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Post by gliptitude on Jul 8, 2015 23:00:29 GMT -5
: campaign originating on 4chan, with the goal of mitigating cronyism in game publishing, evolves into balls-out cultural warfare, grotesque feud with feminists:
Has anybody followed this at all? Have an opinion or care to explain it to me?
This is old news I guess, blowing up almost a year ago, but i am just now reading about it.
Honestly I don't understand how the #gamergate guys have any credibility at all.
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Post by wyldephang on Jul 11, 2015 19:48:11 GMT -5
I recall hearing about it when the story first broke, but I never followed it beyond the half-interested attention I paid to articles that popped up from time to time. From what I can recall, the woman at the heart of the issue was a self-proclaimed feminist who pretended to be a gamer in order to reform gaming culture from the inside out. Things became complicated, and then ultimately died down, after it was discovered that she was an outsider to the gaming community and had little to do with video games outside of taking issue with whatever patriarchal offenses she could extract from various games over the years. Whether it was Mario rescuing a princess or beating up prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto 3, I think she objected to male-dominated gamer subculture in general. The reason we're speaking of it in the past tense is that her campaign ultimately fizzled out without effecting change.
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Post by VectorX on Jul 11, 2015 19:59:05 GMT -5
Honestly I don't understand how the #gamergate guys have any credibility at all. Looks like you were right then. I hadn't heard anything about it until now.
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Post by gliptitude on Jul 11, 2015 22:19:57 GMT -5
There were several women targeted, (zero men). None of them were pretending to be gamers. One is just not a gamer (a feminist critic who has focused on video games) and the others were actual game designers.
I believe Zoe Quinn was the main target. She devoloped a game called Depression Quest. #gamergate folks believe the game was selected to be published for corrupt reasons, that it did not deserve to be published, and that it was favorably reviewed by at least one source only because she slept with the writer.
Prior to this episode, the general feeling was that there was a movement in the industry to bring women and minorities to the table, and to change game content to be more inclusive / less alienating, and #gamergate felt like this was being done arbitrarily and in spite of actual gamers.
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Post by akator on Jul 12, 2015 16:24:06 GMT -5
Over the last year I tried to figure out gamergate. The gamergate "problems" of sexism, favoritism resulting from sexual favors, trolls threatening others, all of these "exposed" issues have nothing whatsoever to do with gaming. These problems are part of humanity, from the smallest town to the biggest city, found from the earliest written histories to the modern day.
Not saying these things aren't a problem, just that they have zero to do with gaming and everything to do with human nature. It's a bunch of random, unrelated things lumped together as complaints about questionable human behavior that can be found everywhere.
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