Why you're wrong about GamerGate.

Disagreeing with you is not lying. And feminism is hardly a radical ideology. Or if it is, that says a lot more about 'the center' than it does about feminism.

Bullshit. She clearly said Mario was a sexist pig for trying to "possess" Peach when he was clearly trying to save her out of friendship. Bowser is the one trying to keep her for his own enjoyment, and lumping in Mario with him simply because he's a male was a clear mistake on her part. That's not up for debate or different interpretation on any level. It just shows that she's willing to manipulate the truth for her own personal gain. She's no different than Glenn Beck.

Listen, it's true that there are a bunch of sexist people involved in GG no doubt, but being extreme on the other end is just as bad. There's a reason that swing votes determine elections every single time.

Extreme left and right is still extreme.

The criticism is that Peach is one of many female characters in video games with absolutely no agency. She exists simply to get captured and provide a dude with motivation to traverse levels. It's meant to be an iconic example of the deficiency of actual strong female characters in video games.

You may disagree with her but to make these hysterical claims that she's propagandizing and consciously warping some obvious objective truth for her own malicious reasons says a hell of a lot more about you than about her.

And fanatical centrism isn't any better.

She's royalty, not an average female. There's been instances in games where princes have been kidnapped and helpless to do anything about it, so this is clearly about an extreme liberal agenda.

And since we're judging and critiquing people in this discussion now, I'll do the same to you. You're clearly a passive-aggressive type who avoids direct confrontation, probably because you were emasculated by a stronger male in your family. You rarely quote other users and simply utter, under your breath, your extreme views with little resistance while mocking opposing views in a way that keeps you out of confrontation.

Let's not go there and attack each other on a personal level. I don't know you and you don't know me.

Attacking a heroic game character falsely for political gain is wrong. Creating a mountain out of a mole hill and dragging unneeded politics in to this fantasy realm of video games is nonsense. Situations in games can and will reflect real problems in the real world, and there's nothing wrong with that. There's also nothing wrong with someone creating a perfect world in a game where everybody is perfect and treated perfectly, because it's up to the creator to decide what content they choose to bring to life, not those that analyze every situation with a political magnifying glass.

Actually, if you're looking for a post that perfectly illustrates gamergate, it's this one. Why let facts get in the way of a good nerd rage, right?

Gamergate: "Zoe Quinn is a slut who slept with someone for a favorable review of her shitty game."

Everyone else: "Acutally, no. That never happened and there are no such reviews."

Gamegate: "Well, even if that didn't happen she's still guilty because... reasons."

Even though this whole thing kicked off because a pissed off ex-boyfriend posted some seriously inflammatory shit about his ex-girlfriend. Even though the accusations turned out to be demonstrably untrue, the "movement" assumes that every bad rumor they hear about her because otherwise there's nothing to be outraged by.

-Byshop

Hahahaha whoa there bucko, let's rein it in a bit.

I still don't understand how feminism and wanting there to be more strong female characters that exist for their own purposes outside of their relationships with dudes can be considered 'an extreme liberal agenda.' You seem to be viewing this criticism as an attack on video gaming, an attempt to destroy it or something, rather than an honest effort to make it better. You cannot imagine that someone could disagree with you honestly, and so you ascribe conscious malice to those who disagree and that is not a healthy thing.

And all art is political, dogg. It's unavoidable.

@Byshop: I'm not involved in GG wise apple, and you painting a perfect picture of her is ridiculous. There was documentation that showed those involved in the "relations" giving good advertisements for a shitty product (tweets and other comments long deleted now). Any way you try to spin it, she hasn't been exactly ethical in her behavior, but please keep telling us she's Mother Teresa.

What picture did I paint, exactly? Feel free to quote me.

I said literally nothing about her character, only that the claim that she slept with reviewers to get good game reviews is false. Now that the claim that she exchanged sex for positive game reviews has been pretty widely disproven (by the fact that the reviews don't exist, for one) it comes down to "well, she has behaved unethically in other ways" and there's a ton of proof out there about it but nobody seems to have any of it.

The only thing I know about Zoe Quinn is that she's a shitty girlfriend. Cheating on someone is bullshit and a chickenshit way to end a relationship. However, the details of that are none of my business because I don't know her. The only thing that's relevant is whether she did something unethical in her industry because -that- would affect the community. The fact that the initial claim about her turned out to just be some bullshit spun up by a pissed off ex should give any reasonable person pause at all the claims that appeared -after- that, though.

-Byshop

Exactly. GG is such a fraudulent movement.

You're the one who started making it personal, incorrectly saying my comment show anything one way or the other about me personally, so any malice is on your part. I simply swing back when attacked in this situation.

The only problem I have with their complaints, is that they expect other people's creations to reflect their personal views, aka asking for a handout. They expect others to conform to their political beliefs when that isn't going to happen, so they're just making noise and annoying others. They should shut the hell up and make the games that they want to play themselves.

That's really all there is to it.

You painted a false picture of me being a GG member. I'm just your average gamer who enjoys games without blindly following political movements. I'm not about to read a novel's worth of this garbage, so I'm just a passing consumer sharing my opinions about the information available to me.

Maybe she's guilty of bad behavior, maybe she's not. Maybe those making death threats are associated with GG, and maybe not. There's no clear evidence of much of anything in all this mess. It sucks that just making general comments about this stuff gets you accused of everything under the sun.

The name calling from both sides is moronic and pointless, and anyone actively involved in either side of this stupidity is wasting their time.

No I didn't. Again, feel free to quote me.

What I said was that your post perfectly sums up the movement (which you obviously did unintentionally) because it's a bunch of opinions that are totally (and even willfully) ignorant of the facts. You came in here and sounded off against Quinn for sleeping with guys for favorable reviews because you didn't take 10 seconds to find out if that was actually true or not. You heard the rumor and you chimed in with your opinion and since this whole thing isn't really based in much fact that's pretty much what the entire GG movement is at this point. Even after finding out that the whole thing this was based on is untrue, you took the position of "well, she's guilty of -something-".

There's nothing wrong with sharing an opinion, but in the interest of -not- spreading disinformation and making the problem worse it's a good idea to try to find out a few facts -before- you do that. The problem here is that there are literally -thousands- of people on forums doing exactly this, sharing opinions without bothing to do any research so at this point it hardly matters that the whole thing isn't true because the opinions are now louder than the actual story, which is that a douchebag made up some lies about his ex. It's the Richard Gere gerbil butt of 2014.

-Byshop

Except customer feedback is pretty normal and hopefully discussing the issue will eventually bring more and more developers around to that point of view and result in games that better cater to the gaming consumer base.

Pretty ignorant to most of this gamergate stuff until the mainstream media started covering it, but god damn, THAT is depression quest? No wonder people thought there was something fishy going on. How on Earth did that get picked up by the media. Literally worse than the text adventure's they use to teach you loops in high school programming classes. I envisioned something like Gone Home at the very least. With all the great games out there(many developed by women), I can't believe that pile of ... is causing all of this.

It just caught a few outlets attention during a GDC one year. There wasn't an overwhelming amount of long articles about it or how wonderful it was. It was a free game that a few outlets recommended people check out if they wanted to learn more about a disease. I think most of the coverage for this game exploded as a result of the multitude of threats that she received for trying to put the game on Steam (she was still wasn't asking people to pay for it; she just wanted it on steam due to a wider audience to help spread awareness about depression).

I think the game is a somewhat interesting experience although I've found other literary works better at invoking empathy and describing depression (like DFW's Infinite Jest). Her notoriety was caused by the enraged internet community acting horribly because they'd rather have and pay for Air Control on steam then have Depression Quest up on the service for free.

I think any and all discussion on Gamergate has now run its course. Let's move on from this depressing topic and get back to talking about the games themselves, shall we?