Contemporary society doesn't fit that ABC picture of yours. Appealing to what happened mid 20th century won't fly.
I gave you an specific example to test your case. Evidently, you decided against addressing it.
But without a shadow of a doubt, you are also calling for more white males to be hired in areas where they are currently underrepresented, even if that means recruiting, say, less females or Asians.
1. You think things that happened in the 1960s just disappeared and never happens today? No remnants still remain?
2. Yes I'm 1000% behind white males being hired in areas where they are currently underrepresented. I LOVE what the New England Pats are doing with their white wide receivers. Clearly those white dudes are better than what most coaches in the NFL think they are. They are CLEARLY being looked over by most teams in the league because they are white. They go to New England and ball out with Tom Brady. It's smart to hire people for your company that are overlooked by the competition. It makes you and your company better.
Oh boy. How to prove the article you are trying to criticize is correct in one simple step. Btw, I believe the feminist side overplays their hand on sexism in gaming too. It's frustrating when this topic comes up, and I have to look at both sides and shake my head.Just don't be oversensitive about unknown people online and enjoy the games with or without a little bit of trash talk.
In a way it's kind of a part of multiplayer gaming culture, especially on Xbox Live.
I think you're pigeon holing what the other side actually is when it comes to a discussion of toxicity in gaming culture. I really believe the other side are the people who think that the people that are always screaming racism, sexism, phobias, etc., are in fact the most toxic aspect of the gaming community, both because of their rhetoric (often consisting of false charges) and especially because of the divide it has caused. Yes, there are some outlanders who they properly despise and that are absolute scumbags and looking to pick on people because of race, sex, etc. But I have played a lot of games, and they do not constitute the majority of people I interact with, and they usually have very squeaky and immature voices. So from my vantage point, someone like Colin M should have been invited long before someone who's only job is telling us how sexist we all are, if we are actually talking about toxicity in gaming culture and not just accusing white men of being toxic people.What "other side"?
There is no academic field for MRAs. "Whiteness Studies" was a thing for a split second until they got run off the stage at their own conferences when their arguments crumbled under scrutiny. Now they take to the blogsphere.
Has nothing to do with "toxic masculinity"- if you feel the need to resort to slurs in vidya then you are an adult infant. society's ills stem from the increasing infantilization of its populous NOT muh patriarchyI think it’s laughable that people in here, in 2018, think this ISNT an issue. BUT this piece is unbalanced - spoke to the wrong people IMO. It’s not balanced in terms of journalism. They should have spoken to behavioural psychologists mainly
That's very interesting choice of experts to voice their opinion.
No wonder people think games journalism is a joke - even political journalism is better at least you get someone to represent other side there.
That last paragraph basically answers the question as to why I don't talk about non-political things on GAF. When I know I have, as the first paragraph in this section references, a "safe space" to talk about my existence as a whole, then I'll relax and joke and talk about play more.
I really believe Zoe Quinn was banged by mans for the review... They just wanted hiding the truth.
Nobody should insult somebody else for no reason. This would be the right way. You make it the other way around.The very first time I used a headset, like 2 minutes in, I heard someone calling me names. Solution: I stopped using headsets with strangers.
Nobody is forced to listen to insults if they don't want to, and any modern system offer multiple choices in how to deal with it (like private parties, blocking, etc).
There is no problem.
Insulting someone has nothing to do with freedom. Else the other person who you insulted would have the freedom to slap you without consequence.Freedom still exists, right? Censorship and attacking people is not the way of changing minds.
What is the problem? That there are bigots in the world or that women are being insulted online? If it is the latter, like the OP is referring to, then it is not a problem. If it is the former, then it's something outside of videogames.
^I actually thought about posting that but wasn't sure if it would be allowed. Still adjusting to the new Neogaf. lol
Edit: I really dislike the use of the word "toxic" and what it implies in today's society.
But it does. Comedians make insulting jokes all the time. Simply expressing my opinion about a subject could be insulting to someone else: "Farmers abuse their cattle" could be insulting to farmers.Insulting someone has nothing to do with freedom.
No, there is no freedom of violence, fortunately.Else the other person who you insulted would have the freedom to slap you without consequence.
I don't know about just respecting people willy-nilly, but I do agree with the sentiment that one should aim to be kind to everyone.It is like always, just try to respect others. Else others won't respect you.
The consequences are that they'll be muted and reported, and if enough people do this, they'll get banned. There's a dicussion to be had over whether developers and platformholders are doing enough with these reports, and whether there's enough feedback to players to demonstrate what happened with their reports, but that's not the subject of this article.If you show those people that their behavior has no consequences, they will never learn.
Else every game that has voice-chat in it must be rated 18+.
It makes no sense to bang a game journalist for exposure.
It is like you would say (slightly exaggerated) "nobody has to be killed, just avoid the killer". The argument just makes no sense.
Also, there are kids playing games, that use headsets.
This is just something that can't be tolerated.
Insulting someone has nothing to do with freedom...
My own problem with Zoe Quinn is the fact she isn't (or wasn't) even a real dev. Her 'game' is not even a game & she was completely undeserving of any attention whatsoever.
This is the epitome of a wrong, i.e. on the contrary sleeping with a journalist makes perfect sense for 'exposure'. I mean this factoid has been common knowledge for centuries & is a pop-culture trope in & of itself (i.e. House of Cards & other such films/series which deal with journalistic corruption intermingled with sex in return for favors of various kinds etc.).
My own problem with Zoe Quinn is the fact she isn't (or wasn't) even a real dev. Her 'game' is not even a game & she was completely undeserving of any attention whatsoever. Add the fact she's nigh comical in her stereotypical SJW'ism & voilà, a pointless person given far too much exposure. She's essentially a faux dev & the sort of person who runs around saying/posting offensive shit, insulting entire groups (men, white people etc.) & labeling many all sorts of bad names... then when called out on her bullshit screams "harassment!" as a defense mechanism. It's tedious.
She's highly offensive & also appears like a lunatic (her attack on Nintendo over Paper Mario a couple of years ago would have been funny if it wasn't so pathetic: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...rio-color-splash-link-to-online-hate-campaign)
I need to stop you here since the issue was never that Zoe was sleeping with this guy. The problem was that they have broken pretty standard ethical rules.I worked for 17 years (1999 - 2016) in a marketing department of a major french retailer (Micromania owned since 2008 by Gamespot) and I can tell you that a positive review of any game by any game journalist doesn't necessarily translate into great sales. We see that recently with some Bethesda games. So, if Zoe Quinn did trade sex for favor over an indie game nobody knew about so maybe she won Something like 30 sales (and I'm large). It's not Worth it and I'm pretty sure she knew that because it's not a secret insider information. Chances are she slept with the guy because she liked the guy. Big deal.
To push a game, marketing is everything and it's Something you work with the publisher and it goes Something like this "I've got this game, we need to push it, let's work together to achieve that". In that equation, game journalists have Nothing to say because they are not and in any way part of that deal. Game journalists are used to talk about the game, to put the game in the air, to create background noise that's it. We Don't rely on them to sell the game, that's our job.
Game journalism and political journalism is not the same thing. Video games are just that, they are not important as in life threatening, politics involves the life of people. If a chemical company poisons a small town over political corruption it's a life threatening situation. Even if you buy a game based on a review and you end up Don't liking that game, what's the worse that could happen to you ? Is your life in danger ?
You will resell your game at a store or in an online marketplace, you loose some money sure but it's not life threatening for you since you have the income to buy 70€ games in the first place and even if it's a digital game and you can't resell it, odds are you won't make the same mistake twice. So maybe a journalist can fool a person once but that's it. You can't rely on that to sell games, it's way too chaotic. You need people who buy games on a regular basis.
Plus many experienced gamers already know their tastes in games and Don't buy solely on a review but because they are drawn to a specific game for various reasons not linked to a journalists opinion. So that means that Zoe Quinn by banging a journalist is after a very specific demographic : noob gamers who blindly trust journalists to the point they open their wallet with no question asked and play obscure indie games that cost 10 box or something. It's a very small demographic I can tell you that.
Now I Don't know the specifics about Zoe Quinn sex life because I don't care, but chances are, when you work in any industry and go to various trade shows, you are often on the road, you meet people, you're in a sort of vacuum where you live with men and women who do the exact same thing as you and sometimes after a work day, in an hotel bar, you flirt a little and bam you end up in bed. That's just life, there's Nothing to it.
And anyway, the way some people attacked her when it's Something done between two consenting adults, whatever their reasons are I don't care, is an absolute no go for me.
Well that's only your opinion. She developed electronic entertainment that she made to express herself. You might not be interested in what she did and it might not be art and it might not be a game in the traditional sense or even in the untraditional sense, but she tried something that was different. Some people were interested and excited about it. She deserved to be called a developer and deserved attention to her project way more than she deserved to be humiliated by her ex and the internet mob. And no matter what she did afterwards doesn't change the fact that she didn't initially deserve all the shit she got in the first place.
And just for the record, I think even people who make games like Snake: Road to Apple deserve to be called a dev and at least some attention, or at the very least more than they deserve any public humiliation. They are at least doing more than 99,9% of the people who mock them online.
I need to stop you here since the issue was never that Zoe was sleeping with this guy. The problem was that they have broken pretty standard ethical rules.
no Journalists who takes this very serious would write an article positive or negative about a person he/she knows personally. And IF which is a big IF. IF he/she still would do it they would at least note in in the article. No one cared if Zoe and journalists banged which I think ws not even the case hey just lived together. But the fact that he did not establish their relationship.
And you know whats really funny? The people who back then thought its not a bi deal now establish their relationship every time now. And yes this is also because of Gamergater. Giantbomb does this also a lot in their podcasts and it all did happen because of this.
Now I Don't know the specifics about Zoe Quinn sex life because I don't care, but chances are, when you work in any industry and go to various trade shows, you are often on the road, you meet people, you're in a sort of vacuum where you live with men and women who do the exact same thing as you and sometimes after a work day, in an hotel bar, you flirt a little and bam you end up in bed. That's just life, there's Nothing to it.
[Note: The author of this post contributes to Zoe Quinn's Patreon campaign. See Polygon's ethics policy here.]
Oh I agree with you here. Harassment should never be allowed but to Anita harassment also means disagreeing with her views over the internet. This is what she said at this UN women conference at least.Well, since she got harassed over her sex life, so it is part of the issue.
Now, I'm not questioning people who want a better transparency in game journalism, it's a perfectly legitimate position.
But I have a problem with harassment since it depicts me, as a white male member of the gaming Community, as a potentially toxic person according to Polygon. And, yeah, I have a serious problem with that because it's not who I am and in the same time I won't deny an entire Community in which there is many great people because it's not who I am either.
The problem is right now, and I'm telling this because marketing and therefor image perception is my daily job, it's very hard to talk to people like Polygon to change this perception of my community because some people who labeled themselves as members of this Community violently harassed others human beings.
I deeply dislike Sarkeesian but the thing is she has being harassed and I cannot and will not accept that, even if I Don't like the person. It's not right. If I disagree with someone, I can beat his/her argument with my brain. I Don't need to threat a woman like I am some sort of stupid douche with a 11 years old brain. It's not the way to win.
She slept with 5 different guys, including her boss and Nathan Grayson of Kotaku, behind her BF's back. She continued sleeping with her BF while this was going on, which by her own definition meant that she raped him - again, that's not my definition - it's her own, based on the fact that if he'd known she was fucking 5 other doods he likely would no longer have consented to the sex he had with her. She then attempted to gaslight and emotionally manipulate him to offload blame on to him, including threatening to kill herself.
But "woman who made a game that virtually nobody cares about has sex with a bunch of guys" isn't why GamerGate happened. If that's all it was it would, at best, have been gossip that people talked about for a day before they moved on to the next piece of internet drama. It was the collusion and censorship that was going on that was the issue.
It's always amusing to me when these "journalists" try and claim it had nothing to do with ethics. Here's an archive of an article written by Ben Kuchera about Zoe Quinn back in 2014: -
https://archive.is/iuDHi
The article after it was updated: -
https://www.polygon.com/2014/3/19/5...rs-real-world-advice-support-for-dealing-with
Notice the edit at the bottom: -
The reason that many sites updated their ethics policies and started requiring their staff to disclose such relationships and financial ties is precisely because of the group that they claim has nothing to do with ethics. Funny that.....
Oh I agree with you here. Harassment should never be allowed but to Anita harassment also means disagreeing with her views over the internet. This is what she said at this UN women conference at least.
So yeah I can individually say, well I'm not like that, but it's hard to speak up for a group who has members behaving this way.
Ben Kuchera before he became a SJW said:The trend of scraping at the bottom of the social media barrel in order to manufacture outrage and mobilize the Internet lynch mob is gross on just about every possible level.
Her 'game' is not even a game & she was completely undeserving of any attention whatsoever.
. I slept Behind my former girlfriend's back one time and I've had a girlfriend who slept Behind my back. It is what it is, it's complicated and it's nobody's fault, things happen. Even I cannot explain rationally why I did it,
It would be nice if everyone was nicer to eachother.
But the truth of the matter is that no matter how many articles, no matter how many anti-mean programs, there are always people who are going to be assholes.
People need to do what humans have done prior the feelings age, sack it up and in the case of online, just block and report and let it be.
This. Exactly this.
I'm so tired of offense and outrage culture. It's mentally exhuasting.
This is what happens when real problems of day to day life go away.
Instead of worrying about a lion stalking you or where you'll get your next meal, it's now about hurt feelings and being offended.
You do not have a right to not be offended.
Ok, now it's mine turn to expose the toxicity of Polygon. Enjoy the read, folks.
http://deepfreeze.it/outlet.php?o=polygon
Ok, now it's my turn to expose the toxicity of Polygon. Enjoy the read, folks.
http://deepfreeze.it/outlet.php?o=polygon
...Incredible...
You could make an entire drama series from all this stuff I'm hearing about these gaming journalists.
This is a generation who were born and grew up through a period of real conservative backlash in the culture. From 1992 to 2010, there was a huge backlash to the progress of previous years. We saw a whitelash against racial change, and an anti-feminist backlash against women’s liberation and sexual revolution.
I don’t shy away from calling myself a “social justice warrior,” whenever people use that as a negative. Like, what’s the opposite side of that? That you’re trying to champion social injustice?
The harassers are conservatives who don’t have a multitude of end goals, while progressives are from many different sections of humanity who are asking for representation.
If you watch one of my videos and you’re new to feminism, you have to come in with an open mind. Because I’m challenging everything you’ve ever thought, and that’s complicated. It’s so much easier to go with the ideas that you’ve always heard. It’s easier to go along with the status quo.
Developers have come up to me and said, “You talked about my game in your video series — I messed up back then, and I’m never going to do that again.” That’s the best praise I can hear about my work. It means that real shifts will occur in the industry as more developers start being aware of the overt and subtle ways they are perpetuating oppression.
We need to be addressing societywide viewpoints about what equality actually means, so it’s no longer viewed as a zero-sum game.
Games companies can also take a lead from indie developers, and create more games that don’t focus entirely on violence as a solution for every problem.
Compassion is essential for thinking about these issues. When I think about the boy who feels like a social outcast at school, that’s hard, and I have sympathy for him. I understand his yearning for connection.
But the problem is that the forces that contribute to him feeling lost are tied up in patriarchy, which is making him feel disaffected. And then he finds these places online where his feelings are hardened and weaponized against women and against feminists, rather than being brought into a place where there is compassion and empathy. They don’t even look for healthy and validating ways to illuminate and understand each other.
Hate speech is a thing. YouTube, Twitch and Twitter have to deal with this.
A lot of folks in those spaces have been harassed, and are asking for action. If social media companies want to offer a space that is welcoming to everyone, they can’t stand by while people are being being harassed and hurt.
They can be doing a lot more to squash that stuff, so hateful *******s are no longer being verified or being given a platform. It needs to happen way sooner than later.
I’ve been involved in doing this for a number of years, and I think it will get worse before it will get better. If we’re serious about treating the problem and not just playing whack-a-mole, we really need to restructure childhood education.
We need to be talking to children about compassion, empathy, dignity and digital citizenship. We need to do it in age-appropriate ways. There are some good movements in that direction, but it’s a very long play. I don’t see any quick fixes coming from any sector, and certainly not from large corporations or from the government. It really has to come from community. We have to connect the dots.
To give them hope, I tell my students that yes, they can be the change they wish to see in the world. But knowing the history of this country, this isn’t anything new we’re talking about.
So if I have to go on record, I’d rather be on record saying that yes, things are getting better — yes, the new technologies can help us to call out and see these injustices. And yes, we can be better informed and educated, and we can treat each other better.
But I can’t say that with confidence. I’m sorry.
Nevertheless, yes, it all starts with people contributing more than "get over it," "so what," "grow a thicker skin," "deal with it" that pervades this thread--toxic masculinity.
My own problem with Zoe Quinn is the fact she isn't (or wasn't) even a real dev.
Specifically - to respond to the text and further discussion:
**editing for clarity** My repeating of your words below was supposed to be in actual quote signs. they're not there.
It's the same advice of a different generation, though. 'get over it,' 'so what,' 'grow a thicker skin,' 'deal with it' was helpful to me, and the best advice around when I was growing up.
Now, it's phrased differently, and more interactive, "take a few minutes for yourself" "process why you feel that way" , hell: "stuipid people say stupid things"
To take things that have been said for at least forty years and suddenly rebrand them as toxic masculinity seems to me to make the same argument as men are inherently bad for existing and that doesn't seem to sit well with me.
At the very least, when I have said similar things to people around me, both professionally and at home with my kids, my intention surely wasn't to be toxic to the person whom with I was speaking.
"Toxic Masculinity", at least the way Phoenix has used it, is nothing more than excuses to be coddled by everyone around you. Thousands of years we have seen the same phrases used in different ways, "Learn to deal with it on your own", "Sticks and Stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you", etc. Why is it only *now* they have become an issue? Because these past few generations have become more coddled and whiny than ever before.