Why Your Voice is Important

A couple of weeks ago, a GamerGate and NotYourShield supporter passed away at a young age in an apparent suicide. I don't want to give out her name, just in case it gets misconstrued as politicising her death or capitalising on it for my own gain (either for clicks or just to talk about my own stuff). That isn't the case. However, her death affected me more than I thought it would.

I actually didn't know the young woman in question. I recognised her face when news of her death was posted but I can't recall ever speaking to her on Twitter. The reason her death affected me was because of something a friend of mine said about her: "She told me, nearly a year ago, she didn't feel that her voice was important". One of the reasons I wish I'd spoken to her was because in the past, I've felt the exact same way.

The thing is, whatever you're committed to fighting for -- gender equality in video games, ethics in games journalism or more mainstream stuff like combating intrusive DRM in games -- it can feel like you have a ton of great points to make but they rarely, if ever, receive the recognition or awareness you want. That sounds selfish or egotistical but everyone wants to feel like their opinion connects with someone. For example, I've no doubt that every single person reading this can formulate a perfect rebuttal to Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes Vs Women in Games videos. There are many, many videos on Youtube doing just that but some of the most well thought-out arguments end up falling to the bottom of the pile and don't often get noticed as much as they should.

I probably don't know how lucky I am; this blog doesn't set the world on fire or anything but I have a very friendly audience and a few people on Reddit who are kind enough to "signal boost" a lot of the things I write, especially the last few posts. I appreciate it a lot. Some posts have even been linked to by writers more high-profile than me, who I respect a lot. However, it still often feels like no matter what I say -- or anyone says -- about the subject of gender issues in gaming, it doesn't make a dent in the flawed "gaming is anti-woman" narrative. That can make you feel like your voice and opinion is unimportant.

It's a little more complicated than that. I don't update this blog very often anymore and there are a variety of reasons:

• Laziness

Obviously.

• Other priorities

I have other commitments to deal with apart from writing this blog. I mentioned studying game design, so I have to balance continuing with that as well as work. I've had to put writing commitments on hold for other sites too.

• The narrative pushed by mainstream gaming sites remaining unchanged

As mentioned above. To this day, mainstream gaming media pushes the narrative that gaming is a "boy's club" in spite of ESA statistics (page 5) that suggest it's actually fairly equal. No opinion pieces are written to rebut this claim or the idea that gaming is sexist. Women who disagree are treated as if they don't exist and men who disagree are dismissed because of "privilege", "patriarchy", "mansplaining" or another excuse to not actually answer the points made. It's reached the point where even bomb threats against GamerGate meetups receive little, if any, coverage by mainstream gaming sites. Presumably because reporting on diverse groups receiving harmful threats would damage the "harassment-endorsing boy's club" narrative that has been built up for years.

• Waning interest in gender issues in gaming

Related to the above point. Seeing nothing change makes it hard to care about staying current concerning gender issues in gaming. That, and the majority of articles on the subject tend to be from mainstream gaming sites and therefore either clickbait, full of inaccuracies, incredibly dull or a mix of the three. Videos suffer from the same problem. Although I've written about articles/games/videos in great detail in the past, it feels like it can only be done for so long without regurgitating the same information.

• Better/more high-profile writers than me covering the same subject

This happens quite often. Back when I started this blog, I wasn't on Twitter and since I joined, I would say there's been a big positive and negative shift when it comes to how I approach gender issues. The positive shift is that I no longer feel like one of the few people talking about the subject, which I did back when the only places I had as an outlet were Gamespot comments sections and the TV Tropes forum. There are thousands of people talking about gender issues in gaming, who roll their eyes at the claims made by outraged social justice warriors who don't care about facts. The negative shift is that I used to take to this blog whenever something annoyed me on a gaming site and needed to be responded to whereas now, I go on Twitter to see what the people I follow thought of it.

The many articles of Adrian Chmielarz on Medium are some of the standout articles that I may not have seen without being on Twitter. Liana Kerzner's five-part series "Why Feminist Frequency almost made me quit writing about video games" is another bright spot. Whether other people are more eloquent, have a platform seen more people or simply have an interesting twist on their argument that I don't, I find myself more tempted to direct people to their points rather than write my own nowadays.

So, with all of this in mind, why is YOUR voice important?

I've heard it mentioned a few times that movements aren't made up solely of leading figures but of many smaller voices. I always thought that sounded a bit like a cop out but it's true; with a bunch of supporters making the same argument, gamers have made a movement out of what would otherwise be a few dissenting opinions on various websites. Without the "smaller" voices, the videos and opinion pieces by more prominent figures would be easy to dismiss. With them, on the other hand, it makes it harder for game journalists to do and remain credible. Instead, it exposes them as being agenda-driven rather than reporting on issues objectively.

The reason that seems like a bit of a cop out is because you still won't receive the same acknowledgement as a lot of people making the same argument and still feel like the things you say aren't being read. Plus, if you're anything like me, you don't have any intention of making videos and you don't live anywhere close enough to attend a meetup with other like-minded people. Hell, you may not like social media or may not want to go through the effort of writing an article/filming and editing a video. However, these things don't mean that your voice isn't important or isn't being heard.

You don't know who your words affect. There are tons of people who lurk on forums without posting or browse Twitter without having an account. Who's to say that one of those people won't see your intelligent, well thought-out point and use it in their own article or video? Although I can't recall any specific occasions -- I tend to give credit for good points I've heard people made -- I'd be very surprised if it turned out I hadn't done that at least once. And I know it's definitely happened to me, with both Adrian Chmielarz, mentioned above, and Milo Yiannopoulos (in the line "leveraging a tragedy to her own political benefit").

Plus, think about this; what's the big deal about popularity anyway? There are hugely popular sites like Buzzfeed, Polygon, a bunch of Gawker sites and more that have only achieved popularity through clickbait. So many of their articles and videos offer nothing of any substance but hey, they're popular! On the other hand, there are independent news sites, blogs and gaming media sites all over the internet that offer objectivity, intelligence and substance in ways that popular sites based on clickbait can't even comprehend. If you feel like your voice isn't being heard, take solace in the fact that you're still speaking out. You are like an independent news site. You have credibility and moral fibre for expressing your opinions when you aren't even sure if anyone will ever read them.

If you want a tip for making your voice heard, here's a practical piece of advice: post on Reddit, not Twitter. Twitter is like everyone shouting over a crowd of other shouting people, trying to get noticed. Reddit, and other more conventional forums, are closer to a discussion.

Finally, don't give up. You'll never know who you could reach or what impact you could have if you give up. Your opinions are valued more than you know. Even as someone who is normally pretty cynical when it comes to people who try to be motivational, I believe that. You never know when your opinion will be the one people take notice of, rally around and support/defend, whether it's as an article or in the comments section of an article.

And I don't normally say this but I feel compelled to, given what I've been writing about; thank you for reading.

Censorship in Games - Are Developers Pandering to the Wrong Audience?

In spite of not following gender issues in gaming as closely as I used to, I still follow plenty of people on Twitter to keep myself informed of what gaming's most easily-offended critics are currently annoyed about and how gender issues play a part in gaming nowadays.

It isn't like there has been a shortage of issues to write about. For Street Fighter V, Capcom released an update that switched camera angles for two characters -- Cammy and R. Mika -- to make their poses less provocative. There have been two localisation changes for Xenoblade Chronicles X; adding more clothing to a bikini-clad thirteen-year-old character and removing a slider to change a custom female character's bust size. The Western release of the newest Fatal Frame game has several revealing alternate costumes omitted, replaced with costumes paying tribute to Samus and Zelda instead. And most recently, Koei Tecmo US has chosen not to release Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 in the West, only for Play-Asia.com to criticise the move and pledge to sell the English-language version released in Asian markets through their website.

There are two reasons behind all of this censorship/refusal to ship games to the West. The first is specific to Xenoblade and Fatal Frame and it's due to Nintendo's steadfast family-friendly image. They're basically doing the exact same thing they did back in the late eighties and early nineties, when they would censor minor instances of nudity, as was the case in games like Final Fantasy VI, seen here:

Examples from the Japanese Super Famicom/GBA, American SNES and Western GBA releases of FFVI.

Where this falls apart is when games like Fatal Frame deal with horror, death and suicide and these are somehow considered less controversial than a woman in lingerie as an alternate costume. The number of games that feature dismemberment, disembowelings and beheadings are somehow considered acceptable compared to a game featuring women playing volleyball. The gaming media has stirred up a non-controversy to such an extent that Japanese developers are under the impression that all Western gamers are uncomfortable or offended by sexuality, rather than just a very vocal minority with high-profile positions. And no talented game developer wants to be called a 14-year-old boy by some talentless hack at Kotaku.

Which leads to the second reason: good ol' fashioned prudishness. I know I've said this before -- probably several times -- but it's remarkable that an audience who claim to want video games to "mature" as a medium have such a fundamentally immature attitude towards sexuality in games. What kind of adult feels threatened by a bunch of polygons on a screen? Essentially what we have here is a tiny contingent of critics who feel it is appropriate to bully and shame developers into making the games they want, based on what they feel is suitable for all Western audiences. Gaming critics have reached the peak of entitlement and the worrying thing is that they're the ones being pandered to by game developers now.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with characters in games being sexually attractive. Developers have a right to create any kinds of characters they want and audiences, men and women, have the right to enjoy them (as a matter of fact, one of the criticisms against Xenoblade's removal of the bust size slider was that it prevented large-chested female gamers creating characters similar in appearance to themselves). Petty authoritarian bullies stomping their feet and throwing a tantrum because they feel uncomfortable is their issue. It isn't the developer's responsibility to change their game because of hurt feelings.

Regarding Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, game developer American McGee wrote this on Facebook regarding the whole issue. He isn't the only person to speak out against this type of censorship. Following the news that DOAX3 wasn't going to receive a Western release, a female voice actress tweeted this:

(The tweet has since been deleted so, out of respect for the voice actress, I've redacted her name. I wouldn't want her to suffer online harassment or lose voice acting work for speaking out against feminism.)

Apart from the obvious reasons why this is an issue -- games having content removed/not being localised because of puritanical outrage -- it's also an issue because of the recurring claim from gaming's Social Justice Warrior and feminist critics that "we're not coming to take your games away". Katherine Cross wrote about it on Polygon, also quoting Carolyn Petit saying the same thing. Jim Sterling said it about Anita Sarkeesian too.

Yet it's remarkable when censorship of games does occur, how quick this same crowd preaching about sexism from their soapboxes acts as if they don't have any real power whatsoever. As if these same journalists who have given countless column inches to Anita Sarkeesian for the past three years, who called game developers 14-year-old boys, awarded Bayonetta 2 lower scores due to being offended by a sexualised character rather than anything to do with the game's quality, warped #GamerGate to be about sexism rather than ethics in journalism and gleefully used a mass shooting to their advantage tell people to get over Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 not coming to the West are suddenly the least-influential people in the games industry.

As Anita Sarkeesian is so fond of telling us in her Tropes Vs Women videos, "these examples do not exist in a vacuum" and I've only mentioned a few examples. Do these people really think high-profile gaming sites and Kickstarter/Intel-funded Youtube critics who have been arguing against sexually-attractive women in games for years are completely unrelated to sexualised elements in games being removed for the West (or the games not being localised at all)?

If so, it sounds like another example of playing the victim to me; even with their monopoly on gaming journalism and the many years of hammering home the same warped sexism narrative, they still insist that they're helpless, silenced victims.

I actually planned on writing about Feminist Frequency's new video -- Jonathan McIntosh's "5 Ways Men Can Help End Sexism", the first video from Feminist Frequency I've watched in around two years -- but had more to say on this subject than I thought. I may write about McIntosh's video too because, even though it's more of what we've come to expect from McIntosh and Feminist Frequency -- Jonathan sounds more like Anita than Anita does, bizarrely -- it is a hilarious video.

Merry Christmas!

Anita Sarkeesian's Interview with Wired UK

The Conference is a yearly event in Sweden where "creators, communicators and innovators of all kinds" arrive to discuss digital media and give speeches on working in creative industries. As she did back in 2013, Anita Sarkeesian took to the stage, discussing what it's like to be the victim of abuse online.

What I'd like to focus on is a follow-up article done by Wired UK, which is something of an edited highlights version of Anita's talk. Let's start with this:

There are three ways in which men attempt undermine women online, Sarkeesian tells the audience at The Conference in Malmo: through the denial of women's earned accomplishments, the denial of their life experience, and the denial of their professional expertise.

Those three ways that men -- not simply critics of Anita's or the social justice warrior crowd that has chosen gaming as its scratching post, specifically men -- attempt to undermine women online are three of the things I'd like to focus on.

The Denial Of Women's Earned Accomplishments

In the case of Anita, I can see how she'd feel like she is a victim of this. People have criticised everything about her methods, from her Kickstarter campaign, to art theft, to using videos without the permission of their original owners.

I don't deny that Anita has accomplished many things but not all of them are what I would call "earned". She earned her degrees in Communication Studies and Social and Political Thought. I'd certainly say she's earned everything she's gained from giving college talks around the U.S. on sexism. She's marketed herself well, it can't be denied. I wouldn't say she earned any of the money that was donated to her through Kickstarter or given to her by Intel. That's a different kettle of fish entirely. Likewise, is making videos really an accomplishment? Not especially. Is being critical of them "denying" that accomplishment? Not at all. However, the Tropes Vs Women series has been watched by a lot of people. Again, that's undeniable and it certainly is an accomplishment.

It also makes me wonder whether fictional women are being included in that statement too. If so, there are plenty of people who would seek to deny the accomplishments of video game heroines entirely because they have a quality they disapprove of (such as a large chest). Take Lara Croft for example; prior to the reboot, there were thirteen games named, or spun off from, Tomb Raider. There were two feature films. Three novels. An animated series. A fifty-one issue comic book run. A place in the Guinness Book of Records as the "Most Successful Human Virtual Game Heroine."

The character herself is intelligent, witty, cultured, a capable hunter and survivor (of a plane crash, no less). She's also a published author and in spite of her wealthy upbringing, remains grounded and easy to root for.

In spite of all of this, many feminist critics have reduced Lara Croft to being nothing but a pair of breasts. The idea that these are the same people asking for strong female characters in video games is laughable. No matter how you cut it, that is the denial of women's earned accomplishments.

The Denial Of Women's Life Experience

Let's just stop and think for a second; since Anita Sarkeesian came to prominence, who is the biggest demographic whose voices have been consistently ignored by both her and the gaming media? Women.

Look at the short paragraph I quoted above. "Three ways in which men attempt to undermine women online". The narrative that is constantly being encouraged by Anita is that she is the victim of widespread abuse online and all of the perpetrators are male. Yet there is a sizable contingent of Anita's critics who are women. The closest I have heard to Anita acknowledging their existence was in a report on a college talk she did -- unfilmed, as Anita allows filming of her talks on abuse but not on gaming -- when she said something along the lines of "I've received criticism from women but not abuse".

However, to listen to Anita or the many gaming news outlets that report on her (or Zoe Quinn, Brianna Wu or anyone else currently in the spotlight), it sounds as if there are only two sides: the infallible hurt party on one side and the inevitably demonic, foaming-at-the-mouth male abusers on the other. Nothing in-between.

What do you call ignoring the many women who disagree with you if not "denial of women's life experience"? What do you call it -- other than arrogance -- if you feel you can speak for women as a whole and not take others' life experiences on board? Life experiences that aren't ones of sexism, abuse and oppression.

While we're on the subject, ignoring your male critics is just as big a denial of their life experiences too. Regardless of the sex of your critics, their life experiences are no less significant than yours and no more worthy of being dismissed.

Yet that's what gaming journalists have done; erased women from the discussion. When women "step out of line", so to speak, they cease to exist. That is, if they aren't accused of having "sockpuppet" accounts; men using female avatars. Again, assuming that women couldn't possibly disagree with Anita can only be described as arrogance.

The Denial Of Women's Professional Expertise

Once again, since Anita came to prominence, whose professional expertise has been consistently ignored? Women.

If you frequent Twitter, one of the responses to the accusations that #GamerGate is a misogynist movement has been to popularise this image of women who work within the games industry. It's a way of highlighting the hypocrisy of the gaming media; in spite of their claims of being progressive and pro-woman, they have made zero effort to raise awareness of or promote women who actually work in the games industry:

Left-click to enlarge.

Instead of putting any of these women in the spotlight, gaming sites devote article after article to women who often have little-to-no experience in the games industry. I can't quite put my finger on a particular reason why: the cynic in me wants to say it's because a retrospective of the several-decade career of an accomplished female developer doesn't earn as many pageviews as a "culture critic" ranting about how everything is sexist.

Alternatively, it could be because, through their desperation to appear "pro-woman", no gaming website dares to deny a platform for the Anita Sarkeesians of the world to speak for fear of being labelled misogynistic. And if you read that sentence and thought, "but wouldn't a spotlight on one of the successful female game developers work to counteract that?" bear in mind that even raising $23,000 for the Fine Young Capitalists' game -- with concepts taken from women all over the world and the game itself being created by an all-female development team -- wasn't enough to quell the accusations that #GamerGate was against women in gaming.

Basically, several of the women in the image above have had their professional expertise dismissed outright by the gaming media and many a critic, in spite of them being far more experienced in the games industry. For instance, Mari Shimazaki, character designer for Bayonetta, was hit particularly hard with arguments such as, "just because she's a woman doesn't mean she can't be sexist". The statement itself isn't incorrect but I'm failing to see any respect for her professional expertise.

Similarly, where was the acknowledgment of Gabrielle Toledano's expertise when she spoke out against the trend of blaming the lack of women in the games industry on sexism, when there are other factors in play? As the executive vice president and chief talent officer of EA, she is likely in a far better position to judge than a wealthyYoutuber or the developer of Depression Quest. How about Christine Phelan's expertise, when she challenged the viewpoint that because she's female, she must face sexist behaviour in the games industry at the hands of her male coworkers? In an interview with TechRaptor, Jennifer Dawe, developer of Seedscape, expressed concern that the fearmongering caused by gaming's critics may push women out of the industry more than invite them in.

Also, let's not forget that female developers can be accused of being "sockpuppets" too. Just a couple of evenings ago, I was directed to this on Twitter:

Left-click to enlarge..

I wouldn't normally take issue with a single example but "Ernest W. Adams", who is making that accusation, is the founder of the International Game Developers Association. Pretty darn significant for him to be assuming female game developers couldn't possibly exist.

Keep in mind, that's only covering women working within the games industry itself. What about fellow outsiders who don't agree with the sexism narrative, or at the very least take issue with some of the arguments put forward by its proponents? I've written before about Liana Kerzner's excellent five-part series called "Why Feminist Frequency almost made me quit writing about video games". Liana is a writer and producer who has worked in her field for over a decade. You don't have to be in the games industry to have professional expertise and Liana Kerzner is far from being the only woman to oppose Anita's viewpoints.

To sum up all three of the points argued by Anita in her talk at the Conference, this denial of women's accomplishments, experiences and expertise certainly exists. Yet she's one of the biggest proponents of doing this (or, if she isn't, certainly hasn't shied away from the spotlight or spoken out against the media for not focusing on other women). In fact, she's actively profited from it; with the media arguing that the games industry is a horrible place for women and gaming culture is a toxic environment for anyone who isn't a straight white male, Anita Sarkeesian appears to be proven correct from an outsider's perspective. The more women are ignored and their experiences eliminated from all mainstream discussion of gaming, the more Anita can speak on their behalf.

The "too long, didn't read" version of this can be summed up as follows: regardless of sex, skin colour, sexuality or any other characteristic, everyone is ignored in the sexism debate. Non-white, non-male, non-straight people cease to exist if they disagree with the sexism narrative and straight white men are all lumped into a "misogynist abuser" category.

The Wired UK article doesn't end there. It mentions two statements by Anita that have been some of the most heavily-scrutinised over the last few days:

"I am an expert on the depiction of women in video games. I know my stuff and I'm pretty good at what I do."

"My analysis is very well researched -- it's double and triple checked."

The following picture from the Conference also tends to accompany the first quote above:

For those of us who have followed Feminist Frequency for a substantial period of time, this raises a bunch of questions. The one that springs to mind immediately -- and this is not intended to sound snarky, rude or critical at all -- is, "if Anita Sarkeesian is an expert on the depictions of women in video games, why does she get so many things wrong?"

That is a genuine question, not intended to be insulting or amusing. The Tropes Vs Women in Games series contains a lot of incorrect information. As tempting as it is to write out all the ones I can recall, it feels like everything that has already been said about Anita's failure (or refusal, in some cases) to report on the depictions of women (and men) in video games accurately. However, a Twitter user named Jasperge107 is putting together a gallery of Anita's inaccurate claims -- although only 6 out of a total of 25 have been completed so far -- and Adrian Chmielarz wrote an article about Anita's controversy over Hitman, which she revisited during her conference speech. Yet while both of these go into detail about specific errors Anita has made, they only scratch the surface when it comes to the number of mistakes Anita has made.

The fact that Anita considers this analysis "well researched", which was "double and tripled checked" does not strengthen her viewpoint in any way. All it means is that she was very thorough when being wrong.

The second question that is raised by Anita's claim that she is an expert is how can she claim to be any such thing when she has never engaged in a debate over her views in the three years she has been in the public eye? She hasn't even debated her claims with a village idiot, let alone a fellow expert. In fact, consider the ways she has walled herself off from all criticism; Youtube comments are closed. She blocks people on Facebook and Twitter with alarming regularity. Filming is not allowed at her college talks. Even her Wikipedia page doesn't have a "Criticism" section and the "Reception and public appearances" header does not contain any criticism of her work.

This all takes place under the guise of "preventing harassment" but if your definition of "harassment" is having your viewpoints challenged, how can you possibly claim to be an expert in your field?

It also goes without saying that putting up a big slide about how much of a genius you are is incredibly arrogant. Humility is obviously not Anita's strongest suit. Although if I was in her shoes, with every gaming website singing my praises and one person even comparing me to Rosa Parks, my ego would probably be too inflated to consider being humble too.

There is one final quote I would like to focus on before ending:

"The cultural norms of male-dominated spaces can be changed."

There are three problems with this statement; firstly, assuming that the things Anita dislikes (violence, sexuality) are "cultural norms". Secondly, assuming they need to be changed. Thirdly, assuming that gaming is male dominated.

Since the first point is debateable and the second is obviously just Anita's own opinion; I didn't write a blog following E3 but she and her producer, Jonathan McIntosh, were famously complaining about the violence in Doom being "the norm". They didn't give reasons why it shouldn't exist but still shamed it for existing and the people who enjoyed it. It's the Jack Thompson argument, only in 2015, by people who are supported by the current generation of gaming journalists. Just like their arguments against sexism, it's their sensibilities that are being offended, nobody else's, yet they speak as authorities on what should and should not exist in the medium.

That's a separate issue though. What bothers me is the third point: the idea that gaming is "a male-dominated space".

Every year, the Entertainment Software Association publishes an "ESA Essential Facts" guide and makes it available online to read. You've probably already seen it but if not, it's available to view here. The pages are filled with helpful infographics about game genres that people are playing, the age of players and the gender of the players:

• This year, women and girls make up 44% of all players.
• Last year, it was 48%.
• In 2013, it was 45%.
• In 2012, it was 47%.
• In 2011, it was 42%.
• In 2010, it was 40%.

Now, read into the slight dips and rises in female players however you like but speaking as a general overview, the number of women and girls playing games has held steady for the last five years and it's in the 40-50% range. Or, to put it another way, around half of all gamers are female.

For Anita, feminists, gaming websites and the mainstream media to continue pushing the idea that in this day and age, gamiing is still "a male-dominated space" is ridiculous. It could not be further from the truth and the facts above prove it. Unless these critics are being pedantically literal and saying that a 12% difference counts as a hobby being "dominated" by a particular sex, the evidence works against them.

What's more, Anita's claims demean and insult the women she claims to be fighting for. Plenty of women were fans of gaming before she came onto the scene. To say something that basically boils down to "this pasttime needs to change before it's appropriate for women" is condescending. It basically treats women the same as children and, as was the case with female game developers, ignores women who have been enjoying gaming for years. What's more, when gaming has an almost equal split between the sexes before you start campaigning to end sexism in gaming, that may be a pretty good indicator that (a) it isn't male-dominated and (b) it doesn't need someone to change it because women are clearly capable of enjoying gaming without it being changed.

It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same for Anita Sarkeesian and the media. The actions that have served her well in the past continue to serve her well in the present day and her arguments are as flawed as they ever were.

-----

I apologise for the long wait between blog posts. In the last year, a lot more people opposing the "games are sexist" argument have started to speak out, on bigger platforms than this one. There are some excellent articles on sexism in games on TechRaptor, Breitbart, Metal Eater, Medium and more. It feels like the voices speaking out are more diverse too, as well as having a wider range of backgrounds; journalists, academics, people within the games industry and many others have raised objections to what they see as an unjustified attack on gaming (because, when developers, games and gamers themselves are all being insulted and told "gamers are dead" and "gamers don't need to be your audience", we're long past the point where it can be called "criticism").

So while all of the raised awareness about the issues of sexism in gaming and the flawed arguments put forward by gaming's critics is wonderful, it makes things trickier for me. I know the more voices speaking out, the better, but it can be a bit disheartening to see a better writer than you talking about a subject you wanted to write about, on a larger platform than your own. It's an exciting development for gaming and gamers as a whole but it puts me in a trickier position.

That's why I didn't write an article after E3. I started it but never got back to it. I may go back to it at some point, just because some of the arguments put forward by the gaming media after E3 were pretty ridiculous but there was a lot of backlash against those flawed articles by gamers and gaming's supporters.

Feel free to leave a comment below and ... I never check my themalesofgames@gmail.com e-mail anymore but you can send me an e-mail if you like. Follow me on Twitter, @TheMalesOfGames.

Edit: A big thank you to /r/KotakuInAction for all the attention this post has received. It's much appreciated.

What Studying "Critical Approaches" is Actually Like

Over the past two months or so, I've been "fortunate" enough to take part in a "Critical Approaches to Creative Media Products" unit that deals with many of the same issues that we have read about and heard talked about in the games industry over the past few years. I don't know if it's anywhere close to the same as the "Social and Political Thought" class that Anita Sarkeesian took but the themes and language used are very reminiscent of her videos. The class itself isn't horrible ... but all the thoughts you have ever had about "cultural criticism" not being a real job are reinforced by it.

Let's start with the biggest reason why: there are no wrong answers. Absolutely everything is open to interpretation. Your own ideology and how much you read into things are more important than being accurate; it doesn't matter if the content creator actually did put the same spin into their work that you claim, it only matters that you make the claim and are able to justify it in some way.

Some of you may have heard of a subject known as "semiotics"; the study of the meaning behind signs and symbols. This doesn't specifically refer to signs but can refer to a body of work (a text, like a movie, game or television series). It's all about the "decoder" (the viewer) figuring out the message and the reasons why the "encoder" (the content creator) created the work the way they did.

Is it correct? Doesn't matter. Can you read something into it? If the answer is yes, then you're on the right track.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I'll use an example given by the tutor herself; when talking about the 2001 Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie, she brought up a scene near the end where Lara Croft visits her father's grave. The tutor's "decoding" of this scene is that the filmmakers and audience are only comfortable accepting a woman in a "masculine" action role if she also sticks to "her place" as a woman and outwardly displays that she's still feminine.

There's a big problem with this. Let's say Lara attended her father's grave in a suit. Couldn't I interpret that as the filmmakers refusing to show that a woman can be an action hero while also being feminine? That she has to be masculine to be believable? Only today, I looked up Jupiter Ascending on Wikipedia and read the phrase "Hollywood typically portrays strong women in action films as "Arnold Schwarzenegger with boobs"," so couldn't that standpoint be argued and be just as valid?

Of course it could. Because there are no wrong answers.

This "no wrong answers" approach is a key aspect of critical approaches that isn't picked up on by gaming journalists. It's all interpretation, based on the decoder's ideology more than the text. Gaming journalists miss this and treat the critique of people like Anita Sarkeesian as fact. Which is unsurprising, since she herself seems to have failed to grasp the fact that the critical approaches subject is based entirely around interpretation. This is why we hear blunt, insulting statements from Anita about people like Toru Iwatani, who she claimed had "regressive personal or cultural notions about women". It's her interpretation but she's stating it as fact.

More than that, and this is another major point that both gaming journalists and Sarkeesian have not acknowledged, even if your interpretation is 100% correct and you've nailed the reasons behind why a game developer did what they did ... you can still be factually incorrect about the game's content. Anita has brought that to the table in spades, cherry-picking examples that support her argument and ignoring the ones that don't (strong female examples and negative male examples). No, violence against innocent female strippers in Hitman Absolution is not "implicitly encouraged". Yes, MaleShep does have his own nickname. No, NPC bodies disappearing does not reinforce women's status as disposable objects. Even if being a "cultural critic" allows you to say whatever you like about a content creator's ideology, you can't ignore facts and evidence in order to prove your point. That is an area where there certainly are some wrong answers.

I don't want it to sound like my Critical Approaches class was horrible and I have to give my tutor credit in some areas. She wasn't on board with the nonsensical "it's impossible to be sexist against men" attitude espoused by Anita and other high-profile feminists. One other significant point she made about sub-cultures vs. the mainstream. An "out-group" vs. an "in-group". Basically, as sub-cultures become more and more of an "out-group", they become more at odds with the mainstream.

You may also have heard a phrase that goes something along the lines of "the oppressors never see themselves as oppressors". Judging from their reactions over the last year, it seems as though there are a bunch of high-profile mainstream figures in the games industry who still see themselves as being part of a downtrodden sub-culture. People like Anita, Leigh Alexander and Brianna Wu see themselves as oppressed, helpless victims being piled on by their oppressors ... but then do a great job of killing that image by landing television interviews, college talks and articles in mainstream newspapers to talk about how oppressed they are. It doesn't matter that they're wealthy. Or funded by Intel. Or the heads of PR agencies. Or were given hundreds of thousands of dollars by their parents to start their own businesses. Or have friends in high places, like film directors and mainstream journalists who are happy to promote them as being victims. They still don't see themselves as being part of the mainstream. Or they do and know how well-off they are but have to keep up appearances for the sake of profiting off their victimhood.

I want to make it clear that I'm not limiting this to those three. Gaming journalism as a whole (more or less) seems to fit this mould. It seems to be a trend with feminism as a whole too; feminist writers and bloggers appear to think that feminism is the sub-culture when, in actual fact, it's the mainstream. In his interview with TechRaptor last year, Daniel Vavra talked about how, "there is a group of people that think they know what’s right and what’s wrong and that they have a mission to make the world a better place and protect the oppressed by any means. They don’t even care what the “oppressed” people think". This isn't specific to games either. It's in all forms of media and ridiculously common in comic books (such as the controversy over the Milo Manara Spider-Woman cover variant). "If you don't like it, don't buy it" is not a phrase they consider acceptable. The demand is that nobody should be allowed to buy it unless it suits their sensibilities. It's very immature. Feminist critique isn't a subculture. It's the mainstream and it has been for about thirty to forty years. Critics of feminist critique are the subculture.

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I was surprised to find that I still get at least a hundred visitors to the blog a day, even when I haven't updated for months. I apologise for that but if you read my last update, you'll know that I don't keep in touch with mainstream gaming news anymore. I get by on word of mouth and a few smaller gaming news sites that care more about the games than the politics. We all want to like games and I feel like buying the games I'm interested in is the best way of doing that. If it annoys critics because it has "regressive" portrayals of women, even better.

Regardless of whether people love or hate what I have to say, I appreciate everyone who visits and feel guilty about not updating more often. My readers (and especially commenters) are all great people and I don't want to let you down after you've done so much for me. I'm not going to stop updating, I guarantee that, but as side projects go, this blog is actually pretty draining.

I have to give a long-overdue thank you to Adrian Chmielarz for his numerous links to this blog in his "Top Ten Critiques of Feminist Frequency" article in February. It's much appreciated and his article was a great read. Thanks a lot to Adrian.

Final Fantasy XV's Female Cid

I apologise for not updating in January and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't due to feeling burned out on gender politics in gaming. Since I started this blog, I spent a lot of my time while writing each post seeking out information on the subject, often hunting down as many articles from the gaming media as I could on a particular subject. Even if those articles made me roll my eyes or cringe at the double standards the author happily promoted.

Now -- and I put this largely down to joining Twitter and becoming smothered by the issue -- I tend to avoid these articles and avert my gaze from the latest ridiculous statements from "pop culture critics", IGF judges and game journalists who seem to hate their own audience. I don't see a reason to read something that I know will irritate me but there'll be no point in responding because it will just be ignored. More high-profile figures than me have responded to these criticisms of gaming without any response. It didn't matter whether they were game developers, game journalists or women and minorities themselves (and obviously, there's plenty of overlap between those groups). Regardless of who they were, they were ignored, insulted, added to blocklists or dismissed for being white and male (even when they weren't, bafflingly).

It feels like each individual gamer's voice online matters less than ever before. Game journalists actively try and cultivate communities where nobody has the right to offer a dissenting opinion. Game journalism is basically one very big ivory tower, with journalists at the top bellowing what is "right" to the world while gamers are at the bottom, their criticisms going unheard.

With that said, growing discontent amongst gamers is clearly being felt by game journalists as well and it's interesting to see how it's affecting them. Take Dying Light, for example, which I know very little about other than "it's the zombie parkour game". Recently, Techland, the developer of Dying Light, chose not to feature a quote from a reviewer or game journalist on the posters for the game, instead choosing to feature a quote from Pewdiepie, the Youtube Let's Player.

Seeing game journalists' seething reactions to this shows how petrified they are about their monopoly being broken. Several different sites referred to Techland's actions as "ridiculous", "shady" and "an ethical can of worms". This is ignoring the fact that PewDiePie's endorsement is no different from a celebrity endorsement in any other medium. Authors promote their books by putting quotes from other authors on the back cover. Films sometimes feature quotes from other directors on their posters (one that stands out in my mind was a Quentin Tarantino quote for Kevin Smith's Red State). I can't even turn on my television without seeing George Clooney advertising coffee and Kevin Bacon shilling for mobile phone networks.

What gets under the skin of game journalists is that they are becoming less and less relevant. Why would a game developer seek a quote from a reviewer or website who might give a game a lower score based on the size of its female characters' breasts or other issue unrelated to the game's quality? Or who only gave it a high score because of how many incentives they were given by the developer? When there's a gamer on Youtube with 34 million subscribers as of this writing, why wouldn't you reach out to that audience and use his quotes about your game? There's no reason not to.

This is basically gaming journalists behaving like children and throwing a tantrum because their parents aren't giving them the attention they want but, just like children, they're very, very loud. It seems as if they're afraid that gamers are listening to -- shock, horror -- other gamers, giving their opinions as they play games, rather than game journalists preaching about how horrible gamers are, how all games are sexist and then recommending you buy Gone Home.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the audience that PewDiePie does. I don't, so my voice doesn't get heard as much as I'd like. Game journalists are still the dominant voice in gaming. That's frustrating. Two weeks ago, a writer called Liana Kerzner wrote a five-part series called "Why Feminist Frequency almost made me quit writing about video games". Liana goes into a lot of analysis of Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs Women series so far and, as so many have done before her, pokes huge holes in her arguments. If you've read these types of arguments before, I recommend skimming Liana's articles but they're worth reading for her perspective on the matter.

I actually disagree with Liana on quite a few things but she comes at the topic in some important ways; not just as a woman but as a woman whose voice has been ignored and as a woman with a large chest who is being stereotyped by Sarkeesian for her views on women with large breasts in video games. I was surprised by how much it resonated with me; just as Liana is frustrated over her viewpoint being ignored and people speaking for her, in spite of the fact she belongs to the group being spoken for, I feel the same way when it comes to her flawed arguments about men. The gaming press listens to Sarkeesian but does not seek out different opinions as they should and not once have they suggested that peer review may be a good thing. In short, Liana and I are quite alike; we both write ridiculously long analyses on Anita's videos but ultimately, our feelings boil down to being the same. Liana was tempted to quit writing about video games due to Feminist Frequency, which is also a big part of the reason behind my long hiatus (although mine ties into game journalism as a whole but because Feminist Frequency's influence is largely responsible for the current climate, that's a circular argument).

Liana's arguments in part four of her series ties into what I want to write about today and, honestly, something I should've written about a month-and-a-half ago. The big news that in Final Fantasy XV, Cid -- a recurring name for different characters throughout the series -- will be given to a female character for the first time.

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The reaction to the latest version of Cid being female reminds me of a few other occasions when a piece of news that should have been considered a victory for female portrayals in games hasn't been welcomed as you would expect. Aliens: Colonial Marines' developer adding female characters was criticised by Carolyn Petit on Gamespot, for example. Anita Sarkeesian dismissed Princess Peach's inclusion in Super Mario Bros. 2 because it was "by accident" because it was a modified version of Japan's Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. It feels like a similar story with Final Fantasy XV.

I don't want to describe the female version of Cid as being "monumental" or "ground-breaking" for women in games but if you're a fan of the Final Fantasy series, it is significant. Having a Cid in a Final Fantasy game has been a theme since Final Fantasy II in 1988 and the size of the role each Cid plays varies depending on the game. However, they tend to have something in common; providing the protagonists with transport for getting around the world (often an airship). This seems to be the direction FFXV is heading in too, with Cid being a mechanic. It's likely that she provides -- or repairs -- the car we see the heroes travelling in during each of the gameplay trailers.

So what's the big issue with Cid?

I plan on keeping my criticism here very short; what we have here is several examples of people who care less about what a woman does and more about how a woman looks.

First of all, let's dispel the myth that Cid's design is "the typical Final Fantasy female character". Thinking about female Final Fantasy characters, your mind could go to any number of conservatively-dressed women, such as Aeris, Yuffie, Yuna, Penelo, Ashe and all of the female characters from Final Fantasy VIII, IX and XIII (unless bare midriffs or legs are considered sexualised. By Lightning Returns, some of Lightning's costumes were clearly designed with fanservice in mind but prior to that, her outfits were modest). That's without going back to the 2D era.

Even thinking about other characters, what constitutes being sexualised? Rikku was introduced in Final Fantasy X with a shot focused on her behind but she wasn't portrayed sexually throughout the rest of the game, nor was her outfit revealing. The same can be said of Lulu, who wore a dress that showed her cleavage but was far from being a sexualised character. Even though Tifa is sometimes held up as a sexualised character, you'd be hard pressed to find any examples of her being sexualised in Final Fantasy VII. I don't know if further games and movies changed that.

This is slightly off-topic but it bothers me somewhat that some people -- hopefully a vocal minority -- have stigmatised Final Fantasy with this label about women while BioWare sexualise the hell out of their female characters but receive nothing but praise for being a "progressive" developer. It doesn't make sense but by now, I've accepted that's often the case.

All-in-all, Cid's critics basically pushed aside the fact that for the first time in a Final Fantasy game, Cid is going to be female. They ignored the important point that she is working in a traditionally male-dominated profession. All they focused on was her body and her outfit. It staggers me that the critics can so unironically and harshly judge fictional women based on their breast size and their attire and then complain that there are no good female characters. When you judge women so cruelly that you think "revealing clothing = bad character" and "large breasts = zero worth", that's the type of conclusion you arrive at. The same critics have attempted to retcon Lara Croft from being a tough, intelligent, witty, independent icon of the PlayStation and most successful female video game character of all time -- the Guinness Book of World Records even says so -- into nothing but a sex object or teenage boy's fantasy.

Plus, male Final Fantasy characters are unrealistically attractive too. From around a dozen androgynous hunks to plenty of gents sporting the open-shirt look, men's bodies and clothing in the Final Fantasy series has long been as over-the-top as the women's, if not more so. Yet it gets ignored or dismissed as -- you guessed it -- a "male power fantasy". Lack of awareness and objectivity concerning male characters is always a stumbling block when these arguments are made about female characters.

Also, and this should go without saying -- in fact, many of these points should -- but there is nothing wrong with making any character attractive or giving them revealing clothing. That does not automatically make them a bad character, nor does it make them sexualised. From what we've seen so far, Cid is not sexualised.

I think with announcements of this nature, we see a significant divide between two groups of people; those who actually want to see more good female representation in games and the entitled bunch who think stomping their feet, playing the victim and demanding their own way will override a game developer's creative freedom. Final Fantasy XV's Cid is a better example of how to make a female character own a traditionally-male role than, say, Jason Aaron's female Thor, and deserves to be treated as such. She should be judged on her own merits as a character and not, as her critics want, as an object.

Besides, even if Cid was sexualised, God knows male blue collar workers have never been sexualised, right?

Finally, and I'm not going to go into this at all, if you want to see true hypocrisy, look up the reactions to the sexualised male hero of Mevius Final Fantasy, an upcoming mobile game. If you ever needed proof that gender equality is certainly not being argued for in games, go and read some of the celebrations by feminist gamers over a male character being sexualised. It doesn't come as a surprise how quickly they abandon their principles over sexualised characters when they're not the victim, nor can they deny it exists against men. Yay equality?

Leave a comment or e-mail me at themalesofgames@gmail.com. My posting may be more sporadic from now on.

Anita Sarkeesian's Sexist Exploitation of a Mass Shooting

I've been procrastinating about writing a blog regarding Polygon's low Bayonetta 2 review score since they posted it last week but this couldn't wait. As some of you may know, there was a school shooting yesterday in Marysville, Washington, leaving two people dead (including the gunman) and four others in critical condition.

I woke up this morning and went on Twitter to see the following tweets from Anita Sarkeesian:

There are a few good reasons to bring up mass shootings with regards to debating an agenda. To discuss the possibility (or necessity) of gun control laws. To point out the poor record of supporting mental health issues and campaign for change.

To push a ridiculous, pseudo-scientific claim about "toxic masculinity" is not a good reason. It's nothing but shameless exploitation of a tragedy to push a sexist agenda. According to Anita the problem isn't guns. It isn't failure to diagnose and treat severe mental health issues. It's men. "Toxic masculinity", to be more specific.

It's one thing to use such a disgustingly sexist phrase as that but acting like pointing it out is helping men -- "this is how patriarchy can harm men too" -- is just ridiculous. Imagine applying the phrase "toxic" to any other characteristic of any other demographic and acting as if it's actually for their benefit. "Toxic homosexuality", for example.

Edit: Created this for Twitter, so I figured I'd post it here too. Feel free to spread it around.

I've already written about the patriarchy argument and how it fails to get to the root of many serious issues that affect men and women. Let's assume for a minute that the patriarchy exists; has the patriarchy ever described a characteristic innate to men as "toxic"? No, yet Anita is happy to do so. How exactly is the "patriarchy" harming me? They aren't stereotyping my entire sex in the way that a popular feminist is happy to, nor are they saying there's something wrong with me just for being male.

As Cathy Young's tweet above points out, it's important to keep in mind that this isn't Anita throwing out her "toxic masculinity" phrase as part of a TEDxWomen or Conference talk. She's branding mass shootings as something inherent to masculinity. Not only does it ignore female mass murderers but paints it as a male problem. Then claims that she's "helping" men by telling them.

I wasn't the only one to point this out but it has to be said: Anita Sarkeesian is now on the same level as Jack Thompson. For those who don't remember, Jack's big claim was that the Columbine massacre was the fault of gamers and he used it to fuel his anti-gamer crusade. Anita is doing the exact same thing and using a mass shooting to promote all the sexist views she wants. She even took the opportunity to plug a book that she had written a blurb for on the back cover:

Left-click for larger view.

Understandably, Anita's sexist exploitation of a tragedy caused some backlash against her. Rather than taking on board the criticism and considering making an apology, Anita did what she always does; claims she was harassed. It's almost reached the point of self-parody:

Yes, Anita actually claimed that a backlash against exploiting a tragedy to push a sexist agenda was "hate". I don't think I've ever used the phrase "professional victim" to describe Anita, as others have, but it's an accurate description; she poses as a damsel in distress to gain further magazine interviews, newspaper coverage and talks about being harassed. This is no different and I don't see any reason why it wouldn't happen; following the shootings by Elliot Rodger in May, feminist bloggers and journalists leapt on the opportunity to blame "male entitlement", "male rage" and "male privilege". Laying mass shootings at the feet of men is apparently common amongst modern feminist "hipsters with degrees in cultural studies" (as the wonderful Christina Hoff Sommers put it when describing Anita's video game criticism).

After this, I don't want to see anyone claiming all Anita is doing is "making videos about wanting equality in video games", as Anita has claimed in the past during her talks. That was never true. The same applies for those who say "feminism is for equality". This is just another example of how that is not the case. In fact, if there are any feminists, especially feminist gamers, this should be the straw that breaks the camel's back when it comes to reasons to denounce Anita as your spokesperson. If the flawed arguments, the bias, stealing videos from others without permission, stealing artwork from others without permission, the whole "prostituted women" instead of "sex workers" controversy and dismissing male victims of domestic violence didn't do it, this should.

In the link I just posted about part two of Anita's Damsels in Distress video, I wrote "her heart may be in the right place". Obviously, I withdraw that statement. There is no reason for any moral person to support Anita Sarkeesian or anyone else who would exploit a tragedy to push their own agenda. More than that, she is a prime example of why I refuse to support modern feminism. I actually follow plenty of feminists on Twitter who I like but it goes without saying that people like Anita Sarkeesian have made the feminist movement about misandry. Not equality.

This is a picture that I posted back in May, following the Elliot Rodger shootings. It's as true now as it was then:

Credit to Europa-Phoenix.

Leave a comment below, send an e-mail to themalesofgames@gmail.com or follow @TheMalesOfGames on Twitter.

"Ethics & Diversity"

I'm sorry for not updating sooner but I came down with an illness at the same time I planned on writing a new blog.

College has started up again and my games design course kicked off with a focus on Ethics & Diversity as part of the induction. There isn't a lot to say about it -- just as there wasn't much discussion about it last year -- but I'll relay what was discussed.

Rather than a typical class of students, this year's course involves each group working together as if they're each an individual studio. Each "studio" has its own name, logo, etc. but before we reached that stage, we had to research mission statements from existing developers and create a "do's and don'ts" poster about ethics and diversity, after discussing it for a while.

Prior to creating the posters, the students had to list examples of discrimination they could think of either in games, the gaming community or the industry, under different headings on big sheets of paper the tutor provided. Headings like "Have you ever seen discrimination in the games industry?" and "List some examples of current ethical issues in the games industry". The one that stood out was "Why do you think women are under-represented in games?"

It's clear that it's a loaded question and your response is probably the same as all of mine were (but I didn't list). Could there be more female characters in games? Yes, as well as more varied and diverse characters in general. Do I think women are under-represented in games? No. I don't believe that just because few AAA games have female characters means women are under-represented and games with female protagonists are plentiful if you cast your net wider, particularly towards Japanese titles. Even if only AAA games are focused on, there are still plenty of strong female characters being represented, even while not playable. Plus, I don't think it's stressed often enough that just because there's a main character in a game with the same skin colour, sex and sexual orientation as me, that doesn't mean he "represents" me in any way. Sharing a few similar characteristics doesn't mean that character is representative of me or anyone else who shares those characteristics. I've spoken about this before, saying it's often easier for me to identify with someone who doesn't share my characteristics, such as a female protagonist, than a character who does that I dislike (Final Fantasy X's Tidus being being one of many examples).

In fairness to the tutor, he seemed reasonable enough. I spoke to him about having "heard" counter-arguments before to accusations of sexism in games -- without naming names, I mentioned that some critics had a habit of taking examples out of context and diminishing good female characters by ignoring/minimising their most praiseworthy attributes -- and he seemed happy to hear me out.

When speaking to the entire class, however, there were two things that bothered me. Firstly, a student mentioned women in the games industry being paid less, which the tutor acknowledged and also mentioned that it was common across all industries. This particular "fact" has been debunked many times over the years, to the point that it ended up on Christina Hoff Sommers' TIME piece "5 Feminist Myths That Will Not Die" (and Sommers also wrote this article for the Daily Beast if you would like more info on the subject or you can check out the report yourself). Not to go into it too much but the wage gap doesn't take into account hours worked, experience, incentives for relocating, travelling long distances or being poached from another company. It's the same story in the case of the games industry but bear in mind that games have been a male-dominated industry for thirty years (and still is). Senior figures in the industry are more likely to be male and their salaries are obviously going to be larger than those of the entry-level employees that their salaries are being compared against (which, while still male-dominated, is more likely to have more female employees because the games industry has tried to appeal to women more in recent years). When you collectively weigh the male salaries against the female ones, it's obvious that the male salary is going to be higher overall.

The problem is that saying that in a classroom when everyone except the tutor is silent makes you look like a nut. Just saying "that's not true" doesn't do much good and it wasn't as though I could back it up with a PowerPoint presentation on the subject.

The second thing that bothered me was when the tutor asked outright, "has anyone here not seen any examples of discrimination in games?" The problem with that is it occurred after talking about the wage gap, after the class had wracked their brains to come up with examples of discrimination to write underneath the headings and after everyone had read out at least one example. After that, nobody is going to say "I haven't" and I doubt they would have even at the start of the session. It's also a loaded question, given it's not structured to account for answers like, "sure but [context, artistic direction, etc.]". That's not to say there isn't discrimination in the games industry -- most notably in online games, where trolls are indiscriminate about who they discriminate against -- but I wouldn't describe, say, the women in Dead Or Alive as an example of "discrimination" or "misogyny". Those terms are too strong to describe something so minor and waters-down the severity of actual discrimination and misogyny. I know this has all been said before but it's worth repeating.

At some point, one of the things the tutor said was something like, "ethics and diversity has become a bigger issue in recent years and will only become bigger as time goes on". To that all I have to say is ... great! One of the biggest misconceptions gaming's Social Justice Warrior critics have towards people who critique their viewpoints is that we don't want to have the conversation. That's not the case at all. I want this conversation as long as it is a fair conversation, with all viewpoints being given equal consideration. To date, that has not been the case.

#GamerGate and #NotYourShield

I'll try to keep this blog from being as long as the last one and give a more basic overview rather than a comprehensive one. This is a story that seems to keep growing, so there's no sense in being comprehensive if there are just going to be more articles and developments. Also note that, for once, I won't be linking to any sites that ignorantly insult or otherwise dismiss gamers.

For anyone who isn't on Twitter or who has been out of the loop for the last week or so #GamerGate is a hashtag that spiralled out of the gaming press' reaction -- or lack thereof -- to the unethical behaviour from game journalists that we touched upon last time; Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Kotaku writer Nathan Grayson sleeping with Zoë Quinn being an association that damages his ability to remain impartial while reporting. The gaming press did one of two things; they either gave a collective shrug of the shoulders or they went on the attack, ignoring the story about corruption in game journalism to say how horrible all gamers were to Zoë Quinn.

#GamerGate is basically the name given to those reactions and the unethical behaviour from the gaming press. Although since then, the situation has become a lot bigger.

Surprisingly, KnowYourMeme gives a good overview of what #GamerGate is about. As before, InternetAristocrat made a video about all of this while it was happening. I recommend watching it if you haven't already:

Let's recap some of the problems that gamers had with the gaming press. To begin with, it was journalists refusing to acknowledge conflicts of interest and associations that could damage their integrity. Nathan Grayson and Zoë Quinn for example. However, lots of other examples came out over the coming days (and some were already available at the time my last blog was posted), including Patricia Hernandez having relationships with two developers whose games she went on to promote on Kotaku without acknowledging any personal involvement. She went as far as to directly link to where the games could be purchased:

Left-click for larger view (very large image).

Since then, she's added footnotes on each piece, very briefly pointing out her relationship with each developer.

Plus, details about journalists contributing to developers' Patreons -- which, in case you didn't know, is a website where people can donate regularly to content creators, usually per month but also per video for Youtubers, per image for artists, etc. -- came out while I was writing my last blog:

Left-click for larger view (very large image).

Then there was this comment from someone who works for Reuters, the world's largest news agency. Give it a read, it's an interesting little story. Amongst other things, the writer notes that during Reuters' 2008 review, they discovered that a staggering 0% of staff members for gaming news sites had degrees in journalism. That's not a misprint. Zero percent:

Left-click for larger view.

There was also the friendship between Polygon reviewer Danielle Riendeau and Gone Home developer Chris Remo, going as far back as 2011. This raised some eyebrows when Riendeau review the game for Polygon and gave it a perfect 10/10 score:

Left-click for larger view.

As this is such a big and far-reaching story, I'm sure I've missed some examples but these all came to light because of #GamerGate. Let's not forget Rab Florence's Eurogamer article about exactly this type of club -- taking aim at the Games Media Awards, Geoff Keighley and the relationship between journalists and publishers -- and Cinema Blend's article about publishers offering gifts to reviewers. As you can see, evidence of unethical behaviour is beginning to mount. Feel free to refer back to the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics page if you're interested in seeing where, exactly, game journalists went wrong.

So what was the gaming press' reaction to all this? Calm acceptance of the whole situation and a pledge to reform what is evidently a broken system? Well, there is some talk of reform, which we'll come to later on but on the whole ... no.

Tom Hatfield - Writer for PC Gamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun and The Guardian. Left-click for larger view.

Devin Faraci - Writer for Badass Digest. Left-click for larger view.

Helena Horton - Currently writing for the Daily Mirror's Ampp3d columns. Left-click for larger view.

These are just a few examples from writers. Being compared to ISIS and saying that #GamerGate was a reason to kill all men are some of the more severe examples but insults about "basement-dwelling virgins" and "manbabies" were thrown around regularly. Here are some examples of the types of ad hominem attacks directed at #GamerGate supporters:

Left-click for larger view. Note that "@Devin_Faraci" is a parody account ("@devincf" is the actual account, as seen in a previous screenshot).

It was the same story when a hashtag titled "#IStandWithJonTron" cropped up. I missed out on this hashtag while it was happening, so I can only assume that Youtuber JonTron -- someone who I only knew from his involvement in the cancelled Game Jam reality television show that Zoë Quinn was also involved in -- voiced his support for #GamerGate and faced this backlash for it:

Left-click for larger view.

There are a few reasons for so many comments about misogyny but, as far as I can tell, very few of them had to do with #GamerGate. Some were still annoyed that the hashtag grew from the Zoë Quinn situation, which wasn't that much of an issue by the time #GamerGate was being discussed. Then there was the leak of celebrity nudes, including Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst, that happened a few days ago. I have no idea how that was linked to #GamerGate. From what I see from the 4chan co-creator implementing a DMCA policy, it's related to 4chan. I also recall hearing something about them first surfacing on Reddit.

Then, around the same time, Anita Sarkeesian tweeted about having to leave her home because of death threats. She showed a screenshot of another three-minute old Twitter account with only ten tweets as "proof". Only ten tweets, all being violent, sexual and threatening towards her.

Now, ignoring whether this Twitter account was legitimate or not (I'm skeptical), this made the news on gaming sites while other significant stories didn't. This unverified story about Anita Sarkeesian leaving her home -- it was based on nothing but her word -- was reported while stories like, say, the Fine Young Capitalists' IndieGoGo campaign hadn't received any coverage at that time. Since then, it's received coverage twice. Once on Vice, where they complained about the campaign for being born of misogyny (even though this project for women has raised $52,000 as of this writing), and once on Gameranx, where the writer said that just because the project supports women doesn't make it immune to criticism. Which is fair enough but hilarious when you take into account the fact that no gaming sites have published any criticism of Anita's supposedly good-for-women project.

Let's be clear; I'm sure there was harassment of both Quinn and Sarkeesian but thirty seconds of research into #GamerGate at any point while it was occurring would've showed that the vast majority of gamers cared about ethical behaviour and, following the insults and accusations of misogyny, some respect from the gaming press and that sexism didn't come into it. The fact that game journalists branded all gamers participating in #GamerGate this way was a damning indictment of their unwillingness to investigate and accurately report in itself.

Accusations of unethical behaviour cast a black cloud over games journalism but, since attacking gamers was suddenly the trendy thing to do, a bunch of gaming sites all coincidentally seemed to have the same idea; supposedly, but unconvincingly, independently from each other, about ten different articles sprang up declaring "Gamers are Dead" ... and they all showed up over the course of one weekend. I'm not going to link to them all here. A blog called Crotchety Old Gamer has a list of many of them but I assume there's more than that. And yes, they used the Anita Sarkeesian story to justify this "Gamers are Dead" claim in each one. There were similar articles about a petition being circled by developers about making an effort to stop harassment in games wherever they saw it. Some sites, like IGN, used an image from Anita Sarkeesian's latest video for that article too but, even worse, the moderators appeared to be censoring perfectly reasonable comments:

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Recapping all of this is starting to feel a bit stale and long-winded, so I'll give some of my thoughts on it and pick that thought up a bit later.

Let's start with the obvious; game journalists don't own gaming or the "gamer" term. Plenty of gamers have been playing games for decades. Game journalists aren't going to kill it in one weekend with some passive-aggressive articles and if they actually believed they would, it's incredibly arrogant of them.

Then there are the insults thrown around. The funny and sometimes strange thing about #GamerGate is that many of the people using the hashtag didn't dislike game journalism. Demanding ethical behaviour didn't mean that they disliked game journalists or suggest that any of them were bad at their jobs (outside of the unethical behaviour, of course). This may have been an attack on a corrupt system but it wasn't about the individuals. When names were mentioned, such as Stephen Totilo, it was because they were in positions to change things. So my question is this: how much must you dislike your own consumers to insult them in such a way? It disturbs me how comfortable game journalists were at branding people misogynists -- there's no two ways about it, calling everyone bigots -- when called out on their own actions. This kind of refusal to take responsibility actually has an acronym; DARVO, or "Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender". Or if you'd prefer something more relateable, a refusal to take responsibility is something children do when they've done something wrong. Game journalists did the same thing. Attacking people when your industry faces criticism is not a mature or rational response.

What I found amazing about #GamerGate was how game journalists -- through their conflicts of interest, attacks on gamers and biased/political/soapbox issue articles -- managed to annoy absolutely everyone. From all demographics. In spite of the claims that all the #GamerGate supporters were "straight white guys" who desperately wanted to maintain a boys' club, the gaming press annoyed men, women, transpeople, left-wingers and right-wingers, people of all races, all sexualities, the able-bodied and the disabled, feminists and MRAs. People from every demographic and group showed their support for #GamerGate for the simple reason that people from every demographic are gamers. We all care about accurate and unbiased journalism ... and the gaming press' arrogance concerning the matter didn't help them in the slightest.

Going back to the story and the "Gamers are Dead" articles, the problem was that by trying to derail the goals of #GamerGate and turn it into an issue of sexism rather than journalistic integrity, the gaming press pulled all of their soapbox articles into the firing line. Although there are people like me who have always had a problem with gaming sites promoting a political stance, others began to speak out in objection to gaming sites using arguments about misogyny, sexuality, minorities and "straight white guys wanting to keeping gaming as a boys' club" in order to derail topics about their own corruption.

So we had objections to Kotaku's Jason Schreier insulting George Kamitani for his character designs in Dragon's Crown:

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A freelance writer named Jenn Frank wrote a scathing attack on gamers in The Guardian, again saying that it was all about hatred of women and using Anita Sarkeesian and Zoë Quinn as examples. Then it came out that Frank is a friend of Quinn's, funds Quinn's Patreon and Quinn's PR agent funds Frank's Patreon:

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Bear in mind that throughout these many accusations of misogyny on the gaming community's behalf, female gamers are speaking out against unethical behaviour in the gaming press ... and having their opinions ignored. Frustrated female gamers didn't fit the "misogynist" narrative the gaming press was weaving. Same for non-white and non-heterosexual gamers being ignored by the writers claiming these were the acts of "straight white guys".

So basically, the same game journalists who claim to be all for progressiveness and equality in gaming are the same people ignoring the voices of women and minorities. The same people writing about Zoë Quinn and posting Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes Vs Women videos are the same people who refuse to give publicity to the Fine Young Capitalists' IndieGoGo project. People who don't represent women or minorities feel as if they have the right to speak on behalf of women and minorities.

This is when the #NotYourShield hashtag started being used.

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Left-click for larger view. Tweets are still difficult to make out in this one.

Gamers from every demographic other than the "straight white male" group that game journalists were singling out used #NotYourShield to object to the gaming press' use of their sex/race/sexuality to shield themselves from accusations of corruption.

#NotYourShield opened up an extra can of worms. Pictures like this one started to do the rounds, showing that 4chan -- the site that game journalists loved to single out as a misogynist haven that #GamerGate sprang from -- actually had a lot more female members than visitors to the gaming sites accusing #GamerGate of misogyny:

Although I suspect these images already existed, they were brought up as part of #NotYourShield to protest how everyone other than straight white men were being ignored the gaming press:

And there was also a great video by this female gamer. Can't embed it here for some reason, so make sure to check the link. There were blogs by black gamers and feminist gamers too.

It was all very inspirational to watch if you followed it at the time.

#NotYourShield didn't change anything, of course. Game journalists and developers went on ignoring women, transpeople, non-whites, LGBT and other gamers just as they did before, except maybe suggesting they were white guys using "sockpuppet" accounts (faking it).

There has been some support for #GamerGate and #NotYourShield on a few different sites -- Gamer Headlines, Games Reviews and Slate -- and their analysis compared to that of, say, Gamasutra is like night and day.

As for reform, Polygon and Kotaku have revised their policies regarding support for developers. CinemaBlend covers the story and it seems that while all Polygon writers have to do is disclose whether they fund a developers' Patreon, Kotaku writers are prohibited from funding them entirely. Kotaku seems to be making greater strides but looking at both the comment from the Reuters' employee from earlier and the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics page, I'd say both still have a long way to go. There isn't much mention of avoiding other potential conflicts of interest, such as relationships, and there is zero acknowledgement of the lack of respect game journalists seem to have for their audience.

The Escapist's general manager also mentions revised ethical guidelines:

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That about covers all I'd like to cover. I suspect I'll take a break after this, with my next blog at the end of the month at the earliest. Until then, I recommend supporting #GamerGate and leave a few images here that I couldn't fit in anywhere else.

Devin Faraci of Badass Digest saying arguments against Anita Sarkeesian are as ridiculous as Holocaust Denial.

Adam Sessler, former X-Play host, president of a consultancy firm for entertainment and media.

Support #GamerGate image.