Tag: games

Gawker’s Max Read makes it clear that #GamerGate is winning in writing what may have been the dumbest, most self-destructive opinion piece ever written:

On October 1, the computing giant Intel pulled its ads from Gamasutra, a trade website for game developers, over an essay called “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over” by a journalist named Leigh Alexander. Intel had been successfully harassed by a small, contemptible crusade called “Gamergate”—a campaign of dedicated anti-feminist internet trolls using an ill-informed mob of alienated and resentful video game-playing teenagers and young men to harass and intimidate female activists, journalists, and critics.

Unable to run Alexander out of game writing, as they had with the writer Jenn Frank, or force her from her home, as they did to the developer Brianna Wu, or threaten her from public engagements, as they did the following week to the critic and activist Anita Sarkeesian, Gamergate went after her publisher. And, in an unbelievable and embarrassing act of ignorance and cowardice, Intel capitulated. The company’s laughable “apology,” released late on that Friday afternoon, didn’t cover up the fact of Gamergate’s victory: Intel was not replacing its ads.

Failing to adequately cover this act of spinelessness was the first big fuck-up we at Gawker committed. Intel surrendered to the worst kind of dishonesty, and we allowed it to do so without ever calling it out. So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity. It folded to misogynists and bigots who objected to a woman who had done nothing more than write a piece claiming a place in the world of video games. And even when confronted with its own thoughtlessness and irresponsibility, it could not properly right its wrongs.

Last week, a Gawker writer tweeted “bring back bullying.” He, and later I, made the tactical mistake of publicly treating Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves. As a consequence, our advertisers were quickly inundated with the same kinds of emails that spooked Intel. Gamergaters were passing around a sample letter and list of advertiser contacts to coordinate the campaign; the Washington Post’s Caitlin Dewey wrote an excellent breakdown of the efficient mechanism by which the relatively small group of Gamergaters was able to make itself immediately annoying to advertisers:

    Step 4: Plug all of your choices into one of the many form e-mails that leaders of Disrespectful Nod have helpfully written already. […]

    Step 5: Keep it up, even when you get no response, and be — to quote the operation’s guide! — “an annoying little s—.” A representative for a high-profile communications company that advertises on Polygon confirmed that he’d received “dozens” of e-mails from Gamergate supporters over a period of several weeks.

    Operation Disrespectful Nod also encourages Gamergaters to reach out to the bosses and managers of journalists who have written “negative” stories, demanding the reporter in question be fired or asked to resign. Topping their most-wanted list, at present, is Gawker Media’s Biddle, who tweeted a string of jokes about Gamergate on Thursday. In context, at least, the jokes were an obvious — if tongue-in-cheek — commentary on the movement’s well-documented, often hateful, idiocy. Critics construed them as an endorsement for bullying. (Biddle later apologized for the tweets.)

Transparent and documented though it was, the obsessive campaign worked. Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner, and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a network that serves ads to Gawker. I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions. Consequently, the editorial director of Gawker Media, Joel Johnson, took to the front page of Gawker to clarify that Sam Biddle does not want to bully anyone, and that Gawker Media as a company and institution is not pro-bullying. (Let’s note here that the admitted goal of our Gamergate trolls is not to eke an apology out of Sam, or the company, but to literally put us out of business entirely.)

If this seems bizarre to you, you’re not alone. I feel like I went to sleep in the regular world and woke up in an insane new one where “bullying” is something that it’s possible to be seriously and sincerely “for.” Yesterday, Adobe wrote to one Gamergater on Twitter that it had asked Gawker to remove its logo from the advertising site because it did not support bullying; a few confused hours later, Adobe was forced to clarify to the world:

    We are vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind and would never support any group that bullies.
    — Adobe (@Adobe) October 22, 2014

Brands like Adobe and Intel, willing to distance themselves from independent publishers over the spurious claims of a limited but dedicated group of misogynists and trolls, share an important core value with Gamergate: Misogyny. Kidding! Kidding. The value that defines both Gamergate and brand response is cynicism. A brand that honestly believes it needs to clarify that it is “vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind”—as though there are or have ever been genuine corporate supporters of bullying, and as though anyone was ever in danger of thinking the makers of Photoshop might be among their number—passes on to its adult customers the same corroding cynicism that the opportunistic reactionaries running Gamergate imbue in their maladjusted teenage followers. Releasing into the world a statement as vacuous as Adobe’s tweet, or as inane as Intel’s “apology,” demonstrates not that those brands stand against something (how else can anyone possibly feel about bullying?) but that they stand for nothing.

Maybe that’s too much to expect from a brand. But it seems like the bare minimum to expect from ourselves. Gawker is rarely perfect, but it strives to be honest and fearless. For us to have apologized for a joke—to have even clarified—in the face of such breathtaking cynicism and dishonesty, from both “ad partners” and the enemies who leverage those brands’ fearfulness to silence opposing voices, feels like an utter abdication of those responsibilities. Frankly, that sucks. If anyone is owed an apology, it’s our readers. So: Sorry.

I’ll be very surprised if Gawker Media keeps this lunatic loose cannon around much longer. Despite all his lies, misrepresentations, and ad hominem attacks, the piece is very interesting for what it admits.

1. GamerGate is clearly winning. Advertisers correctly understand that GamerGate is a broad-spectrum movement of gamers who do not trust the games media and oppose the interference of the SJWs attempting to, in LW1’s words, “make gaming more diverse and inclusive.” Intel’s reaction is particularly important because they are much more keenly attuned to the gaming market than most big corporations, because they depend upon it more heavily than most people realize. I worked closely with them on the release of their MMX chips in 1996 and 1997 – I was one of 12 CEOs (and with Ubisoft and Epic, one of three game dev CEOs) brought in to spend a day consulting with Andy Grove concerning Intel’s marketing of the MMX prior to its release – and they will never, ever blow off gamers. And they also understand that the games media is not to be confused with the gaming community itself.
2. Neither Biddle nor Read feel any remorse for their actions. They are only sorry that they PUBLICLY treated “Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves”. They have learned nothing.
3. GamerGate’s is correctly focused on the media’s Achilles Heel, its advertisers. The games media is so foolish and arrogant that they don’t care what their readers think, but they do care greatly about their advertisers. That is their corporate lifesblood, and that is the place that GamerGate should continue to target its efforts.
4. The pinkshirts still don’t understand that the numbers are not on their side. They don’t grasp that the fact that all the media organizations are on their side means nothing concerning the actual numbers of gamers who support one side or the other. Most gamers support GamerGate, to the extent they lean one way or another (they are mostly uninterested in the whole thing) the developers oppose any interference with how they design and develop their games, and the people responsible for selling products into both communities understand this.
5. The “bullying” is simply a proxy. It could have been anything, but that happens to be the hammer that the anti-Gamergaters handed GamerGate, and so it is the hammer with which GamerGate is going to repeatedly hit them. The real issue is that the gaming media is now not only attacking its readers, it is attacking its advertisers as well.
6. Max Read is very, very stupid. “So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity.” I suspect he’s going to bitterly regret those words soon, if he doesn’t already. If Gawker doesn’t fire him and Biddle, and promptly kowtow before GamerGate and announce its love of games, gamers, and game developers who do whatever they want to do, they’re going to see their advertising revenue continue to decline.
7. Max Read is projecting. The only “dishonest fascists” here are the pinkshirts opposed to GamerGate.
8. In case it isn’t clear yet, GamerGate will never quit. Because making the games we want to make and playing the games that we want to play is part of who we are.
9. The pinkshirts don’t give even the smallest damn about “death threats” or “harassment. I’ve been getting angry emails and death threats from the Left for 13 years now and no one pretending to be so terribly concerned about the “death threats” aimed at LW1, LW2 or LWu has ever said one single word to denounce them. Here are just two examples from this year that were posted in public:

In better days, people were easily thrown out of the city and the gates were locked behind them, let them starve. We need a system like that today, people like Vox Day need to die on the vine. Anyone who holds such opinions should not be allowed in society, it doesn’t matter what the quality of their “art” is. I’m sure that there were many people who thought Hitler was a good painter. – Blackadder Apr 23, 2014 at 9:38 pm

Oh dear sweet Cthulu, I think a little part of my soul just died…  Frankly, Vox is a great big steaming pile of human garbage. He’s an absolute piece of shit. This isn’t his first set of fuckery in the SFF community, either. He ran for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and part of his platform was that he’d ban all women from writing any hard sci-fi or fantasy and only allow them to write paranormal romance (I believe wereseals were specified as the only thing women should be allowed to write about. The fucking jackass doesn’t even know they’re called selkies, but that’s irrelevant). That’s the sort of shit this guy is…. Seriously, vox is an absolute piece of shit. I want him to die a slow and agonising death. – LJP · April 25, 2014

And speaking of pinkshirts doubling down, here is John Scalzi:

“If you’re still pro-GamerGate at this point, you’re a shitty human, or a shitty human’s useful idiot.” – John Scalzi

I tweeted that to @torbooks. Because while Mr. Scalzi has repeatedly announced that he doesn’t care who reads his books and as well as his hatred for GamerGate, it is possible that Tor Books, which sells considerably more HALO and other game tie-in books than it sells John Scalzi books, may feel differently.

I have written to Joel Johnson, the editorial director at Gawker Media, asking him to request Max Read’s resignation due to Mr. Read’s open disregard for the gaming community and one of its leading corporate supporters. If you wish to do likewise, Mr. Johnson’s contact information is available at his personal site.

UPDATE: Nero has a piece on the same Max Read article up on Breitbart.

The irony of Gawker’s career-destroying, far-left authoritarians squealing about fascism and bullying will not be lost on observers. “I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions,” wrote Gawker’s Read last night.

UPDATE 2: On a related note, here is the posted list of Gawker’s advertisers, with contact information.

Brianna Wu, who may or may not be the former Bruce Freeman, has successfully sold his sob story to the Washington Post:

They’ve taken down women I care about one by one. Now, the vicious mob of the Gamergate movement is coming after me. They’ve threatened to rape me. They’ve threatened to make me choke to death on my husband’s severed genitals. They’ve threatened to murder any children I might have.

This angry horde has been allowed to wage its misogynistic war without penalty for too long. It’s time for the video game industry to stop them.

No. What part of this does he not understand. “You could say all gamers drink the blood of innocents under a full moon and I still wouldn’t give a fuck.” – Phasmal. That is exactly how the average gamer feels about this. Whether Wu ends up being ritually tortured and force-fed Ebola before being sacrificed to Cthulhu on an altar made of desert-aged E.T. cartridges or not, his fate is not going to alter any of our opinions on the matter in the slightest. We don’t care. People are dying of Ebola in Africa too. We are still going to design, develop, and play exactly the sort of games we want to design, develop, and play.

And as for those hypothetical children, well, to paraphrase the immortal Zaphod Beeblebrox, count the chromosomes.

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

No, #GamerGate is a broad spectrum of gamers who have no intention of permitting a small group of pinkshirted SJWs do to games what the pinkshirts have done to SF/F literature, namely, destroy it through hyperpoliticization. And we are well aware that the so-called “game journalists” are conspiring with those pinkshirts to do it.

The next day, my Twitter mentions were full of death threats so severe I had to flee my home. They have targeted the financial assets of my company by hacking. They have tried to impersonate me on Twitter. Even as we speak, they are spreading lies to journalists via burner e-mail accounts in an attempt to destroy me professionally.

Boo-freaking-hoo. Even if we assume those “death threats” are genuine, Wu destroyed himself professionally when he lined up with the pinkshirts in the media against the gamer community. No serious gamer will ever play one of his games, no matter how many ideological sympathetic game journalists write favorably about it.

We’ve lost too many women to this lunatic mob. Good women the industry was lucky to have, such as Jenn Frank, Mattie Bryce and my friend Samantha Allen, one of the most insightful critics in games media. They decided the personal cost was too high, and I don’t know who could blame them. Every women I know in the industry is terrified she will be next.

We don’t want them, and it is entirely obvious that we don’t need them either. There are more than a few real genuine women who are part of GamerGate. Obviously Wu doesn’t know any of them, because unlike him, they are not pinkshirt-wearing political activists who are more considerably interested in ideological propaganda and self-inflating genre than in electronic entertainment.

The culture in which women are treated this way by gamers didn’t happen in a vacuum. For 30 years, video games have been designed by men, marketed to men and sold to men. It’s obvious to anyone outside the industry that video games have serious issues with the portrayal of women. It’s not just oversexualized examples, such as Ivy of the Soul Caliber series. Games are still lazily falling on the same outdated tropes involving women. Princess Peach, of Nintendo’s Mario games, has been kidnapped in 12 separate games since 1985. Perhaps the most disturbing of all is the propensity of games to have women thoughtlessly murdered as a motivation for the male hero, such as Watch Dogs.

The consequence of this culture is male gamers have been trained to feel video games are their turf. In stopping Gamergate, the men who dominate it – not just women — must address the culture that created Gamergate.

No. In a word, no. We don’t have to do anything of the sort. Nor do we wish to do so. It is our culture. Also, I note that Wu is dismissing the work of very single genuine female in the industry over the last 30 years. Roberta Williams, Jane Jensen, Brenda Laurel, Scorpia and Charlotte Panther at CGW, just to name a few. (To say nothing of Dani Bunton.) As for the “women thoughtlessly murdered” in video games than the men, surely Wu doesn’t imagine that the virtual body count is even remotely close to being distributed equally on sex grounds.

Some have. But many more have been silent. In the male-dominated video game media, many have chosen to sit by and do nothing as Gamergate picks us off, one by one. IGN has not covered Gamergate. Game Informer has not covered Gamergate. Ironically, the people who most need to hear this message are not hearing it, because of an editorial choice to stay on the sidelines.

He spoke too soon; Andy caved earlier today. So, it is an absolutely ludicrous lie to claim that anyone in the game industry is not hearing the absurd message, especially when anti-gaming pinkshirts are openly bragging about how the media is in their back pocket.

There are many straightforward steps we can take to change this.

First, major institutions in video games, which happen to be dominated by men, need to speak up immediately and denounce Gamergate. The dam started to break this week as Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb broke the silence at their publication on Monday. Last week, the industry’s top trade group, the Electronic Software Association spoke out against Gamergate, saying “Threats of violence and harassment have to stop. There is no place in the video game community for personal attacks and threats.”

No one, literally no one, cares what “the Electronic Software Association” has to say. Considering how successful they were attacking video game piracy, if they’re on the anti-gamers’ side, the pinkshirts ought to raise the white flag now.

Secondly, I call upon the entire industry to examine its hiring practices at all levels. Women make up half of all gamers, yet we make up only a fraction of this industry. While it’s possible to point to high profile women in the field, the fact remains. Women hold a shockingly disproportionate number of high level positions in game studios, game publishers and particularly in leadership roles. There are just 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, according to The Boston Globe. Game journalism also plays a critical role. It doesn’t matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women’s voices will never be heard.

Women no more “make up half of all gamers” than Brianna Wu has two X chromosomes. Playing Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds or Kim Kardashian’s Mutant Butt Destroys the Sheboygan Mall doesn’t make one a gamer any more than playing Myst did. “Gamer” is derived from “wargamer” and it is shorthand for “core gamer” or “serious gamer”. It does not refer to anyone who happens to play an electronic game any more than it refers to someone who plays hopskotch. No one is stopping women from starting their own game reviews. That’s exactly what I did in 1991 when virtually no one was reviewing games in the mainstream media and that’s how I ended up being nationally syndicated, with a game review column running weekly everywhere from Boston to San Francisco.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

To dream of “being game developers” is not at all the same thing as doing the hard work of developing games. Those young girls may desire the status, but they show  absolutely no sign of wanting to actually do the work involved. Anyone who really and truly wants to make games will do so, and will not permit anyone to dissuade them. You don’t need anyone’s permission to be a game developer. You don’t need anyone’s encouragement. You don’t need hugs and a welcome mat. Thanks to the panoply of great tools available, it has never been easier to develop games. Wu can cry if he likes, but the fact is that none of “The Ones We’ve Lost” were ever going to develop a single game. Ever. Not even if they were welcomed into the industry with pixies, unicorns, and rainbows.

This guy quite clearly doesn’t understand how the game industry works and is attempting to put the media cart ahead of the millions of horses that are the gamers of the world.

I compiled a list of the news and opinion outlets that have published articles critical of #gamergate just in the last few days. They’re welcome to boycott these all, it’ll just hasten their increasing irrelevance.

• Arcade Sushi – The Entertainment Software Association Speaks Out On GamerGate
• Associations Now – Game Industry Voices Denounce “Gamergate” Harassment
• B-Ten – #StopGamerGate2014 Explodes on Twitter. Here’s Why This Matters.
• BBC News – Feminist video-games talk cancelled after massacre threat
• BBC News – GamerGate: ‘Press must tackle misogyny,’ says developer
• Business Insider – ‘Gamergate’ Taught Me What Twitter’s Biggest Problem Is
• Bustle – The “#Stop GamerGate2014” Movement Has Been A Long Time Coming
• Buzzfeed – The Man Who Sparked GamerGate Regrets The Harassment, Says He’d Do It Again
• Canada.com – GamerGate has nothing to do with ethics in journalism
• CANOE – GamerGate reveals game industry’s girl problem
• CBC.ca – #StopGamerGate2014 hashtag suggests internet is growing tired of GamerGate
• CBS News – “Gamergate,” guns and threats against women collide in Utah
• China Topix – Female Game Developer Receives Death Threats for Crossing Gamergate
• CNN – Behind the furor over #Gamergate
• Complex – The Hashtags and Death Threats Behind #GamerGate, Gaming’s Latest Controversy
• The Daily Beast – Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage
• The Daily Wildcat – Column: Sexism isn’t answer to gaming’s problems
• Deadspin – The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate
• Dumb-Out – Organizer of E3 Says GamerGate Threats are Just ‘Wrong’
• Eurogamer.net – E3 organiser and trade group ESA speaks out against GamerGate
• Eurogamer.net – We cannot let this become gaming culture
• Forbes – #GamerGate Opponents Rally Behind #StopGamerGate2014
• Forbes – Gamergate And The Unbearable Maleness Of Computers
• Fresno Bee – Appleton: With Gamergate, video gaming community an ugly place right now
• The Frisky – Brianna Wu Speaks Up About The GamerGate Threats That Chased Her Out Of Her Home
• The Frisky – A #GamerGate Reading List To Catch You Up On The Violent And Deceptive Nature Of The Movement
• Game Politics – Leigh Alexander Lists Ethical Concerns With the Video Game Industry
• GamePlanet – E3 organiser speaks out against GamerGate
• The Gamer Headlines – Anita Sarkeesian’s Virulent Critics Are Only Strengthening Her Cause
• GameSpot – Harassment Must Stop, Says E3 Organiser in Response to “Gamergate”
• GameSpot – An important message to our users regarding online harassment
• GamingBolt – The ESA Finally Speaks Out In Response to GamerGate
• Gawker – The Angry Ex Who Ignited Gamergate Has No Regrets
• Giant Bomb – Letter From the Editor 10/17/2014
• Gizorama – “Keep Politics Out Of Gaming” – Why Games Journalists Won’t Leave Their Ideologies At The Door
• The Globe and Mail – A guide to the ideas and words of Gamergate
• Grantland – How Do You #StopGamerGate2014?
• The Guardian – Brianna Wu and the human cost of Gamergate: ‘every woman I know in the industry is scared’
• The Guardian – Lazy coverage of Gamergate is only feeding this abusive campaign
• Guardian Liberty Voice – GamerGate Targets Another Female Developer With Death Threats
• Gulfnews.com – Gamergate and the ‘war on gaming’
• Heavy.com – Gamergate: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
• HLNtv.com – Opinion: There’s nothing new about #Gamergate
• Huffington Post – Dear Media: In Wake Of Death Threats, It’s Time To Take A Stand Against GamerGate Violence
• Huffington Post – The Threats Against Anita Sarkeesian Expose The Darkest Aspects Of Online Misogyny
• Indie Wire – GamerGate: A War on Women Hiding Behind a Mask of “Ethics”
• International Business Times UK – E3 Organisers Stand Up To #GamerGate: ‘Attacks and Threats Have No Place In The Video Game Community’
• The Inquisitr – Gamergate Takes Dark Turn From Online Bullying To Threats Of Mass Shootings
• Irish Times – The misogynistic gamer minority – don’t feed their fantasies
• Kotaku – Thousands Rally Online Against Gamergate
• Liberation – Feminist vlogger vs. sexist gaming industry
• London Free Press – GamerGate reveals game industry’s girl problem
• Los Angeles Times – It’s time to silence ‘gamergate,’ end the misogyny in gaming culture
• Los Angeles Times – Anita Sarkeesian bravely confronts sexist video gaming culture
• The Mary Sue – #Gamergate’s Harassment Of Women Hits The Front Page Of The New York Times
• The Mary Sue – Man Who Sparked Gamergate Says The Movement Is “For The Best” Despite Harassment
• MCV – Global media rallies against #GamerGate misogyny
• Metro – Online trolling and sorry excuses – why GamerGate needs to stop
• Metro – GamerGate – what is it, and why are gamers so angry?
• MetroNews Canada – What is #GamerGate?
• Mic – After Online Misogyny Goes Too Far, the Internet Rallies Around Its Feminist Gamers
• Mind of the Geek – GamerGate: Is Enough Finally Enough?
• MXDWN.com – MXDWN Talks About: Gamergate
• New York Magazine – Gamergate’s Silver Lining
• New York Times – Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign
• The New Yorker – Gamergate: A Scandal Erupts In the Video-Game Community
• NEWS.com.au – #Gamergate: What is really going on in the gaming industry?
• Newsweek – Who is Anita Sarkeesian, One of the Women at the Center of #GamerGate?
• OS News – GamerGate terrorists threaten mass school shooting in Utah
• OSU – The Lantern – Opinion: Gamergate evolves into a misogynistic power struggle
• PC Magazine – What’s New Now: Gaming Trade Group Talks Gamergate
• PBS NewsHour – #Gamergate leads to death threats against women in the gaming industry
• PC Magazine – E3 Organizer Slams GamerGate Threats as ‘Wrong’
• Polygon – On GamerGate: A letter from the editor
• Re/code – The Gaming Industry Could Stop Gamergate – But It Won’t
• Refinery29 – An Awesome Twitter Response To Sexist #GamerGate
• Regina Leader-Post – GamerGate’s mysognistic campaign against feminism has failed
• Reuters Blogs – GamerGate: We now know what evil lurks in the heart of man – or trolls
• RollingStone.com – Anita Sarkeesian on GamerGate: ‘We Have a Problem and We’re Going to Fix This’
• Salt Lake Tribune – Utah State mess brings #Gamergate to light …
• SiliconBeat – Gaming Trade Group Says “Gamergate” Must Stop
• Slate Magazine – A Former FBI Agent On Why It’s So Hard to Prosecute Gamergate Trolls
• Stuff.co.nz – Gamergate: A proxy war for cultural battles
• TakePart – The Nasty Online Movement That Has Women Feeling Unsafe in Their Own Homes
• Tech Times – Gamergate continues: Female video game developer flees home after receiving chilling death threats on Twitter
• TIME – What Is #GamerGate and Why Are Women Being Threatened About Video Games?
• TIME – Fixing What’s Wrong With Gamergate Starts With You
• Toronto Star – Gamergate: Videogame industry speaks out against harassment
• Upstart – Gamergate’s bizarre escalation leads to massacre threats against Anita Sarkeesian
• The Vancouver Observer – Gun violence threats against feminist Anita Sarkeesian send strong message about male power
• VentureBeat – DeanBeat: With GamerGate, enough is enough
• VentureBeat – GamerGate is McCarthyism. Don’t let it silence you (opinion)
• The Verge – The guy who inspired Gamergate ignored his mother’s advice to ‘cool off’
• The Verge – A lot of people are finally fed up with Gamergate’s dumb crusade against women
• VICE News – Violent Threats Against Women Are Getting Even Worse in the Gamergate Controversy
• The Vine – Seth Rogen dives into #Gamergate, calls Adam Baldwin “a fucking idiot”
• Vulture – You Don’t Need to Care About Video Games to Care About Gamergate
• The Week Magazine – Gamergate has backfired spectacularly on its nincompoop perpetrators
• Washington Post – The game industry’s top trade group just spoke out against Gamergate
• Washington Post – What tolerating online harassment costs us
• Washington Post – More women play video games than boys, and other surprising facts lost in the mess of Gamergate
• Washington Post – Why is it taking so long to identify the anonymous Gamergate trolls?
• Xojane – It
  Happened to Me: I’ve Been Forced Out Of My Home And Am Living In
  Constant Fear Because Of Relentless Death Threats From Gamergate
• Boing Boing – Why #gamergate is bullshit

And yet, none of this is having ANY effect whatsoever on the activity of game developers. Literally none. There are no AAA developers suddenly deciding that instead of a 3D shooter, they are going to develop Kim Kardashian’s Mutant Butt Goes to the Mall. Blizzard is not going to halt Warlords of Draenor in order to put more clothes on the girl-Dranei or ensure that they are sufficiently Strong and Independent for Literally Who’s liking. Matrix is not going to start publishing Fashion Quest: Kicky Heels instead of its 576th World War II wargame, Operation Johann: the Czechoslovakian Plan to Invade Lichtenstein. And as far as I am aware, no one is running out to hire Zoe Quinn as a design lead.

But #GamerGate is having a tangible effect on the media organizations. Intel and Mercedes have stopped advertising on Gamasutra and Gawker. Other advertisers will follow suit; I have heard of other publications discovering that their advertising revenues are imperiled. The pinkshirts of the games media are going to find out, over the next few months, just who is truly irrelevant, who is truly impotent. And it isn’t the gamers of #GamerGate.

#GamerGate ultimately comes down to one thing. We gamers like our core games the way they are, and we aren’t going to change them for anyone or for any reason except better gameplay. And we don’t give a quantum of a damn what any casual gamer who plays Myst/Cooking Mama/Farmville/Angry Birds does, thinks, wants, or says. All the theatrical handwringing rhetoric about misogyny and harassment and death threats means absolutely nothing to any of us. It doesn’t matter if Literally Who, Literally Who 2, and Literally Wu wind up being ritually tortured and force-fed Ebola before being sacrificed to Cthulhu on an altar made of desert-aged E.T. cartridges, that’s not going to alter any of our opinions on the matter in the slightest.

One gamer, by the name of Phasmal, speaks effectively for us all: “You could say all gamers drink the blood of innocents under a full moon and I still wouldn’t give a fuck.”

D’accordo. In the meantime, if you’re interested in either reading honest game reviews or writing a few yourself, check out Computer Game World. I’m in the process of adding many of my old reviews and others are adding new ones every day.

No worries, once “pinkshirt” becomes widely adopted as a derogatory term for a feminist or SJW, there can be little doubt that the pinkshirts will promptly pretend that it isn’t a “Vox Dayism”:

Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray
So sad to see GamerGaters latching onto Vox Dayisms like “pinkshirts” to refer to feminists. Oh well, they deserve each other.

One thing I find mildly bemusing is the way various pinkshirted newbies and wannabes still have no idea how long I’ve been in the game industry or what I do there. I mean, Wikipedia isn’t exactly complete, but there is SOME information there.

Laurel Halbany ‏@neverjaunty
@scalzi It’s pretty impressive how many shitbirds who never heard of gaming before this are jumping on GamerGate to peddle their snake oil.

John Scalzi ‏@scalzi
@neverjaunty As soon as GG happened, it was just a matter of time before that one signed on. Which is fine. The two deserve each other.

That’s even dumber than the accusation that my father somehow obtained my column at WND for me. For the record, I have been professionally reviewing games since 1991, beginning with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, then Chronicle Features, and then for Universal Press Syndicate, Computer Gaming World, Electronic Entertainment, and the Atlanta Journal/Constitution. Since I retired my AJ/C column, I have continued to write for various game industry publications since then, albeit not under this name.

I happen to know exactly what sort of corruption is rife throughout the games media; I was the only game developer permitted to write for CGW for exactly that reason. Johnny Wilson and Chris Lombardi both trusted my integrity, as did the editor of Electronic Entertainment. They knew I would cut my thumbs off before I would give a false review of any game. And they sure as hell wouldn’t have trusted the integrity of the most of the current breed of “game journalists”.

Ian Miles Cheong ‏@stillgray
Reminds me of Vox Day and every other parasite who’s latched onto this stupid movement.

Space Bunny ‏@Spacebunnyday
You might want to look at the dates of @voxday ‘s posts on the topic before claiming he’s “latching on” to it.

As it happens, I’ve known the games media longer than most of its biggest names have been around. I grew up with the late Paul Anderson and I still have a cassette tape with “Three Chord Song” and other songs by Andy McNamara’s band around here somewhere. I remember when Game Informer was Funcoland’s six-page in-house rag. I am familiar with the constant pressure the games media faces to ensure the flow of advertising money from the very companies it is reviewing. Some organizations and individuals are able to retain their integrity, but unfortunately, most don’t. Unless you truly love games more than money, you will succumb eventually. The smarter ones usually end up migrating to the development side in the end, where the influence is smaller but the pay is better.

I never accepted anything from anyone except free games for review. I suspect most of today’s “game journalists” would leap at the chance to sell out for a trinket or a free dinner, much less a skanky pinkshirt. Not only are they corrupt, some of them are even in ideological collusion, as can be seen by the timing of these various “Gamers are Dead” articles:

‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over. Exclusive http://archive.today/l1kTW Leigh Alexander Gamasutra Aug 28, 10:00am

An awful week to care about video games http://archive.today/rkvO8 Chris Plante Polygon Aug 28, 1:21pm

The death of the “gamers” and the women who “killed” them https://archive.today/ZyLdw Casey Johnson Ars Technica Aug 28, 5:00pm

A Guide to Ending “Gamers” http://archive.today/2t93l Devin Wilson Gamasutra Aug 28, 7:57 pm

_We Might Be Witnessing The ‘Death of An Identity’ https://archive.today/ht088 Luke Plunkett Kotaku Aug 28, 8:00pm

_Gaming Is Leaving “Gamers” Behind http://archive.today/jVqJ8 Joseph Bernstein Buzzfeed Aug 28, 8:29 pm

_Sexism, Misogyny, and online attacks: It’s a horrible time to consider yourself a gamer https://archive.today/HkPHc Patrick O’Rourke Financial Post Aug 28, 9:33pm

_It’s Dangerous to Go Alone: Why Are Gamers So Angry? http://archive.today/9NxHy Arthur Chu The Daily Beast Aug 28, time unknown

_The End of Gamers https://archive.today/L4vJG Dan Golding Tumblr Aug 28, time unknown

_This guy’s embarassing relationship drama is killing the ‘gamer’ identity https://archive.today/L4n6p Mike Pearl Vice Aug 29, time unknown

And as far as “never heard of gaming” goes, Ender and I are in the process of testing our latest Fifth Frontier War module. For VASSAL. Which, by the way, I named.

Random idea. Ender is nearly done with his rework of my original Fifth Frontier War module and we’re gearing up to play it. Now, I’m wondering if there is anyone here besides the game’s designer who has significant experience of it and would care to serve as a rules catcher, given that the chances we are going to get a few things wrong on this second attempt are all but guaranteed. (The first one went down in flames when we wanted to use the table for ASL after getting things mostly set up.)

As a general rule, we never try to fix rules that we miss, but instead seek to play properly from the point at which the mistake is noticed. I’m going to post the turns here for the edification of the three or four readers who are actually interested, and I figure that we may as well take advantage of any real FFW experience. Corrections are welcome, so long as it’s kept in mind that this is a first playing.

Big Chilly and I set the game up several times when we were in high school, but we never got beyond plotting the initial turn because it took so long to setup and we always ran out of weekend. That’s one of the things Ender has improved in the module; the standard setups are already in place when you start. The other nice thing about having it on the computer, of course, is that it means we can use the projector….

Sure, there is Ebola and mass immigration and the general decline and fall of Western civilization to take into account, but the simple fact is that this is occasionally an awesome time in which to be alive. Fifth Frontier War on a five-meter wide board on the wall… and no need to clean up a game in progress? And to think I once thought that playing Wing Commander on a 50-inch screen was the pinnacle of techno-civilization!

JS is curious about ASL:

Read about this game (again) in a GamerGate post today… Which set do you play?  I’m intrigued…I’d like to buy a kit and start playing. Time for a post for us inspiring ASL newbies! I like turn-based games (I own Supremacy, and even ported the board to Java…Very handy to have a seamless scroll when you control Siberia and Alaska!), but haven’t played detailed military rules since high school.

I own two sets of Squad Leader and two sets of Advanced Squad Leader as a consequence of the Hasbro acquisition panic of 1999 and Ender has a complete set of the Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit. Right now, I mostly play ASLSK because we are methodically playing our way through that. I myself started with the ASL11 Defiance on Hill 30 scenario from Paratrooper, followed by ASL14 Silence that Gun. While I’d owned Squad Leader, Cross of Iron, and Crescendo of Doom since I was 10, I’d never actually played against an actual opponent because I didn’t know anyone willing to learn the rules.

Since then, I’ve played a Red Barricades campaign and took part in an eight-man game of Gold Beach, which was one of the better gaming experiences of my life. Ender was actually given his nickname by Big Chilly as a result of ASL, as he managed to beat me, fair and square, (albeit with the help of a 1 in 36 shot) in one of the first ASLSK scenarios he ever played. I usually win, as he’s too conservative in attack and doesn’t have the experience to deal with my 3GW tactics, but he’s learned that I tend to have trouble maintaining my focus once the game is well in hand and has taken advantage of that to steal a victory or two at the wire.

It’s a wonderful game, and if you take the Journals and Annuals into account, makes for great reading material; Chapter H alone is a comprehensive education in World War II fighting vehicles. Start with ASLSK #1, play through it, and then move on to #2 and #3 if you enjoy it. Then you’ll be ready to move up to the big league and the ASLRB.

Although somewhat biased towards equalitarianism, this history of the general absence of women in gaming goes a long way towards putting #GamerGate into perspective:

The final roster of almost six hundred IFW members, tallied in March of 1973, contains only one recognizably female name, that of Elizabeth A. Parnell. By the end of the 1960s, Avalon Hill faced stiff competition from Jim Dunnigan’s wargames company Simulation Publication, Inc. (SPI), who published the widely-circulated magazine Strategy & Tactics. Dunnigan regularly sought feedback from his broad readership to tune the contents of his games and periodicals. It was not until 1971, however, that the feedback questionnaires in Strategy & Tactics began to inquire about gender. The first returns that summer (published in issue #28) indicated that 1% of those surveyed were female, though that number is perhaps inflated due to rounding. At the beginning of 1974, on the next iteration of the survey, Strategy & Tactics reported, “We asked how many female subscribers we have. The number is roughly one-half of 1%.” That article goes on to explain their survey methodology, which they believed reflected “over 10,000 different gamers,” a sum they credibly represented as the largest study group available to the industry.

That figure, that roughly one half of 1% of “gamers” were female, is borne out by other contemporary sources as well. The “Great Lakes Gamers Census” of January 1974, assembled by the Midwest Gaming Association, tabulates more than one thousand gamers in the Midwest. It contains five recognizably female names: Marie Cockrill, Anne Laumer, Denise Bonis, and then two couples: Mr. & Mrs. Linda Anderson, and Mr. and Mrs. Paul Pawlak. It was this overwhelmingly male community which was the target of contemporary periodicals branded for “gamers” like Gamers Guide.

How much attention were game developers reasonably supposed to pay to a group that made up less than one percent of their market? Notice that as with SFWA, it was the inclusion of fantasy that brought women into the mix. And in games, as in science fiction literature, the subsequent expansion caused the original pioneers to be largely pushed to the side:

The release of Dungeons & Dragons triggered a crucial intersection of two fandoms: wargames fandom and the group collectively known as science-fiction fandom, which included fantasy fans. This is significant because science-fiction fandom, while predominantly male, had far more gender diversity than wargames fandom. Exactly how much diversity has been a matter of some scholarly debate; a recent study suggests that as of 1960, science-fiction fandom was perhaps one-fifth female. Other data points show finer divisions: while subscribers to a hard science-fiction magazine like Analog might have been only one-tenth female, a survey of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction — which published many of the fantasy stories that inspired the creators of Dungeons & Dragons — revealed that around a third of its readership was female as of 1966. Fans of that era, most notably Diana Paxson, invented the Society for Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group which offered dramatically segregated, yet appealing, roles for male and female participants. However we measure it, science-fiction fandom attracted far more women than wargaming.

The big difference is that most male gamers understand and accept that, in the gaming hierarchy, they are third- or fourth-class citizens in gaming terms. The guy who plays Top Eleven respects that he is not considered as serious a gamer as Level 70 Elite Call of Duty player, who in turn understands that he’s not as serious as the average Eve Online player. Who, in turn, is not as serious as the wargamer, much less the monster wargamer. And even hard core wargamers tend to think that Advanced Squad Leader players are over-the-top. This hierarchy is simply recognition of the complexity involved in the game and the expertise required to master it.

Tell me that someone is an ASL player, and I immediately know that I’m dealing with a man who is intelligent, detail-oriented, patient, and capable of grasping a massive quantity of rules as well as mastering a considerable quantity of abstract concepts. Why? Because unless you possess those qualities, and possess them in abundance, you can’t even begin to play the game. The same is not true of a FIFA or Bejeweled player.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that prevents a woman from obtaining that high-level expertise. Any woman can buy War in Europe and start playing it tomorrow. Well, start setting it up tomorrow, at any rate. But some women appear to deeply resent that they are not granted the respect that comes from such hard-won mastery even though they have not put in the necessary effort to gain it. It is this petty resentment that sparked #GamerGate, as no wargamer is ever going to consider a Candy Crush Saga player his gaming peer. It is simply never going to happen, nor is there any reason why it should.

And as for the dearth of women on the development side, note that the very first female game design credit is for Battle of the Wilderness, published by SPI in 1975, only 62 years AFTER  men began designing wargames. I’m hardly ancient, and I have been playing wargames longer than women have been designing games at all.

One of the usual anklebiters attempted to claim that there is no evidence I was ever a successful game producer. Now, I don’t talk about most of my designs these days, for obvious reasons, but since the review is out there, here is the take on RMR from Computer Gaming World, written by Loyd Case, who was their most technical writer at the time:

There is an old aphorism that’s often said about weddings – something old, something new. You need a bit of each for good luck. REBEL MOON RISING is a 3D shooter that is a mix of the old and the new – both in terms of gameplay and technology….

Another new technology feature [after mentioning our first use of 16-bit color -VD] is voice recognition. One early Windows 95 game, ACES OF THE DEEP, used speech recognition, but the implementation was very limited. In REBEL MOON RISING, the list of usable words is quite large. While you can actually give orders to AI squad mates in a limited way, it’s mostly used to communicate with other players in multiplayer games…. Where REBEL MOON RISING doesn’t break new ground is in graphics. Although it does use 16-bit color, the style is still 2/12D, in the style of DUKE NUKEM 3D….

 “Where Rebel Moon Rising does
break new ground in 3D-action shooters is in mission design (as opposed
to level design). There are a couple of missions in which you defend a location. You can either choose to run around frantically, trying to defend against multiple attackers as they teleport in, or you can find the switch that will bring in reinforcements. The reinforcements are about as dumb as the AI opponents, but they do help buffer the target against the opposing forces. The two best missions in the game are ones where
you escort prisoners – in one case, alien babies – to a hand-off point.
The suspense gets pretty intense as you move with your charge and try to
keep enemies from picking them off. It’s also somehow more personal
than similar missions in flight sims. When one of the alien babies was
killed, I felt a very real sense of outrage and emptied most of a
magazine into the enemy that had killed it. Some of the other missions
which involve searching for and destroying a specific set of objectives
are more creative than the “if it moves, shoot it” philosophy in most
3D-action games. All of this takes place in the context of a relatively
interesting story.” 

So, I was publicly recognized by the leading industry magazine as the
first game designer to do mission design in 3D shooters, introduce 16-bit color, and feature AI squad mates to whom you could actually talk to using speech recognition, in a game that did over 6
million units. It did well enough that a strategy book was released for it. This is failure?

Case was absolutely correct. The game wasn’t outstanding. It had some production flaws and my decision to set it on the Moon was egregiously stupid. (Way to show off the color, sport!) But “it has an interesting story and some highly creative missions” is hardly indicative of “a crappy game”.