Troy Maskell

NO U

From "The Quinnspiracy" to "Gamergate", we did that to specifically get away from the people harassing Zoe Quinn

You did a horrible, lousy fucking job at it then.

And of course, I believe everything ever posted on Tumblr

And how about the parts where I question your continued insistence on associating with a toxic brand, instead of striking out on your own and actually having a shot at credibility and not being constantly associated with harassment and misogyny? Anything on that front?

Do you honestly think if we did that the misogynists would not follow to what ever statement or flag we put out there?

This is one of the most pathetic excuses I have ever seen for anything, ever. You deserve the negative reactions you get, because you're too lazy, too scared or you don't care enough to actually try and get away from them.

In your opinion. My question still stands, because we HAVE changed once before. From "The Quinnspiracy" to "Gamergate", we did that to specifically get away from the people harassing Zoe Quinn and to focus on our issue, the Grayson issue and the subsequent issues that followed. What happened? The Harrassers followed us to the Gamergate group. It's easy to say "Change the Flag" or "Why not try this?" but we already know that simply doesn't work.

So tell me oh wise one, since you clearly have all the answers, what do we do when we switch tags and the narrative is either "Look at the misogynists trying to prove they're not misogynists but hiding behind another tag" or in three months when that tag gets spammed by trolls who have nothing to do with the group we're back at the same fucking spot?

And how about the parts where I question your continued insistence on associating with a toxic brand, instead of striking out on your own and actually having a shot at credibility and not being constantly associated with harassment and misogyny? Anything on that front?

Do you honestly think if we did that the misogynists would not follow to what ever statement or flag we put out there?

Why are all the examples you are providing of small scale indy games? People on the ground floor of the small grassroots level of the gaming industry are friends? Shocking!

Why aren't you looking at AAA titles? Why aren't you looking at pre-release review embargoes? Why aren't you calling out games being advertised on sites that are supposedly objectively reviewing them? Those are real ethical problems. The developer of a small game/non-game about depression that was released for free might have had a relationship with a writer who mentioned that her game got greenlit? So what? Go after real problems if you actually care about ethics. Go after the money. Leave the hobbyists who if they are lucky might get to quit their day jobs alone.

Oh there's been problems with AAA games too. Shadow of Mordor was well known for hiring a PR company who offered early access to the game in return for favourable reviews

Mostly to Troy on this one:

If you really think GamerGate is about something else, ethics in journalism or whatever the fuck, why don't you just state your point about that plainly and not associate with a toxic group like GamerGate at all? Stand up for views you have, don't throw in with a bunch of shit heads who might believe something similar and then get pissed off when people rake you over the coals for all the shit they do.

Do you actually read any of my posts or do you just randomly quotemine and move on?

We go out there all the time and say "I Support Gamergate. I do NOT support Harrassment", we report people who use the tag to threaten those people and get their accounts banned, but do you know how easy it is to create a twitter account? If we change the tag do you really think the trolls aren't going to follow us?

I like that I'm accused of not reading your drivel in a post that clearly shows you haven't read mine.

I'll make one more attempt to spell this out for you: How about you go out there and no even fucking mention GamerGate? How about you go out there and just fucking say you're against bias in reviews or whatever stupid shit you'r e crusading on. Separate yourself completely, start a whole new movement, whatever. Instead you continue to preface everything with "I SUPPORT A GROUP THAT IS WIDELY KNOWN FOR HARASSMENT AND MISOGYNY...but I don't support that part of it!" And you wonder why people give you so much shit for it. GamerGate is a shitty "movement" filled with plenty of shitty people who do horrible things, maybe be fucking smart enough to no throw in with that lot if you don't want to be associated with all the shit they bring with them. Seems like common sense to me. Get it now?

Or hey, its fucking video games, go whine about something that actually fucking matters. Who cares if someone gave a positive review to a fucking indie game you'll probably never play. You don't give a shit, really and it doesn't affect you in the least. If you're worried about buying a game that got a good, perhaps unethical review and it turning out to be shit, boo fucking hoo, grow up and learn how to make informed decisions before purchasing. The same shit happens in industries that are far more important than video games will ever be.

Seriously Troy have you even played any of the games you keep mentioning?

In answer to your question, yes. Gone Home was okay, not a revelation but okay, Depression Quest isn't a game. Soundshelf is pretty terrible and the Anna Anthropy games are a mixed bag, some good, some terrible

And for the record: Affleck was still da bomb in Phantoms

But I thought Gamergate was about broader ethics concerns and not Zoe Quinn specifically.

Have you ever heard of the chicken and the egg? Zoe Quinn and Grayson was merely the catalyst. When concerns were blown off people were inspired to dig deeper and found problems with a whole slew of articles and reviews, involving people like Patricia Hernandez (Who wrote glowing articles on Kotaku about games designed by Anna Anthropy, who was a close personal friend of hers, this was never disclosed) Nathan Grayson again (This time he gave a glowing review to the game Soundself, not disclosing he was close friends with Robin Arnott, a developer of the game) and Danielle Riendeau (Who reviewed the game Gone Home for Polygon, despite being close friends with the games composer, again never disclosed)

There are others, Quinn was merely the tip of the iceberg, it was the reaction that caused people to dig deeper and when those we're brought up to the sites editors.....Three days later the "Gamers are Dead" articles came out.

I wish you'd stop quoting the date like that, we're talking about vidya games here, not guy fawkes and his anti-monarchy terrorism.

Well, like Guy Fawkes and or anything, that date is...for lack of a better term, Genesis. That's where Gamergate began when the online media posted a huge ton of articles, all convieniently written to come out at the same time saying not only were they NOT going to investigate the concerns of some readers and consumers but also saying (Paraphrasing here) "Your kind is dead, you're all just misogynistic dudebros and we are leaving you behind. You don’t have to be the audience gaming or the industry caters to anymore."

If grayson and Quinn were buddies, even if they hadn't bumped uglies yet, disclosure would have prevented this entire mess. Hey, disclosure, Zoe and I chat on MSN sometimes so I might be biased, but Depression Quest is the greatest vidya of all time~! Something simple like that.

Exactly this. If Grayson had just gone back and put that in or just said something on RPS as a quick amendum, Gamergate dies in two days. What we got instead was August 28.

It's pants. Not once does it ask 'Do you want to get absolutely Robert Downey Jr'nd on vodka and sleeping pills?'. Rubbish.

OMG! You misogynist. You should die with the rest of the Gators you pig!

I think there's a few elements missing from the timeline though, everyone is focusing on the middle of 2014 and forgetting beforehand about Anita Sarkeesian and some of her videos that caused unrest in the gaming community. She raised some valid points about the need for larger representation of women in gaming, but used some fairly flawed ways of expressing them, namely that there were barely any female protagonists in video games which was fairly easy to dispute. She also made some good points about the total lack of women in development of games, and even now all it's has resulted in is more female community managers (people who run the forums) so that developers can pretend they care about equality.

Reviews giving unanimous praise for Depression Quest was the straw that broke the camels back because it's just a flat out awful game that seemed to get positive reviews entirely because it was created by a girl, and the strange thing about it all was that it wasn't just one review site giving it plenty of praise but a collection of gaming review sites, which made it feel like there was an underlying narritive revolving around it. Then it becomes an ethical debate of should you give a game like this a positive review because it's showing that women are coming out of the woodwork to make their own games, or should we slate it because it's a bad game and make it harder for women to get a foothold in the gaming industry.

Truth be told Petey, Sarkeesian has very little if anything to do with Gamergate, besides being lumped in with those who posted all the hate to her and such because of the Zoe Post, As you say Sarkeesian happened before Gamergate even began. Do she make good points? Of course she does, the "Damsel in Distress" trope is cliché, is there a need for more women in the industry? Probably yes. The problem with Sarkeesian is she will not talk to anyone who has counter points to her arguments, which riles people. Ultimately though Sarkeesian has little to nothing to do with the core issues the moderate Gamergaters want discussed.

As for Quinn the answer lies in the article I posted, there may not have been a REVIEW of the game by Nathan Greyson, but he did give it favourable coverage. That was the tipping point as you say, that and August 28

Actually, this was the only article Grayson ever wrote that mentioned Quinn, and it's simply a summarised version of an article written for Indie Statik about a dishonestly pitched game-related reality show that involved Quinn, among others. Quinn is only described as "Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn", and at no point is any opinion expressed about the game itself. .

Not true. He also mentioned on the site he worked for at the time RockPaperShotgun in an article about it getting greenlighted, not only mentioning it as a "Standout" game but including screenshots from it, the only game of 50 greenlighted games mentioned to have that privilege. Given the allegations and the fact he never disclosed the possible conflict of interest it's easy to come to the conclusion of favourable coverage

Even if it wasn't meant to be, all Greyson had to say was "My bad" and make a disclaimer, he does that and Gamergate dies there and then, of course that didn't happen which turned into August 28.

I think there's a few elements missing from the timeline though, everyone is focusing on the middle of 2014 and forgetting beforehand about Anita Sarkeesian and some of her videos that caused unrest in the gaming community. She raised some valid points about the need for larger representation of women in gaming, but used some fairly flawed ways of expressing them, namely that there were barely any female protagonists in video games which was fairly easy to dispute. She also made some good points about the total lack of women in development of games, and even now all it's has resulted in is more female community managers (people who run the forums) so that developers can pretend they care about equality.

Reviews giving unanimous praise for Depression Quest was the straw that broke the camels back because it's just a flat out awful game that seemed to get positive reviews entirely because it was created by a girl, and the strange thing about it all was that it wasn't just one review site giving it plenty of praise but a collection of gaming review sites, which made it feel like there was an underlying narritive revolving around it. Then it becomes an ethical debate of should you give a game like this a positive review because it's showing that women are coming out of the woodwork to make their own games, or should we slate it because it's a bad game and make it harder for women to get a foothold in the gaming industry.

Truth be told Petey, Sarkeesian has very little if anything to do with Gamergate, besides being lumped in with those who posted all the hate to her and such because of the Zoe Post, As you say Sarkeesian happened before Gamergate even began. Do she make good points? Of course she does, the "Damsel in Distress" trope is cliché, is there a need for more women in the industry? Probably yes. The problem with Sarkeesian is she will not talk to anyone who has counter points to her arguments, which riles people. Ultimately though Sarkeesian has little to nothing to do with the core issues the moderate Gamergaters want discussed.

As for Quinn the answer lies in the article I posted, there may not have been a REVIEW of the game by Nathan Greyson, but he did give it favourable coverage. That was the tipping point as you say, that and August 28

https://medium.com/@meanmrpugface/the-3-events-that-made-gamergate-into-the-nearly-6-month-movement-it-is-today-8ad33f01c5fe

I'm not here to argue or anything, like I said I'm done on that aspect. I simply mention this article which does a pretty good job of explaining in a neutral tone what caused Gamergate and why it's still going

I'm done. At this point I'm screaming at a wall and all I'm going to end up doing is getting myself banned. You clearly will not see any other reason but what you want to believe and nothing I say or do will change that

I could post all examples of all the achievements we've had and it wouldn't matter because in your eyes "You're Gamergate, therefore you are a hate movement". Your biases will never allow you to have even the slightest hint of belief otherwise.

Troy Maskell: single-handedly keeping Kool-Aid in business.

Kool-Aid has nothing to do with my views. It's called common sense, you might want to use it one day, I hear it helps

There's no common sense in anything that you or any of the other GG people have been posting.

There is a really fucking simple bottom line here and it has to do with wishing and hoping. No matter how much you wish and hope like Bret Hart was your genine in a bottle, you CANNOT say "I support GamerGate but I don't support what their leadership does" because then you DO NOT SUPPORT GAMERGATE because you instead support an idea that they are in all reality NOT about.

What part of "we don't have a leader" do you not fucking understand?

By your assumption, you're saying if ONE person does something wrong and uses Gamergate as a hashtag then the whole movement is tainted. Meanwhile people like Wu, Sarkeesian and co are whipping up all this hatred, to the point where people are threatening to show up at PAX East with Sarin gas to "Kill all the Gamergaters" or Wu actively promotes giving away tickets to people who "throw down with Gamergaters" But that's okay right?

The hypocrisy of some people never ceases to amaze me

BTW, some anti-Gamergate twitter user made some comments about using Sarin Nerve Gas to kill all the Gamergaters at Pax East.

https://storify.com/LibertarianBlue/who-should-really-feel-unsafe-at-paxeast

Does that mean that everyone on opposed to GamerGate is a would be terrorist? Or should I forgo your "slander the common man with the views of the insane" position and continue to try and deal with people in good faith and assume they are rational, balanced human beings?

Don't bring up pesky things like "the facts" Sean. Brianna Wu has already deemed that as "Another example of Gamergate Harrassment" so naturally it MUST be true

Troy Maskell: single-handedly keeping Kool-Aid in business.

Kool-Aid has nothing to do with my views. It's called common sense, you might want to use it one day, I hear it helps

I trust that you're only repeating it as rumour on account of having never encountered it yourself.

Well I certainly haven't encountered it from anyone talking to me in this thread if that's what you mean

Edit: Except maybe Sean but I don't think he ever spoke to me directly

Troy Maskell: single-handedly keeping Kool-Aid in business.

Kool-Aid has nothing to do with my views. It's called common sense, you might want to use it one day, I hear it helps

I love how "Less than 10 percent" somehow translates into "most of Gamergate" and how "Leaders of Gamergate are doing this' When Gamergate doesn't have a fucking leader.

I swear talking to Anti Gamergaters sometimes feels like talking to children.

If you're not going to discuss this in good faith and all you want to do is say "Side X is all about Thing Y, fuck whatever you are saying", by all means do it, but if you want to actually talk issues and shit, that would be great.

Either way, I will be locked in behind a padlocked "gamergate".

We die for the sins of our people

Mostly to Troy on this one:

If you really think GamerGate is about something else, ethics in journalism or whatever the fuck, why don't you just state your point about that plainly and not associate with a toxic group like GamerGate at all? Stand up for views you have, don't throw in with a bunch of shit heads who might believe something similar and then get pissed off when people rake you over the coals for all the shit they do.

Do you actually read any of my posts or do you just randomly quotemine and move on?

We go out there all the time and say "I Support Gamergate. I do NOT support Harrassment", we report people who use the tag to threaten those people and get their accounts banned, but do you know how easy it is to create a twitter account? If we change the tag do you really think the trolls aren't going to follow us?

I don't understand. Gamergate IS harrassing females. They don't do anything else. Those two sentences are mutually exclusive. Any of the the subsequent times a gaming journalist - PARTICULARLY a male gaming journalist does something even slightly questionable, Gamergate is nowhere to be found. And that's the thing that they never seem to be able to answer. "If you're truly in support of ethics in games journalism, then where were you when *this* happened?"

Does everyone see now why I said a couple of pages back that trying to provide my point was a pointless exercise? We can't win with you because you only see what you want to see. Confirmation Bias like I said

As for your question. We have plenty of people calling out the stupidity of gaming journalists who try and attack Sarkeesian, Quinn and Wu. But saying "I think you're full of shit and here's why" ISN'T FUCKING HARRASSMENT! Despite them saying otherwise, they don't even debate the points, they just cry "harassment" and count their money.

Mostly to Troy on this one:

If you really think GamerGate is about something else, ethics in journalism or whatever the fuck, why don't you just state your point about that plainly and not associate with a toxic group like GamerGate at all? Stand up for views you have, don't throw in with a bunch of shit heads who might believe something similar and then get pissed off when people rake you over the coals for all the shit they do.

Do you actually read any of my posts or do you just randomly quotemine and move on?

We go out there all the time and say "I Support Gamergate. I do NOT support Harrassment", we report people who use the tag to threaten those people and get their accounts banned, but do you know how easy it is to create a twitter account? If we change the tag do you really think the trolls aren't going to follow us?

Off Topic: But I do find a touch of humor in my DP considering this discussion

Long time lurker around here. Just wanted something clarified from the pro-GG types around here like Troy:

Ultimately, if we are to assume this has to do with ethics in journalism, what does that really matter in the video game industry? Hobo kind of touched on this (how it's simply a form of entertainment) and I get that video games are a multi-million dollar industry but what does one reviewer mean in the grand scheme of things? Would him giving a game that was getting mixed reviews an 8 instead of a 5 really going to impact anything? Would Zoe Quinn be receiving, say, a million more dollars than she would have otherwise? I just don't understand why this apparently mythical review even mattered to begin with, let alone enough to cause threats. If it was journalism about ethics in politics or war or something that really, truly mattered, I get the point of being upset. But I'm confused on what it is about the gaming journalism industry that is sacred and had to be preserved.

Maybe I just don't care enough about video games, but I'm genuinely interested in getting more info on GamerGate's significance. You know, aside from the insanity that came out of it.

The whole point of Gamergate, well the ones of us who are serious have this point and that is simply that we don't know who to trust any more. Which is what makes it different from things like Iraq, Fox News, etc. You ask a fair question in "What does it matter?" It matters this way, we don't know any more what review or what content is real and what content is paid. Is the reviewed giving the mixed review game an 8 because he genuinely feels that way or is he being told to say because the website is getting money from the developer. On the other hand, is the reviewer who gave the same game a 5 saying that because they genuinely didn't like or did they miss out on the deal?

Ultimately though what this all boils down to is they won't admit they're wrong, they don't see the problem in having a reviewer who is a friend of the developer review the game, or someone who is still getting money from said developer doing the review, without a hint of disclosure. As much as people want to make it about Zoe Quinn she's not even in the argument any more to us, she was simply the catalyst for us to look deeper into things and what we found we didn't like.

When we took those concerns to places like reddit and youtube because we got no response when we talked to them what was the response we got? We didn't want wholesale changes, we still don't. Just tell us there's a conflict of interest there and if you've ever taken money for reviews or not. But what we got was a whole string of articles with the same premise: Gamers are Dead. THAT'S what created the "monster" that is Gamergate, like I said if this was solely about Zoe Quinn we wouldn't have being dancing around this for over a year now. It would have died two days after it started. The thing that keeps Gamergate going right now is two things

1. The refusal of the majority of those implicated to admit they may have been wrong

2. They won't even come to the table and hear our concerns. Why? Because "You're Gamergate. You're a hate group. We won't give in to misogyny and hate" even when they see that the majority is not that way.

It's easy to say it's not a right fight, or to say maybe you should back off, but at the same time when you've been marginalised like we have eventually you turn into Jean Lue Picard in First Contact "The line must be drawn HERE, this far no further and I will make them pay for what they've done". Does that mean we're going to go off on those we hate with murder and death threats? No. Does that mean we're going to go to people like Quinn and attack her? No. Are we going to back down? Of course not. Because in the end we know we are right. And no matter how much they try to marginalise us, eventually people will come to our argument, it's already happening. We fight because we're right, that doesn't mean Sarkeesian, Quinn and Wu are wrong, in the end they're not part of the argument, although we would like to debate Sarkeesian on her points, we're aware that ship's probably sailed.

I think most Gamergaters would be happy if the big sites just came to us and said "Okay we're listening" and slowly but surely they are, Kotaku has changed their policy, the Escapist did. a few smaller sites have as well. In the end all we're asking for is a seat at the table, but right now we're not even getting table scraps.

The term Gamergate was created specifically in reference to Zoe Quinn, what are you even talking about.

Baldwin started GamerGate by adding a hashtag to two videos that mentioned Quinn and the alleged collusion, amongst other things, to say it was created specifically about Quinn is disingenuous, if it was solely about Quinn it would have died after a day or two, what kept it alive and continues to keep it alive was the evidence of Video Game Developers buying favourable reviews and op eds, not to mentions the infamous "Gamers are Dead" articles that popped up at the same time the Gamergate hashtag began. Quinn was a part of it, I don't deny that, the roots are in the Quinnspiracy, but to say it was specifically about her is deceptive at best, a bald faced lie at worst.

This is the worst thread on EWB.

I disagr--

And once again the hypocrisy and confirmation bias of those on the Anti-GG side never ceases to amaze me...

HOF.

Look I'm not looking for an argument. I thought I explained this perfectly clear earlier in the thread, have there been trolls in GamerGate? Of course, just as there has been on the other side of the argument. There are plenty of white knights out there who've doxxed GG'ers in the name of Quinn, Sarkeesian and Wu. But I don't believe everyone against GamerGate is that way, because I have common sense, yet everytime GamerGate comes out and takes against this shit (Like the Doxxing of Felicia Day, which was later discover was not done by a Gator) we all get tarred with the same brush. Like I said, Confirmation Bias, you believe GG is a hate group and thus only listen to the arguments that support that view

Gators get 'tarred' with that brush because people actually know the real stated goals of those who started the fucking 'movement'! The originators do not care about 'ethics', never have, never will, and you do not get to defend a concentrated effort to drive a woman to suicide simply because you believe their propaganda.

Your position is like being a member of ISIS and saying it's about the defense of the Islamic religion.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in you.

On another note, since Nick Adams responded to it, the fact that Christians in other countries are facing very real persecution does not give you, an American, a Christian in the most Christian nation on earth, the right to co-opt it. They face persecution (and, for the record, that's horrible), you do not, and to act like you do is to have a persecution complex.

That's where you're wrong though. Gamergate wasn't started. You're thinking of the #Quinnspiracy. The group that attacked Zoe Quinn over those proven to be false allegations of exchanging sex for positive reviews of depression quest

Gamergate started from Baldwin and sites like Kotaku posting articles that screamed "Gamers are Dead" while all the while doing deals with developers for first access and positive reviews. Which got a lot of people upset.

The narrative is Gamergate is a misogynistic hate movement filled will adolescent young men who are scared women like Sarkessian, Quinn and Wu will take away their games, their damsel in distress tropes, their power fantasies. While there are people like that who have used the hashtag, they're quickly called out by most Gamergaters and attempted to be shut down, also there are plenty of women, transgender, young, old, whatever race, creed or sexual state you want that are part of Gamergate. You never hear about it for two reasons.

1. Gamergate doesn't have a leader. The Anti GG saide has plenty, Sarkessian, Quinn, Brianna Wu, numerous female journalists who worked for Kotaku and the like. The closest GG has is the youtube critic John "TotalBiscuit" Bain, who incidentally has been raked over the coals, had his family threated, his address doxxed, gotten messages that there would be people waiting at his stepson's school to kidnap him and kill him, his wife threatened to be raped and his own throat cut, but you never hear those things in the mainstream media why? Because he doesn't want to give those people power by publicising the threats and in turn turning his audience on them, which is more than can be said for Sarkessian, who's Retweeted numerous threats to her followers.

2. Even if GG had a leader what good would it do, you show one threat to Sarkessian that she'll be raped or killed, or one anonymous threat that had NOTHING to do with Gamergate, just a troll who used the tag and was quickly called out and banned from Twitter thanks to GG'ers not standing for it that forces a cancelation of a speaking appearance and the argument is over, it's the same tired argument over and over and over, it's called Syllogism, if the first two statements are fact then the conclusion must also be fact. In this case we have this example.

Statement 1. Misogyinistic statements and Threat to rape and murder Sarkeesian is made by anonymous twitter user

Statement 2: Anonymous Twitter User uses Gamergate Hashtag

Conclusion: Gamergate is a misogynistic hate movement who threaten women.

It's easy to say go to another tag. We tried. We moved from the Quinnspiracy to Gamergate, you know what happened? The trolls followed, and since they keep getting attention they keep going. Do you really think things would be any different if we who actually want change and aren't taking part in hate changed the hashtag to something like #EthicsInGamesJournalism? What would the narrative be? Would there be rational discourse finally at that point? Or would it simply be "Look at the misogynists changing their slogan to try and avoid their label"?

Do I get defensive about being labelled as a misogynist and a member of a hate group just for saying I support what Gamergate are aiming for? Of course I do. Am I going to sometimes have my anger come out and attack people who believe that without actually taking the time to know me> You're goddamn right I am. You'd do the same thing if the shoe was on the other foot.

I've never said Gamergate was perfect, no group is. Do we have problems controlling our own sometimes? Of course we do. Could we perhaps try harder to weed out the trolls and the people who are threatening these women? Probably yes. But are we all in the same boat as those people? Hell no. Yet all we hear constantly is "You're Gamergate. You're a hate group". That's not only unfair, it just shows to us you don't want to find a common ground and that is why we fight.