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Aug. 31, 2014 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
53:41
This Week in Stupid - XL #GamerGate #NotYourShield Edition! (31⧸08⧸2014)
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Hello everyone, welcome to a very special This Week in Stupid for the 31st of August 2014.
Brought to you by the video game press.
If you're unfamiliar with what's been going on in what's been dubbed The Conspiracy and Gamergate, I've included a bunch of videos in the low bar that you might want to check out first before you watch this.
But a quick recap is basically a huge amount of corruption and collusion and contempt for their audience has been exposed in the video game press recently.
This was their response.
So after the backlash against Zoe Quinn and the corruption in the industry by the gamers who are the industry, the video game press retaliated.
I'm going to go through these articles in order of points that they're making, so we can actually see the whole narrative they're trying to craft.
So on Gamer Sutra we get an article titled, Gamers Don't Have to Be Your Audience, Gamers Are Over Exclusive by Leia Alexander.
You might know Leia Alexander from popular YouTube videos, such as this one by Mundane Matt, where he exposes that she also works with a company called Agency, which is directly involved in influencing game developers on how to make their games, showing a self-evident conflict of interests and an obvious attempt to manipulate media to propagate a specific ideological agenda.
She says, I often say I'm a video game culture writer, but lately I don't know exactly what that means.
Game culture, as we know it, is kind of embarrassing.
It's not even culture.
Anything people do as a group is culture, you fucknut.
It's buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it's getting mad on the internet.
If there was ever a more revealing statement that you don't understand game culture, I haven't heard it yet.
It's gaming culture, this is.
Young men queuing with plush mushroom hats and backpacks and jutting promo poster roles, queuing passionately for hours at events around the world, to see things that marketers want them to see, to find out whether they should buy things or not.
They don't know how to dress or behave.
Television cameras pan across these listless cues and often catch the expressions of people who don't quite know why they themselves are standing there.
Alright, now I have a better example of how someone can't possibly understand video game culture.
Because at no point in this description of video game culture did you actually talk about playing video games.
That's unbelievable!
This is not video game culture!
This is a side effect of video game culture.
This is what people go and do when they're not playing video games, when they're not talking with each other about video games.
We're not making, designing, creating mods when they're not engaging on forums, when they're not doing the business of what video game culture actually is.
This is what they do.
And this is what you see because I don't think you've ever been a part of video game culture.
Games culture is a Petri dish of people who know so little about how human social interaction and professional life works.
I'll stop you there.
How many people on Tumblr claim to have autism and don't have any method of being able to actually interact with the real world?
How many?
Fucking hell!
That is just barking!
That is bonkers!
That is so fucking off the reservation!
It is just and professional life.
Oh my god!
Oh my god, I cannot believe the hypocrisy of everything these people say!
So they can conduct online wars about social justice or game journalism ethics straight-faced and cause genuine human consequences because of video games.
Oh no, did Anita death threat herself again?
Oh, she probably did.
Under the pseudonym Kevin Dobson, let's hear about Anita's rape fantasies.
Kevin Dobson, a minute before this screenshot was taken.
Oh, Anita, you're so beautiful and sexy.
You know that?
What great grammar?
And very polite.
Kevin Dobson, fifty-nine seconds before this screenshot was taken by Anita Sarkeesian herself.
If only we could be together.
I'd give anything to drink in your laugh and your smiles.
Whoever wrote this sounds like they're writing a bad romance novel.
Kevin Dobson, 42 seconds before this screenshot was taken.
But instead, I'll drink your blood out of your cunt after I rip it open.
And it's now morphed into bad twilight hardcore fan fiction.
Kevin Dobson, three minutes before this screenshot was taken.
I'm going to rape your cunt with a poll.
Ah, there's the rape fantasy I was expecting.
I'll put links into the description that go on and detail how this is probably bullshit.
But if you're listening, Anita, call me.
So Lei goes on to say that lately, I often find myself wondering what I'm even doing here.
And I know I'm not alone.
I think the answer is money.
All of us should be better than this.
Oh, you should be deeply questioning your life choices if this, this, this, and this are the public face your businesses present to the rest of the world.
These are links to, for example, Kevin Dobson Twitter account and stuff like that.
These aren't businesses.
I guess she means industry as a whole.
They're the CD underbelly that is either concocted entirely by the social justice warrior press or ostracized by everyone else in the community.
This is what the rest of the world knows about your industry.
This and headlines about billion dollar war simulators or those junkies with the touchscreen candies.
That's it.
You should absolutely be better than this.
Jesus, if you could stop judging for a minute and play some games, maybe you could join the gamer community.
You don't want to be divisive?
Who's being divided?
Except for people who are okay with an infantilized cultural desert of shitty behaviour and people who aren't.
What is there to debate?
You're right, we don't want your infantilised cultural desert of shitty behaviour.
That is, in fact, everything that's wrong with social justice warriors and social justice warrior culture.
The projection here is mind-boggling.
Right, let's say it's a vocal minority and not representative of most people.
Are we talking about social justice warriors?
Most people, from indies to industry leaders, are mortified, furious and disheartened at the direction industry conversation has taken in the past few weeks.
You didn't speak to any gamers then.
The people who are buying all the things that these industry leaders are producing.
What you have just said is that the people producing and reporting on these games are not representative of the people buying them.
They are not by gamers for gamers.
Yes, that is a plug for interplay.
God damn, I loved the games Interplay made.
She says when you decline to create or curate a culture in your spaces, you're responsible for what spawns in the vacuum.
That's what's been happening to games.
It's not that gaming culture is something you seem to be unable to see and just can't participate in, but it's that there is no gaming culture.
That's not super surprising, actually.
While video games themselves were discovered by strange, bright, outcast pioneers, they thought arcades would make pub games more fun, or that MUDs would make for amazing cross-cultural meeting spaces.
I really don't know if that was the purpose of MUDs.
I was too young to play them at the time, but I've read about them.
The commercial arm of the form sprung up from marketing high-end tech products to early adopters.
You know, young white dudes with disposable income who like to get stuff.
Suddenly a generation of lonely basement kids had marketers whispering in their ears that they were the most important commercial demographic of all time.
In the video game industry they are.
Suddenly they started wearing shiny blouses and pinning bikini babes onto everything they made.
Started making games that sold the promise of high-octane masculinity to kids just like them.
I don't find this quite condescending enough.
Is there anything you can do to make this more offensive?
By the turn of the millennium, those were games' only main cultural signposts.
Have money, have women, get gun, and then a bigger gun.
Be an outcast.
Celebrate that.
Defeat anyone who threatens you.
You don't need cultural references.
You don't need anything but gaming.
Public conversation was led by a games press whose role was to primarily tell people what to buy, to score products competitively against one another, to gleefully fuel team sports atmosphere around creators and companies.
Yeah, and that's kind of how I liked it, and I'm sure a lot of other people did as well.
Yet, in 2014, the industry has changed.
This is hard for people who have drank the Kool-Aid about how their identity depends on the aging cultural signposts of a rapidly evolving, increasingly broad and complex medium.
You just said there was no culture.
It's hard for them to hear they don't own anything anymore.
And they aren't the world's most specialist consumer demographic that they have to share.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
This just tone, this attitude.
As if you think that gaming has programmed gamers.
And gamers are somehow not entitled to the culture that they have built by paying for it.
You could build your own, or you could knock on the clubhouse door, loudly and repeatedly screaming, let me in.
We also have to scrutinise closely the baffling stubborn silence of many content creators amid these scandals.
Why?
Or the fact that lots of stubborn, myopic internet comments happen on business and interestry sites.
Because they're not representative of the people they're trying to sell to.
And the people that they're trying to sell to are trying to tell them that.
I can't believe you write this stuff.
This is hard for old-school developers who are being made redundant, both culturally and literally.
Oh, yeah, what was...
How much did the Kickstarter of that guy who made Planescape Tormone make?
I know I've gone on Playscape Torment a lot, but I love that game.
Didn't he raise millions?
But it's yeah, it's their unwillingness to address new audiences or reference points outside of blockbuster movies and comic books as their traditional domain falls into the sea around them.
Of course it's hard.
It's probably intense, painful stuff for some young kids and older men.
But it's unstoppable.
A new generation of fans and creators is finally aiming to instate a healthy cultural vocabulary.
Oh yeah, healthy.
The one word everyone always associates with social justice.
They don't associate it with therapy or autism or, you know, other kin or any of this bollocks.
No, they say mentally healthy.
Culturally healthy.
Physically healthy.
A language of community that was missing in the days of gamer pride.
And special interest groups led by product guide approach to conversation with a single presumed demographic.
The language of community was there.
The special interest group was gamers.
And you want it led by a product guide approach to conversation.
You mean where you tell people what to think with a single presumed demographic.
You don't even know who you're telling, but you're going to assume anyway.
This means that over just the last few years, writing on games focuses on personal experiences and independent creators.
Exactly!
That's the problem!
Nobody cares about your fucking personal experiences!
It's about not being a reviewer anymore.
It's not about telling people what to buy, even though you did just say it was.
It's about providing spaces for people to discuss what and whom they support.
You can only support, and you have to support someone, and it has to be creating a cult of celebrity around these stupid idiots in the game press.
You can't critique anyone.
You can't be negative.
It has to be about support.
No.
This is entirely Orwellian.
These strawman game journalism ethics conversations, I'll stop you there.
A, I don't think you know what a strawman is.
B, you have no idea what journalism, ethics, or games are, and conversations, you don't have them, you just dictate down to people, have been having are largely the domain of a prior age.
Yes, they are.
They are these spaces were built by people who are now in their 30s and 40s.
And you're thinking, but that doesn't relate to us because we're psychotic social justice warriors who are completely fine with a totalitarian mindset.
When all we did was negotiate ad deals and review scores and scrape to be called reporters.
Yeah, don't worry about being reporters.
You've lost that title long ago.
Because we have the same powerlessness complex as our audience had.
Oh, right, okay, it is about power.
Right, okay.
Now part of a writer's job in a creative human medium is to curate a community, a creative community, and an inclusive culture.
A lack of commitment to what looks out of step and a partial compromise with the Howling Trolls.
I'm not even clicking on it.
You've done nothing.
Who've latched onto ethics in the latest flag against in their onslaught against evolution and inclusion?
Listen, you're trying to co-opt video gaming.
And you've succeeded, practically.
In fact, you have succeeded.
And now you're...
Like Internet Aristocrat said, this is a reformation.
This is Martin Luther nailing his reform against the door.
You don't know how corrupt and dictatorial you have become.
Developers and writers alike want games about more things, and games by more people, then make them.
We want, and we are getting, and will keep getting, tragic comedy, Vignette, musicals, dream worlds, family tales, ethnographies, abstract art.
We will get this because we're creating culture now.
Great, go away and create a culture somewhere else.
We refuse to let anyone feel prohibited from participating unless you're a straight white male gamer.
Gamer isn't just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use.
You better tell Anita Sarkeesian.
She's pretty sure that she's still a gamer.
Gamers are over.
That's why they're so mad.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and then we get to the metaphorical genocide.
It was only a matter of time.
These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet arguers, they are not my audience.
They don't have to be yours.
That's a fucking bold move.
Alienating the people who built the game industry into what it is today is a fucking bold move.
There is no side to be on.
Yes, there is.
There is no debate to be had.
Now I know you're a fuckner.
There is what's past and there is what's now.
There is a role you choose to play in what's ahead.
You are unbeliev- Are you forming the Nazi party for gaming?
Posted on Kotaku on the same day.
We might be witnessing the death of an identity.
I've been working at Kotako for nearly eight years now, Luke Plunkett says.
And while I've seen some online kerfuffles over various issues in that time, I've never seen anything like the past two weeks.
There has been so much hate, so many angry words, so many accusations, and so much proof over what?
Video games?
Women in video games?
People who write about video games?
No!
But carry on, you idiot!
In fact, no, I'm going to show you what people are so pissed off about.
You know how to not refute the charge that video games have a misogyny problem with rape and death threats.
That sums up everything that's wrong.
You are attacking people on such a fundamental and extreme level.
If you were watching a program that didn't have any black people in it and you really liked that program, I was like, no, that's a racist programme.
You'd be like, no, it's not racist.
I'd be like, no, it clearly is, because look at there are no black people in it.
Or if the black person was like the bad guy, I'd be like, totally racist.
Totally racist.
You might be like, no, it's just the story.
And there are pages and pages and pages of this kind of bullshit.
Dan Golding wrote an article called The End of Gamers.
On the evidence of the last few weeks, he writes, what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity.
Do you think you're going to take my identity away from me, Dan?
The second by Leia Alexander, oh yeah, the same.
Gamers do not have to be your audience.
Gamers are over.
It's a similar piece, albeit one a little more aimed at developers.
Gamer isn't just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use, she writes, gamers are over, that's why they're so mad.
That's really empathetic.
So empathetic.
But I do think that money talks and bullshit walks.
And I think that when people keep buying these hyper-masculine power fantasies that you penises hate so much, then the developers will keep making them and keep catering to that audience.
I know, I know it's awful.
I know it's just terrible that people are willing to spend their money on these things.
I'm so sorry for you.
Note, they're not talking about everyone who plays games or who self-identifies as a gamer as being the worst.
It's being used in the cases as a shorthand, a catch-all term for the type of reactionary holdouts that feel so threatened by gaming's widening horizons.
If you call yourself a gamer and are a cool person, keep on being a cool person.
That's not subjective in any way.
There is an objective standard of what a cool person is.
And if you are one, you keep doing that.
And once you're done here, I'll see you next week, where we can hang out as thoughtful, considerate human beings and enjoy video games as they are, and not what some folks feel they can dictate from a dark corner of the internet.
I know you can't see it, but my mouth is moving, trying to form words that will create a sentence to accurately construct and convey how just how deeply hypocritical and unself-aware these people are.
Posted by Polygon on the same day.
An awful week to care about video games.
Don't play video games, care about video games.
What an awful week for the culture that surrounds and influences video games.
You mean social justice culture.
Last week, a game designer's personal life was exposed to the internet and used to justify physical threats to both the developer and her colleagues.
The designer was one of many people targeted in an orchestrated harassment effort directed at game developers.
Who was orchestrating it?
You can't see that this was a grassroots movement.
The gamers, the people you are trying to dictate to, are pissed off at you.
And you think there is someone pulling the strings because you think there's a conspiracy of some kind going on.
That's probably because you all posted this same fucking article on the same day.
But no, there's no conspiracy in gaming journalism.
You fucking twats.
I can't believe you think that we are more stupid than you.
On Friday, Harassers, that's the label, hacked game designer Phil Fish's Twitter account and website.
Fish, at least briefly, contemplated selling his company and leaving the industry altogether.
I notice that you're presenting a very whitewashed version of events.
As if these things have sprung out of the ether and there is no explanation for why these things are going on other than they are harassers as a profession or label and they revel and take pride in being harassers.
On Monday, prominent media hypocrite Anita Sarkeesian posted a video to YouTube that criticised the use of women as background decoration, particularly in violent and sexual ways that she must have orchestrated herself to get the footage of.
Many of those who shared the post received threats and harassment.
Yeah, sure they did.
The following tweets were directed at the game designer Tim Schaefer on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Supporting Anita, looks like I'm not buying any of your shit anymore.
Such a shame.
I thought you were a decent person.
Well, I have to say I'm going to now follow Slayer of Bullshit because I like the cut of his jib.
At Jon Tron and Tim of Legend, can you people just leave my games alone?
No women gave a fuck about gaming pre-2005.
Can you fuck off, please?
No, I'm afraid they can't.
I'm afraid that they have kicked in the door to the clubhouse and now we're going to have to fuck off.
This week, it should be clear to the community that games are at a cultural turning point.
No longer are games designed, marketed, and sold to a niche group of young men.
Games are now ubiquitous.
Their ability to provide a safe space for experimentation and empathic experiences serves a population that, in a time as economically and politically bleak as this one, need them desperately.
More games are being created by more people for more people than ever before.
And there's never been more complaining from the social justice community.
Two groups are at opposite ends of this moment.
One side has folded its arms, slumped its shoulders while pouting like an obstinate child that has learned they are getting a little brother or sister but wants to remain the singular focus of his parents' attention, and the other are the gamers.
Ha!
The other side has opened its arms, unable to contain its love and compassion.
Love and compassion.
Oh Jesus Christ.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, compassion.
That is the one word that people associate with social justice.
It's not health.
It's compassion.
Because they understand they are no longer alone.
This week, the obstinate child threw a temper tantrum, and the industry was stuck in the metaphorical grocery store as everyone was forced to suffer through it together.
But unlike a child, the people behind these temper tantrums are hurting others.
It's time to grow up.
It turns out you can get more condescending than the previous article.
I love it, you just have no idea how you come across, do you?
And again, on the same day, Destructoid put out another article on the same subject.
I'm not the first to mention this by any stretch of the imagination, but I really want to hammer the point home.
They all did it on the same damn day.
I have an unrealistic dream I'd like to share with everyone.
It's not a dream of personal goals, and it's not a dream of the future of video games.
My dream is that one day the gaming community can learn to put aside the hate.
A dream that everyone can just be reasonable human beings to each other.
The hate is something that gets spread around like wildfire over all our lives.
I'm only speaking specifically about the gaming community because it's a place I feel like I belong.
Because it centres around my dearest hobby.
Did you miss the pages and pages of hate towards gamers calling them misogynists?
That is hate!
And you brought it here!
Internet comments have long been infamous as a place where you can see the most vile, disrespectful, or just plain mean thoughts ever to come out of a social justice warrior's head.
There are some successful people on the internet, whether they create content for YouTube or for written formats, who feel the need to avoid their own comment sections, and that's a damn shame.
Is it a damn shame?
It really depends what they're saying, doesn't it?
I can't speak for others who create content, but for myself, part of the joy of writing is getting to see all of the people who can reply or converse with each other about what I've written, whether they agree or disagree.
Sure it is.
I find people's opinions fascinating when they're presented reasonably.
But it's it's weird how you don't mind when your side is entirely unreasonable.
You're just bothered about the people who disagree with your side.
As I'm just some schmuck who does this once a week as a hobby, I generally don't get huge influxes of people to my content.
So it's rare that I have someone to worry about someone rude.
And the things I have seen on professionally written pieces is just shameful.
But nothing about how shameful those pieces are in themselves.
There are people, quite a number of them in fact, brilliant, who seem to think that their opinion on any particular matter is the most important and precious thing in the world.
Well, their opinion is the most important opinion to them, I imagine.
I mean, you feel that your opinion was so important you wrote a fucking blog about it.
Now it's only natural to want people to agree with you.
It's also understandable to be disappointed when someone feels completely the opposite to you.
But you will never be in a situation where it's impossible for you to reply in a reasonable manner.
I am by no means a religious man.
If you're a social justice warrior, you might want to reconsider that.
I do my best to live by a pretty simple creed.
Try not to be too much of an asshole.
How much of an asshole is someone when you call someone else a misogynist without knowing that they actually hate all women?
I've dealt with depression.
Yeah, I've played Depression Quest too.
And the kind of anger that makes you pace around your room flailing while arguing with yourself.
Yes, I've spoken to social justice warriors too.
Truth be told, I get fired up pretty easily.
Yeah, me too, actually.
I allow myself to get annoyed.
Yep.
From then I moved from angry to angry to stressed.
See, you don't need to get stressed.
The anger should be the outlet to stress.
There are so many times when I'll read what someone has to say and have to literally step away from the computer so I can forget about it and move on.
Were we talking about games?
Even though you feel that the other person is the worst kind of human being and needs to be told how things really are, that is why I'm making this video.
Although I do hope you don't learn from it.
Just take a breath.
No one ever changed the world in the comment section of YouTube.
You don't know that.
If you that is public discourse taking place, you dick.
If you honestly think that what you have to say needs to be said, then all the more reason for you to present it as reasonably as possible.
Well, we tried that and you guys said, me misogyny suppression, sexism, meeeee!
So now we're just resorting to yelling at you because there seem to be no other viable alternatives.
There was an article on another site about Anita Sarkeesian being driven out from her home on account of abuse and death threats.
Now, I'm not the biggest fan of many of her arguments.
I think that she has a solid goal, which was to amass stacks of cash, and she achieved it, but I don't necessarily agree with a lot of her reasoning.
That's because it's bollocks.
That being said, there is nothing this woman could say on the internet regarding video games that could possibly warrant her life being threatened.
Sure, sure.
Some really, really polite, and then really angry, but very well spelt, commenter on Twitter.
All within about three minutes of each other that she got screen caps of all at once, without searching for the account or anything like that.
That yeah, it completely legit, mate.
Completely legit.
And then he goes on to Strawman, saying, regardless of how you think the best way to introduce a female protagonist into the series would be, do you know who gets hurt if they decide just to gender swap Link or make Zelda playable or any other number of possibilities?
Literally no one.
Well, brilliant.
That's that's brilliant because I tell you what I would really like to do.
I would really like to change the protagonist in Gone Home into a clone of Duke Nukem.
No one's gonna get hurt.
No one's getting hurt when I do that.
But are you gonna be happy with that?
Do you think a lot of the fans of Gone Home are gonna be happy with that?
No?
Oh, well that's tough shit because this is how social justice logic works.
On badass digest.
Digest so badass they had to tell everyone in the name or they might not have known.
Video games, misogyny and terrorism.
A guide to assholes.
Well, I'm feeling the love and compassion, but this was actually done on the 26th.
So maybe the love and compassion was instituted on the 27th, so on the 28th when they were writing about it, they were saying, well, we've got all this love and compassion now, so, I mean, that was pre-love and compassion, what are we gonna do?
There's something rotten deep within gaming culture.
Andrew thinks it's time we cut it out.
Alright, Andrew.
So what you're saying is that you have successfully co-opted gaming culture, to mean social justice culture, in your minds, and now you're looking at gamers who are like, we're not social justice warriors.
You're like, well, we need to get rid of them.
As gaming editor here, I get to play a lot of video games.
Glad you told us.
I love the gaming medium.
Good.
I think it's got the potential to define the 21st century as much as film defined the 20th.
Probably does.
I also get to experience the gaming community and industry, which can be a wonderful place if you're a social justice warrior.
There are a lot of genuinely positive people out there making groundbreaking interactive art like Depression Quest, and similarly positive people playing it, like me.
But it's hard to self-identify as a gamer when there's also a large swathe of the community apparently committed to presenting us all as a bunch of hateful sociopaths.
Such compassion.
It's like being a moderate Muslim in the middle of a continuing ISIS takeover and oppression of Iraq.
You fucking martyrs.
Oh my god.
Someone should create a temple to you.
A few weeks ago, I'd have said that was an extreme analogy.
And it still is an extreme analogy, but given the events of the past week, it's becoming clear that it's actually really fucking appropriate.
It would be like the Nazis saying they're being oppressed by the Jews.
But I guess at the time you couldn't have read the other articles on the 28th about power and control and the extermination of gamers.
I'll get to this week's events in a minute, but first, some context, and a warning, a trigger warning, am I right?
Because there are some truly horrible, misanthropic stuff in here that I unfortunately have to repeat in order to discuss.
Lady folk who don't frequent gaming websites may not be aware.
Okay, I'll stop you there.
That means they're not gamers.
They're not really interested in gaming.
But anyway, there are rampant s issues with sexism, homophobia and racism within the gaming industry.
Believe it or not, most gamers don't hate women, they don't hate gays, and they don't hate blacks or any other races.
But social justice warriors will tell you that they do, as they are doing in this article.
There are too many examples of misogyny from employers, readers, or fans to count.
But a prominent, representative example, now ballooned to ludicrous proportions.
There are so many of them, I don't know where they're all coming from.
Is the continued harassment of the video blogger and media commenter Anita Sarkeesian?
I'm not even reading the rest of this giant paragraph.
One developer targeted this week, a phrase I have to use because multiple developers were targeted this week, oh no, was Fez creator Phil Fish, whose website was taken down, gigabytes of personal information leaked, and Twitter accounts hacked.
Yeah, I agree.
It absolutely wrong to do all these things.
But the thing is, Phil Fish is such an unlikable twat that it's really hard to give a fuck.
Fish has always been a volatile personality, but his tweets prior to shutting down his Twitter paint a particularly dismal picture of the gaming community.
This is going to be good.
This is video games.
This is what I get.
This is unacceptable.
This is not okay.
Terrorist!
Never again!
You hear me?
Never again.
Phil, you're such a melodramatic twat.
This is video games.
This is your audience.
To every aspiring game developer out there, don't!
Give up!
It's not worth it!
Nothing is worth this!
Give up on your dreams!
They're actually nightmares!
Don't do it!
Run away!
Run away!
I would like to announce that Polytron and the Fez IP are now for sale.
What a surprise.
No reasonable offer will be turned down.
I am done.
I want out.
You should all be ashamed.
Except he did actually come back like the next day.
So much for your melodramatic flounce out of Athens, Tymon.
Although, I have to say, credit where it's due, he did apologise.
I can't account for the veracity of this tweet, but I'm happy to believe that it was him.
Fish's public execution was served in retaliation for support of Depression Quest developer Zoe Quinn, who he had an affair with behind her boyfriend's back.
Which is why they go on to say, I'm not going to link to the original accusations in Inverted Commons because they're actually confirmed with evidence that the Gaming Rogues Gallery heaped upon Quinn.
But suffice it to say that they surfaced in a lengthy, narcissistic rant by a jilted ex-boyfriend.
You mean in a very humble and incredibly patient manner by the most beta of beta males, who was fucked over by a slapper and his friends!
You shithead!
Where's the love and compassion, you dickhole?
The video gaming internets can be a horrible place.
Hiding behind infinite fake Twitter accounts and message board anonymity are some of the worst examples of humanity.
The abuse gushes forth in such torrents that reporting tweets becomes almost useless.
You block or report one anonymous anime avatar account and 15 more take its place.
15 more slackly flapping mouthpieces for cowardly, whining, crybaby man-children.
The attacks come from all over the internet because the fires are fueled by the fan of message board sites like 4chan.
No.
No, you fucknuts, you absolute moron.
This is why I've done an entire week in stupid on you guys.
Because you are so fucking stupid.
The fires are fueled by you.
You are causing all of this.
You are causing everything by being such raging fucknuts.
And just to prove you guys don't have any kind of sense of humour, they get off and causing others butt hurt.
And there's a cavalier lust for lulls and how they discuss and act on their various hatreds that's extremely dispiriting.
So who are these people?
What do they want?
I've spent way more time than I'd like having to look at them.
You're ruining my YouTube recommendations in the process.
See the guys up in the header image?
They're Jordan Owen and Davis Arene.
The utterly predictable faces of a Patreon crowdfunding campaign currently seeking a laughable $15,000 a month.
Is it laughable because it's too much, or is it laughable because it's very little in comparison to the amount that you guys seem to raise on Patreon?
Called the Sarkeesian effect.
Owen and Arini are the tip of the iceberg.
How and what's the Sarkeesian effect about?
The Sarkeesian Effect is an upcoming documentary film that will explore how gaming and tech culture have been hijacked by social justice warriors as well as a look into the background, ethics and methodology of some of the movement's most prominent voices.
167 patrons with 3,200 odd a month.
That seems like a pretty worthwhile cause that's being pretty strongly supported to me.
Social justice warriors is a term often used by these sorts of people, and it's a term whose pejorative abuse perplexes me.
Because aside from the source of its invention, it sounds like a really badass thing to be.
Unfortunately, it's gone.
It's like National Socialist sounds pretty good.
It sounds, yep, the nation and the society, that sounds good, but I really don't think there's any reclaiming it.
And again, on the 28th, Gamer Sutra.
A guide to ending gamers.
I love how they are determined to wipe the identity out.
That Anita Sarkeesian is Armenian.
Don't you think she might have something to say about wiping people out?
They begin with the no true Gamer Sutra blogger fallacy and say the following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamer Sutra's community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamer Sutra its parent company because this will probably get fucking inconvenient later and we may well need to decry it in the future.
Whether it is the concluding chapter of Ian Bogost's How to Do Things with Video Games, The End of Gamers, Dan Golding's more recent blog on the subject with the same title, oddly enough, odd, that really isn't lovely coincidences, or the hundreds of tweets being written about it, we're seeing calls to do away with the concept of gamers altogether by the fucking industry, you propagandists!
Fucking hell, this is the most dishonest journalism I have ever seen!
You put this on your fucking site, Gamer Sutra!
This isn't even a joke!
Why would you host this?
You know this is so bad, and it's probably going to come back to bite you in the ass so much.
You've already gone, well, I mean, we might not mean this.
It really depends who wins this civil war.
This is great, but change isn't going to happen automatically.
It's absolutely not inevitable.
Celebrating that uncertain victory now is premature, hubristic, and an insult to the people who are suffering abuse from self-identified gamers.
You are the pigeons who have shat on the chessboard, and now you're strutting around saying, hey, we beat you at chess.
I cannot believe I am reading this.
As such, I'd like to postpone our backpatting and think about solutions for bringing this change about sooner than later.
And think about the regular ending the regular harassment of women in games is better achieved today than tomorrow.
Have you not noticed that this has been going on for two weeks?
This isn't over!
You can't win this!
We can't just Twitter block the problem away, which is really what you'd usually do when there's dissent.
Even a video game series critical of the medium is only a partial solution.
Games culture needs to change at a grassroots level.
At least this person can see this is a grassroots thing.
And each of us has a part to play in that revolution if we want it to happen.
You'd be revolting against yourselves, you idiots.
It's not only the worst of us that need to change.
None of us are outside of this system.
None of us are completely above its effects.
None of us are entirely innocent.
We all need to work to make our role in games culture more positive.
Which absolutely does not mean less critical.
I'm looking forward to hearing your rules.
Here are some preliminary tactics I propose for transforming games.
Feel free to propose your own in the comments and offer revisions to mine.
I will.
1. We don't wait.
The industry has been distracting us with carrots on sticks.
It's carrots and sticks, you idiots.
Since its inception, repeatedly pulling the rug out from under us before we could even get oriented in the first place.
We've been doing far too much waiting in games.
Level screens, what are you talking about?
Loading.
It's got a load.
What'd you want?
We need to raise our expectations and stop waiting for the medium to mature.
Yeah, why don't you get on with it?
It's 2014.
Well done.
The first generation of consoles was decades ago.
Yes, it was.
So what?
The only reason that games are immature is if consumers and producers are allowing them to be that way.
Yes, it's called the free fucking market.
You bloody communists.
2. We listen to those who are less privileged than we are.
And since you consider yourselves to be at the top of the pyramid, that's pretty much everyone, isn't it?
Isn't that all your gaming audience, you muppets?
3. We display broader interests as individuals who make and play games.
We spend more time learning about the world beyond the industry.
We put more effort into making games about things other than what we've already seen in games.
Ugh, can anyone remember when games were fun?
Can anyone remember just when you had a laugh playing games with your mates?
Is anyone looking forward to killing Floor 2?
4. We make and play fewer isolating games, including online multiplayer games.
Online multiplayer games are isolating games, are they?
That is so fucking retarded!
If our medium is designed for people to stay secluded for dozens of hours while having their ego stroked, then we reap what we sow in terms of the kinds of people who emerge from this pastime.
Are you shitting me?
We need to consider the very real possibility that the offensive behaviour displayed by gamers in recent weeks is not unrelated to the artifacts they rally around, which I doubt are especially obscure.
You're talking about the raping and video games that would have otherwise been in this actual episode, except you guys have taken up way too much time already.
We become far more mindful of the games we make and play.
Sexism in games is pervasive and toxic.
Racism in games is pervasive and toxic.
Violence in games is pervasive and toxic.
The future of video gaming is going to be Beige Cube Simulator 4.
These people are arguing for the worst possible video games they could make.
6.
We maintain a critical eye towards the esports scene and its accompanying machismo.
Oh, who could have imagined it might have been fairly macho when it's entirely about competition.
Yep, Beige Cube Simulator 4 is going to be single player only and there will be no score counter.
7.
We change the culture of game consumption to be less about buying and rating games and instead develop a paradigm that's more about playing and thoroughly investigating games.
The reason this is so vital is because to be a gamer is not merely to play games.
At its core, to be a gamer is to be obsessively and regularly make the correct purchases.
No, it's not about correct fucking purchases, you morons.
Buy whatever you want.
Just play it properly.
Don't you're talking as if the game cannot be wrong.
You're talking as if the game is handed down from on high to the pbeans who are then to bask in it and explore it until they've got every bit of knowledge out of the game and then you can just go to the public says, bravo, that was life-changing.
Life-changing.
I'm now fucking depressed.
Honestly, buying the games is just fine.
If people want to take pride in what they buy, let them.
Who cares?
I just don't give a fuck what people buy.
I give a fuck what's fun.
We jettison the hardcore/slash casual dichotomy because it's just gonna be Beige Cube Simulators from here down.
You can't have a different kind of game and there are no different kind of players.
Your identities will be wiped out and assimilated into our cube simulations until one day we realize that that's edgist towards spheres and then it'll be Beige Sphere Simulator number one, the revolutionary game that tops all the charts, that's on all the magazine covers, and you will have finally killed gaming.
9. We let the industry's tent poles fall to the ground more often.
We stop allowing ourselves to be told which games we need to play.
Are you fucking shitting me?
Did you not read the previous two points you made?
But you're smarter than that.
We abandon any skepticism any of us have towards underrepresented people's deep concerns about the medium.
Well, if you're abandoning skepticism, enjoy your religion.
11. We stop upholding fun as the universal ultimate criterion for a game's relevance.
What the fuck?
Listen, I want Bayesphere 5 to at least be a fun game.
I mean, 1 to 4 were pretty boring, but I've got good hopes for the future of this franchise.
I.
It's a meaningless ideal at best and a poisonous priority at worst.
Fun is a neurological trick.
Fun is a neurological trick.
It's this.
Jesus, I feel like I've gone through the looking glass.
Plenty of categorically unhealthy things are fun.
Let's try for something more.
But we were talking about games.
Why did you kill Joyce and have to come along and suck the life out of my basephere simulator?
I'm honestly dreading to read this next one.
12. We don't afford any credence to the idea that games are just for fun.
I thought I was going to say then, games are not fun.
But no, it's games are not neutral.
Oh, just...
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, games.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Why?
Yeah, they're not just for fun.
They're very serious business that everyone should be very serious about when they're doing it.
God forbid anyone's feelings ever get hurt.
We need more seriousness in games.
I think that is what the gamers are crying.
I think that you've actually worked your way around to their position now.
It's like, we need less fun in our games.
We want our games to be more serious and boring.
Bring out Bayesphere 6.
13. We make and play fewer linear games about one person saving the world.
Sorry, Joseph Campbell.
No, we're going to have to sacrifice you on the altar of progressiveness now.
Take a look at the people terrorizing games culture lately.
They're almost all tyrannical brats with messianic delusions.
Where do you think they're learning this behaviour from?
I'd say the gaming press, but you all knew that was coming.
14. I can't believe how many rules there are that they've got, but I'm definitely, definitely going to get through these all.
We make gaming more like recreation or reading than it is a religion.
You're not gamers.
That's what you're telling us.
You don't like games.
You don't care about the games.
You don't care about fun.
You don't care about competition.
You don't care about anything related to gaming itself.
What you care about is not fucking games.
We get it.
15. We get serious about inclusivity.
Well, Jesus Christ, if you're not being serious about it yet, I hate to think what you're going to be like if you do get serious.
But yes, participation ribbons for all.
There is no lose condition.
Well done.
Beige Sphere 7 is going to be a bestseller.
16. We do not assume that the harassment we've seen lately is a complete aberration.
Don't worry, we don't assume that your completely condescending attitude is either.
We understand that there is a link between this medium that terrorists see themselves as defending and the terrorism itself.
Unbelievable.
Absolutely unbelievable.
17. We agree that caring about the world and its inhabitants is more important than clinging to our toys.
Fuck the world and its inhabitants.
It's nothing to do with this.
We're talking about how fun games are and you're trying to ruin that for everyone.
You are literally trying.
You're setting out rules that will ruin it.
You're probably going to be like, oh, well, you know what?
Bayesphere 7 has got way too much Beige privilege.
It really needs to involve teal as well.
And so we'll have to put in options and then they'll be like, yeah, but what about Morv?
And they'll be like, oh, God, here we go.
And then it won't be Base Cube 7 or Base Sphere 7, it'll just be rainbow platonic shape.
And that's all it'll be forever.
You managed to ruin the game that was supposed to have ruined games.
18.
We'll all grow up starting this very instant and we bring the games along with us.
This doesn't mean making grittier or darker games, rather.
We make and play games that we will have no reason to be ashamed of.
And most importantly, we're honest about what may very well be shameful about games.
Because if there's one thing we can be sure of, there is definitely shame involved.
Because shame is a control mechanism.
And that's what they're trying to use to gain control of the entire video gaming narrative and industry.
Not a fucking chance, you twats.
We're not done yet, but I'll just sum up the last two articles because I can't believe how much bullshit all of these idiots put to print.
On Ars Technia, they put the death of gamers and the women who killed them.
zoe quinn and ita sarkeesian prove points a certain gamer type refuses to hear yes the point that-yes the point that all it takes is to be a slag or a con artist and you can make it to the upper echelons of gaming culture That's a fucking sad state of affairs, isn't it?
Many of the people slagging on Sarkeesian, cue images of Zoe Quinn raping Anita Sarkeesian, bind up their arguments in bigger issues, saying that Quinn's situation shines light on ethical quandaries in games and gaming journalism, and that Sarkeesian's illuminates crowdfunding scams where social justice warriors cherry-pick evidence to undermine the massive business and culture of video games, rightfully owned by a particular kind of white man.
You're a fucking idiot.
That's literally what you are.
You are, if I were to define an idiot, I would say the person who gives a fuck about people slagging on Sarkeesian and Quinn, and really think that that's a good way to excuse the ethical quandaries in games and the crowdfunding scams.
I don't know.
I don't know how to explain it.
I don't know why you would think, well, you know, I mean, they did do those things, but they're not really important.
What's really important is that people are saying bad things about a woman.
Two women in this case.
Fuck, that's the important issue.
It's not the scams.
It's not the ethical quandary.
It's nothing to do with that.
It's it barking.
It's just bonkers.
These people have fucking gone off the deep end, way off the reservation.
They are fucking loopy.
And finally, Games on Net simply tells their readers to fuck off.
Their problem here is that these squealing man children, so desperate to keep women out of their precious games, want it both ways.
Nobody cares about the gender of the person playing on the other side.
Nobody cares about the gender of the person reporting.
What they care about is the quality of the reporting or the quality of playing.
And in your cases, it's shit.
The only thing left for these people to do is put their toys back in the pram and huddle together as the tide rises against them until they wake up in five years' time and realise that Assassin's Creed 7 is actually a pretty good game even if they had to waste three precious seconds flicking the gender over to male because it's obviously going to be female or some bizarre combination of words from Tumblr instead of that.
Well I mean the major demographic would probably still be men who just don't listen to the video game press but it's obviously going to be female.
It's obviously going to be female.
And I love it.
The tide rising against you you you don't understand that you guys are the boat and the gamers are the ocean.
The tide is rising against you and other people in these articles actually realize it.
This one is just such a fucking idiot.
Here's the door.
So here's another change for you.
If you th really think feminism or women are destroying games or that LBG whatever people and relationships have no place in games or that games in any way belong to you or are under attack from political correctness or social justice warriors please leave this website.
I don't want your clicks.
I don't want your hits.
I don't want your traffic.
Leave now and please don't come back.
Tim Colwell closes his career with If you're not on board, find another ship and good luck to you because that ship will be sailing against the wind.
Well I'm definitely taking advice from someone who calls himself a social justice druid.
I will never be going to your website again Tim and I will always advocate that nobody else does because you people are fucking insane.
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