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Ah, sweet schadenfreude! The gamebros at 4chan have been insisting publicly that the whole #GamerGate campaign — you know, the vicious attacks on game developer Zoe Quinn and other women in gaming — has been a spontaneous grassroots uprising against corruption in the world of game journalism, not a targeted campaign by misogynistic 4channers and their allies to ruin the lives of Quinn and everyone even vaguely connected with or even just aligned with her.
Well, it’s just become a lot harder to make that argument with a straight face. Last night, Quinn announced that she’s been lurking in the IRC where 4chaners have been diligently and often quite deviously planning this “spontaneous” uprising. And she’s started posting screenshots that seem to offer pretty incontrovertible evidence of just how duplicitously 4channers planned every element of #GamerGate.
You can find Quinn’s tweets of these screenshots laid out neatly on this Storify page; it’s essential reading for anyone who’s been following all this.
But I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite bits.
Here, 4channers talk about trying to hack her email:
definitely no raids ever happen because of 4chan and I definitely hacked myself mmhmmm pic.twitter.com/3309AiQk3u
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
Here they spout bizarre conspiracy theory — while conspiring to hack another website.
this has pure insanity AND some illegal shit in it pic.twitter.com/rRo5KVFBhZ
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
In this screenshot — you can find the whole thing here — 4channers talk candidly about how they hope to ruin her career:
More of the same:
because this is about integrity. not revenge. not harassment. not hurting people. pic.twitter.com/rSSm4ZJG4T
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) September 6, 2014
Here some 4channers talk about #NotYourShield, a supposedly spontaneous bit of hashtag activism in which people of color — and white dudes pretending to be people of color — attack “social justice warriors” for supposedly using them as “shields” for their attack on gaming. Notice the dudes at the end talking about showing up on Twitter “as a Latino” and “in blackface” to support the campaign.
Given how damning a lot of these screenshots are, it’s hardly surprising that they freaked out when Quinn started posting her screenshots:
https://twitter.com/MsMinotaur/status/508177920687210496
Too late, dudes. Too late.
@BreakfastMan
Then why don’t you define “journalistic corruption” for me in this context? If it isn’t “giving games higher reviews than they otherwise receive for reasons unrelated to the game itself,” then what is it?
Truth. When the Rolling Stone piece on General Whatshisface came out, I remember seeing some bigwig reporter talking about what a horrible, HORRIBLE, career-ending mistake the Rolling Stone reporter had made, because he would now lose access.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622
It really made me think, at the time, about how tricky it must be to balance having access to the movers and shakers, and snitching to the public about the movers and shakers. It frustrates me that so many journalists don’t seem to remember that it’s the second part that is the REASON for the first.
@Policy of Madness: That would be an adequate definition, but from what I read and have heard from reviewers, looking at what scores games get isn’t a good way to diagnose corruption problems. IGN giving a high score to a game that the community or other critics dislike isn’t inherently proof that corruption is going on. Neither is the fact that most games get a 7 or higher proof that corruption is going on, as most outlets follow the american school-system paradigm where a 7 is “average”.
LOL Okay, you keep telling yourself that virtually every game getting a high score is proof of nothing, and that access would continue to flow to reviewers if they didn’t do that.
Breakfastman and Policy – Honestly game reviews have been a joke with most gamers for years in my experience. Inflated scores and outright lies for pay have been a pretty open secret for years. I think that’s a large part of why things like Let’s Play videos and longer form reviews have become more common. I know for my part at least I’ve always just generally found a reviewers who’s tastes seem to align with my own like say Jim Sterling or Yahtzee and give their opinions a glance before purchasing.
Of course since Quinn’s game was never reviewed by any of these “corrupt” journalist’s the whole current furor seems like a convenient excuse to crucify another woman in the games industry who dared to not behave in a way the angry gamer contingent demanded.
They remember. They just can’t do anything about it. Rolling Stone is big enough to get away with lots of honesty, and so is Katie Couric. Most journalists and outlets have room in their careers for only ONE career-ending expose. When do you write that piece excoriating the Speaker of the US House? You write it when you’ve decided you want to change fields, because no politician will speak to you after that (unless you’re Katie Couric).
@Policy of Madness: Of course it would. Good reviews help a game sell, and no reviews on launch day means less sales, because it indicates to consumers that the pub has no confidence in the game.
And “practically every game getting high scores”? If you define “over 7” as a high score, maybe. Only a couple games a year break 90 on metacritic.
@pendraegon: LPers blatantly take money to promote games on their channel, tho. How exactly is that less corrupt than the press at large?
Cloudiah: Finally, don’t know if this is the right thread, but I wanna be a Social Justice Librarian.
Try reading this short story…
http://www.ruanyifeng.com/calvino/2008/12/a_general_in_the_library_en.html
Breakfastman – In general it’s known when a LPer is being paid, and that transparency cuts down on corruption considerably. Combine that with how a LP is not a traditional review but instead gives potential customers a look at the game in action, making it harder to hide flaws behind bullshots and showing storylines in action and other such practical information I’d say it’s considerably less corrupt. While there are certainly LPers who hide their associations it’s, again from what I’ve seen, considerably less common for such under the table deals to occur.
Has anybody taken the role of Social Justice Ranger yet? I prefer ranged attacks. 😀
And yeah, this whole manufactured outrage over GamerGate is just disgusting. Glad ZQ had the strength to face that crap anonymously and publicise what the trolls were doing.
And the “not all 4channers!” stuff I’ve seen floating around today is great (by which I mean terrible). As if people calling each other slurs for setting this crap up doesn’t mean it happened…
Wasn’t there a big dust-up a couple of years back that supposedly involved publishers trying to figure out the review sites that had higher Metacritic weightings, and targeting them for bribery/flattery/cajoling/strong-arming? My memory’s hazy, but it rings a bell…
@Phoenician, Thanks, cool short story.
I’m normally a stay-at-home, don’t-bug-me type, so I think I’d like to be a Social Justice Ogress. Someone has to do the cooking, after all. I can take up my cleaver whenever necessary.
For quests, that is.
Twincats – I’d suggest troll then, much better health benefits than ogre and if you go norse with it you can even work some magic. 🙂
The advance review policies vary by industry. The film industry has press screenings and outside of extremely rare circumstances (i.e. clueless management that rarely keep their jobs), they will never, ever deny a proper journalist a press screening. They know that shit bites them in the ass. They do sometimes skip giving a film a press screening altogether, but even though that’s an obvious attempt to prevent reviewers from telling the public not to see Godawful Parody Movie #33, at least it’s not selective. The book industry is even more generous and will give ARCs to pretty much anybody with a website. I don’t know about music or television.
Video game publishers, however, use a whole slew of dirty tricks to keep the press loyal. They’ll often invite journalists to gala events, fly them over on first class, put them in expensive hotel rooms, and only let them play the game in spaces they control after doing a whole lot of schmoozing. They give journalists lots of branded gifts and a company even once gave out a whole bunch iPads (nominally because the game had some synergy between iPad and console, but they’re not fooling anybody). This is generally done for preview coverage, but I’ve read about publishers forcing journalists to go to their spaces to play their games for review as well.
Publishers will sometimes cut journalists out of this loop if they think they’re not giving them positive coverage. I don’t think many publishers are dumb enough to deny advance copies (although that was an actual, established practice pre-internet), but the threat of denying that slight taste of a rock star life is enough to mollify most of these overworked, underpaid journalists.
(Purely anecdotal, but I know a former employee of Sega. She once said Sega never leans on journalists and as a result, all their games get trashed way more than anything from Ubisoft and such. Metacritic seems to back that up.)
It’s this usage of the press as advance advertising that is the real corruption, but conveniently, most of #GamerGate ignores that to rant about people actually criticizing industry trends, demanding social (and, by extension, economic) growth, and having the gall to possess (or, heaven forbid, use) a vagina.
Side note: I was recently at the video game section of a Target. There was a video where some guy from GameSpot opens up with something to the effect “I’m (name) from GameSpot, your number one source for unbiased game coverage, and I’m here to talk about Watch_Dogs.” What followed was a blatant advertisement for the game. Not a review, not a discussion, but an adjective-filled sales pitch for the game.
My favorite word was “unbiased” because it’s kind of like Fox News and Conservapedia: if a publication goes out of their way to tell you they’re credible and trustworthy, they aren’t.
Pendraegon, are trolls green? Tall and fat are negotiable but I wanna be green.
If every game review is over a 7, then what is the point of numbers 1-6?
Game reviews are a joke.
Twincats – They are indeed green, they’re also quite tall since they’re size category large, fat is variable I’m sure I could dig up a sub-race of troll for whichever you’d prefer. Heck there’s even two headed ones so you can keep yourself company while stay at home social justicing.
The exact same thing happened with car reviews in magazines around here.
Okay then, Social Justice Norse Troll it is!
Don’t need two heads tho, I can talk to my hubby the Social Justice Mage and, of course, the Social Justice Ninja Kitty we both serve.
And they just posted all this on message boards? Did they not think anyone was going to be able to read it?
Ooh, are prestige classes allowed? Can I be a Social Justice Duelust? I always wanted to play a Duelist.
Sparky – That depends what’s your base attack at? If it’s not high enough you may need to wait a few levels. Maybe pick a few in Social Justice Rogue to round out your skills. 🙂
But Social Justice Rogue doesn’t have a full BAB progression, so it’s not a good choice if you’re going for a prestige class.
This was already debunked Zoe cherry picked or wrote them herself
notice how she only posted the OP of that 4chan post?
Because the rest are calling it a clear trap/shutting it down
But whatever like you idiots care