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by acdha 4270 days ago
Here's the problem: #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn, closely following a round of attacks on Anita Sarkeesian[1] by many of the same people. The journalism bit was a valid issue latter adopted as a shield against criticism from the attacks at those women, several journalists and anyone else who spoke up against the abuse. Then they jumped in bed with the Breitbart crew, who were never particularly fond of gamers in the past but love free attention and attacks on feminists and other perceived enemies.

Things like the image you linked to were invented well after the shitstorm was in full swing as part of that distraction campaign, as were the hundreds of fake accounts registered on Twitter, etc. in the last couple months which use very similar language and pictures to either make attacks or deliver excuses or historical revisionism – amusingly, often trying both from the same account as in e.g. https://twitter.com/frankcifaldi/status/521117712844468224.

There's simply no way to recover from the tainted roots of that movement. I have no doubt that there are people who really do care about the quality of gaming journalism or the public reputation of gamers but they're simply being used at this point in the same way that someone who shows up at a PETA-organized rally expecting to talk about sustainable farming.

If you actually care about any of those issues, stop volunteering your time and reputation as a shield for #gamergate. Let the extremists deal with the mess while you write about ethics without having to get distracted by the grenades being tossed by the people you're choosing to ally with.

1. See e.g. http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/zoe-quinns-depression..., http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for..., etc.

2 comments

> #gamergate started as part of a harassment campaign against Zoe Quinn

The problem has never been about Zoe Quinn.She can f$ck whoever she wants.

The issue is so called "game journalists" f$cking Zoe Quinn then writing articles about her praising her work,funding her through Patreon,and not disclosing the fact that they are also f$cking her.

The issue is "game journalists" colluding in google groups to push a leftwing political agenda that has NOTHING to do with gaming,not even because they believe in that agenda,but because they profit from it directly. This "webpress" has basically become a PAC,there is no difference.The way they opperate,the way they are funded,they have a plateform and they use it to push political bullshit.

It's about corruption.It's about a small elite of journalists and crooks, that knows each other,conspire to drive a political agenda,that is fundamentally extreme and is hurting the independent gaming industry and the independent gaming press.

And yes even leftism or feminism can be as extreme as conservatism or any -ism.

That's all.

> The issue is so called "game journalists" f$cking Zoe Quinn then writing articles about her praising her work,f

You meant one journalist, who never reviewed her game and mentioned her once before they started dating, right?

I've watched this unfold and it was rather starkly different from the charming story you're telling. On the off chance that you aren't intentionally spreading propaganda, here are a few links which cover how things actually happened:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how... http://gawker.com/what-is-gamergate-and-why-an-explainer-for...

Nathan Grayson is one of the accused people. He's written a few articles on Kotaku painting her game in a positive light. Kotaku is a Gawker Media site - one of the two sites you've linked to. You can see why your evidence might not be taken so seriously in this context.

Robin Arnott is also one of the accused people. While not a journalist, he is one of the judges for Indiecade. Her game won an award on last year's indiecade, winning over Papers, please and other titles - quite a clear conflict of interest.

Kyle Orland is also one of the accused people. You can see an article on depression quest by him right here: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/08/what-depression-quest-...

There has also been unearthed that the IGF, which granted awards to Fez in two separate years, had judges who all had a financial investment in it, and according to Edmund McMillen, there was direct decision to cause it to win because of this, not on it's own merits.

These are the sort of things people backing gamergate are angry about. Few people are interested in harassment campains, despite what the opposing side claim.

"Robin Arnott is also one of the accused people. While not a journalist, he is one of the judges for Indiecade. Her game won an award on last year's indiecade, winning over Papers, please and other titles - quite a clear conflict of interest."

That's also not a thing that happened. Depression Quest did not win an award at Indiecade. It wasn't even one of the finalists. There's a press release here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200020/IndieCade_announce...

"The 36 finalists represent only a fraction of the total number of games to be exhibited, which will include top picks from the inaugural VR Jam and over 120 non-finalist selections including Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest."

So Depression Quest was exhibited, but it wasn't a finalist and it didn't win an award. The actual award winners are listed here: http://www.indiecade.com/2013/award_winners/

Seriously, man. I'm not trying to win an argument here: I am earnestly and sincerely recommending that you step back and think about the people who lied to you about these things. You're swimming in a toxic cloud of hate and anger. It's not healthy.

Ok, I was wrong on that point - believing a forum post to remind me of robin's role was a poor choice of mine. Her game was chosen as an exhibitor among thousands of submissions however, so it seems hard to believe that no influence is at play, nor does it invalidate the other points.

You are VERY quick to accuse me of "swimming in a toxic cloud of hate and anger". Have you yourself considered that you may have had your viewpoint biased by the input you've had? Or that perhaps some of that anger may be due to gamers as a collective being openly insulted by journalists, simply for demanding better standards?

Considering that Indiecade 2013 took place well in advance of any sexual contact between Robin and Zoe? It's very easy to believe that no influence is in play.

And this is why I don't think I'm too quick to accuse. You're not thinking. You're not applying any rationality to this at all. There's something else going on in your thoughts, and I think it's toxic anger generated by the meme bubble you're currently living in -- not maliciousness.

Demanding that Robin Arnott develop a time machine and retroactively undo Indiecade choices after he started a relationship with Zoe Quinn isn't "better standards." It's insanity. Gamergate is being treated as you'd expect from a bunch of people insisting that something that happened in 2013 was caused by something that happened in 2014.

I'm truly sorry you can't see that.

linking to arstechnica ,sure , when the head of its gaming department is at the center of that shitstorm ... who is spreading propaganda again ?

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed...

Generally speaking, the guy linking to frigging Breitbart is a good lock to be the guy spreading propaganda.

Y'all have been played most effectively by guys like Nero--guys who sneered at you until they realized they could make a name off you. Y'all froth at Sarkeesian all day long for "not being a gamer"...and yet this is the guy you put up as having Useful Things To Say? Get real.

Generally speaking you should actually read the damn article linked before commenting it.The guy who wrote the article worked at the Guardian.He is not a right wing nut.
Nero is one of the more loathsome right-wing extremists you will run across outside the straight-up Stormfronts of the world; he dresses it up a bit better but if you dig a bit you'll figure it out. He's happy to be known as wearing Iron Crosses (seriously, holy shit) and is the token "gay against marriage equality" trotted out by Breitbart when they need him. He's spoken positively of the BNP in the past, too.

(Oh, and he stiffed numerous contributors when he ran The Kernel, but that's just him being a turd, not a right-wing turd.)

Sorry, you sound like Rush Limbaugh. Stop clinging to silly conspiracy theories of journalists sitting down together and deciding future of the gaming industry. Journalists don't care about future of gaming industry, as long as it bring clicks to their articles.
Sorry, you sound like Rachel Maddow. Distording facts and saying i said stuff i never said.
Of all the genres of journalism to get so passionate about ethics about, you choose this?
Of all posts on the internet you choose to comment this one?
Check my profile - I comment on tons of posts. Doesn't mean I'm that passionately invested in them.
Yeah,says the pot that calls the kettle black... I'm not a creep, I dont check profiles nor give a fuck about yours.
That's one way to tell the story. Here's another:

Zoe's disgruntled ex-partner decided to publicly air a lot of dirty laundry after he'd discovered she'd been unfaithful to him. This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true.

Caught with their pants down, instead of doing the decent thing and apologizing, the editors in question rallied their friends, and published articles decrying gamers as woman-hating children, and declaring that they were 'dead' and 'over' - essentially, insulting their audience for daring to accuse them of poor ethics.

This was understandably offensive to previously loyal readers, being attacked because of their hobbies, and so the movement was born - coined #gamergate by Adam Baldwin, but helmed by none.

Images like that banner were created as a response to the repeated attempts to discredit the movement as nothing more than a woman-hatting harassment campaign, as was the sister hashtag #notyourshield, in which plenty of minorities of all genders showed their support, and disproved the claims that it was just a bunch of hateful white men.

re: your links. Gawker Media are well known as having a vested interest in painting gamergate as a hate movement; their site Kotaku plays host to one of the accused PR-for-sex journalists, they have posted numerous attack pieces, and in return have had several of their sponsors pull out due to gamergater's emails. They are desperate to paint gamergate as a hate campaign, because they badly want it to go away and stop hurting their revenue.

Gamergaters generally want people to stop focusing on women's sex lives, and pay more attention to the actions and lack of integrity of the journalists involved.

It's not true that she slept with editors to receive positive coverage. The ONE writer she became involved with did not write any reviews of her game and the only article he did write was written before they became an item.

The fact that you choose to lie about this fact shows that you are perfectly happy with your role as a cog in the harassment campaign. Gamergate is a hate campaign that you are participating in.

As for the #gamergate hashtag, after its first use by Adam it was quickly taken over by several people on 4-chan to attack Zoe, so it was helmed by someone. see http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/new-chat-logs-show-how...

in a response below you state: "it was about the journalists who had accepted sex, and reciprocated with positive coverage." Yet there has never been any proof of this, because it didn't happen. She started a relationship with a writer and received no positive coverage from it. You continue to state lies that have been proven false.

She herself stated that it was her reason for sleeping with them, in the video-capped facebook chatlogs her ex posted. That was enough evidence for me to believe the claims.

Her actions aren't important, however. Gamergate the movement generally wants people to stop focusing on women's sex lives, and pay more attention to the actions of the journalists involved.

You're quite quick to accuse me of harassment and hate. That a hashtag was hijacked hardly discredits it's original intent. Those hijackers, and any since, have quickly been condemned by people who simply want journalists to have integrity and ethical standards.

If the websites had simply stated that yes, having a conflict of interest with the subjects we write about is poor ethical behavior and we will do things to change this, the campaign wouldn't have taken off at all. Instead of simply addressing gamergate's legitimate complaints, they are still trying to discredit the movement, which serves only to fuel the fire, and ironically, destroy their ad revenue due to sponsors pulling out.

How about pointing me (and the others reading this thread) towards the chat logs where she admits to sleeping with journalists in exchange for positive reviews.

The hashtags original intent existed for only a short period of time. It's like saying we shouldn't call Hitler a murderous dictator because he was so sweet and friendly as a child.

The only reason I viewed them in the first place was because they were readily available at the time, and because I wanted to confirm for myself if the claims being made were true.

I don't want to go digging for other people's private relationship drama to share it here in order to prove a point, and if you think this discredits my position, then so be it.

I went digging for them and found nothing that was even close to an admission of trading sex for positive coverage, so yeah, your lack of proof discredits your position.
"the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true."

No, this is not true. Here are the ways in which it isn't true:

- You're claiming that Zoe Quinn slept with people for the purpose of positive coverage (as opposed to, say, pleasure). There's no evidence of this.

- She didn't sleep with "editors of gaming publications." Of the three people named in the blog post, only one is a journalist and none are editors.

- Zoe's ex-partner didn't accuse her of sleeping with people for positive coverage; in fact, he explicitly says "if there was any conflict of interest between Zoe and [journalist] regarding coverage of Depression Quest prior to April, I have no evidence to imply that it was sexual in nature."

- [Journalist] wrote one article that talked about Zoe Quinn at all; it was not a review. It does say nice things about her. He wasn't sleeping with her at the time.

I don't have much hope of this, but seriously: you should stop and think about why you've come to believe this skewed, angry version of the story. What are you getting out of thinking Zoe Quinn is this bad a person? Could you be wrong about the rest of your beliefs about Gamergate?

The video-capped facebook chatlogs and her own admissions were evidence enough for me.

However, she is not important.

What is important is the poor behaviour of the journalists. That is what the focus is, that is what's been called into question, that is what people are angry about.

The only people still talking about women's sex lives are the anti-gamergate crowd, trying to smear the movement.

This is absolutely false. There was no coverage that was slanted for her free game after she supposedly slept with anyone. This is not about ethics, if it were that would have been an issue when BIG publishers started paying youtubers to cover games without any negative language. Or any of the other actual scandals. Not when ONE indie game developer happened to have some dirty laundry aired by an asshole.
You mean like when TotalBiscuit called out Shadows of Mordor and then Boogie reported that publishers are changing their contracts?
Notice how quickly the #gamergate contingent dropped that to go back to talking how Anita/Zoe/Brianna totally deserved it and how gamers are being oppressed by a vast SJW conspiracy?

This is not what a real campaign to improve journalistic ethics looks like.

No, I haven't noticed that. In fact, discussion of anita and zoe is banned on most gamergate forums because of throwaway accounts being made to try to stir up shit about them. What I have noticed is their campaigns to get advertisers to pull ad campaigns from corrupt websites. Looks like a real campaign to improve journalistic ethics to me.
Can you name me everyone in the "#gamergate contingent" as well as all tweets between the time SoM issue was announced and when Boogie mentioned the "resolution" (in the name of contract changes). I recommend pastebin for large lists.

If not, I would ask ... why has this -> gamergateharassment.tumblr.com [1] <- not been reported by the same journalists that say they are ethical and that GamerGate is only a harassment campaign.

Also, I think things get a bit more messy when the same journalists involved in the issue use their parent companies to shield themselves from criticism. Unless you forgot that time that P.H. smeared Stardock and Cards against Humanity on flimsy "evidence" and then when the same level of evidence comes up about someone else, it's deemed irrelevant. Here I thought being ethical was applying equal standards to people, guess I was wrong.

So, in that case, please explain why Grayson did not need to mention his relationships, or why the Wizardchan harassment was never clarified in a new article (to correct offending publications), or why allegations against Wardell and Tempkin were published (multiple times) as "relevant to the industry" whereas another developer is not.

Where is the exact line? Please fully describe the line in detail so all reading this comment thread can clearly see Grayson, Hernandez, Kotaku et al have not violated any ethics standards and treat all stories and persons equally, and they have not contributed to harassment.

[1] http://gamergateharassment.tumblr.com/

The admission she herself made, as well as the video-captured facebook conversation logs her ex posted with her where she admitted as much, was evidence enough for me.

The scandal wasn't about her though, try as the media might to make her the focus - it was about the journalists who had accepted sex, and reciprocated with positive coverage. It was also about the many other journalists who were found to have been doing similar things - patricia hernandez, writing a multitude of articles about the games of her housemate; danielle rindau, giving Gone Home a 10/10, when she had a pre-existing friendship with the developers, to name two.

It's the behavior of the journalists which is what's being criticized.

Gamergaters generally wants people to stop focusing on women's sex lives.

If you won't point to the Facebook conversation/logs where she supposedly admitted to exchanging sexual favors for favorable coverage, at least point us toward all these stories by the journalists she slept with. That would help, a list of all the journalists that you know accepted sexual favors to provide positive coverage. With that list, please provide links to the positive coverage they wrote for those game developers they slept with.

And please point us towards all the death threats that the journalists received for writing these articles.

And you say that gamergaters generally want to stop focusing on women's sex lives, but you continue to bring it up without providing any proof what so ever.

I will never forget when a Gawker employee (Gizmodo, brand under Gawker) used an on/off device for TVs in the middle of a tech demo at CES 2008 [1]. Gawker showed their true colors then.

They have not changed since, only gotten worse.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmodo#TV-B-Gone

Edit: I'm getting downvoted. Please explain where I am factually incorrect, either in what I have said or linked. Thanks :-)

Sounds like a lot of female sexuality policing to me. I'd be ashamed to have my name anywhere near it.
It has nothing to do with her actions - the complaints are aimed at the journalists who accepted sex in exchange for coverage, as well as the numerous other journalists who have demonstrably low integrity and poor ethics.
Really? Where are these reviews?
> This is childish behavior, but the thing that caught people's attention was his claim that she'd intentionally slept with the editors of gaming publications to receive positive coverage, which turned out to be true. > … more tedious historical revisionism …

You couldn't even make it one sentence in without repeating a trivially disproven lie about Zoe Quinn – how exactly is that supposed to convince anyone that you're concerned with ethics instead of harassment?

I wanted to verify for myself that said claims were true, and video-capped facebook chatlogs where she admits her intent are pretty hard to convincingly fake.

She's not the issue, though. The journalists who accepted such favors in exchange are the issue.

Why are you trying to focus on a woman's sex life instead of the journalist's poor ethical behavior?