Was downvoting the OP really necessary? C'mon, the OP did nothing wrong and he's getting downrepped as fuck.

It's full of shit. Stopped reading right there: That's a lie. I have personally donated money to enter two demos in the IGF (they didn't win anything). Even entering the same game twice wasn't against the rules when Fish pulled his cunning stunt.

My understanding is that is nothing to do with GAMERSgate, it is called GAMERgate, after Watergate lots of scandals have had "gate" added to the name eg. IranGATE, ContraGATE, this is about games so I am guessing someone added GATE to the term gamer.

*shrugs, this is just a guess on my part :)

REALLY? Because that's not how it feels this end
Actually, I'd like to think you were right because I'd like to think that this whole thing was old skool, lefty geek gamers against modern AAA meathead gamerbros as much as anything else but it seems, sadly not

personally I think OPs mainly being downrepped because of
"Quick check of the front page didn't show anything like this"
When there's 2 massive uberthreads that OP himself has contributed to that have discussed this whole, sick, sorry situation to exhaustion already - people are just tired

Plus people REALLY don't like that one LordKat article for some reason - at this point I don't even know if it can't actually be read in SUPPORT of Quinn, in a sort of
'She's being singled out for abuse just for playing the same games that literally EVEYONE else was playing - probably because she's a blue haired, promiscuous female'
kind of way!

FYI, I am myself a lefty, and have been a labor voter all my life, and am certainly not conservative in anyway. If anything it's that these feminists/gaming writers etc are just so goddamn annoying that they make enemies out of everyone, even those who had no problem and even supported their ideas.

If you really think gaming is a seething underbelly on misogyny well I'd say you're insane, there's real sexism in the world but I can assure you trying to bash of Western Caucasian males you are literally slamming your head against the wall, these people are the most least racist, sexist generation ever. The reaction is purely a backlash against having the SJW ideology shoved down our throats constantly when many people go to gaming to escape real-world politics and everything else.

But sure, go on and keep making enemies, I'm really sure that some Western white guys are the most evil sexist force in the world and a threat to all women, forget about those people running round in black clothes beheading women for going in public :/

You people live in a fucking bubble, it's pathetic.

We gamers share plenty of our toys with girls. No one seems to have a problem with any of this except for a handful of shiny feminist gatekeepers, who are shoved to the front of the line and given the loudest megaphones.

It's funny and sad at the same time to see, despite this larger issue of journalism corruption, that the SJW crew is still intent on forcing this feminist/misogyny issue to the forefront. Anyone seen any women being forced to sit in the back of the bus lately? Anyone have proof of female gamers being denied the right to vote?

But keep it up, don't bother just going back to playing games and letting people be different. No... keep forcing political homogenization, keep shoving your agenda down everyone's throat. This whole thing will end up with 1 or 2 feminist radicals on the far end of youtube proclaiming victory to their tiny handful of supporters... as they are marginalized to the very back of the internet bus. See how things come full circle? Want some PR advice? Keep your mouths shut until this thing blows over. Keep hitting this attack button and you will not get any more power-ups against the end level boss character.

I'm actually all for the dismantling the top-down structure of way mass media has been run for the last couple of centuries, not just in terms of gaming but music too - in these days of YouTube, iTunes and DD gaming platforms do we even NEED publishing giants anymore? Surely their strangle hold was down to buying blanks and pressing copy of physical media in bulk - economics of scale, now that its all digital they seem a bit of an anachronism!

I'm just really disappointed that when the time has finally come to examine these things and tear them down it's not in the name of auteur artistic freedom and finally having enough of EA and Ubisoft's etc. money squeezing, always on DRM, day -one DLC bullshit but in accordance with some right-wing knee jerk reactionary MRA agenda!

*EDIT*
Saying that I also, at the same time, seem to be saying that we DO still need Apple, Google, I guess, Valve but I guess, we only need those services, is what I'm saying...

I see what you're saying about the top down system. Large software companies have had a hand in the military industrial complex in sharing warfighter software with the military. Years ago a group from the Pentagon had gamers show up at a mall and play drone simulators where the kids flew pilot-less drones in simulated combat scenarios in Iraq... testing tomorrow's combat pilots for 21st century warfare, only it will be real and actual humans will die because of it. That is a sad reflection on how art can imitate life... and then blow it to smithereens.

However, this left/right paradigm is also perpetuated by the left just as strong. The claims of female gamer oppression is just a baseless accusation. It's a paper tiger. In fact, the only place where I can see some profound exclusion to women is in the gaming journalist department, which is made up almost exclusively of white males... the same people proclaiming this feminist agenda the loudest. Doesn't that ring a bit hollow? That would be like Morgan Freeman doing a PSA for a KKK recruitment drive.

We've all got our heroes and villains in this. I just wish more people who put aside this shit and go back to playing video games... and generally distrusting mainstream journalism of all types. However, if mud slinging is going to be the name of the game, I've got my mud launchers at the ready.

Is that some conspiracy revolving about troubles in Contra team? Has blue pants guy slept with red pantsy guy's wife?


To say something on topic. I too thought it's thread about GG digital distribution and I think it is poorly chosen name.
I wonder if it was called something like Gamers-Only Gate it would be called GOG.

Probably goes to show what percentage of people calling themselves 'gamers' are actually aware of Gamersgate's existence! Poor GG!

Not sure if you were serious, but for clarity sake :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair

:)
In all fairness you would kind of wonder why it exists, it's not actually (afaik) a "go to" site for buying games :)

Personally I don't think the SJW / feminist whatever agenda IS the journalist's true agenda, it just happens to line up with their goals at the moment, those goals being the games as art / gaining respectability as an art form agenda and promoting female gamers / devs etc. and lauding games that are ABOUT issues like depression or are clearly arty in some way like Dear Esther, trying to create new, artier genres for games, further those goals

I kind of think they have a point though - look at film - Arthouse cinema is a thing, Big studio Oscar bait cinema is a thing and chick flicks are a thing too but still the projects that get all the money pumped into them are the Michael Bay 'splosion fests and films based on comic books - films for young white males, basically, plus trying to hook us 30 somethings in with the nostalgia angle

Those other genres give breadth, diversity and credibility to the industry, if ALL Hollywood made were Bay, DC and Marvel films people would think that films were only for teenage boys and think you were weird if you liked films and you weren't a teenage boy and that is exactly where the games industry is at the moment, in the eyes of society at large anyway...

Oh, c'mon, where's your common sense? This is not what the problem is. I come from a time when games were about HAVING FUN, now it's all about politics, money and fame. The gaming press in general stopped talking about games and now just talks about how developers are evil because of how women are portrayed in games. For fuck's sake, just having a girl in bikini in a game nowadays is enough to get "journalists" and feminists all up in arms over it.

Where's FREEDOM nowadays? Game designers and publishers are not free to develop the games they want anymore because there are a bunch of "journalists" and assholes trying to push their agendas for PERSONAL reasons to gain some kind of advantage, be it fame, money or even sex (in the case of Zoe Quinn and her loyal supporters).

Back in the day having a game about a plumber who has to rescue a princess was fine, but nowadays it's a fucking crime because it uses the "damsel in distress trope" and whatever. All the Mario and Zelda games are "evil" because they "objectify" women since you have to rescue the princess. Oh mean, c'mon, give me a fucking break, it's just a fucking game, it could have been about rescuing the protragonist's dog, it doesn't matter. Having to rescue someone is just a plot device to get the game going. It's not an evil conspiracy to "objectify" women. What's next? You can't have a game about rescuing dogs because it objectifies animals? Where will the SJW stop?

Remember the controversy around the lack of playable female characters in AC Unity? That was fucking BS. Since when do game developers need to make thousands of playable characters just to please different groups? What's next? Ubisoft is racist for not having a playable muslim character in the next Assassin's Creed? Oh, please. Every game from now on will need male characters, white characters, black characters, female characters, japanese characters, korean characters, chinese characters, african characters, south american characters, jewish characters, muslim characters, christian characters, homossexual characters, bissexual characters and every other kind of group. If Ubisoft doesn't want to make a game with playable female characters it is their right to do so. Period. The gaming press really need to stop making such a shitstorm over something so fucking frivolous as a game design decision.

For me all this feminist BS being pushed against developers by these pseudo-journalists smells a lot like censorship. They are trying to take away the freedom from developers and publishers and trying to dictate how they should make games. This is fucking disgusting.

Not too long ago RPS made a bunch of articles about how Blizzard was "misogynist". First they counted how many times Kerrigan's ass appeared in cutscenes, then they made a shitstorm over Blizzard's female characters design in Heroes of the Storm. Why? Blizzard can't even design its own characters anymore?

Another case: people got "offended" by the lack of same-sex relationships in Nintendo's life-sim Tomodachi Life. I'm a huge defender of LGBT rights, but that's just too much. If Nintendo wants to make a game without same-sex relationships they should be allowed to do so. It's their game, it's their vision. At the same time, i really liked how EA basically showed the middle finger to conservative christian groups when they allowed same-sex relationships in some of their games and didn't retreat to please them. It's all about freedom.

I'm not saying that misogyny and sexism doesn't exist in our society. It does. And that's the main issue i have with these "feminists" like Quinn, Anita and their supporters. They're creating a problem where it doesn't exist. All they want to achieve with these actions is fame and money, and so far they are succeeding. Anita is now famous and got a bunch of money from the idiots that supported her on Kickstarter by playing the victim card and calling the "white knights" to rescue her. Ironically she acts exactly like the "damsel in distress" she complains so much about. Quinn achieved fame and got a lot of exposure for her shitty game by both playing the victim card and by using her genitals.

What we shouldn't accept are the cases of REAL sexism and misogyny. For example, millions of women are sexually harassed every year, women receive lower salaries than men by doing the same functions. There was a very controversial research here in Brazil that showed that a significant portion of the population think that women get raped because of how they are dressed, basically transferring guilt to the victims. That's real misogyny right there. We should fight against that, not against a fucking plumber that has to rescue a princess in a game.

And saying that games "objectify" women and make gamers misogynists is like saying that violent games make people violent. To be very honest, these feminists and her loyal journalists are not very different from Jack Thompson.

That's BS and you know it. Wasn't it the games media themselves who were foaming at their mouths in rage during last generation for Nintendo daring to make games that appealed to women, children and older people? The same people who looove shit like Dear Esther and Gone Home for daring to challenge our perception of what a game is?

No one has any problems sharing their toys, we have a problem with being called shit and and worse than the HJ (Hitler Youth) and ISIS. We are calling BS on the people who mocked Jack Thompson but lick Anita's ass who uses the same exact rhetoric. We are sick of the lies that are being propagated. We are sick of being treated like idiots. And we are sick of people like you who eat up the lies and fuel their fire.

No one is being misogynistic. The SJWs are saying BS and we are calling them out one it. Anita is not getting any more "harassment" than any man out there, but the double-standard dictates that for any man receiving death- and rape threats is just another day on the internet, but if it happens to a woman all men must be killed. BS indeed.