“What we feel is that there is a literal war in this industry on women.” — Brianna Wu, head of development at Giant Spacekat, who was forced from her home by death threats to her and her husband from GamerGate supporters.
Elsewhere in the business of video games this past week …
QUOTE | “Threats of violence and harassment are wrong. They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community-or our society-for personal attacks and threats.” — Statement from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) commenting on the GamerGate movement.
QUOTE | “When indie games come out, I want them to come out and I want Xbox to feel like it is a first class citizen when an indie game launches.” — Xbox boss Phil Spencer, talking about why they have a parity clause in their indie agreement to ensure indie games don’t come out on another platform first.
STAT | 136 per cent — Amount that retail sales of consoles rose in September compared to last year, according to NPD; overall, revenue in retail stores was only up two per cent due to a 35 per cent drop in software sales.
QUOTE | “We’re trying to do crafted experiences hopefully using an interesting technology that’s available to us to make great games with smaller teams.” — Amazon Game Studios head Ian Vogel, talking about why they have been able to attract notable developers like Kim Swift and Clint Hocking.
STAT | 234,806 — Number of units (combined) of the New 3DS and New 3DS XL Nintendo sold in Japan during its first week; various 3DS models occupied four of the top six slots in the best-selling hardware chart.
QUOTE | “So to sum it up: We have no plan to sell Unity.” — Unity CTO Joachim Ante, doing his best to dispel rumours that developer platform Unity was looking for a buyer for the company.
QUOTE | “What I take out of games isn’t always what they were designed to do.” — Child of Light lead programmer Brie Code, talking about what women want out of games and why it’s more than just female protagonists.
QUOTE | “Ironically, we weren’t artsy enough for the government, but we’re a little too artsy for many of the studios.” — Gamercamp festival organiser Jamie Woo, explaining why there won’t be another one of these festivals celebrating indie games after six years.
STAT | 3.2 million — Number of players per day that Destiny is averaging, according to Bungie; these players are spending around three hours per day on average in the game.
STAT | 600,000 — Number of new players gained by World of Warcaft in the run-up to the release of the Warlords of Draenor expansion; that puts the current number of players at 7.4 million.
Comments
23 responses to “This Week In The Business: A War On Women”
Are you serious?
THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
And women.
Oh FFS it was not #gamergate!
Brianna “said” it was #gamergate…. Sod it i’m back to Escapist at least they have ethics.
Kotaku is pathetic.
First 100 tweets on #gamergate not one threat against a woman…. And if i bothered to go further I still wouldn’t find any harassment of women… Give it up Kotaku… Frauds
There is a tiny minority of idiots using the Gamergate hashtag, to post terrible things. They didn’t get involved because of matching ideals they got involved so they can be horrible people and feel like everybody agrees with them.
Gamergate doesn’t have a membership registry, any idiot can claim to be part of it. Nothing is stopping me making a T-Shirt with #GamerGate on it, some how getting on the news or a photo of me in the paper and talking about how GamerGate plans to clone Hitlers Brain put it in a monkey and fix the worlds problems. And the world will think anybody involved in Gamergate is a crazy nutbag like I was pretending to be.
The sad thing is the Truth has become irrelevant. Gamergate is now associated with Misogynists who are scared of women making video games. And who threaten them with rape and murder. It no longer matters if it is true.
If a group of drunk idiots go on a vandalism spree after a Sportsball game, and one man is wearing a jersey for Sportsball Team B who happened to lose that night, all the men will be labeled as Sportsball Team B supporters.
yeah and this ‘membership’ problem presents the perfect way to discredit the movement, and to turn everyone against them. I have no affiliation with the movement, but their initial argument regarding ethics was good.
Oh I get that… I get that very well. But they keep giving oxygen to the whole Brianna thing WHO WAS HARASSED WHICH IS UNACCEPTABLE but it was only associated to #gamergate by her. Or the Anita thing where she said she received death threats WHICH IS UNACCEPTABLE but “oh and by the way one was from #gamergate” but no offending tweet yet from Kotaku.
Kotaku is like the Fox news of gaming journalism at the moment.
Additionally, this is Kotaku who get outraged whenever someone mentions gaming causes violence…. But falls over itself to say gaming creates misogynists and sexists.
They’ve created this great big boogeyman of #gamergate being the sole cause of arseholes on the internet.
Pure coincidence, I suppose, that Wu became a target only after tweeting critical comments about Gamergate.
yeah but poor kotaku needs clickbait ad revenue
by posting this comment i just refreshed the page twice
You know if Gamergate had uncovered even a single actual case of a serious conflict of interest or anything it might make some kind of sense. I mean, when they discovered a male journalist had dated a female dev, did they go after the journalist? No, they went after the dev. Is this really about ethics in journalism? I have not seen any single concrete thing articulated about those issues. It’s all about attacking “Social Justice Warriors”. It is a culture war.
I’m pretty sure there was also a bit of light shed on Grayson… Hence why Kotaku is all pent up rage against a pretty harmless hashtag.
Grayson was the target of the psycho ex-boyfriend’s fabricated allegations of sex-for-coverage involving Quinn. There’s nothing to substantiate any of the allegations about any kind of relationship, and nothing to substantiate any suggestion that Grayson provided coverage in exchange for anything.
The only remote connection to ethics in this whole affair has been with regard to games writers supporting the development of games through crowdfunding efforts. Rules of journalistic ethics are primarily concerned with journalists receiving money from people, not giving it; unless there’s any evidence that developers are providing exclusive coverage/information to journalists who support their projects, no ethical issues arise.
Besides, Kotaku and Polygon (and other outlets by now, I’m sure) have already clarified their policies anyway, requiring that their writers not support games or developers through crowdfunding services. And they did this before the end of August. Within a week of the whole thing starting.
The only reason Gamergate has rolled on for two more months, after the only ethical issues it raised were already resolved, is because there are more women that need to be silenced.
And then there is Games Journos Pro…. Which shows some lovely collusion between Ars Technica/Polygon/Kotaku/Escapist and others… “Games Journalism” appears to just be an echo chamber… Which also arose from the concerns of #gamergate members.
But we will ignore that and paint it all as “Gamergate is basically a group of boys that don’t want girls in their videogame clubhouse. Only, instead of throwing rocks, they threaten to rape you.” – Brianna Wu 17/10/14.
They’ve also supported Fine Young Capitalists after they were derailed… And as of last week when Gawkers very own staff member tweeted “nerds should be shamed and degraded into submission” and “bring back bullying” they have raised $16,000 for an anti-bullying organisation.
But it is so much easier to just brush this away under that “women that need to be silenced” moral soap box.
The acts of a few taint the many. Soccer hooligans. Westboro. Extremists. Even die hard atheists…
But there has been some good out of this.
Liana K admitted she started scoring games at an 8/10 because she found out that that was the score needed for the developers to get their bonuses
A ‘literal’ war eh?
Really sick of hearing about this shit.
When one idiot rears their head blame the masses eh? Wonderful… Makes me wonder why I even come to this site anymore.
(Also waiting an entire day for a comment to go through. Really?)
I dont know why I bother reading this site anymore.
You and me both. It’s ridiculous.
It’s the same old issue of anonymity. It just happens to be that these individuals are also sexists.
Is anyone not particularly surprised that someone who is willing to call false death threats doesn’t give a crap that they’re being sexist?
It’s not about the gaming community and industry as a whole boldly warring against females, it’s about the small subset of people who use anonymity to do whatever they want against whoever they want and they just happen to also be sexist.
Comments are more thoughtful than the articles.
Gives me hope 🙂
Meanwhile, women are finding it hard to get into construction work because of all the groin grabbing, wolf-whistling, stubby guzzling tradies.
On the other side, there are the men who can’t become kindergarten teachers because of vagina mentality.
I thought it was because every man is a pedophile.
Correction… It’s because we are all paedophiles.
I am completely unaware of such prejudices. My experiences are my own so they might not represent the larger picture but I’ll happily describe them.
I was studying a diploma of children’s services at one point to become a childcare worker. I was the only guy in the class. I was welcomed with open arms. When I did my practical placement, all 3 facilities wanted to hire me when I finished my qualifications because male workers were in high demand. The general belief is that is more men enter the industry, the pay rate will increase across the board.
Also, over the years my two boys have had 2 male grade 1 teachers who were very popular among all of the parents.
I prefer jumping on mushrooms, to reading drivel about feminism or women in gaming.
Wasn’t gamergate about journos favorably reviewing games with whom they had personal relationships?
ive not had a stance on this whole gamergate business. until i read this. way to go Tea Party looking mysoginst and what not.
http://www.tpnn.com/2014/10/17/feminist-speaker-cancels-university-speaking-event-because-there-would-be-legally-owned-concealed-weapons-allowed/
I find overwhelming irony in the concept of an American threatening to use a gun to inhibit someone else’s freedom of speech.
SHH YOU GUNS ARE FREEDOM
/s
This site is ridiculous. Someone makes a threat to a developer (yes it was evil and they should be jailed) but to then go on and equate that to everyone who supports gamergate? Wow. that’s some shoddy journalism.