I’ve been working at Kotaku for nearly eight years now, and while I’ve seen some online kerfuffles over various issues in that time, I’ve never seen anything like the past two weeks.
There has been so much hate. So many angry words, so many accusations, over… what? Video games? Women in video games? People who write about video games?
It would be absurd if it hadn’t forced people out of their homes for fear of their personal safety.
There are a lot of opinions going around about this sad state of affairs at the moment, and you don’t have to travel far to find some, but if you want to read something beyond a simple recap, something more substantive, my advice – as someone horrified by the degree of hostility, bigotry and sheer inhumanity that has been on show – is to start with these two articles.
The first, by Dan Golding, is called “The End of Gamers”. “On the evidence of the last few weeks”, he writes, “what we are seeing is the end of gamers, and the viciousness that accompanies the death of an identity.”
The second, by Leigh Alexander, is called “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over.” It’s a similar piece, albeit one aimed a little more at developers. “‘Gamer’ isn’t just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use“, she writes. “Gamers are over. That’s why they’re so mad.”
“These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers — they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had.”
Note they’re not talking about everyone who plays games, or who self-identifies as a “gamer”, as being the worst. It’s being used in these cases as short-hand, a catch-all term for the type of reactionary holdouts that feel so threatened by gaming’s widening horizons. If you call yourself a “gamer” and are a cool person, keep on being a cool person.
Once you’re done here, I’ll see you next week, where we can hang out as thoughtful, considerate human beings and enjoy video games as they are, not what some folks feel they can dictate from a dark corner of the internet.
Comments
98 responses to “We Might Be Witnessing The ‘Death Of An Identity’”
“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.”
Beautifully put.
It’s why I’m against such practises as teabagging in Halo. The original meaning is lost to the ages and now “men” do it mainly to claim dominance over someone else. Even if you beat them they’re still claiming it.
I’m interested in what the “original meaning” of simulating placing one’s testicles in the mouth of a corpse was, if not dominance…
Victory in the eyes of defeat.
…Just imagined someone teabagging someones eyes on halo…
How is that different to asserting dominance?
Dominance is about power, and with the toxic masculinity problems in todays world it’s about proving that everybody is your bitch and you’re the man.
What if a girl does it
And thank god for that.
… and nothing of value was lost
Seriously. I’m me. I’m not “a gamer”. My consumer bracket is useful to marketing people, but it doesn’t put food on my table or comfort me in my dark times. I just like video games. And beer. And women. I’m also interested in what feminists have to say, have no interest at all in whats the best console or whether my mac is better or worse than a PC. I think most peoples tribes suck and I dont want to join one. When you subscribe to a lable, you give commerce a handle to control you by defining the boundaries of your experience and who you can hang with. And seriously, who wants that. Heres a label I’ll own: “An adult”. Except when I dont feel like it, of course.
I’d just like to say both of the articles linked are fairly biased to say the least. If anyone reading this is so out of the loop they don’t know whats going on, I’d advise you to look around a little more.
The so-called ‘identity’ is part of the problem. If it dies and as a result we can move forward as rational adults and decent human beings, I couldn’t care less.
Let the deranged manchildren cling to the identity if it gives them solace or helps them sleep at night.
Or lack thereof…. I think the fact that these people lack so much identity is also a large part of the problem. You might be able to go after Sam Lewis and find his details, and then alert the authorities to abuse/threats made by him. However, it is much more difficult to go after cardinal7477.
And yes, that is my name. Nice to meet you all!
I do get sick of the internet tough guys, sitting there behind a username and IP address.
I don’t care if the gamer identifier is lost. I do care however, that I can get lost in that crowd of users and abusers, then be classified as one myself due to ‘wrong place wrong time’ scenarios….
Why do we have to let a tiny minority of knuckledragging mouthbreathers take it away from us?
Why do you need your entire life to be summed up by what kind of stuff you do in your free time?
Are you a Reader, Movie Watcher, TV Guy, Cyclist, Hiker, Sex Haver, Nose Picker? The idea that you define whole people with something as simple as a Cool Kids’ Club is a big part of the problem gaming as an industry and a hobby has. It’s incredibly juvenile to hate someone for liking a different sports team or movie to you. It’s no different for any other hobby.
Why do you need to have this silly label that puts all people into one of two categories, other than for it to be exclusionary?
Well, we have rev-heads, ravers, cyclists, hikers. People do associate themselves with their favourite hobbies. I personally don’t care about football, but there are plenty of fanatics out there that will defend arbitrary colours to the death. I associate myself as a “gamer”, because at night, when I’ve done everything I need to to keep my family fed and housed, I play video games. I’ve been doing so since the VIC20 and hope to do so until the PS100.
I have a high end PC, have all the last gen consoles (I haven’t seen a compelling reason to get the new ones yet and going through 4 XB360s has taught me a lesson on early adoption) and support the gaming industry as much as possible. I see “games” like Candy Crush as a backwards step for gaming, as they are solely based on producing money for the developers and have engaged psychologists to determine optimal addiction paths. I do not consider someone who is addicted to CC as a gamer. They play an addiction, and are not open to other games. The introduction of Microtransactions is sad too.
I absolutely detest all the hatred and misogyny. I welcome anyone who wants to play the latest EA Blockbuster or indy Green light, or try any games on any console. But if someone says they’re a gamer because they play CC 10 hours a day, then they are misrepresenting themselves. They’re an addict.
I wouldn’t send death threats and insults. That’s just lame and I agree with NegativeZero on this.
Yes, that’s the answer, when someone throws a rock at you, throw rocks back. Conflict resolution at it’s best.
if your rocks are really big and bludgeon people to death then yes, the conflict is resolved 😛
Contrary to popular belief, violence solves almost any problem.
If at any point violence is not solving your problem, you probably aren’t doing it hard enough.
Sounds like wishful thinking, to me. I don’t think the problem is going away anytime soon, that we can simply ‘ride out’ the imagined death throes of a demographic about to disappear on its own. Disappear and go… where? Enlightenment? That’s… optimistic.
Games still aren’t taken seriously by a very significant portion of the community (edit: without any studies to back it up, I would still say ‘the majority of the community’), and those who DO take them seriously, those who are passionate about games as their primary hobby and interest are still ‘other’. You can call that enthusiast group whatever you want (Otaku, maybe, or some other loan-word), it’s not going to change much. Particularly if only the socially-conscious are doing it to draw a line in the sand.
I don’t know (or especially care) if that’s good or bad or whatever, I think that’s just what is and will be for a long time yet.
What you said, just to add my 2 cents: And when that generation outgrows, learns and moves forward, there will be another to take its place.
For the sake of balance, here’s Total Biscuit’s piece on the matter.
http://blueplz.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/this-game-supports-more-than-two-players.html
Thank you for posting this again. It needs to be read. Not because it advocates a specific point of view, but because it uses the right tone to do so.
The number of faces anyone wears makes them far more complex than any one word can convey. I’m a gamer, a geek, a programmer, a hobbyist mathematician, a guy, a son, a cousin, a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger, a random on the internet, an employee, a colleague, a reader, a consumer, a technophile, a classicist, a music-lover, a turophile, and so on. I am more than what any one face would imply me to be, but I am still a lover of games. Whatever term we use, gaming is part of my life, and that’s not going to change any time soon. Geeks reclaimed their word, why can’t we?
Every community has its share of vocal arseholes; what needs to be retired is the stereotype that these people cause to persist. Or, we need a more specific word for “these obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers,” because they certainly don’t speak for me. But we already have one, don’t we? Why not just say “vitriolic arseholes aren’t our target demographic” and be done with it. Don’t destroy “gamer” because of a small subset of morons – start doing that, and we’ll be on a path that destroys half the adjectives in our language.
Turophile, eh?
Vocabulary++
I had a friend who used to use that as a screen name…it’s pretty much the only reason I know what it means.
Is it a lover of Turok?
I think the original word I learnt for it was “fromagophile,” but that seems even more disused, and is a bit of a mouthful, too. Besides, “turos” is an Old Greek word for cheese, whereas “fromage” comes from Latin “forma” which more describes the way it is moulded than what it actually is. Hmm… I guess I should add hobbyist etymologist and linguaphile to that list, too. 😛
I don’t eat cheese I am lactose intolerant.
How do you live 🙁
More bacon, it saves everyones life
You got it!!!
I nearly hung myself 15 times I tells ya!
What is worse is I was not born intolerant so I know how good pizza, ice cream, tacos ***starts to cry***
Hard cheeses have very little lactose. Cheddar, swiss, mozzarella, parmesan and so on are all very low in lactose. (Mozzarella is classed as a hard cheese even though it’s not very hard. I assume it has to do with how it’s processed.) For example, according to Wikipedia cheddar cheese has 0.07% (less than one part in ten thousand) lactose.
This assumes you’re dealing with real cheese that’s actually been aged.
My understanding is that the lactose is used up by the microbes that make the cheese … cheesy. Soft cheeses aren’t aged and so the microbes have no opportunity to use up the lactose.
There are also enzyme pills you can buy which offset the lactose. My brother (who is lactose intolerant) uses these to eat regular ice cream. Discovering these made him very happy as he was getting thoroughly sick of lactose-reduced yoghurt…
I am quite seriously sorry for your loss.
I don’t identify as a gamer any more. Most of the people at Kotaku AU are lovely, but overall as a species – it’s not something I want to think of myself as part of.
Not stopping me playing games or anything, but I’m definitely losing that particular tribal facet.
These days I go by manchild.
I was reading an old tech magazine I found at work the other day. It was from 1994, and in a piece about the new marvel “Internet”. It said, “The internet will eventually give everyone a voice!” More like give everybody a soap box and a smoke screen. Ugh.
I’ve read the articles listed above, and I’m actually pretty pleased to see that the Kotaku community’s comments were really civil and pretty well articulated. I’m proud of us! And maybe I’m naive, but I’d like to think we’re all genuine here – we mean what we say, and then don’t go and troll or say horrible things elsewhere.
I asked Mark about this once, asking if the quality of the community was the result of careful admin pruning. I’ll really have to hunt for the response, but I think it was along the lines of, ‘not that much moderation at all.’ And while it could be that there’s some cultural differences between Oz and the US, it’s also perhaps the smaller size of the community (both KotakuAU and Australian gaming enthusiasts in general) tending toward easier self-policing and self-censure. People are pretty quick to report or downvote into oblivion the more egregious examples of trolling or being foul as an outlet, rather than ignorance. And ignorance… folks tend to try and argue/discuss. Because I dunno, hope springs eternal?
But every now and then you’re bombed by downvotes for the stupidest reasons.
True enough. A lot of folks have different opinions on how they should be used, and there’s definite overlap in the results.
Sony fanboys….
Okay that was just trolling….. but they ask for it…
I honestly think the MS fanboys pick the biggest fight and I think it comes from Yanks being pro-american blahzay about their console combined with a immature demographics being around for the COD heyday met with PS3 missteps early on. When I was a kid this stuff didn’t happen to that degree.
I don’t see as much crap from PC/Sony/Nintendo ‘fanboys’.
Aussie sites like this and even UK ones are far less volatile all round yet go to the comments on IGN and yuck. So maybe it is nothing to do with manufacturer/platform?
Just what I have seen though. It is all subjective and really, who cares right? All we can do is lead by example and make it not a thing till that becomes the norm.
As a gaming news enthusiast I enjoy reading KotakuAU primarily because of the community. There’s often extra detail on a topic or an interesting point within the discussion. As an American, I rarely see an equivalent level of rational conversation on our US news/media sites. It’s refreshing to visit communities like this.
Kotaku is one of the few sites where I would like to meet the people in real life.
There has always been a great feel to the community even if I don’t always agree with everyone.
I’ve been a member for awhile, but I only just started commenting in the last few weeks – I was really worried at first. Everytime I saw a notification I was like, “Oh no, someone thinks I said something mean,” or “Someone is going to be say something horrible to me… ”
But it’s never that. I’ve been so delighted by the community here.
I totally understand. I was similar wen I first started commenting.
It’s definitely great to see how welcoming everyone is here.
It gives you some hope for the gaming community at large.
Yeah don’t be fooled, it’s all cannibalism at the get togethers. They call them MEATS for a reason!
We do actually meet up in real life. I started reading the regular ‘Talk Amongst Yourselves’ (TAY) comment thread, and saw people were organizing meet-ups (which we call ‘meats’) and I got invited along, and I went, and everyone was pretty damn cool and definitely worth hanging with, so whenever I’ve got some meatspace time and the stars align, I do just that. There’s some pretty cool people there. It’s not as hard or scary as it seemed at all.
My girlfriend and I met through one of the meet-ups arranged here about two years ago. We now live together.
When we were living in Sydney, we had a regular group of people come to our apartment and play board games. Most of them came from this site.
This community is pretty rad.
Wait I’m an asshole because I call myself a gamer? Then though I have never attacked or threaten someone online, yeah that makes sense.
It’s that whole thing of one bad apple spoils the cart. Same thing with being a feminist – people think it automatically makes you a man-hating bunny-boiler :/
congratulations, you too have completely missed the point of these articles! here is your star sticker for the day.
in a less obnoxious tone, no. you’re not. they’re saying that there is a tribal culture around the word gamer, a particular identity that comes with it that is rooted in the history of the medium. one of being an outsider, who endures being attacked for liking games, who bands with other gamers with in jokes and mutual enjoyment of games. it’s also very much perceived as a boys club, for various reasons.
so when some games are criticised for things by ‘outsiders’ (often decried as social justice warriors) who demand change, things that aren’t perceived by the ‘gamers’ who fit that in-club identity as being a problem, they lash out. but what the articles are saying that identity is no longer either an accurate depiction of people who play games today, or relevant when it comes to audience demographics.
the old ‘gamer’ identity is dead, and that’s a good thing. once people have gotten over that, ‘gamer’ can lose its negative connotations, that incidents like this cause it to have.
so don’t get angry or feel like you’re being attacked when you’re not. actually read the materials and don’t jump to conclusions based on a summary article here.
While that’s a very valid point to pose – albeit not one that I strongly agree with, as I mentioned above – I don’t blame @arnchise for taking offense. I mean… let’s take a look at this.
It’s very weaselly in its tone, a casual, “…no offense,” after something greiviously offensive. Such as lumping gamers in together with the special breed of ****s responsible for unthinking derision and death threats.
“Gamers are scum dying out – oh, but I don’t mean YOU, you’re OK. Just all the other people who identify themselves as the same thing you do.” You don’t just attack a group hiding under the same label you identify as without coming up with some OTHER label for them.
It’s exactly the same as giving yourself some bullshit ‘out’ when talking about terrorism by saying, “And when I say ‘muslim’ I’m using that as short-hand for ‘muslim extremists’. So if you’re muslim and not an extremist, keep on being cool, I’m not talking about you.”
It’s rude as fuck and I’m surprised he hasn’t been called out on that more.
EDIT:
Actually, reading that with some word-substitution? I’m not OK with this article. Let me replace the word ‘gamer’ with ‘muslim’ and tell me if you’re OK with this AT ALL. I will show you in brackets the very few words I replace.
Tell me that’s an OK paragraph to read in this day and age, at all excusable. Tell me if you think that wouldn’t PISS OFF any muslim. But the same thing with different labels shouldn’t piss off gamers, because we have some extremists too?
Nothing of consequence to add, just posting to say…
BOOM! @transientmind strikes again.
Edit: I should clarify, your posts are well worded and articulate. I enjoy reading them. It helps that I thoroughly agree with them. 🙂
Damn I up-voted you before you made the edit but now I can’t up-vote you a second time for the edit/addition.
you can down vote him, then upvote him again!
this is a good comment, and I think I’ve come around to this view because of it. If only upvoted comments were more visible at the top of comment sections.
Thanks. That means a lot.
I don’t think I’ve ever been so upset by an article that I signed up to a website just to post. If what these articles say are to be believed, I, a gamer for my entire life of 23 years, with memories tracing back to when I was four of playing Bubble Bobble on the Sega, am no longer the target audience for video games. And that upsets me.
And so if I complain, if I say ‘Excuse me, I’m a gamer and I would like to see more games made for me and if the entire medium shifts away from me as its target audience I will probably lose my interest in games’, then I’m an ‘obtuse shitslinger’ and a ‘wailing hyper-consumer’ who is ‘threatened by gaming’s widening horizons’.
What industry has a fanbase as abusive, aggressive and abrasive as gamers? The same industry that denies its association with its audience and calls them names. You can try to sugar coat it and tell me that I’m a ‘cool person’, but I think you’re missing the point here. They are encouraging people to stop making games for me, someone who has been gaming for nineteen years of his life, and dismissing any complaints I might have as being a part of a rebelling vocal minority.
I’m a human being. I’m a gamer. I’m a consumer of a product or service I pay for. You do not get to treat me like I don’t matter. I would have thought Kotaku of all websites would understand that, instead of providing attention and coverage to people who would prefer I didn’t exist.
Anyone else seen or read about the recent Zoe Quinn thing?
I’ve read both sides of the story regarding her game being greenlit, and its troubling to say the least. And nothing necessitates threats or violence, but I can understand why people would be unhappy about it.
I’ve read it pretty extensively. I understand why the compromised integrity of gaming journalists would be made public knowledge, but dredging up all of the other personal things between the couple (by the boyfriend) was just vitriolic and really unnecessary. The way people made death threats against Quinn would think we’re back in the friggin’ middle ages when women were stoned to death for this sort of thing.
Thing is even if she did do it, he used 4chan. As far as I’m concerned that means he’s lost. Those scum are the new godwin’s rule, you invoke them and you lose no matter what your evidence is.
Yeah, I didn’t even want to mention the personal stuff in my comment but there you go. The video that’s been going around is informative in parts, but really biased as well… Makes it hard to try and form an opinion unless you dig around.
And I find it strange she’s being lumped in with Anita, who is AT WORST just a biased reporter with good intentions, but Zoe would be a lying, exploitative scumbag. Which has absolutely nothing to do with her gender, just her actions and personality.
I have been in the deep end – I have seen so much.
I like this website so I don’t really care that you guys got called out, but the fact is you got called out…. deal with it, accept it, don’t pretend it’s the death of anything or that all men are sexist. I do totally agree that everything has been blown way out of context, in the end this is still a great source for gaming news, so keep on keeping on.
It’s not so much the death of an identity, but the lack of one which gives the vocal and foul mouthed minority it’s strength. Those people that are willing to hide in the shadows and pull people down for their own enjoyment. Disgraceful.
Sometimes I try to think about the people behind the comments, and man, I am willing to bet that like 98% of them would avoid confrontation in person – especially with the people they berate online.
Which makes it all the more perplexing. I’m pretty non-confrontational in person, generally, and I wouldn’t type anything in a comments section or forum that I wouldn’t say to someone in real life. I’d rather keep the peace, knowing that everyone has a different opinion. I only generally speak up against ignorance (on the net and IRL), which people tend to spout under the guise of freedom of speech. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but an educated one will always win out over one formed through ignorance and fear.
As I’ve been saying for decades, we need a “punch someone in the face over the internet” button and stuff like this will vanish overnight.
It’s the utter lack of consequence that emboldens the powerless and cowardly to vent their petty minded spite and getting away unscathed and with a visible effect on their target it makes them feel more powerful. Rinse and repeat until they feel like gods in their own tragic little realm as they destroy someone’s life to attempt to compensate for the fact that they have no life of their own.
I’d pity them if I didn’t want to stomp their skulls into paste.
I’m here for the shits and giggles… I’m going to play games and have fun.
The rest of y’all can take all this navel gazing rubbish and get into deep and meaningful’s but it really bores the pants off me.
Controller/keyboard/mouse in hand and having fun. Been that way for 26 years and still hasn’t turned me into a RaciMisogyHomoIslamoFasciPhobe.
^^This!
‘Gamer’ is such a cringey term. It just evokes all these horrible memory trips of being in year 9 and thinking “the cake is a lie” references were so fucking cool.
There is so much more to the Zoe Quinn saga than meets the eye.
It isn’t black and white at all.
And the death-threat to Anita is sooooo suspect.
If it’s real though, well, the police will sort him out, hopefully.
Whoah! Didn’t realise it had escalated to this…
I’ll always remember what I was doing the day “Gamer” officially became a negative term: Sitting on my fat arse surfing the net!
The two situations of Zoe Quinn and Anita have created such a devide between gamers that it has created as two sided war. You’re either on the side of those two women and what they say/think/believe, or you are anti-woman/feminism/”equality”/etc and not a good person.
The ones who will be virtually untouched after the dust has settled (outside of the horrible death threat situations they both have faced) are the two women whom have created this preferrbial “war” while the total sum of the collective that call themselves gamers, players or have anything to do with video games will be left to crawl to reclaim any good focus on the hobby without any support from those in higher, and more helpful, positions in the industry and life in general.
Seeing the little groups form here and the fact that most comments are not only civil but a polite discussion on differing points I’d say it is maybe a culture thing.
Look at Aussie and UK sites and forums. People just are less shit bags. Go to reddit or IGN, heck anything American dominated and it is just hate fueling hate for hates sake.
People on here and the forums I like (ie PCPP and Atomic) are full of people I’d meet in real life and never get on my nerves at all from previous posts. Need an eg, look at Weresmurf and Transientmind on here and the conversion they inspire.
Haha, “just are less shit bags”. Love it. But I totally agree 😉
“Gamers” as an identity needs to die because it’s always been exclusionary. Games should be as much a hobby as any other form of media. People who listen to music don’t call themselves “musicites” or whatever, and anyone who does cop an elitist attitude towards music is quickly shut down because music is to be appreciated, not hoarded.
Gamers used to be a niche audience and we’re transitioning out of that like we should have long ago. The problem is that does cause of a loss of identity so people continue to hoard their titles and accolades because if they can’t be more of a gamer than someone else then maybe, in the grand scheme of things, it just doesn’t matter that they were a general in Halo 3.
“Facebook/mobile apps don’t count, those are for casuals, not TRUE gamers.”
“You have less than 50,000 achievement points? Get on my level, scrub!”
“Consoles don’t count, join the PC master race!”
“Ugh, you don’t even know where snipers have been camping on de_dust for 15 years? Why don’t you just die.”
“BOTTOM LANE IS A FEEDER, LET’S CALL A SWAT TEAM ON HIM.”
Fuck all of that.
I actually agree with all that, it’s annoying hearing how I’m not a gamer because I never played Ocarina of Time. But at the same time I actually feel that Facebook/Mobile apps isn’t part of gaming. Not that they can’t be, but majority of the time they’re not.
Well. Except that ‘hipsters’ and other music lovers do actually section themselves off into different music-listening groups. Metal-heads, goths, ravers, whatever you want, there’s a subset who self-identifies about their passion and cherishes it and embraces the stereotypes of their such (ask the average metal-head about his fucking fantastic beard). Sports-fans doesn’t mean ‘everyone’, except to sports-fans who can’t actually conceive of someone NOT being a sports-fan unless they were ‘some kind of fairy or something’. You have to have seen it. You’re a Ford man or a Holden man, and while we’re at it, are you Libs or Labor or one’a them…. *spits* innapendants?
Tribalism will never die.
I’m not saying there’s no cons, to it, but as long as things can stay (mostly) friendly, like with rival footy codes or clubs? That’s OK.
And if ‘gamer’ is short-hand for ‘gaming enthusiast’, then that is actually niche. People might be playing Angry Birds or Candy Crush by the score on the train, and you won’t hear them identify themselves often as ‘a gamer’, but the ones who do, who chase the AAA and indies? The number of people buying AAA titles on consoles is only a few million globally, and it doesn’t matter how well accepted you think gaming is, putting it on your dating profile in most demographics is all but a social death sentence.
What needs to die is not the label by which a small group of enthusiasts band under, but the utterly self-unaware toxicity that runs rampant through the Internet. It only takes a couple idiots to start a soccer riot, and it only takes a solitary internet bigot to SWAT someone, but our particular hobby, our passion, is so heavily linked to the Internet and the every foul voice gets the same 140 characters as everyone sane hobbyist, but more screen space for being abnormal, such that the whole thing turns into one giant mess/echo chamber of heavy-saturation coverage.
To put it another way… ‘gamer’ is how we find each other. People like us. It’s how we find that chick in the N7 hoodie or that guy with the companion-cube t-shirt, when they aren’t wearing shit on their sleeves. It’s how we find the people who think that kid on the BCF ad IS living by raiding when he ‘could be out on a fucking lake fishing, REALLY living!’ How we find the people who know what the cake is that everyone’s lying about, who have a pretty good chance of being able to party with you in an exotic realm without first taking ecstasy. At your next staff morning tea, ask everyone which MMOs or online games they’re currently playing and which server they’re on, so you can hang. Then tell me we’re not niche.
The things a ‘gamer’ loves are still niche. That’s still harder to find than it should be, without a label. Let us have our label to find our brothers and sisters.
A while ago I passed a chick on the street wearing a black N7 hoodie. As she passed I told her it was a nice hoodie. She turned around and thanked me, kept walking, then did a double take to notice I was also wearing an N7 hoodie.
I confess to reading the first sentence “A while ago I pissed on a chick wearing a black N7 hoodie” My brain is wondering WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? while my eyes went back for a second look to see if maybe they had ballsed it up on the first pass.
Because he is a gamer and that is what gamers do to women. Or so the internet has led me to believe 😛
i’m just commenting now to say i’ve been reading your comments and i like your discussion a lot. please continue commenting a lot!
Including this article, there have been at least 5 articles saying “‘Gamers’ is finished”.
MundaneMatt has an interesting take on it.
(though if you haven’t been paying much attention to this week, you might not understand a lot of it. Let me recap, relevant to the things he says:
Matt had a video covering Zoe Quinn, based on the facts that the boyfriend gave. This video was DMCA, allegedly by Zoe herself (hasn’t be denied or confirmed). This was the first in a huge wave of discussion censorship around the internet, Reddit being the biggest most dramatic censorer, with scores of redditors being shadowbanned and threads and comments being deleted by the bucketload.As a result, reddit (and several other forums that had similar censorship issues) went off to 4chan, the only place where discussion wasn’t banned. Threads were hitting 1000 posts in an hour, and they’ve been going strong since a week ago.
4chan DID back a feminist-made IndieGoGo campaign, a really good one, too. Short version is that 5? women have an idea for a game, the most popular idea will be made into a game, that woman gets 8% of the profits and and all rights to the game and art and etc – the other 92% goes to a charity. 4chan, so far, has raised over $13,000 for this cause. They did this partially because they like the cause and/or the games (or one particular game), and partially because Zoe basically shut the contest down before it started – she has a lot of weight on twitter, and her public shutdown led to no reporting on the campaign (allegedly, I suppose).
There have been a good dozen or so articles about Zoe Quinn, almost all of them saying that this ongoing “war” has been about either her sex life, or the idea that woman dare participate in making games, but the reality is very different. Not to say she hasn’t been harassed, because she surely has, and that’s because (surprise) there are arseholes on the internet.
A lot of shit hasn’t been posted to the Australia site but basically, Nathan Grayson and Patricia Hernandez were found having posting articles on people without disclosing (recusing as it’s known) that there were friends (in Nathan’s case, that friend was Quinn!). There’s been this huge surge against Kotaku on the twitter front, and ultimately Editor Stephen Totilo decided “niggas gotta disclose information, and also aren’t allowed to pay money to indie game developers via patreon.
That line about being compared to ISIS? Some dickhead on twitter said he had more respect for the ISIS bellends than the gamers harassing Anita and Zoe.
There’s still more to discuss, but that’s less relevant.
I think its interesting someone DMCA’d it. Thats not how DMCA notices are meant to work, unless they have copyright in regards to the video, ie, created it themselves, or bought the rights off someone.
The video in question has a single screenshot of Depression Quest in the background, one Matt had nabbed off of Steam.
It is important to state that while the DMCA was done by a “Zoe Quinn” it could’ve easily have just been someone doing it in her name, with or without her knowledge.
Due to her actions with other stuff, I’m willing to personally assume she did it.
I’m calling these 2 weeks, the end of kotaku’s decent journalism.
All I’ve seen is constant click bait.
Implying that hasn’t been the case all along.
I just find I’m becoming less and less a “gamer” by today’s terms. One factor is that new games simply don’t interest me as much. (Like seriously, there’s maybe 2 games confirmed for release this year that I’m slightly interested in)
And the second reason is that I am embarrassed and ashamed to be part of a sub-culture that can just be so mind-numbingly stupid, ignorant and cruel.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a number of “gamer” meet-ups in the past and generally I find other gamers to be friendly, happy people. But these nutjobs are coming from somewhere. And they seem to have claimed my happy geeky hobby for their own.
I think Anita’s videos are fantastic and horrifying at the same time. (As someone who hasn’t actually played a lot of the games she’s referencing, I am in a constant state of shock while watching her videos…)
These horribly offensive portrayals of women, whether inserted out of malice or ignorance, need to stop. I cannot understand how any self-respecting man could disagree with that let alone threaten someone who’s going to the effort of bringing it to public attention.
Phew. My 2c. Time for bed now. ^_^
The generation of meaning is always political. Cultural studies 101.
its seems i read this article from a completely different standpoint than most. as i interpreted it as a branding of “gamers” who express their disappointment at the industry as wailing manchilds (yes,there is idiots that take it to far) and that gamer can be ignored by the larger industry
its stuff like this that leads the publishers and devs to the mentality of ignoring widespread concerns as “its just the gamers and they dont matter”
and that mentality of ignorance i believe is a major factor i the hate we see from the consumer community. its like a cycle of ignorance and hate seemingly fueled by current gaming journalism
you see sometimes when a dev says broadening horizons, “gamers” sometimes see they really mean they’re narrowing them and when the gamer speaks up the dev just says broadening horizons again ,but louder
So tired and drained from all of this.
I’m glad to have communities and authors like the Kotaku variety. I was a big frequenter of Eurogamer, but they have ruined that with the latest article ”Why We Need More Developers Like Zoe Quinn”. Thank you Kotaku for being such a great community 🙂
We are not seeing the death of “gamers” we are seeing the death of game journalists.
I hope i don’t get banned for this comment, if i say it over US Kotaku i pretty much would but here goes. Note that US Kotaku is one of the main players in all of this shit-storm.
The “Streisand effect” coming into play here, the more someone is trying to suppress information the more that information becomes available and the more interest it gathers.
So why is no one talking the whole catalyst into the death of gamers, it’s the biggest scandal to hit gamers and nearly every popular gaming news site hasn’t touched it. Why is the really interesting part.
So really the whole story is, Zoe Quinn sleeps with “5 Guys” in the game industry for good publicity for her game Depression Quest, case in point is an article by Nathan Grayson who “COINCIDENTALLY” after the article is published started a sexual relationship with him. Her now ex releases a blog post pretty much calling her out on all allegations that she is being harassed by a group called “wizardchan”
Zoe Quinn ruins a competition run by a group called Fine Young Capitalists in which they were throwing open to women who have ideas for a game but don’t have the know how to get it going. FYG would create concept art and then pitch the idea to the internet and the most popular would get made. Creator would get 8% royalties and the rest will be donated to charity. In comes Zoe Quinn, ruins it by saying it’s oppressive to women only to promote her event called Rebel GameJam.
I fully suggest if you have an hour to burn watch a youtube video series called Quinnspiricy Theory by InternetAristocrat (NSFW, lots of swearing) and see that this shit-storm implements nearly the whole games journalism industry and certainly paints Gawker Kotaku in a new not so good light.
Also read Know Your Meme for a history of “GamerGate” -http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/quinnspiracy
Gamer culture is still alive in 2017. The only thing these bare faced clickbait lies have done is lead to the foundation of the alt-right.