It’s not about ethics

Max Temkin (Of Cards Against Humanity fame, a pretty fun card game if you’re into that sort of thing) was accused of rape.

Now whether or not he did it is up for debate - it’s clearly one person’s word against anothers, as these things usually are. But regardless, the “Gaming” community were quick to claim this was yet another false rape accusation perpetuated to destroy an innocent man’s life.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=853507

Once again - I’m not claiming he’s guilty, but naturally the default position of these people was to presume he’s innocent (Which is fair).

Cut to Zoe Quinn: A female game dev, most famous for Twine game: Depression Quest. A game designed to show people what it’s like to suffer from depression.

An ex-boyfriend decided to post apparent chat-logs she and him had - personal things, no matter who they affect - which aren’t anyone’s business. And the natural response? Was it to question the claims, like they did for Max Temkin?



Of course not. They were automatically believed, because of some (easily forged) chat logs. Why was that? The obvious response is that in the culture we live in, people (especially males) are quick to blame the woman and engage in slut shaming immediately, not questioning the motives of the person releasing this information.

It turns out that a person she “Slept with”, Nathan Grayson, works for Kotaku.

This was their chance. This was a chance for straight cis male gamers, who an entire industry caters to, and is slowly moving away to actually include a more diverse audience, to attempt to stop the progress the industry, journalists, and fans have made, and stop their mortal enemy:



The Social Justice Warriors.

SJW is an interesting term. It’s mostly used perjoratively - anyone who dares uses terms like “Cis” or uses correct preferred gender pronouns, anyone who claims that sexism exists today, anyone who dares suggests the glass ceiling exists, anyone who uses dreaded terms like “The patriarchy” or “Intersex”, anyone who thinks the LGBTQI community should have fair representation in media, or anyone that is a decent human being - by those who are part of the status quo and are happy there, swimming in so much of their own privilege they don’t realise there is a problem.

Naturally the stories started. “Zoe Quinn slept her way to the top, she slept with game journalists to get good reviews.”

There are no reviews of depression quest. Check metacritic. Check Kotaku - the guy she apparently slept with mentioned her game once - and it was a five word mention. Two of those words, were the title of her game.

But that didn’t stop them. The people that readily believed Eron Gjoni - the man who made the original claims about her - and his blog post, decided that when Zoe said she was harassed by wizardchan, why, that never happened!

Of course it didn’t happen! She’s a Hu-Mon Fe-Male! They all lie and love the attention! She was just making these things up for publicity! Unlike that man, who of course was telling the truth! He wasn’t a jilted lover at all, he was only doing it for the good of the community!

Zoe was then was unfortunately doxxed (Real life information given out) alongside with a fellow “SJW”, who the 4chan/reddit shitlords love to hate, Phil Fish. Did they believe them? No! They did it to THEMSELVES to get MORE attention!

Which is revolting. Who would do that?

After they received a bit of flak about harassing women, they decided to change tactics.

They’re now claiming it’s about the “Ethics” of gaming journalism. That this “Cronyism has to stop!”

Except it’s been happening for years. And they didn’t care about it until some “SJW”s were involved.

EVERY person they’re targetting - every single one, could be classified as a “Social Justice Wartortle”. They all care about fair and equal representation in video games. They stand up for women when they’re harassed. They don’t tolerate homophobia. They dare associate with … Transpeople. The horror!



Square enix helped a 1up journalist with his weding ring:

http://kotaku.com/5095362/1up-editor-in-final-fantasy-nerd-engagement-extravaganza

No outrage!



Nintendo VP married to a IGN editor:

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2007/12/20/ign_nintendo_pr_scandal_erupts/1

And notice the comments! “Who cares!” “Who cares!” “Who cares!”



There’s no cries of “Journalistic integrity!!!”

Giantbomb (Possibly my favorite place to visit on the internet) REGULARLY has people like John Vignocchi on their podcast, and he and Jeff talk about texting each other. John Drake is also on their podcast. They have an ex-obsidian employee on staff AND an ex-Harmonix member on staff. They regularly promote their games; where’s the cries of CRONYISM? The only thing people seem to lambast giantbomb for is Patrick Klepek - who dares write articles about Women in gaming, sexism and other similar topics! I smell a trend!

This is clearly not about media ethics. This is clearly about a bunch of pissy little white kids who are clearly annoyed that “their” hobby is being taken over by people other than their own.

The dev/game journalist relationship seems to be mutually beneficial for this particular industry - we get interesting, off the cuff interviews - we get fresh news, we get to see people act like people instead of PR drones.

But oh no, the SJWs! Run, before they infect your children with feminism!

(I didn’t even bother mentioning the “OMG ZOE QUINN DOXXED A GAME JAM” - this has been debunked by the people involved themselves, which is conveniently being ignored by shithead redditors: http://www.thefineyoungcapitalists.com/PeaceTreaty)



If you want to read more, here’s Zoe’s final thoughts (With further evidence being ignored): http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/96115946094/final-thoughts-on-this-whole-kerfuffle (She seems like a cool person)



Follow good, interesting game journalists on twitter:

@caraellison of rockpapershotgun

@botherer John Walker, also of rockpapershotgun

@fiddlecub Kevin VanOrd gamespot, typical sjw!!

@xpatriciah Patricia Hernandez, Kotaku (She also likes Anaconda by nicki minaj)

@carolynmichelle Carolyn Petit, formally of gamespot (Unfortunately let go)

@patrickklepek who seems like he’s a pretty cool dude

i cant believe i wrote this whole thing which no one will read and was a waste of 30 minutes of my life