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Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies


Brandon Strader
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Frankly, The Coop is right. This is way too charged of a topic for serious discussion among the "main players," and anything otherwise is a personal attack.

Kind of like this:

It was to play off the mention of playground tactics earlier on the page... http://ocremix.org/forums/showpost.php?p=978423&postcount=1582

O <- where you were aiming

where the joke went -> O

Snide comments aside, this is a serious discussion. As I see it, this is being horribly (and sometimes, hilariously) mishandled by both sides of the issue, and I don't know if this can easily be handled at this time without a serious cease-fire being called.

Edited by Anorax
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Who would argue the other side of that, though? Who would say "sexual objectification is just fine" in the gaming climate we have now?

I was planning to :)!!

Right now, the topic is basically too charged to have a real, civil discussion about it, because both sides are looking for anything to latch onto and lash out at. Hell, I fully expect someone to scold me for even mentioning the possibility of an argument with the above paragraph. So I don't know if going into a debate on both sides of the objectification issue, and how both men and women contribute to it, is doable at the moment... or at least doable without it degrading into snide comments and insults.

Are you talking about this thread, or the larger discussion? I was just talking about this thread, and I was just talking about sexualization/objectification in games, specifically, and more generally in art, but NOT in everyday life. I'm one of those folks who thinks people are actually rather GOOD at compartmentalizing, which seems like a dirty word and/or a foreign concept to would-be cultural critics in the gaming world at this moment in time. They need to catch up with cultural critics of other art forms, who more or less let this ship sail & put on their big-boy/big-girl pants decades ago, realizing that objectification in and of itself is a valid form of expression and has been since art itself existed. The CONTEXT of said objectification CAN be misogynist, offensive, sexist, etc., but the objectification itself should not elicit the knee-jerk reactions that it does, which embarrass both the medium & other more legitimate grievances surrounding the topic.

It's funny, because I think a lot of reasonable people would look at video games with scantily clad female characters and just dismissively say "grow up!!" - which is fine by me, this stuff is often just immature & silly. But for the others who choose to make a big academic fuss and get all up in polemical, righteous arms, my response is identical: "grow up!!" :nicework:

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O <- where you were aiming

where the joke went -> O

Well you can attribute that horrible aim to the lack of FPS floating around. One can derive from the mainstream media and their trusting viewer's thoroughly investigated account that gamers are a put-the-woman-down misogynistic clique, that this genre faded into obscurity having lost support for being forever tainted by cooties after Perfect Dark. Just take a look at Wreck-It Ralph: While there was a boycott of Disney by pixel-kin for the insensitive representation of pixlexia, the movie's box office failures was more influenced by how it reminded gamers of that monumental disaster in gaming and prompted a revival of the Keep Cooties Out of Gaming movement that seeks to regulate artistic expression by colluding with popular review magazines and sites to impose biased rhetoric and unfavorable scores on the criteria that they don't fit into the political agenda of the critics opposed to craftsmanship of the work.

I'm not even being facetious. Social justice education says I can break free from the chains of institutionalized methods of establishing knowledge and data, thus this is valid history, just as statistics for perception of quantitative occurrences of harassment by gender can be used as statistics of actual occurrences of harassment by gender. The distinction of subjectivity and objectivity is only a tool of subjugation by the Patriarchy.

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Well you can attribute that horrible aim to the lack of FPS floating around. One can derive from the mainstream media and their trusting viewer's thoroughly investigated account that gamers are a put-the-woman-down misogynistic clique, that this genre faded into obscurity having lost support for being forever tainted by cooties after Perfect Dark. Just take a look at Wreck-It Ralph: While there was a boycott of Disney by pixel-kin for the insensitive representation of pixlexia, the movie's box office failures was more influenced by how it reminded gamers of that monumental disaster in gaming and prompted a revival of the Keep Cooties Out of Gaming movement that seeks to regulate artistic expression by colluding with popular review magazines and sites to impose biased rhetoric and unfavorable scores on the criteria that they don't fit into the political agenda of the critics opposed to craftsmanship of the work.

I'm not even being facetious. Social justice education says I can break free from the chains of institutionalized methods of establishing knowledge and data, thus this is valid history, just as statistics for perception of quantitative occurrences of harassment by gender can be used as statistics of actual occurrences of harassment by gender. The distinction of subjectivity and objectivity is only a tool of subjugation by the Patriarchy.

cute10char

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Well you can attribute that horrible aim to the lack of FPS floating around. One can derive from the mainstream media and their trusting viewer's thoroughly investigated account that gamers are a put-the-woman-down misogynistic clique, that this genre faded into obscurity having lost support for being forever tainted by cooties after Perfect Dark. Just take a look at Wreck-It Ralph: While there was a boycott of Disney by pixel-kin for the insensitive representation of pixlexia, the movie's box office failures was more influenced by how it reminded gamers of that monumental disaster in gaming and prompted a revival of the Keep Cooties Out of Gaming movement that seeks to regulate artistic expression by colluding with popular review magazines and sites to impose biased rhetoric and unfavorable scores on the criteria that they don't fit into the political agenda of the critics opposed to craftsmanship of the work.

I'm not even being facetious.

Sounds sardonic to me. :)!!

The distinction of subjectivity and objectivity is only a tool of subjugation by the Patriarchy.
uh

what, no philosophical distinction between these two? Kant does not approve :<

Edited by timaeus222
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Ran into my first pro-GG'er today. He's been busy trolling all over my recent YouTube video just because I retweeted some anti-GG tweets.

Ya know, because the whole movement is about ethics in journalism.

I just clicked on the youtube link in your sig, looked at every video uploaded within the last 3 months and didn't find anything even remotely related to GG that's all over the comments in any of them?

Did you leave out anything like you deleted the comments, or you run several different youtube channels?

I mean, if you're going to characterize "the WHOLE movement" based on the actions of a troll, you should know that a hasty generalization fallacy is supposed to involve a bad sample size, not a non-existent one.

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I just clicked on the youtube link in your sig, looked at every video uploaded within the last 3 months and didn't find anything even remotely related to GG that's all over the comments in any of them?

Did you leave out anything like you deleted the comments, or you run several different youtube channels?

I mean, if you're going to characterize "the WHOLE movement" based on the actions of a troll, you should know that a hasty generalization fallacy is supposed to involve a bad sample size, not a non-existent one.

He showed up and insisted that my music should be boycotted by "decent, reasonable people" because I, as a "misandrist gamma male", needed to be "taught a lesson". He also proceeded to spout that debunked stuff about Zoe Quinn sleeping around with game reviewers and whatnot on my G+ page.

I deleted his comment and banned him. I don't deal with trolls any more than that, usually. Just found it interesting that my very first run-in with someone pro-GG was a troll.

But I'm sure I just made that stuff up, right? #GamerGate #notyourshield

Edited by DusK
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Ran into my first pro-GG'er today. He's been busy trolling all over my recent YouTube video just because I retweeted some anti-GG tweets.

Ya know, because the whole movement is about ethics in journalism.

I mean, if you're going to characterize "the WHOLE movement" based on the actions of a troll, you should know that a hasty generalization fallacy is supposed to involve a bad sample size, not a non-existent one.

Or...

http://www.clickhole.com/article/summary-gamergate-movement-we-will-immediately-cha-1241

Gamergate is a movement of video game fans who are fighting to achieve something involving ethics in gaming journalism using reasonable, measured debate.
Seems just insulting to tell someone how to properly do something wrong. :whatevaa: Edited by timaeus222
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Sexual objectification is not wrong. It just has to have its place. If you are marketing a game for a broad audience, you will want to tone down the sexual objectification. Not everyone wants to play a game that also acts as erotica. I certainly don't. Game developers in Japan know this but can get away with it in Japan because it is such a male-oriented society. When they sell games in North America, they have to redact the rape scenes that they are fond of inserting into in Japanese games. Because apparently, there is a lot of rape scenes glibly put into Japanese games.

Men want to be sexually objectified; women want to be sexually objectified. Just not all the time. And most certainly there is a large audience that wants their games to not be solely in the province of catering to sexual objectification. And certainly there is a large audience that wants games to not serve the monomania of adolescent male fantasy.

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The societal acceptance of women's portrayal, I'll say again, is a problem deeper rooted in the cultural mindset. If you want to fix it, you can't try to tell game devs not to do what they want. If you want the unequal sexual objectification between sexes to stop, you have to change the culture, the prevalent consumer attitude that accepts it, and that is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. It's not a games problem, it's a world/nation culture problem.

At that point, you can only see it as a problem if you believe you have a higher moral standard than what is currently employed in the real world, which is often the case of activists. However, it allows people who argue that sexual objectification is fine some credibility because they're hiding behind this "It's the way things are, and people like it, so what's the problem?" mentality. If you want to change it, you have to eliminate that.

"Don't fix what isn't broken" is really hard to disprove, simply because it's good advice in certain cases and bad advice in others, but that's pretty much the challenge of trying to convince someone that objectification is wrong.

Edited by Neblix
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Seems just insulting to tell someone how to properly do something wrong. :whatevaa:

http://wiki.gamergate.me/index.php/GamerGate

multiple gaming journalism outlets posted nine different articles, all on the same day, which decried "gamers" and declared that Gamers are Dead. Soon after the articles were published, actor Adam Baldwin tweeted his support for gamers and created the hashtag "#GamerGate", which quickly evolved into a consumer revolt against unethical practices in gaming journalism, such as corruption, collusion, and censorship.

That's not characterization.

Like, if you say you're a musician, it does not say a lot about your personality.

Or, to be more "insulting" about it, equivocation is too easy to point out, you're supposed to try to excuse the generalization by pointing out the "no true scotsman" fallacy as if I had committed it since I've not yet explicitly said that I'm aware that any broad group of people is going to have jerks.

Sophistry is actually viewed by quite a lot of people as a debate strategy. You can look up books like "How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic" if you don't believe me. Sophistry successfully influences people regularly. There's something lacking in general education or something that left has conveniently left this social engineering vulnerability within democratic society, somehow. Yet, the thought that journalists can lie and exploit, seems to be considered tin foil hat territory.

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Are you talking about this thread, or the larger discussion? I was just talking about this thread, and I was just talking about sexualization/objectification in games, specifically, and more generally in art, but NOT in everyday life. I'm one of those folks who thinks people are actually rather GOOD at compartmentalizing, which seems like a dirty word and/or a foreign concept to would-be cultural critics in the gaming world at this moment in time. They need to catch up with cultural critics of other art forms, who more or less let this ship sail & put on their big-boy/big-girl pants decades ago, realizing that objectification in and of itself is a valid form of expression and has been since art itself existed. The CONTEXT of said objectification CAN be misogynist, offensive, sexist, etc., but the objectification itself should not elicit the knee-jerk reactions that it does, which embarrass both the medium & other more legitimate grievances surrounding the topic.

I was talking about the subject in general, outside of our OCR bubble.

As for objectifying, everyone knows that many people objectify themselves on at least a semi regular basis to some degree. We get dressed up, make ourselves look good, and then go about getting ourselves noticed. Married and single men and women do it. Sometimes it's just to feel good about yourself/attractive, sometimes it's to find someone to potentially start dating, other times it's to get laid that night... the list goes on and on. There are simply moments when we want to be the object of someone's desires, and we let those around us know when that mood's hit us with the way we present/flaunt ourselves on those occasions.

But, you can't say that with this whole gamergate/tropes thing going on. Some people simply refuse to believe that self-made objectification is a real thing that people can and willingly do on purpose. They try to call it something else, but it's objectifying yourself, pure and simple. And since the word "objectify" is nearly a loaded term thanks to what's been going on with gaming lately, trying to rationalize any form of it just results in some people losing their collective shit and lashing out.

So... yeah. Some people have no problems with objectifying themselves, and enjoy the attention/power/effects on others it provides. Other people will happily objectify themselves at times, but when they're not in the mood to do so, they don't like being objectified by others. Others still don't like being objectified at all. The topic's a situational thing that differs from person to person, and level-headed people understand that. The problem is, that some people are trying to turn it into, "ALL OBJECTIFYING IS EVIL AND IF YOU SAY OTHERWISE U R BAD MEN!" And it's tough to have a grown-up and civil conversation when such people keep butting in, shouting the loudest.

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The societal acceptance of women's portrayal, I'll say again, is a problem deeper rooted in the cultural mindset. If you want to fix it, you can't try to tell game devs not to do what they want.

No. If you think a game has an absolute disappointment of an ending, do you tell the developers that the game has a great disappointment of an ending?

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But I'm sure I just made that stuff up, right?

No, I was more implying if that was the extent of what is backing your reason for vocalizing peer-pressuring discredit of gamergate, you should have at least saved a screenshot or web archive or something.

I'm sorry someone decided to sink down to tumblr level on you. I say that genuinely as someone who has been the recipient of harassment and malicious, libelous character assassination that sites where it propagated to such as tumblr and wikia refused to deal with because they "value free speech" and won't budge without a court order that's out of my budget.

But that part you're saying that's debunked? No.

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But that part you're saying that's debunked? No.

For a picture claiming to prove something, it does a pretty bad job of proving anything. Should I let everyone I've tagged on Facebook know that I'm banging all of them?

Also, Grayson reviewed her game? When? Let's see it.

Actually, let's just get right to the point: Post a single review of Depression Quest written by someone she allegedly slept with.

Edited by DusK
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No, I was more implying if that was the extent of what is backing your reason for vocalizing peer-pressuring discredit of gamergate, you should have at least saved a screenshot or web archive or something.

I'm sorry someone decided to sink down to tumblr level on you. I say that genuinely as someone who has been the recipient of harassment and malicious, libelous character assassination that sites where it propagated to such as tumblr and wikia refused to deal with because they "value free speech" and won't budge without a court order that's out of my budget.

But that part you're saying that's debunked? No.

The allegations were that she slept with multiple journalists to get positive reviews for her game. I don't think this article qualifies as a "review" of Depression Quest at all, whatsoever.

http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game-reality-tv-show-that-went-to-hell-1555599284

An entirely different writer posted basically the same story.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/214364/Inside_the_disintegration_of_a_game_jam_reality_show.php

So yeah, the allegations are still not true at all.

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For a picture claiming to prove something, it does a pretty bad job of proving anything. Should I let everyone I've tagged on Facebook know that I'm banging all of them?

Also, Grayson reviewed her game? When? Let's see it.

Actually, let's just get right to the point: Post a single review of Depression Quest written by someone she allegedly slept with.

So yeah, the allegations are still not true at all.

I'll give you that the wording was flimsy with that scandal (even the gg wiki describes them as allegations,) however the point is that the relationships was not disclosed, despite that it wasn't a dedicated review, this article pretty much put Depression Quest in the spotlight, given the image spot, with glowing alt-text and first mention, when given 49 alternative choices: https://archive.today/iS4Ru

Then there's this that's come to light:

http://theralphretort.com/zoe-quinn-couldnt-have-made-depression-quest-without-grayson/

http://www.depressionquest.com/ itself shows an indiecade award, referring to Night Games 2013, where it was pit against Papers, Please and lesser known indie titles, some of which that make interesting innovations. Do you believe Depression Quest is that groundbreaking of a game, where a curator and judge of the event is one of those in the scandal?

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I stopped reading Turbo's posts after he linked to the GamerGate wiki to define what GamerGate was, despite that being incredibly biased due to everyone writing for it being a GG supporter. You can't define something with itself, after all.

Also here's a relevant article about the whole thing that I wanted to share, didn't see it posted in here yet.

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