Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

what does "art" encompass? "game is fun = good art."

Eh being fun doesn't make casual games GG-approved art though. Game has five billion explosions per minute, lets you blow shit up, does not try to trick you into having any silly moral qualms about blowing shit up, has rad particle effects = game is good art?

(Though yeah, in my limited experience the games-as-art crowd and the gamergate crew seem p. separate except when the latter thinks it makes a compelling rhetorical point, but there are definitely 'gaters claiming that it's wrong that Sarkeesian wants people to think about the role of women in games because if as a result of her videos even one game came out with a slightly different attitude to women than the one already drawn up by 30 dudes on crunch time and a board of directors that would be a Crime Against Pure Artistic Vision.

Any previous examples where a guy in a suit looks at the 3D models or packaging design and tells the art guy to make the token female NPC bustier and more scantily-clad = the team's singular artistic vision is only being enhanced; game companies de-nerf something or change an ending following gamer forum shitfits = just fine for artistic vision; entirely hypothetical possibility that one day the man in suit will come down and ask if maybe the token woman could wear a bit more on the box art and hey could we have another female character = oh no, artistic vision has been destroyed, ~~corruption~~)

Hah, I actually found this this morning, was going to post it as a follow on to my last post:

Gamer Dweebs (I admit I flinched a bit at the title, but I'm a big boy, I can suck it up.)

"Games are art, and they should follow the artist’s vision completely, unless that vision has people who aren’t like me in it in which case they should be removed, because games aren’t art, they’re a business, and a business has to do what’s best for the company to continue, unless that means including people who aren’t like me, because games aren’t a business, they’re an art, and you shouldn’t enslave art to financial and business principles like equal opportunities or whatever, because look at all those people who’ve made artistic games with their artistic vision, except those ones made by people who aren’t like me, who’ve failed because games aren’t art, they’re a business, and it just shows you that they don’t understand business otherwise they’d be more successful and prominent and rich, but if they are rich then it’s probably because they just exploited simple business principles or just had nice art."

https://storify.com/MorganRamsay/how-often-do-video-game-journalists-write-about-fe

Of the 130,524 articles downloaded from 23 outlets in a 12-month period, only 0.41% of those articles referenced feminism, feminist, sexism, sexist, misogyny, and misogynist. Less than half of 1% of the articles published by professional video game journalists for major publications during a 12-month period brought up these more progressive subjects explicitly.

@ezraklein
Whatever good points #GamerGate had to make are getting buried underneath the raging misogyny:

They don't have any good points though

exactly

well were never gonna know until we clear out all this misogyny god dang it

this is basically about defending the purity of metacritic scores right?

"beneath" all the misogyny i mean

Anita Sarkeesian's panels had extra security and bag checks due to bomb threats phoned into the convention center.
That is really screwed up.

― hyggeligt, Sunday, October 12, 2014 4:09 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

These people think its funny to call SWAT teams on each other

one interesting thing imo is when you have sociopaths operating openly enabled by a culture that thinks theyre cool and funny

*lay up*

I still dont think I can follow what the hell any of this is about. So they accuse some woman - falsely - of giving skewed reviews in a game mag so this leads to rape and death threats and bomb threats all round for Reasons? What?

this is basically about defending the purity of metacritic scores right?

If this is seriously all its about then a bunch of saddoes need to sorely get laid, then shot in the head, in that order.

yeah I feel like working hard to understand wtf any of these ppl are talking about would be some gaze into the abyss stuff

really you know most people just play video games and...don't have opin ions or know about any of this crazy rabbit hole

they accuse a woman -- falsely -- of sleeping with a journo in order to get better coverage of her game, even though said journo never wrote anything. somehow this hypothetical thing that never happened led to a movement protesting things like that happening.

except it's not protesting things like that, it's a hate and harassment campaign against arbitrarily-selected women in the games industry and their friends, with a painted-on veneer of manufactured "controversy" over "journalism"

oooh i know. i'm just saying their arbitrary cover is so fucking broken it's ridiculous they're still managing to push their narrative to the fore. but it is definitely the wrong thing to be concentrating on here.

what does #notyourshield mean, is it an rpg reference?

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[–]CroatInAKilt 23 points 1 month ago
Basically, after Zoe Quinn's actions were exposed (around the same time Anita Sarkeesian came out with another Tropes vs women video) a few nasty men (presumably maladjusted teenage boys) made threats and mysoginist remarks against them.
Here's where it gets interesting.
Most game media outlets, blogs and journalists started pointing out these remarks and accusing the "GamerGaters" of all being mysoginistic and hateful towards minorities in video games, while barely making a mention about corruption in journalism - which is the actual issue here. They also failed to point out the harassment GamerGate hashtaggers were receiving, as well as comments from the GamerGate side condemning those threats and remarks. So now women who support GamerGate have taken to twitter with the hash tag #NotYourShield to speak against the media outlets that are trying to distract from the issue of industry corruption by making it seem like a gender motivated, social justice issue.
TL;dr The games media is vastly misrepresenting the GamerGate supporters and the NotYourShield people are calling them out on it.
permalinkpocket

i guess like the corrupt games journalists were using all non-cis--str8-wite-male identity groups to shield themselves from having their jig exposed so then tho groups spoke up and said hey were not yr shield bro

except no the #NotYourShield people were the same small cadre of 4chan fuckwits who started the whole thing in the first place

using sockpuppet twitters etc.

oh ok, this just confirms that I don't want to follow or try to make sense of any of this

yeah its bad and nonsensical

I was getting depressed about news about this stuff the other day and I was like 'wait this basically has no real impact on me whatsoever'
I went and repotted some African vciolets and felt better

not just women!!

After coming under fire for supporting the GamerGate movement, females, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, transgenders, gays and bisexuals took control of their own narrative by telling those who attacked them for supporting gaming that they are #NotYourShield.

good call xp

I mean it sucks that some women are getting treated like shit \

sometimes I thinjk about my male students for whom I have a respectful, protective, kind esteem, which is mutual
andc that they hang out on reddit and 4chan and are probably monsters there
it's weird

it is def very weird

its amazing how people adapt to very weird shit completely effortlessly

one of my students was telling me about how terrible anita sarkeesian (sp?) is and how all feminists will try to lie and say you raped them
I was like 'is reddit your source – check some other sources plz'
he is such a smart, funny kid and he's nice to me but I am not sure I register as a woman or even a human

ugh

how can you not want to slap him upside the head

knowing he is not a fully formed human and none of us are

accusing the "GamerGaters" of all being mysoginistic and hateful towards minorities in video games, while barely making a mention about corruption in journalism - which is the actual issue here.

Because a bit of perceived payola or bias in a few shitty hobby magazines is SO MUCH MORE important and urgent to address than women being threatened with dismemberment nbd

They aren't even mad about payola though. They literally are mad that feminists exist and sometimes have opinions on videogames.

Yeah, I am trying not to accept that cos it is so dumb I cant even :(

i'm fairly convinced that gamergate is a handful of legit psychos, several handfuls of opportunistic men's right winger typers and a core of ONLY IN IT FOR THE LULZ trolls which makes abbott's story about impressionable youth super sad and makes me glad i grew up when the only shit that did that kind of damage was everything else around me but the internet

that's sad, Crabbits, but if he's nice to you and hopefully other women/girls there's hope that he'll work it out one day, like, "oh man why did I even believe that stuff when I already knew awesome women who liked the stuff I like" or w/e

Of course most of the #NotYourShield women/minorities are just made-up sockpuppets but there probably are some real teenage girls in there too and that's what's getting me atm. I was thinking of the mostly-male geek communities I was in as a teenager, online and offline, and how I would have said p. much anything to say "heeyyy I'm not like Other Girls (whatever that means since nor are any of my female friends and I've always had female friends who talk about video games and comics but somehow I've never stopped to think about that)! you can make whatever horrible jokes around me and I won't make a fuss. please let me be one of the guys!"

I feel like I only don't remember personally saying anything particularly objectionable because* I was lucky enough that the groups I fell into, while male-dominated by numbers, already had some smart, assertive women in who didn't let the conversation get too shitty and were good friends and role models for all of us. It makes me sad that any genuine girls out there might be cheering for GamerGate and all because they're like I was, just not that lucky.

(* OK, also partly through my own history-rewriting and always being averse to expressing strong opinions in public, but most importantly those other women. thank you to them)

To an extent it's like the US Republican party I guess, #NotYourShield is the PoC Republicans / National Federation of Republican Women / Log Cabin Republicans and there are enough people that if they're near and the rest are far away, it looks like balance, but it's just a trick of perspective, and outside the bubble very few are fooled.

For example, Gaymer X, the LGBT geek convention, got word that it was on a 'enemies list' and tweeted that it was neutral on the matter - and then 6 hours later tweeted "Yeah, we've listened to our fans and the message is Fuck Gamergate", to amazement and outrage on the part of GamerGate: "We have gay people on our side! You're throwing them under the bus!"

They aren't even mad about payola though. They literally are mad that feminists exist and sometimes have opinions on videogames.

Yup - Leigh Alexander's excellent article on actual corruption in video games is largely shrugged off in favour of focussing on SJW indie gamers corrupting games publications with their magical vaginas. I've seen one of them literally claim that the serious corruption doesn't matter because it's just trying to move metacritic scores a few points and who cares about them, but these SJWs are conducting an assault on the culture!

Yeah, really feel like ''corruption'' here operates in the main as like, ''contagion'' or something, some force that is rotting and destroying games. The ins and outs of payola and so on tend to bounce off the discussion b/c the movement's appeal is emotional, you join because games are under attack and ou can stand up for what's right etc, or in the worse case, to feel the thrill of joining the witch hunt/coverrt op/however else these people addled by decades of sophisticated murder-porn see the campaigns of harassment.

I really gotta stop thinking about these assholes.

Ugh, that is another really terrible aspect, the "They have picked the wrong enemy, we have been trained for years in how to struggle and never give up". #gatestgeneration

I really gotta stop thinking about these assholes.

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, 14 October 2014 13:46 (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think a fair part of the "payola" or "sex for reviews" garbage comes from the fact that the women initially targeted are strong voices for diversity in games and are engaged in pointing out misogyny in mainstream gaming. Anita Sarkeesian notably is the the creator of a video series examining misogyny in games, and Zoe Quinn, who was probably the first major target of these assholes, created a text adventure game about depression.

As cringe-inducing as it was, the beginning of the "journalistic corruption" angle re: Zoe Quinn was her ex-boyfriend writing a long screed outlining how she did him wrong, including her hooking up with a writer who had written a profile of her (not even a review) months earlier.

You know what? It does sound like it was a toxic relationship and she cheated on him. But the worst part is that his reaction wasn't to walk away, but to tell his sob story to the more toxic assholes out there so that he could get revenge. So there you have it, the people who are really into this are the type who will have a bad relationship and instead of getting over it, decide to turn their entire life into some vengeance quest. Ugh.

literally the only thing I got out of reading the sob story was "wow, this dude is pathetic and needs to get over himself" whereas the gamergate dudes read it and thought "women are the enemy!"

guy's sob story was unreadable and longer than the bible iirc

it was like "she cheated on me, then we got back together, then I demanded a comprehensive list of all cheating details, then I got mad, then I exchanged angry IMs with her like a petulant teenager, then I demanded blah blah"

and I thought I had too much drama as a youth

Ugh, that is another really terrible aspect, the "They have picked the wrong enemy, we have been trained for years in how to struggle and never give up". #gatestgeneration

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, October 14, 2014 9:46 AM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao no this is the good stuff