[Karunamon]

Wait, what? Did you click through any of the links on those pages you cite? In the very fist example you mention, every bit of that is substantiated via an archive link. Quinn's game is unpolished garbage as revied, Kuchera did contribute financially to her, and Hernandez is friends with her and did write about her without disclosing that.

Those are not lies, or even misleading in the least. They are all trivially verifiable facts. All the sources are right there.

I'll go through the others if you wish, but I'd ask you to examine the evidence and point out problems with it before just dismissing it as lies. Heck, I might learn something here.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> Quinn's game is unpolished garbage as revied

The fact some gamergaters don't like Quinn's game doesn't make it "garbage". It's not a traditional game. That doesn't mean that rating it highly is somehow a violation of ethics.

The idea that Quinn somehow used personal connections to get literally tens of thousands of people to highly rate her game violates Occam's razor.

[Karunamon]

Tens of thousands, involved in a scheme? No, of course not, and I have no doubt that a lot of people liked it. That was a subjective judgement on my part - I think it's low effort nonsense.

Here's the thing - would those tens of thousands of people have seen it in the first place if Hernandez hadn't talked up her friend on Kotaku? Would that niche of a title have wound up on the site at all if not for the personal connection between those two?

I suspect the answers to both those questions are "no".

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> I think it's low effort nonsense.

Have you ever actually made a video game yourself, or written a piece of literature? Do you appreciate the effort this actually takes?

> Here's the thing - would those tens of thousands of people have seen it in the first place if Hernandez hadn't talked up her friend on Kotaku?

Sure. For one thing, Quinn had at least that many Twitter followers. It's a game, also, that covers mental illness, which isn't a frequent topic. On that novelty alone, it was likely to get some attention regardless of who Quinn's friends were.

> Would that niche of a title have wound up on the site at all if not for the personal connection between those two?

There's a good chance it would. Depression Quest was novel. Kotaku likes showcasing novel and interesting things.

[Nadya]

\\Edit

I got DQ mixed up with another Twine game I had heard of at the time. This post can be more or less disregarded. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10254524

\\End Edit

>Have you ever actually made a video game yourself, or written a piece of literature? Do you appreciate the effort this actually takes?

Using the same tool ZQ used to make her game - it's literally 5-15 minutes online. The effort was next to nil.

http://twinery.org/

As someone who has actually worked on creating even a simplistic Zelda-clone, you're fooling yourself if you think it took any real amount of effort.

>written a piece of literature

The entirety of Depression Quest reads like simplistic hipster angst. Similar to "Will You Save Your Son", except at least WYSYS has some self awareness and was meant to mock this type of storytelling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSm1Rn7Prcs

Maybe an hours' total of work for a low quality Twine game using a script written during a lunch break.

I think it's generous to even call it "low effort".

[Karunamon]

Eh, the quality of her game doesn't really matter anyways. It's interactive fiction with some graphics showing - it's hardly Call of Duty, but it does take a lot more than "15 minutes". Quinn is a game developer in the same sense that my gran playing Words With Friends on Facebook is a gamer - both terms still apply, even if casually.

Play around with something like Inform7 or even Twine with the interest of making a full story - it still takes a lot of thought.

Still, having played it, I'm not a fan (and that goes double since I've fought with depression and do not care for her treatment of the material!), and I think it comes off as amateur hour. I think Steam could do a lot better than IF-style "games" in general.

Good point WRT her Twitter following. I had not considered that.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> Using the same tool ZQ used to make her game - it's literally 5-15 minutes online. The effort was next to nil.

Writing something the length of Depression Quest, creating graphics, mapping out the story, quality assurance testing, composing music... this does not take 5 to 15 minutes. It is not nil effort.

If you think it's so easy, please, go ahead and recreate Depression Quest from scratch in 15 minutes.

[Nadya]

I'm going to have to apologize. I got DQ mixed up with a different hipster Twine game that I heard of at around the same timeframe. One that was no more than 10 or so panels and 3 lines of dialogue that also garnered a fair amount of attention. I confused the two (and no more than a brief Google search showed me that I had...)

At 40,000~ words + music/still graphics, DQ is a fair chunk of work.

Again, apologies. Definitely more than "next to nil" effort.

[DanBC]

When I do it it's networking and growth hacking.

When she does it she's a dirty whore, cheating on her partner and exploiting and manipulating men. (and whether actually did this or not is irrelevant, we're going to keep saying she did and supporting that with total bullshit).

[Karunamon]

If your definition of "networking and growth hacking" means writing positive coverage for people you are friends with and/or financially contribute to while not telling people that, your definitions are broken.

It's not okay. It might even be against FTC rules. Full stop, end of story.

By the way, why are we talking about whether if you do it is okay or not when just one post ago you were calling the (sourced, verified) accusations outright lies?

As to who Zoe did or did not sleep with- kind of irrelevant in the long run, but if you're going to bring up any mention of it as perpetuating a lie, I'm obligated to address that.

Eron, her ex, posted a ton of chatlogs on the original post that started this whole thing (including that stupid "five guys burgers" meme).

It doesn't look like a lie to me. If is, it's the most exhaustively fabricated and backed plot I've seen this side of a crazy soap opera.

I'm not asking you to agree with me, here. I'm asking you to exercise the same dispassionate, critical analysis you'd use on any other topic.

[DanBC]

This is an example of a gamergate supporter (you) continuing a pattern of harrassment (perpetuating the copiously debunked lies about Quinn). Repeating the libel is the harrassment.

I understand you don't see it that way.

[Karunamon]

If by "debunked" you mean "fully sourced and verified". Can you point to even one verifiably untrue thing on Deepfreeze?

Someone is lying in this conversation alright, and it isn't me.

[Karunamon]

By the way: HN Notify got to your snarky comment before you did.

The links you gave were interesting, so thanks for that, but I don't appreciate your implication that I was "lying" because you misunderstand a conversation's thread.

http://i.imgur.com/TLuTJRk.png

Are you going to reply to the other post or not?

[DanBC]

> Are you going to reply to the other post

No. I'm not going to waste my time with people who lie.