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Thread: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

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    Default Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    Fans are, by definition, fanatical. But that fanaticism can also lead to a level of obsession that can trigger some very bad things like threats of death, kidnapping, torture, stalking and financial ruin.
    There’s a hot trend among a vocal minority of gamers right now: the harassment of women developers and critics. Of course, this sort of thing is not new in tech – or, let’s face it, across the internet – but in the video games industry it has hit a fashionable peak.
    On Thursday, it was widely reported that the North American media critic Anita Sarkeesian had fled her own home, thanks to rape and death threats from angry gamers targeting her and her family. Her crime was to produce a series of YouTube videos analysing the depiction of women in games from a feminist perspective.

    Sarkeesian’s plight eerily mirrors that of games designer Zoë Quinn [see footnote], developer of the experimental adventure, Depression Quest, who has also had to pack up and move in with friends, after an online campaign of hatred against her.
    Earlier this month, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend published intimate details of their relationship online, and her sexual history inexplicably became the centrepiece of a large-scale, industry-wide debate about journalism, nepotism and ethics.
    Accusations were hurled at Quinn via gamer forums and sites like Reddit and 4Chan. Gaming news blog Kotaku clarified that an alleged breach of journalistic objectivity concerning Quinn never actually took place. But the hate speech continued.

    Yes, it’s been quite a banner season for the collective of self-identifying core gamers who gather on forums to muster shared fury. Now they feel they are at war with a group of left-leaning games writers and developers who they refer to as “social justice warriors” – this is effectively anyone who has ever questioned the patriarchal nature of the games industry or the limited, often objectifying depiction of women. Because, you know, games are fine as they are thanks.

    http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...in-video-games
    Online harassment, no matter the reasoning, is always about power and positioning, about putting people in their place, said Nathan Fisk, lecturer at the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
    "Fans are invested in the stories and worlds that developers create, and certain design decisions can be seen by fans to threaten those stories and worlds. " said Fisk, who was featured in Bullying in the Age of Social Media.

    Developers, both named and those who wish to remain anonymous, tell Polygon that harassment by gamers is becoming an alarmingly regular expected element of game development. Some developers say the problem was among the reasons they left the industry, others tell Polygon that the problem is so ubiquitous that it distracts them from making games or that they're considering leaving the industry.

    Toulouse said that when he started at Xbox he analyzed the problems Xbox Live was having with this issue and determined that one solution was to have a single person as the face of enforcement for Live, a "sheriff."
    "Customers needed to know that there is someone who is in charge of making sure this gets better. What came along with that, unfortunately, was SWAT teams and threats and abuse."

    "Microsoft didn't know what to do," he said. "I would bring it up. I would say, 'Hey, I am putting my family at material risk, by you wanting me to be this public sheriff.'"
    Toulouse said he asked for security because people would tell him they were going to kill him at events like PAX.
    "They were like, 'We don't do that,'" he said.


    Edwards points to George Lucas' very public semi-retirement last year as an example. In January, Lucas told the New York Times that he was retiring, blaming in part the negativity of fans.
    "Why would I make any more," he said, "when everybody yells at you all of the time and says what a terrible person you are?"
    "If someone as successful as George Lucas, someone who has been arguably both creatively and financially successful, is basically hanging it up because he's tired of hearing the negative feedback, that's a pretty serious thing," Edwards said. "He is such a prominent person and to have him so publicly talk about that particular issue, it kind of resonates with a lot of people."


    http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/15/462...support-groups
    “What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.” - ECKHART TOLLE

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    Good point about George Lucas. Some of that news is gamergate but it does seem to be a thing. Keep in mind though that death threats and "outrage" are all on the increase because they can be done easily and anonymously through the internet. I read a thread here on SW where someone said that even on here there are dudes pretending to be girls. Anonymous interaction removes guards on behavior.

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    Anita Sarkeesian is a con artist. I want my fucking money back. I donated $50 back in 2012. The series is not completed after 3 years. She was GIVEN a quarter of a million, and she is this late? It's bullshit. I thought her series would be a incisive look on females in gaming, but turned out to be her stereotyping as well and cherry picking arguments for her narrative. Not to mention how she lied and said she's a gamer when there is record of her saying she doesn't like video games. I believe no one should receive death threats. At all. SJWs are doing the same to progamergate. Remind you.


    But let me explain to you guys what Gamergate really is. It's about ethics of gaming journalism. With Zoe Quinn, she was fucking gaming journalists who were pushing her indie game. That is called conflict of interest. I don't care who she fucked and that she cheated. I care about ethics and conflict of interest. When I read reviews on games I may want to purchase with MY MONEY, I want to trust it and not worry about conflict of interest.





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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    ^^^respect!

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    I found Gamergate to be an utter waste of time, in all respects. It stopped being about ethics in journalism about ten seconds in, and just turned into a really lame feeding frenzy for lowest common denominator gamers. Had it actually been about ethics, maybe i would feel different, but it wasn't. Maybe it was a bunch of psychos hitching their stars to GG, while the real thing got drowned out; but a lot of the GG folks were foaming at the mouth. A lot of swatting went on because of it, too.
    Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    I thought this was about 'The Game' a rapper dude w/a 'dating/reality show'. He's being sued for 10 mill, by a trans. woman.


    MANY MEN WANTED TO LAY ME DOWN, BUT FEW WANTED TO LIFT ME UP

    -Eartha Kitt

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    They're were trolls, but they are not representive and in fact they are on both sides, gamer gaters and non gamer gaters got target. In fact one person who wrote stuff for both sides, GG and antiGG, I think under a different identies, who got busted for trying to incite a muslim into terrorism. Dispite finger pointing I think the worst trollers, those who make rape and death threats that they never carry out have no idealogy, they just about love creating as much chaos and fueds as possible.

    I'm not a GGer, I never had enough respect for most main stream journalists never mind most game journalists, so I didn't get invovled in it.

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    GGers are getting death threats and rape threats too...
    Both parties that are doing it, the media just decides to report on one more then the other.





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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    OK, then give it to me, what was the view of GamerGate from females that were a part of it? All i heard was the rape stuff and that, naturally, turned me off to it. "Rape" and "threat" are two words that don't belong in the same sentence, much less the popular vocabulary. They don't roll off the tongue, as it were.

    WHat did this Zoe Quinn do that was so wrong? Is it something that is unusual? That doesn't get done, without incident, every day?
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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    Quote Originally Posted by audritwo View Post
    Anita Sarkeesian is a con artist. I want my fucking money back. I donated $50 back in 2012. The series is not completed after 3 years. She was GIVEN a quarter of a million, and she is this late? It's bullshit. I thought her series would be a incisive look on females in gaming, but turned out to be her stereotyping as well and cherry picking arguments for her narrative. Not to mention how she lied and said she's a gamer when there is record of her saying she doesn't like video games. I believe no one should receive death threats. At all. SJWs are doing the same to progamergate. Remind you.


    But let me explain to you guys what Gamergate really is. It's about ethics of gaming journalism. With Zoe Quinn, she was fucking gaming journalists who were pushing her indie game. That is called conflict of interest. I don't care who she fucked and that she cheated. I care about ethics and conflict of interest. When I read reviews on games I may want to purchase with MY MONEY, I want to trust it and not worry about conflict of interest.





    #NOTYOURSHIELD
    Thank you so much for posting this. I am so tired of people vilifying GG. And this mass media frenzy on the 'war on women' makes my blood boil.

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    Default Re: Gamers Turn on Game Designers.....Death Threats and all

    Young males. All bravado and trash talk and no experience or ability to back it up. The internet makes it worse of course because having a rep for being a complete asshole has no negative consequences and quite the opposite makes you popular with the other assholes. I think if you jump into any of these games you'll see young male gamers saying things that would get their block knocked off IRL as "banter". Sadly I don't think kids of that age realize that threats of any kind are bullshit, even if they have zero intentions of doing anything.

    On the other hand, a few female developers have gone too far the other direction. I think one of them was crapping on the industry because they don't make any overweight "butch" female characters, they are all feminine and pretty. The same is basically true of male characters, their abs have abs and they all look like they are in some roid rage fueled rambo lifestyle. Nobody wants the more realistic tubby slob male with love handles and a double chin. I think they need to just dial it back a notch with the agenda so they don't get dismissed out of hand. The points are fair, but alienating the market is just poor business. Shaming kids that openly sling racist comments and worse at each other into seeing it your way isn't going to get any traction.

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