The latest brilliant plan by the GamerGaters to bring gaming industry corruption publications that say mean things about them to their knees?
OPERATION KRAMPUS, which is literally a plan to RUIN CHRISTMAS by … boycotting every game maker that continues to send review copies of games to the ever-growing list of game-related publications that the GamerGaters have decided aren’t sufficiently adoring towards the GamerGate Revolution.
No, really:
![OPERATION KRAMPUS The Leader of Gamergate 10/13/14 (Mon) 16:56:46 ID: 15d7f7 No.104068[Last 50 Posts][Watch Thread] OPERATION KRAMPUS Winter is coming, and with it the holiday sales rush. We are two months into #GamerGate, advertisers continue to withdraw, but the gaming websites have issued no apology and continue to survive. It's time to escalate. People have said from the beginning that if this drags out until winter, it will affect games sales and force the hand of developers. It is time to assure that. The operation is twofold: 1) A complete boycott of games made by companies who send review codes/copies to anti-gamer publications. Gamers are under attack by the gaming websites. The developers cannot support both, and anything done by developers that allows these websites to thrive is a show of support. Contact the PR departments of the game companies. Let them know that we are angry and offended. Tell them that we will not support companies who work with the websites that have attacked us. 2) Spread the word to holiday shoppers. Flood #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday with pro-#GamerGate messages. Let holiday shoppers know which companies advertise on anti-consumer gaming websites and that they should not buy from those companies. Provide alternative places for holiday shoppers to make their purchases. Continue contacting advertisers with OPERATION DISRESPECTFUL NOD as before, but spread the word to other customers as well. The message needs to be crystal clear: Support people who attack your customers and your customers will no longer support you. First step is to collect information. Compile a list of companies who send review codes/copies to Kotaku, Polygon, and the like and how to contact their PR departments. Then let the emails fly. This will be our winter campaign.](https://manboobz.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/krampus.png)
Happily, I suspect that the GamerGaters’ master plan is simply too ridiculous to succeed. Because, seriously? The ever-expanding list of publications and websites they want to destroy consists of a rather large portion of all gaming media, not to mention pretty much every other non-gaming publication that’s written about GamerGate.
Here’s an incomplete list of the websites and publications that the GamerGaters are trying to boycott:
Kotaku; Polygon; Destructoid; Rock, Paper, Shotgun; The Escapist; Motherboard; IGN; GameSpot; Gamasutra; Gameranx; PCGamer.com; Xbox 360: The Official Xbox Magazine; Total Xbox; Gameplanet; Gizmodo; TechCrunch; Ars Technica; VICE; The Daily Dot; Badass Digest; The Daily Beast; Raw Story; The Mary Sue; Salon; BuzzFeed; Uproxx; Paste Magazine; Wired; The New Yorker; Cracked; Mic; xoJane; The Verge; Gawker; Valleywag; Defamer; Lifehacker; Deadspin; Screamer; io9; Sploid; Jalopnik; Paging Dr. NerdLove; RationalWiki; TV Tropes.
Now, granted, Dr. NerdLove and The New Yorker don’t exactly publish a lot of video game reviews, but do GamerGaters really think they can stop game makers from sending review copies to IGN, Gamespot, PCGamer, the offical Xbox magazine, The Escapist, and Kotaku? That seems about as likely to happen as movie studion forbidding critics from the New York Times and Entertainment Weekly and the AV Club from seeing their films.
I guess the open question isn’t so much whether OPERATION KRAMPUS will bring the eeeevill game sites and/or companies to their knees — seems a tad unlikely — but whether the GamerGaters’ collective tantrum will throw a wrench in game sales this holiday season and basically ruin Christmas for everyone in the games biz anyway.
But hey, there’s no reason any of this has to ruin Christmas for me. See, for some reason I’m not on this GamerGate list of baddies yet, as far as I know, so I would like to encourage all game makers out there to send me all their extra review copies and codes. I won’t review any of the games in question, because that’s not what I do, and also I suck at most games, but at least it won’t get the GamerGaters mad at you.
Merry Christmas!
H/T — @EffNOVideoGames
By the way: the RationalWiki article is coming along in leaps and bounds, and is already a very popular page. (Don’t read the talk page, though.) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gamergate I think we’ve got most of the record of events down, but if there’s anything important missing do please add it, with a reference.
The GamerGhaziers were spamming the @rationalwiki twitter trying to get RW’s attention for their IMPORTANT CAUSE. Welp, they got their wish!
Looks like they’ve put themselves on the line. Time to find out whether they’re the big powerful demographic that they think they are, or whether the times they are a-changing.
As for me, I’ll be buying games as usual this Christmas season. Since I’m buying games for little girls, I’m more than happy to support anyone that wants to broaden vidya games horizions.
@greyskye
I 100% stand behind my opinion that if they actually cared about game journalism, and were working cogently toward cleaning it up, that is a perfectly OK thing towards which to devote one’s energy.
This is a new addition to your position, and no, it’s not okay to destroy someone’s life over a game. Or, in fact, over most things.
I am not in the business of judging someone else’s cause. The same argument you make here were leveled against Rebecca Watson during the elevatorgate explosion. It wasn’t fair then and it isn’t fair now.
It is doubly unfair here because it’s a red herring: game journalism is not, and never has been, something GGers care about. The problem is not the magnitude of the issue; it’s that they don’t give two shakes about this issue, as evinced by the fact that what steps they are actually taking or propose to take (such as this ill-conceived boycott) are completely ineffective toward the resolution thereof.
These stupid “operations” complete with code names will never not remind me of a bunch of 8-year-olds stockpiling water balloons in a treehouse.
I hope they have patches, or at least flair, to denote how many tours of duty they’ve done in the petulant Internet spite battalion.
They wanna boycott TV Tropes, really? What the hell does TV Tropes even have to do with “gaming journalism”, aside from having articles about video games?
Curse these jerks for tainting the image of good ol’ Krampus.
Also, I thought Gamergate had no leader and therefore nobody could be criticized for asshole behavior? But now someone’s claimed to be leader? Okay, whatever dudes.
Also, trololol, boycotting TVTropes.
Yeah dudes. Good luck with that.
… And I just realised the irony in them claiming that this whole mess is because they’re “Fighting for justice in journalistic ethics” and then turning around and calling anybody who disagrees with their behaviour “Social justice warriors.”
@greysky I would think that gaming being a thing of the wonderful whacky weird World Wide Web serious gamers would ignore the hype machine of “official” sites / magazines and depend more on word or mouth from other gamers and viral buzz. More to the point you would not care about the politics of a journalist or what kind of dirty deeds s/he might be involve in. If the journalist has a good record of picking franchises you like then you will take them seriously. If on the other hand a journalist is picking turkeys, you will not take them seriously. Seriously, payola has been around since the days of vacuum tubes and a thing called radio.
That this has escalated to the point that law enforcement has to take threats seriously is ridiculous. That women have been driven from their home is beyond ridiculous.
I don’t like them using Krampus. Krampus is awesome, these toolsheds are not.
Yep.
I never heard of krampus so I had to look him up. Okay so he’s not the devil.
Cloudiah- There’s a reason it reminds you of that. Because a lot of these gg halfwits hav been keeping lists like ta for yars. Every single imagined slight is the sort of thing they cling to and stew over for years. Now they finally have the chance to take those lists out and act on them while pretending it’s all part of a righteous crusade.
So basically they’re demanding that the gaming companies not promote their games right before the biggest buying period? Yeah, that’s going to happen.
Has anyone heard anything that supports Krampus’s claim that some advertisers have withdrawn from game journals to appease the GamerGaters? Just, you know, so I know which games I’m not going to buy this Christmas.
@Policy of Madness – yay we stand behind our opinions, that’s great.
Also you say I added “destroying peoples lives over”. I point out that “while they literally ruin the lives and careers of people who did nothing wrong.” is in my 2nd post. So… no, I didn’t add that.
I actually have no idea why you’re picking apart my posts. I’m against Gamergate, it’s bullshit. They don’t actually care about ethics in journalism, it’s a veil to excuse and obfuscate vicious attacks against individuals. And even if they did, the way they’re going about is insane and a gigantic waste of energy and time that’s causing much more harm than good.
Causes, they’re doing it wrong.
@Belladonna993: Intel withdrew advertising from GamaSutra. When the world called them out on it, they issued a press release reassuring everyone they totally didn’t support vicious misogynistic attacks on people! Except with their money, of course.
Belladonna993 – There is exactly no evidence of it occurring, there has definitely been some game developers that have spoken out in support of GG but because the way most games are created, first being made in a development studio and then distributed through a publisher, there has been no real evidence of publishers treating GG as anything more than another gamer tantrum that will blow over. I imagine there’s been some smaller studios that have pulled review copies but larger triple A studios know that games boycots inevitably fizzle out.
Basically the only games that’d be hurt by this proposed boycot would be smaller, indie games. You now the one’s that most “gamers” say don’t receive enough exposure.
So, they plan on bringing the gaming industry to its knees by…convincing people not to buy video games as Christmas presents if the manufacturers of those games sent review copies to the most popular gaming magazines and sites out there?
Isn’t that, like, all of the videogames, basically? Especially the most popular ones that everyone’s going to want?
Ok, well, good luck with that, guys.
ZOMG THE EVIL SJWS ARE DECLARING WAR ON CHRISTMAS!!! WE MUST TELL BILL O’REILLY TO SPREAD THE NEWS BEFORE THE EVIL SJWS CORRUPT OUR MANLY VIDYAGAMES WITH THEIR ICKY COOTIES!!!1!
Seriously, I won’t be the least bit surprised
ifwhen Bill “War On Christmas!!!” O’Reilly throws himself on the bandwagon in the same of Saving Christmas From The Evil Femmunist Libtards. To which I shall inevitably say, “O’Really?”And once the Fox News Conservatives are on board, they might even use #GamerGate to reverse something they’ve been on the losing end of for some time now: #StopRush. Namely, a counter-boycott to force the videogame companies to advertise on Rush Limbaugh and in this way reverse the so far very successful #StopRush boycott. There could be a quid-pro-quo involved, even: Limbaugh pledges to support GamerGate, and the Gaters declare jihad against #StopRush. Easy as that.
Like I said, the MRM’s ultimate goal (besides of course abolishing women’s rights) is to get into the conservative mainstream through Fox News. That’s why Esmay was on the Detroit Fox station during that little AVFM get-together.
Be careful what you ask for…
I mean, how do they expect consumers to decide what to buy if there are no reviews? Are they just supposed to walk into a store and play pin the tail on the donkey with whatever happens to be on the shelves?
Ah, so this is basically what my mother would call a “dog in the manger” style tantrum. “IF WE CAN’T HAVE GAMES JOURNALISM NO ONE CAN HAVE GAMES JOURNALISM.”
I also think they are severely over-estimating how much “holiday shoppers” are going to give a fuck about GamerGate. (Hint: it is none of the fucks). Because, you know, holiday shopping is when you buy gifts for other people in your life, which by and large means that the holiday market for videogames are confused parents/relatives/partners looking for “the Grand Theft Auto” for the latest Playbox. I know this, because my parents were those people for most of my teen years. The idea of my Dad studiously researching corruption in gaming journalism before buying my Christmas present is an hilarious image though. THANKS GAMERGATE.
So, I was under the impression that GamerGaters represent a very small portion of gamers overall. Therefore, when their boycott is unsuccessful, they will be proving to gaming industry that there are not many GamerGaters and that they are not particularly influential. This, in turn, will mean that the industry will be LESS likely to cater to their whims and desires.
Bravo, guys! You found a way to prove your insignificance and ensure that no one listens to you. Not exactly the best way to promote your cause (whatever it may be).
I got back into gaming (however slightly) because of Let’s Plays. Even if they aren’t technically ‘reviewing’ the game, I often learn a lot about it!
Could this be the turning point at which the Gaters discover that they are, in fact, a numerically and demographically insignificant group of squalling malcontents?
Or will they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and retreat to the Treehouse of Solitude to congratulate each other on their stunning victory?*
*In that attention was paid.
Also, trololol, boycotting TVTropes.
Yeah dudes. Good luck with that.
Comrades, you do not understand TV Tropes’ owner, Fast Eddie. Twice he went on a trope page censorship frenzy when Google Ads cut off his sole source of income. TVT fork All The Tropes has the lowdown here: https://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/The_Situation https://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/The_Second_Google_Incident
If the #Gits can somehow cause a Third Google Incident and get it connected with GamerGate the way they want in the minds of Fast Eddie and his banhammer-happy chief enforcer Fighteer, TV Tropes will be theirs. That’s pretty much why All The Tropes forked in the first place.
Trust me, considering the exact kind of tool Fast Eddie is, if he lets GamerGate into his hugbox, he’s theirs.