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#Gamergate Operations sugestions

This won't include codenames or battle plan, just some musings on how we can best highlight unethical practices.



The primary focus right now is with the FTC as it has been over already i will skim it a little. You need to be making FIOA requests for gaming publications involved in this. Pick one. If enough people do this we will find the right ones. You also need to contact the FTC pointing out any potentially illegal activities these sites have engaged in. Please keep this in mind as an FTC investigation would be extremely damming for the likes of Vox. Gawker and Gamasutra or groups of developers or journalists who have threatened or engaged in blacklisting or illegal boycott attempts. Dig, document and send.



I would like to re-affirm the need for a consumer group or ombudsman in the medium to long term. Ideally this would take the shape of an independent body where complaints and content disputes are arbitrated and publications can become certified.



We NEED a body like IPSO https://www.ipso.co.uk/IPSO/index.html but we also need to realize the pitfalls of having such a voluntary body without binding powers. IPSO was found asleep at the wheel in the UK BUT i think any regulatory body is better than no regulatory body. This should be one of our primary ends goals; a permanent solution to publications complete lack of accountability.



As well as a standards and practices body i propose a fully consumer funded body is formed that can:



1. Lobby on behalf of consumers in much the same way the ESA is able to lobby on behalf of the games industry. This would take significant capital but would pt the power out of the hands of the ESA who may or may not be able to act in the interests of gamers.



2. Name and shame poor outlets in a review process with ordinary gamers able to vote on worst/ best practices. Look how ashamed EA became after it was voted worst company in America. Imagine in millions of gamers voted for "Worst editorial of the year" or "Most biased publication" or an overall "Worst games media outlet".



3. Highlight unethical practice, collusion, conflicts of interest etc wherever they arise. This would give us a place to call out bad practice as it happens. Most recently "Youtube Nation" did a highly questionable piece in which it's main focus was a close friend of Zoe Quinn and someone working on her game who put forth a wholly inaccurate version of events. These ethical violations are still ongoing and we need a place to call them out.



4. Work in the interests of artistic freedom for developers. Gamers want devs to be free from too much interference. As gamers i think we can all agree we would want to support freedom on speech and expression. In cases we have seen recently there have been shame and censorship tactics used. It's a sad fact that we as gamers now have to defend developers from the press, especially small developers, when politics or personal vendettas appear



5. Help in mediating disputes between gamers, publishers, PR firms and gaming press. The more go-betweens we have the better. It seems some sections of the gaming press are COMPLETELY cut off and out of touch with gamers. They don't hear the people on the ground. Having an official and separate voice for gamers, by gamers would be something more difficult to insulate themselves from.



We also have the existing ESA. As Steve Tom Sawyer and other have put forward the ESA with it's affiliations in the industry make it the de facto body for fighting toxic anti-games legislation. The ESA is THE gaming industry body on capital hill, it is one of the major power centers for the interests on developers and by extension gamers and games media. Four years ago the ESA helped us win in the supreme court against the idea games caused violent behavior. I'll be dammed if i let them allow the idea that games cause sexism creep in and allow the same pressure to censor from the far left.



http://www.theesa.com/



I suggest we flood the ESA with evidence of unethical and even illegal practice and we document via e-mails and also use Twitlonger to publicly show the 100s of messages we have sent. As some have already put forward having a public record of our e-mails copied and pasted into twitter and tweeted publicly at these organizations makes them harder to ignore as out voice is both public and private.



Here is the Senior VP of the ESA https://twitter.com/RichatESA This is the twitter their website directs people to.



And here is the contact page of their site: http://www.theesa.com/contact/index.asp



As usual be personable, be polite and highlight specific cases. You can find these in the GG git-gud http://gitgud.net/gamergate/gamergateop/tree/master or you can ask around on twitter, Reddit KIA, 8chan /GG/ , The Escapist Forums etc. If people decide to take this operation further i will compile an Imigur of easily understandable violations.



Send them examples of anti-gamer rhetoric, unethical behavior, illegal activity, blacklisting threats from both journalists and developers as well as distasteful behavior on social media. As always do not directly mention GamerGate.



The ESA is also involved heavily in E3 which leads me to my next point: I would like to suggest is we hit the publications on their access. Kotaku, RPS, Polygon etc all make the bulk of their news via trade-shows and specialist access smaller sites and gamers couldn't dream of. My final suggestion is we look into taking away their press passes. We need to look into contacting the organizers of PAX, E3, TGS and saying gamers are not happy with some of the people being given free rides to shit on us. This will really hit them where it hurts if we can get it moving. Places like GDC have already fallen to a small clique, we need to be careful not to let other industry events go the same way.



The sites we are battling are nothing without this access. If we could persuade these events these people do not represent us then their power will cease to exist. After all, WE are the commodity their sell to advertisers and WE are who they claim to represent at media events.



So rev up those investigating skills and e-mails. I want to see operations suggestions and info-graphics galore. We NEED YOU to make these ideas work. These are powerful avenues of investigation.

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