AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Not necessarily talking about game titles but rather what goes on behind the scenes or are video game related? From company whatzits to game controllers attacking the hands of mankind.

Come no further! Gossip about video game happenins right here!

What's up with that Gamergate thing? I've heard about it for a while now, and seemingly everything about it sounds terrible.

Am I the only person around who manages to find news about games from non-shit places?

Like seriously, there's been a brewing shitstorm over the terrible state of gaming journalism, but it wouldn't matter if they didn't have so many people to click on their site in the first place.

I just get what little 'news' I need from Youtube, and the only legit gaming journalism channel I watch is Gamespot. Even then mostly for their spin off series and I don't feel the need to go read their articles. I mean some of their reporters are kinda annoying but I haven't seen anything exploitative.

GamerGate is an ongoing thing. From what I understand, the controversy surrounding Zoe Quinn and the way that game "journalists" handled it led people to start digging, leading to hefty concrete evidence of them supporting indie devs and other people on Patreon, being good friends with them IRL or online, etc. And then writing favorable coverage of them or defending them in certain arguments. One notable example is Kotaku's Patricia Hernandez, who wrote article after article for her indie game friend Anna Anthropy. She didn't even bother to hide their relationship; a ton of conversations were publicly available on Facebook.

As well, last week a ton of game news sites tried to run damage control, claiming that "Gamers are Dead" and stuff like that. This was way too many sites to be a coincidence. This may have been in retaliation for people to try to start boycotts of their sites by using programs like adblock and sites like pastebin and archive.today to spread evidence of their idiocy and what few non-shit articles they post without giving them page views.

Good sources for information about this as well as ongoing coverage include MundaneMatt and InternetAristocrat on YouTube, and Loltaku on tumblr.

My understanding of the Gamergate shit:

Quinn makes a pretty shitty videogame that no one cared about prior to this controversy. Quinn allegedly had sexual relationships with journalists who proceeded to promote the game. Quinn also faked being harassed online (by wizardchan of all places) to garner more attention. There was an unrelated project about promoting female video game developers where the proceeds go to charity (link here). Apparently somehow this was sexist according to Quinn and other like-minded individuals. They proceeded to create a shitstorm about it on twitter and got close to shutting the whole thing down (source).

4chan caught wind of all this, and because they love kicking up hornets' nests, proceeded to make everything worse. This is where the actual harassment of Quinn started. 4chan did manage to save TFYC project by donating copious amounts of cheddar to it (which again went to charity). Of course, this just served as further proof in the eyes of Quinn's side that the project was somehow sexist since 4chan is a "perverted" place and yaddayadda. Totalbiscuit and other figureheads also started to get involved, taking sides as they went. People on both sides got harassed and sent death threats.


In conclusion, I wish that every site of game discussion wasn't completely overtaken by social justice issues every 3 seconds.

tha social justice shit'll go away when the talentless hipsters callin theyselves journos get thrown out

What the fuck is a gaming journalist.

someone witout a degree in journalism who be writin bout games

I wonder if its possible to not have a degree in gaming journalism, and yet still write well.

I would suppose that the definition of a "good" game journalist would be someone who is completely unbiased towards the games they write. But that in of itself would be difficult due to the fact games can make ya feel. XD

Buuuut generally thats where the journalism comes in, you the person yourself decide if what youre working on is news. If what youre working on is worthy of touting to the world. Nothing else to it really. :/

Okay, here's the thing about #gamergate and 4chan. "4chan" doesn't harass people. It doesn't release naked photos of them, or hack websites, or any of that stuff you always see it credited for. Neither does "anonymous." There's no single-minded group of people being assholes here, no matter what news sites or people who have never even visited the site tell you. 4chan is not a hivemind and it most certainly is not organized enough to secretly control a Twitter campaign about revealing corruption in the industry to actually be about harassing people just because. 4chan does not do that. You'd have to be incredibly gullible and/or outright retarded to believe that. And that is exactly what every "issue" related to 4chan is about - sites and people who don't understand the site trying to put it into some predefined mold where the bad guys are easy to point out. These sites and people can't handle the concept of anonymity, they require some sort of face to blame everything for. And that's where groups like "Anonymous" come in, they're weak attempts at creating an umbrella definition for a loosely connected group of people without identities who spend most of the time bickering among each other and only pool their resources when threatened by some common enemy, which in this case is the games journalism industry. And this whole bully reputation is exactly what people like Zoe Quinn use when they want a convenient scapegoat. Here's the thing - anyone who has lots of experience with 4chan and is familiar with how its users work and has been there whenever 4chan's been the "bad guy" can see right through the bullshit. Because the people who abuse the site's reputation always fall into the same category as the rest - they don't understand it. When Zoe Quinn claimed that the whole Twitter campaign was actually orchestrated by 4chan through some secret IRC channel with the intent of hating on women, I did not buy it for one second. Because I know exactly how the site works and what its agenda on the whole matter is. The vast majority of people had not even heard of such a channel - I sure hadn't, nor had the people on Twitter with no ties to 4chan. What Quinn did was simply a shift in her and her supporters' tactics. They know they're losing and are getting increasingly desperate. This was evidenced by the explosive increase in obvious false flag posts in the general on /v/ right after the supposed reveal went live - each and every one of those posts stuck out like a sore thumb since they tried to blend in while going directly against /v/'s own narrative. It was an amateur attempt that could only be done by an outsider.

There's also another reason Quinn did what she did - because #gamergate is not about her. She's largely irrelevant now - she only served as a tool to set everything in motion. However, her brief fame period was financially beneficial to her and with this move she tried to shift the focus back to herself. It's a common tactic for people with no sense of self worth - attention at any cost.

woah mayn careful wit dat rational thinkin and explanation. someone might call it mansplainin. I tink dat's da word dey use anyway

Lemme say this as a moderator first: Mete, I'll appreciate you stopping with the condescending tone, and you'll also stop using words like "retarded". mister popo, you'll drop it with the "accent" too, thanks.


I think you see that whole issue as an "Us vs Them" situation, which is detrimental to considering stuff in a more objective way.
I don't understand how you can claim that "4chan and anonymous aren't a single-minded group of assholes", and then claim "I know exactly how the site works and what its agenda on the whole matter is". How's that possible, since they're not a hivemind?

As you said 4chan, /v/, anonymous or whatever - they aren't organized communities with a common goal. They are all individuals. Is it that hard to believe that, amongst these individuals, exist like-minded people that wanted to go create more drama around Zoe Quinn - whether for a laugh, whether because they're sexist, whether because they thought it'd help with "gaming journalism"?

I'll agree with you on this: saying "4chan did it!" is stupid. Saying "/v/ did it!", "anonymous did it!" is stupid. I'll agree with this, too: people went in threads pretending to be against Zoe Quinn, saying "guys as /V/ let's harass her lol I hate womyn!", to try to "prove" /v/ was behind it and everything.
I don't believe for one second that Zoe Quinn would organize that though (even if the whole cheating on bf/ sleeping with journos thing is true). These were probably people who thought Zoe Quinn was right, who thought /v/ & co were assholes and responsible for this, etc.
Of course, this can't be proven - just as Quinn being behind it can't be proven, either. Saying, "you'd have to be a fool to believe/ not believe this" is just you calling people idiots, not you actually bringing anything worthwhile to the discussion.

Yes, calling it "4chan's raid IRC" is as stupid as it is inaccurate. But if you put any faith in Eron's chatlogs screencaps, I don't understand why you wouldn't put any in Zoe's - except if you're picking sides and are actively "against" Zoe Quinn, despite claiming this has nothing to do with Zoe Quinn anymore.

I understand that you like 4chan and don't want to see it being blamed for things that wasn't done by the whole community (or even by a significant part of the community), and I agree with you on that: this issue isn't related to 4chan, and they're being used as a scapegoat. But, it still is an issue, and in my opinion, your liking of 4chan just makes you blame it on Zoe Quinn instead of thinking that maybe a bunch of idiots that also happen to sometimes go on 4chan organized a smearing campaign against her. I'm not saying it's 100% what happened - once again all this stuff is hard to prove - but I just feel like you didn't even consider that.
I'm not saying Zoe is right, I think it's biased to say she organized/ worsened her own harassment just so she could blame people and "look like the victim" again. I know she already did it once but that doesn't make the possibility that people are actually trying to destroy her career disappear.

Just my opinion, of course.

What career? She made a browser game and threw it on Steam Greenlight. It's not even an accurate depiction of depression.

That's a whole lot of ifs and maybes, Great Handsome Oppressor. Personally I'm going to wait until the IRC logs have been combed over.

And yes, saying that she has a career is a bit of an exaggeration. Plus like I said, she's no longer the target, the industry as a whole is. Nobody really cares about her anymore. This is just her publicity stunt before fading into obscurity.