Ab56 v2 aka Ash

I regret not meeting up with you guys! But if you're ever in the Bay Area, let me know.

So I don't really know who runs MAGfest, but one thing that could've been done better for many of the panels I saw was how they take questions. The Team Four Star panel did it the best: they had a designated volunteer who took a mic with her and walked around the room, choosing who gets to ask a question. It was fair, efficient, and most importantly, got the mic around so every person's question could be heard throughout the entire room. I couldn't hear the questions at all in some of the panels, so it was tough figuring out what the panelists were responding to. Alternatively, panelists could repeat the questions so the audience hears. It's a little thing, but it tends to be the little things that make a convention or conference go from decent to professional.

Haha well I wasn't sure I was going until a couple nights before, and I forgot to contact anyone on OCR beforehand. It was tough getting a hold of anyone on IRC during the event (duh, everyone's out having fun). I wasn't too sure how to get in touch. My bad! But who knows, maybe if there's a Bay Area meet-up in the near future, I'll swing by.

Is it normally shorter? I went to MAGfest this weekend for the first time. My friend and I bailed early to go explore the area though; we didn't go Monday. After participating on the forum and IRC for close to a decade, I sort of regret not saying hello to anyone in person. But it was nice attaching names to faces at the OCR panel, and I finally bought an OCR shirt. Cheers to 15 more years.

Don't know if anyone I know will be there, but I might actually go to MAGfest next month too.

Plenty of ways to elaborate. What group? Can you describe these financial, personal, and professional ties? Can you describe this specific group's involvement in the controversy? Why should the "anti-GamerGate" label apply only to this narrow group rather than all the people out there on gaming sites, Twitter, Tumblr, and elsewhere that oppose whatever it is that GamerGate is about?

I'm actually in the business of lawyering, which people have analogized this request to. I might be kind of peeved if someone was coming to me personally and directly for free services after all the hard work I put in to get here. But if it were an open call for any interested persons to come help--like this thread is--I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'd just ignore it if I wasn't interested. Respectfully, I think if you're not interested, you could just not respond. There's no need to discourage people who are interested in helping by mucking up this thread with a big derail.

Could you elaborate on this and why I should believe that term should be limited to the clique you mentioned?

Don't labels like "SJW" just contribute to the identity war that you've decried several times in this thread? It's not so different from calling someone a racist or sexist, which I think you've also said was too vague earlier on. So other than for convenience--i.e. laziness--why would you ever use a vague label when you can attack specific ideas?

Lazy potshots aside, I thought this was an interesting interview by TotalBiscuit of Rhianna Pratchett, a video game writer.

Once again you've completely misrepresented my position which I've made pretty clear. I'm starting to doubt you're actually reading my posts. I agreed with djp when he said the following: Basically, I think it's plausible that Anita Sarkeesian played some role in expediting the schism, as he put it. I would hold her "responsible" for that. Would I blame the entire resulting fiasco on her? Not really. All the vitriol is not a reasonably foreseeable consequence of her actions. Like I said earlier, to put all the blame on her would mean that nobody else is responsible for their own actions. Why should Anita get 100% of the blame when there are probably thousands of people participating in this #Gamergate discussion? It makes no sense. But again, I want to reiterate that this is really not a productive discussion because it has absolutely no benefit. The topic being relevant doesn't make it a productive one. And you're almost right: you're right to an extent about this blame business, but no one should care. What do you hope to actually achieve by allocating all the blame on one person here? As far as I'm concerned, you're just contributing to everything that makes the #Gamergate discussion so off-putting. It suggests to me that attacking some person is more important to you than improving the medium in any way.

Some productive alternatives would be to talk about what kinds of depictions in gaming are lacking, how to promote those ideas to developers, or how to market the concepts to audiences, to name a few.

It's not a productive question because the answer doesn't lead to anything productive. And all you did in this post was make angry unsubstantiated claims.

I agree that you've made the argument, and you should expand on it and dress it up. There will always be some oddballs who would tell you to "check your privilege." On the other hand, there may be others who could see a reasoned argument and learn from it. If it convinces someone who could go on to influence any aspect of gaming by adding their voice in a constructive way, that's a net positive. It's more likely to do some good than not trying.

If that's all you've got, I think it's unclear whether a coherent argument can be made and received and it's not worth arguing one way or the other. I'd rather people just make the argument. No, it's not an interesting or productive question. But it's the question that keeps on popping up in this thread because of people who are hellbent on blaming Anita for the whole mess. I would be glad to ignore the question if people would drop it. I think that lends to your point about a war of ideologies. It's unnecessary.