Tag: #GamerGate

Interview with Vox Day

Sam Roberts at Reaxxion interviewed me about the game industry, the SJW attack on it, and our upcoming plans for First Sword:

SR: Many commentators, at our site and elsewhere, have noticed the sudden outbreak of prudishness in the gaming industry. We saw this with PAX and its ban on booth babes, even to the point of specifying a minimum length for girl’s skirts. Even Mortal Kombat, the franchise that established itself in the 1990’s through its willingness to break all the rules, is moving to “more realistic” characters with smaller breasts and thicker waists. What do you think has changed in the gaming industry in the past 20 years that’s made it so much less able to resist moral scolds?

VD: The most important change is that game development no longer belongs to the mavericks. When we started Fenris Wolf in 1993, literally everyone thought we were crazy. We were throwing away good jobs and wasting our educations to do what people considered to be the equivalent of playing with digital Lincoln Logs. Now that games are widely understood to be big business, many of the jobs pay decent salaries, and you can get degrees in “game development” and “game design,” you have considerably more risk-intolerant, conflict-avoidant people entering the industry.

Twenty years ago, the average developer would have laughed his ass off at the idea that he should design or develop anything other than whatever the hell he wanted to do. These days, there are a fair number of bed-wetters in game development who are terrified at the idea that someone, somewhere, might take offense at something in one of their games. And then, of course, you’ve also got SJWs trying to stick their noses into the industry in order to change it, just as they did in comics and science fiction & fantasy fiction.

You’ll definitely want to check out the screenshots of the 3DV engine in action. Be sure to click on the image of the High Elven archers. 3DV is visually spectacular and is intended to do for miniature gaming what VASSAL did for board-and-counter games. In addition to various other topics addressed, you can also see our response to the SJW demands for more women in games, beginning with the introduction to Morwyn Shadowsong, a female elf gladiator who is the face of First Sword, the fantasy gladiator miniatures game.

It probably won’t take a genius to put two and two together and realize that the Tactical Uncertainty model I’m developing, which has been discussed in some detail over at Castalia, is intended for the third edition of Striker that Marc Miller has asked me to develop. The rules will be developed for use in 3DV and on the tabletop alike; the challenge is how to make something that works almost automatically in the former can be translated to the latter. With regards to some of the other games mentioned, we will have some exciting new announcements soon.

#Comicgate

Dare we dream of a response to the SJWs in the comics world?

CB: And how will you react if and when they tell you some of your art is “problematic?”

EL: I don’t need to do a thing. I’m in charge here. Readers can buy what I’m selling or not. Ideally that’s what it should be. A candy bar company makes a candy bar and you can buy it or not. Those are your two choices. The internet assumes there are two other options: that candy bars can be pulled off the shelves and returned to their manufacturers unsold or that those buying candy bars can stipulate the ingredients. You want to make a different comic book? Make one of your own. You can buy the one I produce or you can not buy it, but you can’t dictate what goes on inside those pages. One guy makes that call.

CB: Lastly Erik, what do you think the long term effects will be if the comic industry continues to acquiesce to these sort of demands?

EL: The slippery slope is a return to the Comics Code. That, or some other kind of censoring body who knows better than the rest of us. Movies have gone in a direction where everything is pre-screened to an audience who weighs in on them and decides what’s good or bad and changes are made accordingly. The danger of taking cues from the audience is pablum like Star Wars Episode I where fans weighed in on what they wanted, George Lucas gave them what he thought they wanted and then they hated what he gave them. The audience is not wiser than the creative people. If they were better writers and artists than those in the field, they would be employed in the field. They’re mouthy amateurs and their suggestions should largely be treated like the witless ramblings of an insane person.

Years ago, Stan Lee instituted a new policy because of a number of letters from readers. Some vocal fans had complained that continued stories were problematic. Since distribution was spotty at best, many readers often missed chapters of continued stories and so they asked that Marvel stop producing continued stories. And so they did. The policy went into effect and a few months later all of their books were self-contained. And then another batch of mail came in complaining about the simple, dull one-part stories throughout the line. And so that policy was tossed out the window.

The danger is in thinking that the vocal few represent the entirety of your audience. They don’t. And so what we’re getting is situations like Jim Lee giving Wonder Woman pants in the Justice League because readers demanded it, then getting rid of them because other readers demanded it, all before the pants version saw print! These publishers are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to please everybody and not knowing who to listen to, and I can’t help but feel that a lot of the people yelling and screaming aren’t buying the comics, pants or no pants.

 #GamerGate has changed the rules. Blue SF is on the rise and the pinkshirts are reeling in dismay. All it takes is for one creator in an industry – just one – to stand up and say “I will create what I want to create” in order to inspire others to do the same.

Man the battlements

Mike Caputo raises the blue flag:

If you imagine the world of entertainment or leisure generally as a map, video games are one of the few geographic regions where boys are still allowed to be boys, and this is simply not tolerable to feminists. They look at that territory and see a dark black stain on the pink-tinted expanse of modern culture. Feminine sensibilities and political correctness dominate the traditional media, Hollywood, academia, and publishing, while video games serve a niche market that, though large in absolute numbers, impacts a far smaller percentage of the population than other media. In other words, they have us surrounded.

But what they—and most men—don’t appear to understand is that the only reason things have gotten this far is that we haven’t been fighting back. Men have spent 50 years meekly retreating, conceding cultural territory, and even defecting to the other side. It has taken a blatant, undisguised assault on some of the least-threatening members of the male population, people who mostly just want to enjoy their hobby in peace.

This is a test, and the answer is not to become an MRA so you can try to fight the feminists on their own well-fortified ground. The answer is to become a man in the traditional sense: self-sufficient, productive, ambitious, knowledgeable about the world you live in, and resistant to female emotional manipulation. Women who understand the benefits they get from living in a masculine environment will do what the majority of women do best: follow and support you, or get out of your way.

Do not give an inch. Do not accommodate them. Do not compromise with them. Do not agree with them with regards to their nebulous, noble-sounding goals. Reject them relentlessly for the orcs of Mordor that they are.

They don’t merely seek the destruction of masculinity, they are literal grinches who consciously seek the total elimination of fun.

He’s on a manic swing again

I always enjoy McRapey’s manic phases. That’s when he produces his most amusing quotes and you get a clear glimpse at how messed up and insecure he is. He’s apparently been feeling his oats lately, so he decided another shot at #GamerGate was in order, which promptly led to him feeling insecure after a number of #GamerGaters wondered who the hell he was:

4 NYT Best sellers. 3 Hugos. 3 TV series currently in development. Books in 20 languages. CLEARLY, public opinions have hampered my career.

(I should note that two of those Hugos were awarded to me, essentially, FOR having opinions in public. So.)

GamerGater: YOU ARE TERRIBLE FOR TELLING ME NOT TO READ YOUR BOOKS AND I WILL NEVER READ THEM NOW Me: Ate a lot of lead paint as a kid, huh?

Lots of GGers smugly asking who I am because they’ve never heard of me. Of course not, you’d have to be literate for that, lads.

It’s amusing how Johnny can’t open his mouth without trying to spin the narrative. I mean, full credit for admitting that two of the Hugos were political in nature, but we all know that all THREE of them actually were. There is not a single person on the planet who genuinely believes Redshirts was the best science fiction novel of 2013 in any sense of the term. Including McRapey himself.

And the idea that anyone who is literate has heard of John Scalzi is hilarious. I live in Europe. I know many highly literate people. Absolutely NONE of them have ever heard of him. We have over 100 players at the adult level. Ender has a game this weekend, so between that and practice next week, I should see everyone. I’ll report back on how many of these literate and multilingual Europeans have ever heard of “the science fiction writer John Scalzi”.

It’s also funny that Scalzi thinks he’s big time because he can sell up to 150k books per shot with Tor pushing him as hard as it can. He’s trying to break into the game industry, where games that have 17 million active players are still practically unknown to the game journalists as well as everyone who doesn’t play in that particular genre.

One more amusing note. Back in 2012, someone named CDaniell claimed I was jealous of Scalzi. His words are even funnier today, now that we know what we know about SF’s biggest con artist.

I did have a chance to read up a bit on Mr. Scalzi. So: The SFWA presidency, the Hugo nominations, the ascendancy to the the New York Times best seller list, the 50,000 visitors-a-day blog and a novel being adapted to film with Wolfgang Petersen attached to direct? Goodness. Talk about an Alpha who can seriously put the bread on the table. 

The film was canceled, the 50,000 visitors a day was proven to be a lie, the fan writer nominations are now an award and a Best Novel award that is a historic embarrassment, and the NYT bestsellers show every sign of being nothing more than his publisher gaming the list.

Reddit aGGros busted

Reaxxion has the news of a big leak proving Reddit’s anti-GamerGate bias:

Reddit, an internet social news aggregator based in San Francisco, has recently had a monster leak from their moderator chatroom. It is purported that this leak came from a disgruntled user, who dumped the contents of the whole #modleak channel to pro-gamer media. This leak entails a lengthy chat log which captured conversations from September 15th 2013 to February 17th 2015….

Here is a chatlog of /r/Gaming mods talking about filtering the
submission of new threads. Any of these words in the title will trigger
the auto-delete function. Notice the high anti gamer-gate slant in the
mod list. The biggest gaming subreddit has been caught red-handed trying
to stifle gamergate.

I’ve never used Reddit much myself, but it is now abundantly clear that, like Wikipedia, it is SJW-occupied territory and therefore unreliable.

The original SJW invasion

How the comics were entered and taken over by the original SJW freakshow:

Olive Byrne met Marston in 1925, when she was a senior at Tufts; he was her psychology professor. Marston was already married, to a lawyer named Elizabeth Holloway. When Marston and Byrne fell in love, he gave Holloway a choice: either Byrne could live with them, or he would leave her. Byrne moved in. Between 1928 and 1933, each woman bore two children; they lived together as a family. Holloway went to work; Byrne stayed home and raised the children. They told census-takers and anyone else who asked that Byrne was Marston’s widowed sister-in-law. “Tolerant people are the happiest,” Marston wrote in a magazine essay in 1939, so “why not get rid of costly prejudices that hold you back?” He listed the “Six Most Common Types of Prejudice.” Eliminating prejudice number six—“Prejudice against unconventional people and non-conformists”—meant the most to him. Byrne’s sons didn’t find out that Marston was their father until 1963—when Holloway finally admitted it—and only after she extracted a promise that no one would raise the subject ever again.

Gaines didn’t know any of this when he met Marston in 1940 or else he would never have hired him: He was looking to avoid controversy, not to court it. Marston and Wonder Woman were pivotal to the creation of what became DC Comics. (DC was short for Detective Comics, the comic book in which Batman debuted.) In 1940, Gaines decided to counter his critics by forming an editorial advisory board and appointing Marston to serve on it, and DC decided to stamp comic books in which Superman and Batman appeared with a logo, an assurance of quality, reading, “A DC Publication.” And, since “the comics’ worst offense was their blood-curdling masculinity,” Marston said, the best way to fend off critics would be to create a female superhero.

“Well, Doc,” Gaines said, “I picked Superman after every syndicate in America turned it down. I’ll take a chance on your Wonder Woman! But you’ll have to write the strip yourself.”

In February 1941, Marston submitted a draft of his first script, explaining the “under-meaning” of Wonder Woman’s Amazonian origins in ancient Greece, where men had kept women in chains, until they broke free and escaped. “The NEW WOMEN thus freed and strengthened by supporting themselves (on Paradise Island) developed enormous physical and mental power.” His comic, he said, was meant to chronicle “a great movement now under way—the growth in the power of women.”

Wonder Woman made her debut in All-Star Comics at the end of 1941 and on the cover of a new comic book, Sensation Comics, at the beginning of 1942, drawn by an artist named Harry G. Peter. She wore a golden tiara, a red bustier, blue underpants and knee-high, red leather boots. She was a little slinky; she was very kinky. She’d left Paradise to fight fascism with feminism, in “America, the last citadel of democracy, and of equal rights for women!”

Narcissistic left-leaning sexual freakshows pushing feminist propaganda onto an unsuspecting market as the original content creators and publishers, in their naive ignorance, blithely fail to see what is happening right under their noses. Sound familiar, everyone in the science fiction and game industries? The only substantive difference between the current states of comics, SF, and games is the date at which the SJWs began to invade those industries.

Don’t let it happen again.

From the Wikipedia page about Marston, the first SJW: “He purposely aimed to condition readers to becoming more readily
accepting to submission to loving authorities rather than being so
assertive to their own destructive egos.”

Another response to Anita Sarkeesian

Sam Roberts of Reaxxion carefully considers Anita Sarkeesian’s list of recommendations to “make games less shitty for women”. This was #3 on his list of eloquent, well-reasoned, and above all, illustrative responses:

Have female characters of various body types

My response: No.

The temptation is always to say that Ms. Sarkeesian misrepresents the
gaming industry, that there are actually plenty of female-friendly
games, or that characters like the ones above are “strong women”, whom
feminists should love.  This is the wrong answer.  By making this
argument, you’re implicitly agreeing with Sarkeesian and her like that
games need to be feminist-friendly; you’re just disagreeing on how
feminist-friendly they are right now.  And once you’ve agreed with her
there, you’ve given her the power to dictate what is and isn’t allowed.
 After all, who’s going to know better about what games are
SJW-friendly—you, or a women’s studies major?

The only response is this: If you don’t like games with big-boobed girls, don’t play them.

There is nothing to discuss. I speak only for myself, but my opinion happens to be shared by nearly ever game designer and game developer in the industry, regardless of whether they are Left, Right, or somewhere in the middle. We make the games we want to make. We play the games we want to play. If Anita Sarkeesian, or anyone else, wants to see different games made, then she is welcome to make her own. We’re not going to do it.

Frankly, these ladies all look a bit beefy to me. Where are all the slender, snake-hipped girls with cheekbones you can shave with and BMIs of 17? Surely this is the rankest misogyny by bearded, round-bellied patriarchs!

#GamerGate: the last redoubt

Nero has some important observations that those in other communities attacked by the SJW Left should take to heart:

In all of the distracting, hysterical, evidence-free and unfair allegations of misogyny and bigotry hurled at supporters of GamerGate, the consumer revolt that continues to surface outrageous misconduct in the video games press, something is being forgotten.

GamerGate is remarkable—and attracts the interest of people like me—because it represents perhaps the first time in the last decade or more that a significant incursion has been made in the culture wars against guilt-mongerers, nannies, authoritarians and far-Left agitators.

Industry after industry has toppled over, putting up no more of a fight than, say, France in 1940. Publishing, journalism, TV… all lie supine beneath the crowing, cackling, censorious battle-axes, male and female, of the third-wave feminist and social justice causes.

But not gamers. Lovers of video games, on seeing their colleagues unfairly hounded as misogynists, on watching journalists credulously reporting scandalous sexual assault claims just because a person was perceived to be “right-wing” and on seeing the games they love attacked and their very identities denied and ridiculed, have said: no. This will not stand.

The key, as he points out is here: “Because hard-core gaming is overwhelmingly male—don’t
believe cherry-picked statistics that tell you women now make up 50 per
cent of gamers; they don’t, in any meaningful sense—and
because those men are often of a stubborn, obsessive, hyper-competitive
and systematic bent, it has produced an army finally capable of
launching offensives against the censors—using the censors’ own tactics, such as advertiser boycotts, against them.”

Keep in mind the Four Fs of Victory. Fight, Follow, or get the F— out of the way. And if you’re a concern moderate who has “concerns” or is “worried” or thinks one tactic or another might be “counterproductive”, shut the F— up. 


As history clearly shows, you’re the one who is counterproductive.

Truth in Anti-GamerGate

It’s admittedly hard to find. But we finally managed to locate some after correcting for a few modest exaggerations and untruths, shall we say. Meet Fuchsian Stains, the oft-open mouthpiece of Anti-GamerGate.

And this exchange is why you ALWAYS ignore the ever deeply concerned Concern Trolls.

George Feher ‏@BRC1134
Why the fat shaming? Bad enough they shame mental and neural health issues. Shouldn’t you be better than them? 

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Click on the link. It should be self-explanatory.

George Feher ‏@BRC1134
I understand parody, but I think this will be used against gamergate and other things that don’t need sjw crap.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Don’t focus inward, target outward. There are no GG thought police.

Bloody moderates. Always concern-trolling, always thought-policing, always preferring to shoot at their own side than the other one. I think I’ve finally figured it out their counterproductive tendencies, however. Moderates tend to be gammas, so they don’t want to take on the enemy directly because they’re conflict-avoidant and after all, the enemy might shoot back.

So, they suddenly become “strategists” and experts in coming up with ways to prevent anyone from actually doing anything. It’s freaking hilarious to see a few of them “strategizing” together because they inevitably produce a consensus that is not only less effective than literally everything they’ve been criticizing, but is usually unrelated to the original objective. “We should be better than them” is their battle cry. They love to show that they are “better” than the other side by preemptively surrendering and refusing to fight back. Which, of course, is why they reliably lose.

Now, I should point out this isn’t always the case. Brad Torgersen may be the cuddly Bleeding Heart Care Bear of the Evil Legion of Evil, but he’s as steady under critical fire as The Mountain That Writes, and if he lacks my quasi-sociopathic immunity to social pressure, he is nevertheless remarkably calm about it. One thing I’ve learned about Mormons in the last two years is that they are remarkably unflappable.