Virginia Kruta writing on Dana Loesch’s site on #Gamergate.
#GamerGate is essentially the backlash, fueled by gamers themselves, against a collusion between game developers and certain gaming journalists to promote specific games based on their political value rather than merit.
I’ll add a simple example that doesn’t quit fit the ‘political’ narrative:
The newest Simcity came out in early 2013. It sold for around $80. The city simulation genre has millions of fans, most not normally known as ‘gamers’. It’s a concept that crosses from the traditional gaming enthusiast to the people just wanting to idle away some time. The game was unplayable on release and for at least two months after. It still hasn’t lived up to the hype that Electronic Arts payed for. Magazines were filled with glowing reviews, multi-page infomercials. The hype was unbelievable. “Finally a successor to the 11 year old Simcity 4!”, etc.
This is the Metacritic page. Look at the difference in reviews from the Critics vs the Users. One group reaped benefits from EA’s largess and the other group payed EA for the privilege of having a crap game.
The eulogy? EA shut down the Maxis studio responsible for Simcity 2013 in March. Cities: Skylines from developer Colossal Order and published by Paradox has taken the throne of city simulations, and they are doing it for around $30.
I could have gone pro years ago, but unfortunately life got in the way and I had to work for a living instead.
The Social Justice Warriors tried to take on a bunch of kids who literally fight dragons every day. They spend hours learning tactics and fighting evil, so this is nothing.
The word “literally” takes another body shot, figuratively speaking.
Do you take an arrow to the knee Knight 99? 🙂
Most of the analysis (including this one, sorry Lance) misses the point.
Game journalism has always been sycophantic. Everyone involved in the gaming industry knows this. That certain publishers, designers, or games get good reviews regardless of what crap they turn out because they have a special relationship with the console manufacturer is a known quantity and has been since before the days of Official Playstation Magazine (c. 1997, so longer than most GamerGaters have been alive).
#GamerGate is 100% political, because gamers have been aggressively not caring about transparently BS reviews since, well, ever. What’s really going on here is that video gaming is going through a massive transition that’s going to look an awful lot like the death of the hobby to people emotionally invested in it. SJWs have latched on to video gaming just like they’ve latched on to tabletop RPGs and SF lit and similar geek entertainments that are also “dying” in the sense that there’s no big money to be made in them any more. They’re parasites that only become a problem when the host is no longer healthy. If any of these hobbies were making money hand over fist like they used to, you’d never hear from these people because the producers would be ignoring them like they used to, because they could be safely ignored. I’ve been geeking since the late 1980’s. The SJW fruitbats have always been there, they just got ignored because there was no need to pander to them.
The real takeaway from GamerGate should be that SJW invasions are a sign of a dying industry or business model. People who have invested a lot of time and money into a hobby that’s about to dry up and blow away are going to react emotionally to the last remnants of their hobby being defined by outsiders or activists that look like they’re trying to hasten it’s destruction.
Perfect counter-example? The adult board games hobby (cf boardgamegeek.com). Nobody in that field is whining about privilege or intersectionality or safe spaces, because when they do they get shouted down by the people actually spending money on board games.
Sorry to disappoint, Daniel, but I agree.
You see the same thing in movies and TV. Why are we assaulted with reproductions of classics? Because it’s safe and doesn’t cause any waves.
Exactly. Broadcast entertainment is going through the same transition. What I find interesting about services like Netflix and Hulu and HBOGo &c., is that it will actually be harder for activists to hijack the industry because digital streaming gives the distributor perfect knowledge about who’s consuming their products, when, for how long, and in what sets. No market research, no Nielsen ratings, no TV diaries, no “why, of course we watch PBS exclusively from 8 until 10 on weeknights, sir”.
The thing about activists is they talk a lot but they don’t spend money. It’s basically impossible for them to corrupt an industry that can run an SQL query and reply “yeah, but you don’t put money in our bank accounts, so p*ss off.”
The real takeaway from GamerGate should be that SJW invasions are a sign of a dying industry or business model.
Hmmmmm … I don’t think video games are dying off.
I think SJW infestations more represent a saturated market, where SJWs tend to eat the weakest of the producers, but the strongest producers easily outpace the SJW. The SJW can rid the world of SimCity 2013 producers, but the GTA guys are just laughing. Didn’t GTA 5 have revenues of $1B in the first two days or something?
Gaming industry is nothing like movie industry. Movie industry is dominated by Hollywood – an elitist clique that can exclude you for minor transgressions and ruin your career. Gaming industry is not. You have MMOs from Russia: World of Tanks, World of Warships, War Thunder that are excellent and readily available you have RPGs that are outdoing each other with political incorrectness: Borderlands series is a perfect example. And you get slaughter feasts where it really does not matter what sides you are on: Dying Light, Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry. Games where to survive you have to kill other players (… and eat them) like DayZ. They can’t force douchey games on people, because people will look for alternatives and there are plenty to choose from.
As for Sim City, the game was always about being a benevolent, environmentally conscious, social planner, yes this game was easy to infiltrate by SJWs.
But here is nothing SJWs can do to censor games with quotes like this:
“Oh, yeah, and since you shiver-brains evidently don’t know how to listen, I’ll say it again: stop bringing in fake Sirens. Only six Sirens can exist in the universe at any given time, and I already know of three — you’re not gonna convince me you happened to find one of the remaining three just by drawing blue tattoos on some random chick’s corpse. I will admit, it was mildly amusing the first dozen times you idiots tried it, but now my office smells like blood and marker fumes.”
“What I find interesting about services like Netflix and Hulu and HBOGo &c., is that it will actually be harder for activists to hijack the industry because digital streaming gives the distributor perfect knowledge about who’s consuming their products, when, for how long, and in what sets.”
I like to play games I have the disc for in offline mode by myself, sandbox style, and am not alone in my desire to do this.
I won’t open accounts with the online outfits because they have been hacked over and over and I avoid products with DRM that won’t allow one to play unconnected.
There are plenty of online forums where the actual gamers discuss the pros and cons of a particular game, but it seems that the business people in the marketing departments of the big game designers who don’t play games have too much say in how games are designed and care not a fig to read the forums to see what the gamers want/like/dislike.
From Cracked(pre-Gamergate): 5 Reasons the Video Game Industry Is About to Crash
http://www.cracked.com/article_20727_5-reasons-video-game-industry-about-to-crash.html
There was a discussion this week on Rush, about a different topic, but along the same thread.
The discussion was with a black woman, who was citing evidence(the TV Show “Empire”) where they are trying to ‘normalize’ homosexuality in the black community as a vehicle to promote homosexuality and pedophilia.
This IMO is another example of the PC crowd trying to change the appetite of the consumer.
In years past here, when I used to bloviate about rap music, I often said “this is the only place a young man can go to for an uncensored male perspective”(in fact Chuck D called Rap Music “the Blackman’s CNN”). I probably should have included the Video Game Culture as a Man Zone, but I digress.
Here is the bottom line, men/boys will stop playing/listening to the aforementioned media types(I will) IF the PC crowd is successful in feminizing these masculine outlets; therefore, they will not be successful, as the interests involved must maintain their bottom line.
That said, they are trying.
“Well, in games, sometimes evil is just evil. Sometimes good is just good.”
I have been thinking for some time that the Gaming industry has been responsible for teaching scientific absolutes. In that the game boundaries, defined by pecker faced programmers, represent a limit set by existing science and that the acceptable responses may easily be set by SJW types.
The easy, almost naïve, acceptance of the AGW nonsense is not happenchance.. Folks lack a interest in the mystery of real Science and are easily convinced not to question an opinion by anyone with a PhD… Not normal IMHO
“I have been thinking for some time that the Gaming industry has been responsible for teaching scientific absolutes.”
In the games I’ve played which are favorites of mine the Hero(played by me) always has to do at least some evil or even a lot of evil but it’s usually justified because I’m the Hero and doing individual acts of evil are justified because I’m saving the world or at least serving some higher purpose even if it’s just to save a family member or a member of some in-game Tribe/Guild/Companionship which is required in order to advance in the game.
For example in Skyrim one has to join the Companions of Whiterun or the Riften Thieves’ Guild to initially make money and get the training needed to save the World from Alduin World Eater which is a huge black dragon.
First task as a Companion is to beat the living schnikies out of someone and the reason is never given, first task with the Thieves’ Guild is to frame an innocent for theft by heisting a ring and then reverse pickpocketing it on him.
I seriously doubt that most people who play these games would perform a homosexual act in order to become a member of these ‘tribes’.
In Skyrim a player can become a vampire or a werewolf but I’ve never been a vampire or killed or eaten people as a werewolf and a player can’t advance up the skill tree of either without doing those things.
(in the Companions you can’t go forward if you don’t consent to receiving the werewolf curse and you have to move forward or you can’t get free combat training from the Companions and I’ve paid more than 100,000 gold septums for Greatsword training from Vilkas even before becoming the Harbinger of the Companions)
On the Wiki site about the Skyrim guide there are at present over 28 thousand pages of guides and information on the game.
Dwayne >
“Do you take an arrow to the knee Knight 99? :)”
Thanks Dwayne,
Naw it was much worse, I was campaigning in Eastern Europe, well on an EU map, a 30hr binger, and a huge hidden army of Persian War elephants attacked my line all at once!
Needless to say an hour later I sprained my right thumb trying to build pikeman. It threw me off my game for a year, and never did recover to compete again.
I’m thinking about setting up an online donation webpage to get the ol Knight back in the saddle for a retirement comeback.
All donations are welcome (Left-wing or Right-wing)I try to keep politics out of it.
“Do you take an arrow to the knee Knight 99? :)”
That’s a stock line from the main city guards of the various Holds of Skyrim.
The Dragonborn(hero) walks by a guard and the guard says, “I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow to the knee!” Gamers say it all over the internet as a throwaway line.
There’s a nip in the air, cold won’t be good for my crops.
Did you know that some crops grow better in the cold?
I’ve heard of you and your honeyed words. You’re not fooling anyone, I know Thieves’ Guild armor when I see it. If I find your hand in my pocket, I’ll cut it off!
I’m on the sidelines but note that the SJWs still have not found a way into MineCraft and if that is the case they are missing the key 8-14 male demo. Dead in the water in five years.
Have you been following the Hugos? SJWs are dead in SFF in five years too. Return of Doc Sampson and pulps on the Indie Internet will see to it.
This week they’re all swearing they will Burn Down The Hugos if the Sad Puppies keep pushing. Retards, the lot of them.