own ethics policy.[81] Kotaku Journalist Patricia Hernandez had written multiple stories[82] about a games developer who is her close personal friend.[83]

It is revealed that Kotaku writer Nathan Grayson is friends [84] with game developer Robin Arnott. Grayson gave Arnott's game Soundself a glowing review in Kotaku.[85] Grayson also promoted Arnott's work several times on Kotaku [86][87][88][89][90] during 2014, sometimes receiving an abnormal amount of coverage. At no point in his coverage did Grayson recuse himself or disclose his friendship with Arnott.[91][92]

Polygon game journalist Danielle Riendeau is revealed to have appeared together with Gone Home score composer and good friend Chris Remo appear on an IdleThumbs podcast, one week before Riendaeu gave Gone Home a 10/10 review[93] on Polygon.[94]

Journalist Devin Faraci, writer for badassdigest, tweets that Quinn's detractors were worse than ISIS.[95] It is only one example of insults directed at gamers over the course of the scandal.

Information surfaces that Kotaku writer Patricia Hernandez covered Drink and The Hunt for Gay Planet, which were games developed by her friend Anna Anthropy. Hernandez and Anthropy had been roommates for several months and shared a close friendship that was not disclosed in Hernandez's coverage.[96]

The "Gamers are Dead" articles - A blitz of anti-gamer articles begins to hit the web from various games journalist sites. Articles originate from a variety of sources including, but not limited, to Gamasutra,[102] Destructoid,[103] Kotaku,[104] RockPaperShotgun,[105] ArsTechnica,[106] Vice,[107] Buzzfeed,[108] The Daily Beast,[109] and Dr. Nerdlove.[110]

The author of the Guardian piece, Jenn Frank is revealed to have had an undisclosed conflicts of interest,[131][132] having been funded on Patreon by Silverstring Media PR agent Maya Kramer. Anita Sarkeesian and Johnathan McIntosh of Feminist Frequency are also both advisors to Kramer's company Silverstring.[133]

Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo writes an article on Gamergate, in which he states that his journalists are entitled to pay into developer's Patreon funds in order to gain access,[158] and expense this cost.

A team of gamers investigating the leaked Polytron data from August releases a video[169] outlining conflicts of interest at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), and the IndieCade game awards, centered around the the investment group Indie Fund. Indie Fund and Polytron investors are revealed to have been judges in the 2012 IGF awards, at which Polytron's "Fez" won the Grand Prize,[170] while also entitled to a percentage of the game's sales upon its release the following month. The awards chair of IndieCade, at which Fez also won 2 awards, is also revealed to have been a Polytron investor. (Gamesnosh Article on video[171])

A confirmed former games journalist makes a post in the /r/Games subreddit detailing corruption in the Australian gaming press. The source states that unprofessionally close relationships between Australian game publishers and game journalists motivated them to kill a story after a security breach resulted in over 40,000 user accounts getting compromised by hackers .[185] EA would later confirm that the incident occurred at the community forum for developer Firemonkeys on Sep 8th, 2013.[186]

APGNation publishes an interview with Matthew Rappard of The Fine Young Capitalists,[189] on the difficulties that TFYC's feminist game jam faced due to opposition from Zoe Quinn throughout 2014, as well as their recent interactions and difficulties over the course of the current scandal.

Stardock CEO Brad Wardell releases a blog post in which he expressed sympathy for GamerGate and dismay at the "character assassination and harassment" conducted by its opponents.[243]

William Usher Releases an article about a GameJournoPros leak in which a former GJP member talks about a conflict many conflicts of interests and claiming #Gamergate isn't about ethics because they haven't called them out. [290]

William Usher, one of the leakers of the GameJournosPro list, publishes evidence that members of the GameJournoPro group conspired to fire and blacklist then-Destructoid writer Allistar Pinsof after Pinsof warned consumers about corruption in an IndieGoGo campaign.[303]

William Usher posts a GameJournoPros email from May 2013 in which Brandon Boyer, the chairman of the IGF, sent out invites for the Horizon game conference to members of the mailing list. Kyle Orland, senior gaming editor of Ars Technica, responds by stating "The benefits of your GJP memberhip just keep growing. JOIN TODAY!"[356]

William Usher reveals a GameJournoPros email sent by Ben Kuchera which showed that despite claims that he was harassed for talking about ethics, as of 7 Sep 2014, Kuchera admitted that he had "yet to receive a single message from an actual reader about any of this" and that he was "not convinced the people who play games or read our sites care."[360]

Nichegamer interviews developer Christian Allen, who worked on AAA games including Halo: Reach, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, and Ghost Recon. Allen criticizes the current state of game journalism and states that "I have personally sat in negotiations where a publisher negotiated a higher review score for a game in exchange for an exclusive cover or assets for a separate upcoming game. It is common, especially with previews. This is why you often see glowing previews of bad games, or pre-release reviews that have to be revised post-launch." [430]

More Gamejournopro emails are leaked, revealing that a circle of journalists lead by Patrick Klepek from Giant Bomb conspired to blacklist developer Kevin Dent from receiving any interviews or media attention.[449]

William Usher runs an article on Tyler Wilde, author of the PC Gamer master race article, revealing that Wilde maintained close personal relationships with employees of Ubisoft and Capcom, but wrote about their products without disclosing his potential conflict of interest to readers.[494] PC Gamer apologizes for the perceived ethical breaches of Tyler Wilde for Ubisoft Games, they moved forward by removing him from future Ubisoft coverage and stating "In any situation in which the writer was still required to comment on the subject, full disclosure will be provided in the article."[498] No comments on making an Ethics Policy public outside of the Review Guide were made, however they did mention they would disclose affiliate links in the future, and would fix any missed ones that people find.

Ben Kuchera admits to taking work from another source without providing a citation.[514]

TechRaptor publishes the first two portions of an interview they conducted with Allistair Pinsof, who was the subject of GameJournoPros blacklisting after he was fired from Destructoid. In his interview, Pinsof states that he decided to come out into the open after being blocked by IGF Chairman Brandon Boyer on twitter. Pinsof then described how Boyer used his personal connections in order to help a friend win the 2011 Fantastic Arcade Best of Show Award for Faraway. Pinsof also talked about how developer Shawn McGrath and artist Jason Degroot were not properly credited or compensated for work on Fez and how McGrath was libeled in Indie Game: The Movie.[531][532]

And that's just till Feb this year. You're welcome -_-
Sources links found at http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php?title=Timeline


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:

Sining wrote:
So your argument is that what? Death threats in this instance invalidates something?

My argument is what I’ve already typed, here it copy and pasted for you;
“And what's more, we have cases in the past with actual evidence of trading favourable reviews for advertising purchases between major software labels and major review sites... and yet we're supposed to believe that this instance, in which an evidence free accusation against an indie game maker and one game journalist who's possible ethical breaches were unknown to management caused a massive retaliation.

The difference is that this time the story had sex, women and progressive politics involved. And those things caused a massive freak out among a certain part of the gaming community.”

That's great. Go look for another scandal where the journalists wrote several articles saying gamers were dead though.

Again, you provided one photo of one person on twitter who's both a SP3 and GG member. ONE person. By that logic, since Arthur Chu is offering guys 40 usd to vote no-award on twitter, obviously, those people who are going to vote no award are just being bribed. See how that works?

You know Vox Day was a key early member of gamergate, yeah? It isn’t just some weird coincidence that he’s happened to claim a central role among the puppy – he brought numbers, and guess where he brought them from?

Sining wrote:
"evidence"

So your "evidence" consists of four things:

1) Stuff that isn't evidence of corruption at all, probably because you just copy/pasted the list from somewhere else without bothering to pay much attention to its contents.

2) Vague speculation about how various people are friends with each other, without any proof that their friendship resulted in inappropriate actions in their jobs.

3) Complaining that certain journalists talked about and coordinated their work, which might be inappropriate but isn't really corruption.

4) Evidence of developers arranging favorable reviews for their products, which is the equivalent of gamergate uncovering shocking evidence that water is wet since everyone in the gaming community already knew that developers have been doing that for almost as long as there have been game reviews.

You're free to interpret it however you want. However, you do realise most professional journalists disclose when they have relationships to the people/company whose product they're reviewing don't you? Or are you just trying to argue for the sake of arguing?

Prestor Jon wrote:
All of the suggested lists/ballots from various authors and websites were publically available. Whether it's from Scalzi or Locus or Sad Puppies or Tor.com or whomever. Sad Puppies put out a suggested list, Correia used his blog to promote the works on it and increase the sales of those stories on Amazon in the hopes that more people would read them find them worthy. There's nothing nefarious there.

Yes, I said it was publically available, that’s one of the parts of the slate strategy, obviously. No point having a slate if you don’t tell people about it

And to repeat it for hopefully the last time, there is a difference between saying ‘these authors are great, you guys should read them and vote for them if you like it as much as I do’, and ‘there is a clique dominating the Hugos, and to counter that clique we should strategically vote for a consistent ballot which is these books I’ve listed here’.

The only political aspect to Sad Puppies is that that they don't want an author's personal politics to play a role in evaluationg a story's Hugo worthiness. There is no unified political position shared by the authors promoted by Sad Puppies or any unifying demographic characteristic.

Holy gak man look at the fething name 'Sad Puppies Think of the Children'. When the name of your organisation is openly mocking a strawman of SJW, claiming there’s nothing political in the movement is just plain delusional.

That's the dirty little secret that was exposed and is causing such sour grapes; the Hugos had turned into an award determined by a tiny insular group of trufans that wanted the proper authors to win, the proper books to be reviewed and endorsed by the proper sites and make the suggested lists on the proper sites, tacitly condone the personal self promotion and campaigning done by the proper authors and enjoy a nice circle of affirmation and pats on the back when the proper stories won every year and their ideals of what real scifi and fantasy should be were upheld.

The number of nominators is very small considering the low hurdle for entry, that’s true. But the claim that therefore the awards were cliquish and insular and shut out deserving authors because of politics is the disputed point, and to be honest that claim is just total bs. Have you read the breakdown of winners that Martin put up? There’s just no case to claim that conservative authors had been shut out.

Here’s the thing, if the puppies hadn’t built themselves up around this anti-SJW nonsense, and instead just said focused on a get out the vote campaign, and just tried to encourage anyone to enrol and vote, there’d be no complaints, and no reason to challenge whatever the ballot was.

To an extent, sort of, that’s actually what Sad Puppies 3 did this year, by moving away from the previously all conservative slate to a slate spread across the political spectrum. The problem then is that their slate didn’t actually get the job done. While much of their picks got nominated, it was only when they happen to align with the Rabid Puppy slate. While the Rabid puppies were able to get up 6 nominations that weren’t on the Sad slate, the Sad slate didn’t get a single nomination across the line when it wasn’t on the Rabid slate.

The Sad puppies are actually a distraction. The real power was with the Rabid slate. I’m not sure if this is due to numbers, or because the Rabid slate more loyally followed the suggested slate, but it is what it is.

Now WorldCon has to decide if the Hugos are going to determined by any member of fandom willing to pay $40 and let the nominations fall as they will or if they want to change the system and make it an award given by a chosen few who determine who is worthy.

Moving to a select panel means it’s an entirely different award. Arguably a better award (I’ve never much liked the Hugos, to be honest), but if they change that radically they might as well just start from scratch with a totally different name.

I think it’s much more likely that the Hugos will continue much as they are, and for a period of time (hopefully a short period) the awards will be contested between two political factions both working with slate voting and drawing in as many voters as possible to beat the other side. For all the years that nonsense continues, the Hugos will mean nothing. Hopefully by the time the people involved grow up and move on to important things, the Hugos will still have some meaning.

Sining wrote:
That's great. Go look for another scandal where the journalists wrote several articles saying gamers were dead though.

Who really cares? Some random blog authors saying (for pretty good reasons) that stereotypical gamers are no longer relevant is hardly so unethical that it justifies the kind of reaction that it got. If the best example of shocking ethical problems in game journalism is nothing more than "they said bad things about me" then gamergate is officially a joke.

I mean, it's not like Vox isn't popular on his own.

He is. He's just coincidentally popular among the same "SJW TUMBLR FEMINAZIS RUIN EVERYTHING" crowd that enthusiastically supported gamergate. So it's not unreasonable to suggest that there's a significant overlap between Vox Day's gamergate fans and Vox Day's SP3 fans.

Don't be so tsundere Sebster. I know you expect me to keep replying to you but sometimes I miss things. This post alone jumped 3 pages while I was out last night.

Yeah, how unfortunate that the post you "accidentally" missed just happened to be one that it would be awfully convenient for you to ignore...

The random blog authors call themselves journalists and they also happened to be some of the most influential gaming sites online. It's not some 'random blog', much the same way huffington post or jezebel are some random blogs.

I mean, feel free to go prove there's much overlap. You like evidence right? Go provide some

Kind of like how you're ignoring my posts Pere?

Sining wrote:
However, you do realise most professional journalists disclose when they have relationships to the people/company whose product they're reviewing don't you?

So what? Everyone knows that video game journalism has never met the same standards as "real" journalism. There's nothing in those relationships that is any worse than the same old relationships between reviewers and publishers that has existed for as long as game journalism has existed. Gamergate just discovered shocking evidence that water is wet, while everyone else eyerolled and wondered why they were acting so surprised. So the obvious conclusion here is that if the supposed "ethical issues" were the same things that everyone already knew about and ignored then gamergate had way more to do with an anti-SJW crusade than legitimate concern about ethics in game journalism.

 sebster wrote:


I think it’s much more likely that the Hugos will continue much as they are, and for a period of time (hopefully a short period) the awards will be contested between two political factions both working with slate voting and drawing in as many voters as possible to beat the other side. For all the years that nonsense continues, the Hugos will mean nothing. Hopefully by the time the people involved grow up and move on to important things, the Hugos will still have some meaning.

If the Hugos are going to exclude people, then they already mean nothing. What's the point of getting a prize that had to exclude people? You'll never know if you won it on merit or because certain people were excluded


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

Sining wrote:
However, you do realise most professional journalists disclose when they have relationships to the people/company whose product they're reviewing don't you?

So what? Everyone knows that video game journalism has never met the same standards as "real" journalism. There's nothing in those relationships that is any worse than the same old relationships between reviewers and publishers that has existed for as long as game journalism has existed. Gamergate just discovered shocking evidence that water is wet, while everyone else eyerolled and wondered why they were acting so surprised. So the obvious conclusion here is that if the supposed "ethical issues" were the same things that everyone already knew about and ignored then gamergate had way more to do with an anti-SJW crusade than legitimate concern about ethics in game journalism.

I didn't know there was a subcategory where journalistic ethics apparently never applied to video game journalists. -_-

 sebster wrote:
Moving to a select panel means it’s an entirely different award. Arguably a better award (I’ve never much liked the Hugos, to be honest), but if they change that radically they might as well just start from scratch with a totally different name.

This is pretty much it. The Hugos are the Hugos because they are by the people and for the people. There are already closed panel awards which are held in higher regard than the Hugos (the Arthur C Clark award springs to mind), but the Hugos have been special because they're the largest award anyone with a bit of spare cash can vote for.

Last year when Day got himself on the ballet there was some limited talk of changing the rules to stop such p*ss-taking but it was quickly ruled out by most as then the Hugos would not longer be the Hugos, and I'm sure the same will happen this year. With Kloos removing himself from the ballet and a John C Wright story being removed as ineligible the sad puppies this year are falling apart before the awards even start. The campaign will fail this year and they will lose momentum. Next year or the year after it will be business as usual and this whole episode will be remembered as 'hey, remember that time those white supremacists tried to hijack the Hugos?'

 .Mikes. wrote:

 sebster wrote:
Moving to a select panel means it’s an entirely different award. Arguably a better award (I’ve never much liked the Hugos, to be honest), but if they change that radically they might as well just start from scratch with a totally different name.

This is pretty much it. The Hugos are the Hugos because they are by the people and for the people. There are already closed panel awards which are held in higher regard than the Hugos (the Arthur C Clark award springs to mind), but the Hugos have been special because they're the largest award anyone with a bit of spare cash can vote for.

Last year when Day got himself on the ballet there was some limited talk of changing the rules to stop such p*ss-taking but it was quickly ruled out by most as then the Hugos would not longer be the Hugos, and I'm sure the same will happen this year. With Kloos removing himself from the ballet and a John C Wright story being removed as ineligible the sad puppies this year are falling apart before the awards even start. The campaign will fail this year and they will lose momentum. Next year or the year after it will be business as usual and this whole episode will be remembered as 'hey, remember that time those white supremacists tried to hijack the Hugos?'

And you still keep mixing up the 2.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Some data on the whole voting thing.

http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2015/04/14/sad-puppy-data-analysis/

Sining wrote:
And you still keep mixing up the 2.

I'm not, but you have still been defending a person who says things like this:

there is no such thing as marital rape. Once consent is formally given in public ceremony, it cannot be revoked... If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her![28]

I noticed that the number of fake reviews of my books on Amazon declined considerably after I tracked down the woman from Minnesota and posted her address on this blog

Ironically, in light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban's attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.

I could go on.

 Peregrine wrote:

Sining wrote:
However, you do realise most professional journalists disclose when they have relationships to the people/company whose product they're reviewing don't you?

So what? Everyone knows that video game journalism has never met the same standards as "real" journalism. There's nothing in those relationships that is any worse than the same old relationships between reviewers and publishers that has existed for as long as game journalism has existed. Gamergate just discovered shocking evidence that water is wet, while everyone else eyerolled and wondered why they were acting so surprised. So the obvious conclusion here is that if the supposed "ethical issues" were the same things that everyone already knew about and ignored then gamergate had way more to do with an anti-SJW crusade than legitimate concern about ethics in game journalism.

You thought a guy wearing a cheesecake shirt was unprofessional, but have no problem with undisclosed conflicts of interest?

Pfttt ha ha ha ha!

 .Mikes. wrote:

Sining wrote:
And you still keep mixing up the 2.

I'm not, but you have still been defending a person who says things like this:

there is no such thing as marital rape. Once consent is formally given in public ceremony, it cannot be revoked... If a woman believes in the concept of marital rape, absolutely do not marry her![28]

I noticed that the number of fake reviews of my books on Amazon declined considerably after I tracked down the woman from Minnesota and posted her address on this blog

Ironically, in light of the strong correlation between female education and demographic decline, a purely empirical perspective on Malala Yousafzai, the poster girl for global female education, may indicate that the Taliban's attempt to silence her was perfectly rational and scientifically justifiable.

I could go on.

Dude, I am not for Vox Day. Unfortunately, when you mix up the 3, Larry, Brad and Vox day together as one distinct entity, then I have issues with that. Which is why my posts to you have constantly been 'stop mixing up the two slates'

First off, Vox Day is not part of Sad Puppies. Second, here's an interesting blog that actually crunches some numbers. not definitive but interesting.

Sining wrote:
Dude, I am not for Vox Day. Unfortunately, when you mix up the 3, Larry, Brad and Vox day together as one distinct entity, then I have issues with that.

I'm not mixing anything up. Day's and Correia's slates come from the same, self serving murk which ompliment each other.

Jason Sandford put it perfectly earlier this month:

Larry and Brad don't want to be associated with VD. But they also must not mind benefiting from his campaign. I say this because it's the only reason I can think of for why they're not calling Vox Day out for the obvious conflict of interest of his Rabid Puppies campaign turning out the block vote for both himself and his own publishing house.

Day, Correia, Torgerson and John C Wright have a well - documented, mututally beneficial relationship, as defending by Torgerson and Wright. If the various shades of puppies are not the same, why have Correia and Torgerson not denounced Day? I mean, as Sandford pointed out, his actoins go directly against their stated aims with sad puppies (ignoring those claims are bollocks of the hairiest degree).

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Sining wrote:
However, you do realise most professional journalists disclose when they have relationships to the people/company whose product they're reviewing don't you?

So what? Everyone knows that video game journalism has never met the same standards as "real" journalism. There's nothing in those relationships that is any worse than the same old relationships between reviewers and publishers that has existed for as long as game journalism has existed. Gamergate just discovered shocking evidence that water is wet, while everyone else eyerolled and wondered why they were acting so surprised. So the obvious conclusion here is that if the supposed "ethical issues" were the same things that everyone already knew about and ignored then gamergate had way more to do with an anti-SJW crusade than legitimate concern about ethics in game journalism.

You thought a guy wearing a cheesecake shirt was unprofessional, but have no problem with undisclosed conflicts of interest?

Pfttt ha ha ha ha!

Considering that most of these gaming websites are paid for by adverts of the very games they have to review, individual reviewers having personal conflicts of interest (such as maybe having funded something at some point or talked to somebody at a party or convention) is laughably low on possible sources of corruption or conflict of interest. The only way you are ever going to remove conflicts of interest from gaming websites is by either:
a) Having no adverts.
or
b) Not reviewing the games which you have adverts for.

A is economically unviable and B just means you lose money due to getting less views as you don't have reviews for the biggest games who will pay for prime advertising space.

Also, once the leading members of your "movement" are reduced to planning attacks on its opponents from a website which hosts child pornography as nowhere else will have them then they've lost any right to talk about ethics of any kind.

 EmpNortonII wrote:
1. "for so much abuse when compared to Grayson" is the operative part here. Of course she had received some criticism- that criticism is what she had the false claims made against... but this didn't become focused on her until she did that. MundaneMatt *has* specified that she was responsible for his video being taken down.

Ah, if it was finally confirmed that it was her that’s really poor form on her part. Fair enough. And of course, it isn’t the only instance of bad form by her, she had a record of pretty crappy behaviour before any of this started.

That said, arguing that it’s the reason that she got dumped on is a real stretch though, because takedown orders are an unfortunately common, and don’t produce death threats or anything like the freak out we’ve seen in through gamergate.

But arguing that it’s one factor of many that contributed, that I’ll accept. I’ll just point out that there are two big factors that played a really big part in all of this are that;
1) It was about sex this time.
2) Quinn was aggressively progressive in her politics, and had a pretty clear SJW identity.

These two factors combined were a red flag to a certain sector of the gaming population (and we all know some of those people). All the factors, the dubious ethics, Quinn’s abrasive personality, that all played a part as well, but we can’t deny the importance of those two major factors.

2. By "after" we of course meaning 2 days later... and that's just what we know. March 31st vs April 2nd... and that's just what we know, not what's possible or likely the case. A woman sleeping around to advance her career is hardly a conspiracy- I expect everyone knows someone that's done it, and not all of them are women. Men do it, too.

And if the accusations had stayed there – an indie game maker had a relationship with a fringe game journalist to get positive reviews, then it would have remained a deeply uninteresting story. The legs in this story came from the insane conspiracies, the five guys, and how it then expanded out in to all this other weirdo stuff. All of which was bs, and really weird bs at that.

I've never known anyone personally that's slept around for any kind of material gain. I don't think I'm particularly unusual in that sense. I mean, obviously it happens, but I doubt it's anywhere near as clear and widespread as you claim. Sex is so much more complex than that, most times.

3. It was past my bed time. I also got DMCA backwards twice. Either way, yes, GamerGate had a mailing campaign to get the rules changed and the rules changed. People involved with it have posted photos of the letters they received back from the FTC. Yes, the Gamergate mailing list had a positive effect.

I was grumpy, and shouldn’t have picked you up on a minor typo like that, my bad.

But the reforms to native advertising had been in development for a long time before then, and were moving forward with no difficulty. Kudos to gamergate for having a positive involvement, but they didn’t materially impact the issue.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Considering that most of these gaming websites are paid for by adverts of the very games they have to review, individual reviewers having personal conflicts of interest (such as maybe having funded something at some point or talked to somebody at a party or convention) is laughably low on possible sources of corruption or conflict of interest. The only way you are ever going to remove conflicts of interest from gaming websites is by either:
a) Having no adverts.
or
b) Not reviewing the games which you have adverts for.

A is economically unviable and B just means you lose money due to getting less views as you don't have reviews for the biggest games who will pay for prime advertising space.

This is nothing new to journalism, how do other web sites or newspapers do it? By adhering to a code of ethics such as the Society of Professional Journalists:
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

Journalists should:
– Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

– Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.

– Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; do not pay for access to news. Identify content provided by outside sources, whether paid or not.

– Deny favored treatment to advertisers, donors or any other special interests, and resist internal and external pressure to influence coverage.

– Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two. Prominently label sponsored content.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Also, once the leading members of your "movement" are reduced to planning attacks on its opponents from a website which hosts child pornography as nowhere else will have them then they've lost any right to talk about ethics of any kind.

Nice Ad Hom laced with dark hints

Sining wrote:
That's great. Go look for another scandal where the journalists wrote several articles saying gamers were dead though.

Yeah, this is the kind of insanity that gamergate has fed off. If anyone ever bothered to read any of those articles they’d have seen they were about the old gamer identity, of the white male, typically with little social life or skills, as no longer being a thing, that gamers were now much more diverse, much closer in make up to the general population.

But gamergate decided to just pretend the articles said something else, in order to feign outrage. It’s just stupid nonsense, really.

You know Brianna Wu is also anti-SP3 right? So by that logic, I guess we can use arthur and BWu as the sole standards of the people who are unhappy with the whole SP3 saga.

I mean, it's not like Vox isn't popular on his own. No, it has to be gamergate. We are the new Anonymous hacker 4chanit

That’s a completely incoherent response.

Don't be so tsundere Sebster. I know you expect me to keep replying to you but sometimes I miss things. This post alone jumped 3 pages while I was out last night.

You just repeated the same defence that you claimed before. It’s getting weaker.

Sining wrote:
If the Hugos are going to exclude people, then they already mean nothing. What's the point of getting a prize that had to exclude people? You'll never know if you won it on merit or because certain people were excluded

And there's still no proof that the Hugos excluded people unfairly, only speculation that it must have been unfair exclusion because somebody's favorite author didn't win one.

I didn't know there was a subcategory where journalistic ethics apparently never applied to video game journalists. -_-

Sigh. I really have to wonder: did you miss the point this badly because you genuinely don't understand, or because you'd rather have an argument against a straw man than accept that criticism of gamergate might be accurate?

The actual point I was making is that game journalism has never been taken seriously by anyone with any real knowledge of the gaming community. For as long as there have been game reviews it has been pretty obvious that game reviewers have close ties with game publishers and are extremely reluctant to give a game anything less than a 9/10 score no matter how obviously terrible it is. It has been decades since anyone has considered a magazine review to be anything more than an opportunity to see a few new screenshots of the game and maybe laugh a bit at how desperately they're trying to justify the 9/10 they're about to give a half-finished product that nobody is going to buy. The stuff gamergate "discovered" is just business as usual for the industry, exactly like it has been for decades. That doesn't mean that it should be like that, but we don't live in an ideal world.

So if talking about biased game reviews and questionable ethics between publishers and journalists is like presenting shocking new evidence that water is wet then which is a more plausible explanation for picking this particular bit of questionable ethics for special outrage: that gamergate is a bunch of naive newbies who genuinely hadn't heard that game reviews were a joke, or that "ethics in game journalism" was little more than an excuse for an anti-SJW crusade.

 sebster wrote:

Ah, if it was finally confirmed that it was her that’s really poor form on her part. Fair enough. And of course, it isn’t the only instance of bad form by her, she had a record of pretty crappy behaviour before any of this started.

That said, arguing that it’s the reason that she got dumped on is a real stretch though, because takedown orders are an unfortunately common, and don’t produce death threats or anything like the freak out we’ve seen in through gamergate.

But arguing that it’s one factor of many that contributed, that I’ll accept. I’ll just point out that there are two big factors that played a really big part in all of this are that;
1) It was about sex this time.
2) Quinn was aggressively progressive in her politics, and had a pretty clear SJW identity.

These two factors combined were a red flag to a certain sector of the gaming population (and we all know some of those people). All the factors, the dubious ethics, Quinn’s abrasive personality, that all played a part as well, but we can’t deny the importance of those two major factors.

I will give you that sex being involved helped get peoples attention. However this not a political thing is just a person thing. People like sex scandals, they like talking about them because they are so "juicy" You add sex on any to any scandal and the average person will get more interested it doesn't really matter about the political views of the people involved.

However I think you are missing one major thing here, which like a lot of controversies it is not the initial act but the response. The gamers are dead articles and other actions by these so called "journalists" was like pouring kerosene on a fire.

 sebster wrote:


Yeah, this is the kind of insanity that gamergate has fed off. If anyone ever bothered to read any of those articles they’d have seen they were about the old gamer identity, of the white male, typically with little social life or skills, as no longer being a thing, that gamers were now much more diverse, much closer in make up to the general population.

But gamergate decided to just pretend the articles said something else, in order to feign outrage. It’s just stupid nonsense, really.

It is irrelevant what you think those articles definition of gamer was, what matters is what they (meaning the pro-GG people) thought the bloggers meant by gamer. They clearly saw "gamer" as just meaning people you play video games. And those articles pissed a lot of people off as you would imagine.

That diverse group of people that all call themselves gamers took those articles as an attack on them, which once again pissed a lot of people off. The blame for this failure to communicate here lies on the bloggers not their readers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
[
Sigh. I really have to wonder: did you miss the point this badly because you genuinely don't understand, or because you'd rather have an argument against a straw man than accept that criticism of gamergate might be accurate?

The actual point I was making is that game journalism has never been taken seriously by anyone with any real knowledge of the gaming community. For as long as there have been game reviews it has been pretty obvious that game reviewers have close ties with game publishers and are extremely reluctant to give a game anything less than a 9/10 score no matter how obviously terrible it is. It has been decades since anyone has considered a magazine review to be anything more than an opportunity to see a few new screenshots of the game and maybe laugh a bit at how desperately they're trying to justify the 9/10 they're about to give a half-finished product that nobody is going to buy. The stuff gamergate "discovered" is just business as usual for the industry, exactly like it has been for decades. That doesn't mean that it should be like that, but we don't live in an ideal world.

So if talking about biased game reviews and questionable ethics between publishers and journalists is like presenting shocking new evidence that water is wet then which is a more plausible explanation for picking this particular bit of questionable ethics for special outrage: that gamergate is a bunch of naive newbies who genuinely hadn't heard that game reviews were a joke, or that "ethics in game journalism" was little more than an excuse for an anti-SJW crusade.

Gaming "journalism" is a joke. The sad part here is that pro-GG people were duped into thinking these people where actually journalists at all and not just bloggers, which I believe is a more appropriate title for them.

Sining wrote:
http://difficultrun.nathanielgivens.com/2015/04/14/sad-puppy-data-analysis/

Interesting. So Vox Day's influence is pretty clear, and that pretty well disproves the idea that he's just some irrelevant fringe element that nobody is paying any attention to. However, the "average reviews" analysis has at least three major flaws:

1) It's almost entirely based on a very small number (2-5, depending on how you want to draw the line) of nominees that are significantly above the winner. Take away just a couple of dots from the graph and suddenly the past 2-3 years aren't exceptional at all. They do include a winner or two that is farther from the top score than average, but only by a margin that has happened quite a few times in previous years. So IMO this is just a case of trying to draw strong conclusions from a bit of random variation. To have a strong case for bias in the winners there would have to be a much longer trend than what we actually see.

2) The data points that the bias argument depends on are significantly above the average scores of nominees. The 4.6 average is the single highest score in the entire history of the award, and the 4.4 average has only been matched four times. Did the past five years really have such a dramatic improvement in the quality of science fiction writing? I seriously doubt it. I think the much more obvious explanation is that these two scores are the result of dedicated fans leaving "OMG BEST BOOK EVER" ratings and skewing the results for a book that most people wouldn't rate anywhere near that high.

3) It doesn't say anything to address the Sad Puppies criticism of the nomination process. The graph only looks at nominees who have already been approved by the supposed left-wing conspiracy. So if SP is correct then at best it can prove that some left-wing books were unfairly favored over other left-wing books. It doesn't say anything at all about the average scores of the center or right-wing books that were supposedly excluded from being nominated at all.

 sebster wrote:

 EmpNortonII wrote:
1. "for so much abuse when compared to Grayson" is the operative part here. Of course she had received some criticism- that criticism is what she had the false claims made against... but this didn't become focused on her until she did that. MundaneMatt *has* specified that she was responsible for his video being taken down.

Ah, if it was finally confirmed that it was her that’s really poor form on her part. Fair enough. And of course, it isn’t the only instance of bad form by her, she had a record of pretty crappy behaviour before any of this started.

That said, arguing that it’s the reason that she got dumped on is a real stretch though, because takedown orders are an unfortunately common, and don’t produce death threats or anything like the freak out we’ve seen in through gamergate.

But arguing that it’s one factor of many that contributed, that I’ll accept. I’ll just point out that there are two big factors that played a really big part in all of this are that;
1) It was about sex this time.
2) Quinn was aggressively progressive in her politics, and had a pretty clear SJW identity.

These two factors combined were a red flag to a certain sector of the gaming population (and we all know some of those people). All the factors, the dubious ethics, Quinn’s abrasive personality, that all played a part as well, but we can’t deny the importance of those two major factors.

I can't help but think that if, instead of a mass-publishing of "gamers are dead" articles, Nathan Grayson had gotten a suspension without pay and an apology was issued, there'd be no GamerGate. The censorship on 4chan and reddit contributed heavily to the backlash as well. If people had been allowed to blow off steam, it would have died out before scum-sucking parasites like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian could purposefully blow the incident up as much as possible in order to profit from it. If you want to look at how this is different from Doritosgate or the Jeff Gerstman incident, the things that stick out to me are the censorship and the current status of Twitter. In 2007, it was hardly a blip on the map. There was no mass-defense of Jeff's firing in 2012.

 sebster wrote:
And if the accusations had stayed there – an indie game maker had a relationship with a fringe game journalist to get positive reviews, then it would have remained a deeply uninteresting story. The legs in this story came from the insane conspiracies, the five guys, and how it then expanded out in to all this other weirdo stuff. All of which was bs, and really weird bs at that.

I've never known anyone personally that's slept around for any kind of material gain. I don't think I'm particularly unusual in that sense. I mean, obviously it happens, but I doubt it's anywhere near as clear and widespread as you claim. Sex is so much more complex than that, most times.

Some of those insane conspiracies were true- the GameJournoPros mailing list and the censorship on reddit and 4chan,

Maybe it's just my part of the country, maybe it's the industry. I worked at a call center for 2 years (specifically, one in the Midwest, that provides its services to Apple and Turbotax). I can name three names easily (one on which was eventually arrested for dealing meth, because Indiana).

 sebster wrote:


I was grumpy, and shouldn’t have picked you up on a minor typo like that, my bad.

But the reforms to native advertising had been in development for a long time before then, and were moving forward with no difficulty. Kudos to gamergate for having a positive involvement, but they didn’t materially impact the issue.

Thanks. It's hard to keep perspective in stuff like this. I totally understand. I do it myself, though alcohol is usually a contributing factor.

At any rate, I'm unaware of any group that has been actively pressuring the FTC to change its rules, specifically on youtube and in online journalism. You might know of one, but I don't.

David Auerbach wrote what is probably the only sensible article on the anti-GG side of things that I've read, and it seems like this is a good place to post it.

It's meaningless, of course, because his suggestions are things like "be polite" and "throw Gawker under the bus," which will never happen.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/10/how_to_end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.html