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
I made this the other day but this Krampus news just helps make my point:
https://twitter.com/Chaltab/status/521462606251687937
Oh new GG strategy. Did they remember to hit ‘save’ before they tried to execute it?
My best guess is that 85% of my immediate and extended family members are avid gamers. This year, every gamer is getting games from us for Christmas and I’m encouraging everyone I know to do the same. Not only will it be fun thwarting the efforts of the GGers, shopping will be a breeze!
These gamers are a bunch of cry babies. Is funny they think corporation will sabotage their cash cow for this whine fest.
@ JM
The funny thing about this is: I don’t remember ever basing my identity in gaming. I played games since before I got my first computer – we assembled at my friend’s place, who was the only one with a Commodore 64, and played Lemmings and some Indiana Jones-like thing I don’t remember the name of. Then I got my first PC and traded packs of up to 20 3.5″ with my schoolfriends. We played games just because we liked them, it was just always a normal thing for us to do during the 90s. We were a bit nerdy, but didn’t see ourselves that way. We also played all kinds of games, because there weren’t that many to go around and you played what you got from other people. I stopped around 2003 because I prepared my masters’ thesis and because I didn’t have the money. Only in 2012, I returned to games because my girlfriend introduced me to gog and steam, and I love the many creative and beautiful things that are out there. In between those dates, something has changed (or maybe I wasn’t confronted to it before). This “gamer” identity revolves around games that I never considered worthy of my attention. Wolfenstein was some obscure thing that someone showed to me once, not really fun to play, but Civilization, System Shock, King’s Quest, Discworld, Baldur’s Gate, even Warcraft and Command & Conquer, or Battle Isle and Incubation were interesting games to me (and my friends), so I think I have an eclectic taste that covers several genres. My girlfriend is a fanatic adventure gamer since the 90s, and she finds a lot of websites that cater to only these. My little sister only recently told me that she had surreptitiously always played “my” games on “my” computer when I wasn’t there (which I answered by buying her the newest games she might like for birthdays and such). The three of us talk about games, we give each other games as presents, and follow fanatically the news about what, for example, Jane Jensen is up to.
“Gamers”, on the other hand, seem to be people who excel at FPS’s that are as simple as they are militaristic and ridiculously graphic. It’s not even that they don’t represent the majority of people who play games anymore.
They never have.
Glad someone posted about the Marc Lepine-style threats against Anita and USU. Fucking appalling.
I’m not sure there’s anything they could have done that would have made it as clear who they are and what their motivations are than threatening to replicate the Lepine massacre.
In terms of how they’ll be perceived by the general public who haven’t been paying attention to any of the stuff on Twitter and so on, I mean. “Give us what we want or we’ll go shoot random female students” really does send a clear message, it just isn’t the one they intended to send.
Wait, those idiots are threatening to NOT visit most of my favorite websites?
This is a most wonderful gift!
I don’t play games as I use to but I’m thinking…this christmas I will pick up gaming again.
Any suggetions?
I haven’t read all of the comments, but this popped up on my radar today:
http://qz.com/279823/nerd-culture-is-destroying-silicon-valley/
It seems like an earnest reflection by someone who’s not generally an ally (he uses the term “social justice warrior”).
There seem to be more attempts at honest appraisals like this popping up.
Perhaps I’m being overly optimistic – like many here, I was a nerd when it was still a reason for ostracization and I’m incredibly saddened to see what segments of “my tribe” have become – but I still have hope that this putrid bile bubbling up from GG may help some to see the rot.
didn’t know there was a bunch of people on this site who don’t see a problem with a child abuse mascot…
@ justabrowngirl
I don’t know what you are into, but I would recommend to look around on gog.com. GOG means “Good Old Games”, they have many ports of old games that you might like to revisit, but also new (mostly indie) games, most for reasonable prices. All easily downloadable and no DRM.
More concrete:
Adventure: Moebius, Gray Matter, Black Mirror series, Broken Sword 5, anything from Wadjet Eye Games
Strategy: Xenonauts (the better X-Com remake), Nexus, Bionic Dues
RTS: AI Wars
4X: Civilization V (or even IV: Colonization, there are some interesting mods trying to integrate the killing of native americans and the Atlantic slave trade), Distant World (this one ridiculously complex, but fun!), even Dwarf Fortress (although I still haven’t got the grip on that one. You literally need to read a book to understand it)
RPG: Divinity: Original Sin, To the Moon
Action RPG: Bastion, Transistor
Puzzle: Hexcells, Jelly no Puzzle, SpaceChem
Shooter: BioShock series
what have I forgotten?
Sorry about the garbled posts, it’s very late here and I’m a bit drunk.
Thanks Bernardo, I’ am street fighter, resident evil kind of girl but I do like the oldies…I would look into it
What genres do you like?
I do like action adventures and fantasies but i have been out of the loop for a few years now. The last game I play was Abe’s oddysee, if you need a reference point.
They’re boycotting Child’s Play. Who the hell looks at a charity meant to make sick kids happy and says “Oh yes, this is a terrible thing we no longer want to exist”?
Gamergate becomes more and more bizarre every time I look at it.
@justabrowngirl
The Portal series. Everybody likes the Portal series.
M. Justice Ranger (sorry for shorting your name), yes! I remember having three to 4 discs in one, It was one of my favorite game.
Which explains how someone like Vox Day wants to be able to sniff derisively and say “a woman playing Candy Crush on her iPhone is not a gamer” (actual quote). Someone who wants games to be more inclusive wants that woman to say “gosh, Candy Crush is fun! I wonder what other games there are that I could play?” And that also explains why Day has such a hate-on and obsession for John Scalzi, who says he literally writes science fiction to appeal to readers who don’t yet read science fiction. Day doesn’t want anyone inviting the undesirables into his clubhouse. And that is why he supports gamergate; as another observer said, they are the chocolate and peanut butter of misogyny and opposition to social justice.
RE: ej
I think I spent more time picking out my outfit than was strictly necessary,
You kidding? Customizing appearance was Sneak’s favorite part! Pink spiky hair and rainbow nails? Sneak’s dreamtank!
RE: justabrowngirl
this christmas I will pick up gaming again.
What platform/genres you into? If you like beat-’em-ups, Castle Crashers is a lot of fun (especially multiplayer). We like Alice: Madness Returns, which is a sequel to American McGee’s Alice, a platformer with psychological horror trappings.
I love how most of these have nothing to do with video games, and a couple are wikis.
LBT, i have been out of the loop for a while but those sound like fun ( I did play a lot of Spyro and final fantasy in my days). Thanks for all the great suggestions.
Re: GG boycotting TVTropes, it’s probably because the forums banned all discussion of GamerGate. Which is pretty heavy-handed, but whenever it came up, the discussion went toxic very quickly and spread to and dominated threads for other issues.
The same thing happened to the Feminist Frequency thread, but I haven’t heard of Anita Sarkeesian fans calling for a feminist boycott of the site. Most people seemed to recognize that it wasn’t really possible to have a reasoned discussion on FemFreq there, shrugged, and went elsewhere to talk.