tremere110: If you must know, the Kotaku article wasn't too bad. It reported the perspective of SBI perfectly fine. I even agree with some points of said article - the industry needs more transparency. The main issue with the article (and Kotaku in general) is the lie by omission - done to essentially foster a misconception. They fail to mention the harassment campaign initiated by an employee of SBI, there were plenty of screencaps and archives that could be found by anyone willing to put a modicum of effort into investigating the issue.
Yeah it wasn't, was it? Certainly not full of factual inaccuracies, misinformation and all those things that people are accusing it of.
You could argue that they're lying by omission, I might even agree. No article will mention everything surrounding the topic, but if you think it really relevant to the article, then it should be included.
I'm more concerned about real life harassment and even death threats that were made as a result of GamersGate 1.0 and 2.0, at Kotaku writers, and Sweet Baby Inc. writers and employees. That's not even up for debate. On the one hand you have a Steam group with some guy who never played the games, outraged at inclusion and tolerance, and is trying to cancel creative content, and there's an attempt to have this group closed for doing so. On the other, Real Life harassment of real life people. Hm. Even death threats apparently at the Kotaku writer. I believe I know which one is worse, and the other I would barely even call harassment.
If you ask my opinion, it was not cool to try and have the Steam group closed down. But it was also not cool to try and incentivise groups of people to cancel creative content due to ideology. But what remains is the real harassment - something none of you have touched upon.
tremere110: Of all the places they went to look for the other perspective they went to Discord. Discord is a toxic cesspit regardless of which side of an issue you fall on when it comes to politics. It's a horrible source for anything unless you want to talk directly to a developer in their discord or you're looking for US airforce secrets. Anything else and you're just fishing for a specific response. Kotaku could have talked to the creator of the Steam curator instead, but nah - that would actually get the other side's perspective. As to my source for the SBI harassment campaign - myself, I witness it personally.
Yes, well, going to the "source" to get their side of the story, means going either to the Steam group, or the Discord group, whilst trying drudge through unverifiable facts and misinformation. Good luck writing an "accurate" article and representing them fairly.
I actually touched upon these topics with that B1tF1ghter dude who ran away screaming in CAPS, but these were some of the things I brought up. Would you like to explore them a bit? They seem relevant again:
2. Given that they went to the primary source on one side (Sweet Baby Inc.) and attempted to go to the other (the conspiracy theorist community and Discord group/Steam group), how would you have represented the other side? What would you have done differently? Do you think both sides should get equal representation in an article like this?
Once, BBC made a feature interview about climate change. Their mandate at the time was to represent both sides of the issue as much as possible. They had a renowned climate scientist on one side, and a (science-denying) "skeptic" with no peer reviewed publications to his name. They both got the same amount of time to argue their points. Even though the matter of anthropogenic climate change is settled science, and there hasn't been a single credible peer reviewed article published in the past two decades refuting it, the guy got equal footing than the factual scientist.
Do you think both sides should get the same exposure in such a case?
3. Do you think that a video gaming article built on one side on conspiracy theories and non-verifiable facts, could ever be comprehensive and conclusive?
4. Don't you think the burden of proof is on the ones making the claim that Sweet Baby Inc. did all those terribad things? Why does Kotaku have the responsibility to get to the bottom of the matter, when the accusers don't even have any verifiable facts (and indeed declined to argue their case, instead banning the journalist)?
5. What is your opinion on the Sweet Baby Inc. controversy, and do you base it on any verifiable facts?
6. Do you think your own prejudices and preconceptions have anything to do with the way you view the articles? Meaning, if the message was different (Sweet Baby Inc. is the devil in disguise and the ruin of the whole video gaming industry due to "wokeness"), would you have accepted the article?
7. Do you think sources should be dismissed outright, without even going through them and objecting to its content? Can someone just dismiss an entire source, like if it comes from Fox News, it's automatically bullishit and shouldn't even be given the benefit of consideration? Should the reader at least attempt to read the article, and establish whether they have major objections to its content, before acategorically dismissing it?
8. What does journalistic integrity mean to you? Is the fact that the source admits when they are wrong, and redacts articles/corrects them after the fact, enough to say that they have journalistic integrity? If one source redacts articles, and the other never does, which one has more journalistic integrity?
tremere110: The wokeness is less of an issue for me than most seem to think. I have plenty of games on the SBI list that I was looking forward too despite being "woke". Most of those games are no longer of interest to me because of how SBI acted in response.
They definitely didn't handle the situation well, and their PR department (which doesn't exist, as it's just a company of 16 writers) should be fired. Yes yes, any PR, good PR. Bollocks, this resulted in vicious hatred and harassment against them. No good came of it.
tremere110: With all that out of the way - what is your opinion of the SBI reponse to the curator?
This is the first time somebody asked me this. Thank you! Or even my opinion on the general matter.
Sweet Baby Inc.'s response to the Steam group owner, who never played their games, yet rallied support to cancel their creative content, and manufacture outrage, was not only ineffective in its goal, bad PR, but also just futile. Unless I'm not aware of something, trying to close down a Steam group and get the guy banned for possibly violating the company's TOS, and submitting a report, is not really harassment. It's a dick move, and if he broke TOS or lost his gaming library on his anonymous profile, that would be sad. A tear might be shed somewhere. Or just the world's smallest violin playing somewhere. By a cricket. But let's be real here - it pales in comparison to Real Life harassment of real life people, and what they had to go through, and what they are going through. Nobody should be subjected to that when writing about freely expressed artistic content, or writing about video games. That's insane.
So unless I'm missing something about the Steam group owner's "harassment", it by no means justifies what happened next.