The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

What’s Going On With the Escapist?

The Escapist appears to be going through a period of great upheaval in the last 6 months. Just to recap their last few months:

  1. When GamerGate started, the Escapist bent over backwards in order to make themselves home for GamerGate.  It started with them being the only major game site that didn’t close down #gamergate threads, and culminated in a befuddling editorial that vastly misunderstands the actual metrics and economics of AAA game development.
  2. This all led to the Escapist doing the disastrous interviews with developers about GamerGate.  One of these developers was one of the original harassers of Zoe Quinn in #burgersandfries (this one embarrassingly was removed from the site).  Another cheerleads rape as a game trope and had a financial investment from founder Alexander Macris for his Gor-themed RPG that was undisclosed. A third was repudiated by his employer Microsoft for saying that the games industry was 90% supportive of GamerGate.  (Full disclosure: I was also interviewed for this).
  3. During this period of time, the Escapist has just been cutting ties with some of their most notable talent, in particular their video talent such as Jimquisition, MovieBob, Miracle of Sound, I Hit It With My Axe (a series about playing D&D with porn stars) – I feel like I’m missing a couple, but it seems pretty much everyone other than Yahtzee has wandered off.  And at some point, Yahtzee has to realize he could probably put up a Patreon and make twice what Jimquisition does.
  4. The Escapist had a nasty layoff just a month ago, which hit several long-term employees including long-term Editor-in-Chief Greg Tito.
  5. Despite the need for layoffs due to budget cuts, the Escapist has managed to find some money to get some new writers contributing, all of which have a unique and curious slant of being decidedly more right-wing and/or blatantly pro-gamergate.  This includes Lizzy F, who described the ‘gamers are over’ articles as an attack on her 3-year old autistic daughter.  It includes Brandon Morse, who appears to have little or no gaming writing in his portfolio but was labelled one of the top 30 Republicans under 30.  It includes Liana K, whose somewhat befuddling takedown of Anita’s video series is mostly that Anita is too successful, and Anita’s followers can be kinda mean.  And it also includes reaching out to Oliver Campbell, who wrote this about one of the most vile extended campaigns of harassment in the history of gaming.

Um, right.  At any rate, I think it’s very clear that the Escapist has decided to embrace a certain editorial slant for their future content,  which is fine.  Game journalists SHOULD be able to have slants and biases – otherwise, every single piece of writing will read like the puff pieces that just regurgitate publisher talking points, which is what games journalism was back in the print days.  It is, I note, probably going to be roughly as fair and balanced as, say, Fox News.   Or, dare I say it, less objective than Polygon – just the other direction.

Pandering to this audience has created some level of excitement amongst the GG diehards.  Will it work?  Possibly.  Polygon is actually doing pretty well from all evidence I’ve been able to find, in stark contrast to the Escapist’s sinking fortunes (compare the 1yr data to see what I’m talking about), so clearly talking about games from a well-defined point of view can build a readership.  That being said, GG is not actually a very big movement – KiA’s readership of 28K is a rounding error compared to the 12M people that Kotaku reaches monthly, and the Escapist’s sinking fortunes overlap tidily with their embrace of GamerGate, meaning that the slow shift they’ve been making already appears to be alienating more people than they’re bringing in.

All that being said, I can tell you that I’m no longer the target market for that magazine.

166 Comments

  1. Vetarnias

    Um, looks like you posted this entry while I was typing my comment about this exact same subject. I’ll just repost the link to an Escapist forum thread that shows that Mr. Morse’s arrival hasn’t been too well received: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.871054-A-professional-objective-apolitical-future-for-The-Escapist

    The thing is that Defile… I mean, Defy Media, has never been quite shy in talking about using The Escapist as a way to leverage promotional synergies and so on (nor was its predecessor, Alloy Digital); for instance, when Viacom invested in it: “The investment in DEFY Media allows Viacom to benefit from the company’s substantial reach and also tap into unique content and marketing opportunities with the company’s top digital talent and personalities.” Or ” Defy Media will promote Viacom’s brands and content across its owned digital properties and network of third-party sites.”

    Not to blow my own horn here, but I was already suspected this would happen to The Escapist in October/November, at the height of Gamergate: “Since The Escapist calls itself “the mouthpiece of the gaming generation”, its capitulation before the “Gamergate” mob was a foregone conclusion as soon as the movement started snowballing. At no point did it (or anyone else, it seems) realize that for video gaming journalism to be respected, it needs not only independence from its advertisers, but also the ability and the courage to stand up *to*, not for, its audience if it also threatens its integrity.”

    In other words, The Escapist is crap, tailor-made to a demographic which Gamergate claimed to represent. Any wonder that any anti-GG person there has now left the building? Only Croshaw is left, but there are two Croshaws. There is the perceptive critic who writes detailed reviews which are quite relevant to game design; and there is the yellfuck who makes all those hyperventilating videos that get lots of eyeballs. He’ll have to decide which he wants to be.

  2. Vhaegrant

    I stopped dropping byThe Escapist some time ago when they were less than supportive of the Extra Credits folk. I’m not going to dredge up the gory details, it was a while back and I’m not sure all the information was made public, but it definitely made me put The Escapist aside as a source of information/ entertainment. Still following Extra Credits 🙂

  3. Grim

    Corrections:

    1. I champion the right of creators to cover any topic. I don’t champion ‘rape’. Read the damn article you’re linking to.
    2. Archon had no reason to disclose his donation as he wasn’t promoting the project and didn’t have a byline on the article. Nonetheless I suggested that it should be disclosed anyway.

    Please get things right and criticise people for what they actually do and say, rather than what you imagine they do and say.

    Cheers.

    G

    • Consumatopia

      TL;DR: You wrote “Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element, one of many.” And, no, that wasn’t out of context–I go into the context below. But that sentence alone is enough to make Damion correct: you’re cheerleading rape a game trope.

      You were not just arguing for “right of creators to cover any topic”. You argued at length that rape should be in media even when it’s done lazily, and that no one should criticizing rape in stories just for being lay Furthermore, you never make clear whether when you say “censorship”, you mean people privately denouncing or advocating boycotts, or you mean state censorship.

      Some examples, emphasis added.

      If you agree that rape (and murder, and drugs, and torture and indeed anything else) can be used in stories, games and other materials successfully and should be judged on its merit, rather than its content, then you agree with me.

      This makes clear that your complaint is not people taking away the right to cover a topic, but that people are judging works by a standard that you deem unfair. (Also note that merit is subjective. If we’re going to judge things by their merits, we have to judge subjectively. Which is good, we should judge art subjectively. But later in your essay, you have a problem that subjectivity.)

      The ‘sexism/misogny/rape culture/all men are bastards’ argument has been raging in ever increasing intensity over most of the things that I enjoy and like. Cinema, comics, fantasy art, role-playing games and computer games. I’m pretty much done taking the abuse and the offensive presumptions that go into these arguments without arguing back at this point, because I don’t want the argument to be entirely in the hands of censorious bullies.

      And here again, the “censorious bullies” don’t seem to be government censors people making arguments–arguments that certain media are bad, not necessarily arguments for government censorship (or at least if they are you never made that clear)

      Leaving that aside for the moment, some of the accusations frequently levelled during these arguments are that using rape as a plot point is ‘lazy writing’ and that it somehow trivialises or normalises rape.

      Is it lazy writing?

      Well, honestly, at this point in human history every plot device and story has been used to death over and over again. There’s whole genres that centre around murder and that’s objectively worse than rape. Shakespeare said there were only seven kinds of story, Tolstoy said there were only two, I’m tempted to say there’s only one and that’s ‘Shit happens’.

      Writers reuse all sorts of plot elements and stories over and over again. A different amount of skill and different elements are mixed up but not every story has to be literary greatness, break new ground or be sensitive to each and every agenda out there.

      And here you aren’t arguing against censorship at all. You’re arguing against criticism.

      And you added this to the beginning later:

      Whether something is ‘well done’ or not is a subjective argument that can never be settled because tastes and sensitivities vary, but do you really mean that there should never, ever, ever be a story that includes rape, ever again?

      No, obviously your opponents didn’t mean that at all. All we’re saying is that lazily adding rape to a story trivializes rape. That “lazily” is subjective doesn’t matter, because all criticism is subjective–there is no such thing as ‘objective’ criticism, and if you demand to silence criticism based on subjective views, it makes no sense for you to then go on about ‘censorship’.

      Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element, one of many.
      Rape can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death.

      And you go on for several paragraphs cheerleading for a rape trope, and you sum up with this:

      There’s more, but I think that amply shows that it needn’t be lazy writing and as story material it goes right the way back to Greek myth. It’s a story-making tool that should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small.

      But of course very few people would say that rape is always be lazy storytelling, only that it can be and often is, and that they should have the right to call it out as they see it.

      Does the existence of rape stories, even as a cheap jab to get someone’s emotions involved, somehow trivialise or normalise rape?

      I’m going to pin my colours to the mast pretty firmly on this one and say no it doesn’t.

      How can I assert that with such confidence?

      Simply this. If rape were trivialised it would not have the power to move us, involve us and activate our emotions.

      This is absurd, of course. Rape can be trivialized in your game without being trivialized for everyone. Punching Hitler “For the millions!” (http://turtlepedia.wikia.com/wiki/Adolf_Hitler ) trivialized the Holocaust in that comic, but doesn’t somehow magically mean the rest of us stop caring about the Holocaust. It just means we look at that comic and find it ridiculous. And something can be broadly normalized without being universally normalized. For one thing, ours is a culture that normalizes some kinds of rape–prison rape being the most obvious instance of that. That doesn’t mean that *I* stop being horrified at prison rape. And there are some people out there for whom rape outside of prisons is normalized. (Someone has to be doing all the raping, right?) The documentary The Act of Killing shows one never-punished war criminal go on at length about how much fun he had raping kids. He’s surrounded by his comrades, all wearing the uniform of his militia, as he relates this for the cameras. No one is shocked. No one thinks that this shouldn’t be filmed. Rape can definitely be normalized.

      Finally, don’t bitch about people getting your words wrong when you’ve intentionally made it harder for people to see your original words, moving from html to a seperate docx file, and posting a very misleading summary of them in their place.

      • Consumatopia

        Ugh, why did I think I could get that many blockquotes correct? Here is what that last blockquote was supposed to look like.

        Leaving that aside for the moment, some of the accusations frequently levelled during these arguments are that using rape as a plot point is ‘lazy writing’ and that it somehow trivialises or normalises rape.

        Is it lazy writing?

        Well, honestly, at this point in human history every plot device and story has been used to death over and over again. There’s whole genres that centre around murder and that’s objectively worse than rape. Shakespeare said there were only seven kinds of story, Tolstoy said there were only two, I’m tempted to say there’s only one and that’s ‘Shit happens’.

        Writers reuse all sorts of plot elements and stories over and over again. A different amount of skill and different elements are mixed up but not every story has to be literary greatness, break new ground or be sensitive to each and every agenda out there.

        And here you aren’t arguing against censorship at all. You’re arguing against criticism.

        And you added this to the beginning later:

        Whether something is ‘well done’ or not is a subjective argument that can never be settled because tastes and sensitivities vary, but do you really mean that there should never, ever, ever be a story that includes rape, ever again?

        No, obviously your opponents didn’t mean that at all. All we’re saying is that lazily adding rape to a story trivializes rape. That “lazily” is subjective doesn’t matter, because all criticism is subjective–there is no such thing as ‘objective’ criticism, and if you demand to silence criticism based on subjective views, it makes no sense for you to then go on about ‘censorship’.

        Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element, one of many.
        Rape can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death.

        And you go on for several paragraphs cheerleading for a rape trope, and you sum up with this:

        There’s more, but I think that amply shows that it needn’t be lazy writing and as story material it goes right the way back to Greek myth. It’s a story-making tool that should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small.

        But of course very few people would say that rape is always be lazy storytelling, only that it can be and often is, and that they should have the right to call it out as they see it.

        Does the existence of rape stories, even as a cheap jab to get someone’s emotions involved, somehow trivialise or normalise rape?

        I’m going to pin my colours to the mast pretty firmly on this one and say no it doesn’t.

        How can I assert that with such confidence?

        Simply this. If rape were trivialised it would not have the power to move us, involve us and activate our emotions.

        This is absurd, of course. Rape can be trivialized in your game without being trivialized for everyone. Punching Hitler “For the millions!” (http://turtlepedia.wikia.com/wiki/Adolf_Hitler ) trivialized the Holocaust in that comic, but doesn’t somehow magically mean the rest of us stop caring about the Holocaust. It just means we look at that comic and find it ridiculous. And something can be broadly normalized without being universally normalized. For one thing, ours is a culture that normalizes some kinds of rape–prison rape being the most obvious instance of that. That doesn’t mean that *I* stop being horrified at prison rape. And there are some people out there for whom rape outside of prisons is normalized. (Someone has to be doing all the raping, right?) The documentary The Act of Killing shows one never-punished war criminal go on at length about how much fun he had raping kids. He’s surrounded by his comrades, all wearing the uniform of his militia, as he relates this for the cameras. No one is shocked. No one thinks that this shouldn’t be filmed. Rape can definitely be normalized.

        Finally, don’t bitch about people getting your words wrong when you’ve intentionally made it harder for people to see your original words, moving from html to a seperate docx file, and posting a very misleading summary of them in their place.

        • jim

          Excellent takedown, Consumatopia.

          • Consumatopia

            Thanks, Jim. 🙂

      • Dixie Normes

        Wait, don’t Grimster attempt suicide after people like you attacked him for that very article?

        What the Fuck is wrong with you?

        Seriously, you almost killed a guy with this shit and you keep going at it?

        I don’t care which side of this argument you fall on; this article is dead. It’s over. STOP.

        Here’s hoping someone you care about never gets the level of harassment that you gave Grim.

        Here’s hoping people will learn when something is in the past, and needs to be left alone.

        Fucking Hell people, you wanna disagree with Grim, fine, but drop this Fucking article. Grim doesn’t stand behind this anymore. It almost killed him.

        Stop.

        • John Henderson

          OK, “Dixie Normes”.

        • Consumatopia

          I do think it is shitty when someone says something stupid, apologizes for it, and the twitter mob keeps going after them, e.g. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html

          But if someone says something stupid, then keeps accuses everyone else of lying about it? Well, the rest of us have the right to say that we weren’t and aren’t lying.

    • DZ

      > 2. Archon had no reason to disclose his donation as he wasn’t promoting the project and didn’t have a byline on the article. Nonetheless I suggested that it should be disclosed anyway.

      Not having a byline on those interviews was actually *more* dishonest of Alexander Macris, not less. From http://innuendostudios.tumblr.com/post/104288647532/why-the-escapist-wont-talk-about-gamergate:

      The reason this even happened, Greg explained to me, was that the interviews – attributed in the article to “Escapist Staff” – were conducted by Alex Macris, who is not actually on The Escapist’s staff. He works for Defy Media, overseeing several of their properties. He is technically Greg’s boss, and the article was pushed through editorial with less oversight than usual.

      Given that Macris *himself* conducted these interviews, and that he donated to a project of a person he interviewed, this was extremely sketchy. Not only did not he disclose it was he who did these interviews rather than “Escapist Staff”, he did not disclose a monetary relationship with one of the devs he interviewed.

      • Malorie

        interviews were decent, up until that last few question deluge of hypothetical scenarios

        seriously macris wtf even.

    • Damion Schubert

      The article is called “In Defense of Rape” and includes the sentence “Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element, one of many.” I stand by my statement. That’s cheerleading rape.

      Incidentally, I totally stand by the idea that creators should be able to put rape into their stories if they want. I also stand by critics to tell them that they are fucking assholes if they do so in a way that is thoughtless or gratuitious. Incidentally, this mirrors what feminists say about sexual assault in the arts – rape stories shouldn’t go away, but they shouldn’t be thrown in as an afterthought, but should instead try to depict the actual horrors and aftermath of sexual assault. Which is to say, more films like the Accused and Thelma and Louise, and less games like Watch Dogs, where little sexual assault scenes litter the entire game world as a way to make the world feel more dangerous and edgy.

      As for the disclosure, I actually don’t give two shits about it, but Macris did put those interviews together, and then refused to byline himself AND offer disclosure. If you care about the pennyante shit that GG thinks is high treason by the gaming press, then that’s definitely fair game.

      • A Person

        “That’s cheerleading rape.”

        No, it’s cheerleading the idea that fiction can be for adults and can deal with adult situations. At least say “It’s cheerleading the inclusion of rape in fiction.” Nobody is cheerleading rape.

        ” Incidentally, this mirrors what feminists say about sexual assault in the arts – rape stories shouldn’t go away, but they shouldn’t be thrown in as an afterthought, but should instead try to depict the actual horrors and aftermath of sexual assault.”

        1. This is an argument about intent, which is flawed in the way all unknowable intent arguments are. You have no idea who is throwing it in as an afterthought and who isn’t – what you actually mean is “that I claim is an afterthought. based on political expediency.”

        2. If the story isn’t about the rape as a central point why would it depict the aftermath? Because rape is a very special crime? This is buying into the destructive idea that rape is a punishment worse than death, vastly different from any other crime, that ruins a person for life, tied into weird thinking about virginity, deflowering, etc. Highly regressive cultures often consider rape a very special crime because it ruins women (their property) for men.

        You wouldn’t make the same demand of murder – that you can’t depict a murder unless you depict the aftermath etc. This is not what “feminists” think uniformly and certainly not what anti-rape organizations think. Considering rape a crime separate from any other that uniquely scars the victims is one of the reasons rape is under-reported. It’s also a reason college campuses have completely backwards rape reporting and handling procedures that ultimately hurt rape victims.

        RAINN, an organization about these sorts of issues, argues that rape needs to be treated as a plain old crime – basically that rape needs to be normalized (don’t purposely misinterpret what “normalized” means here – I know you want to!) as a boring old crime rather than set apart as something to gasp about behind closed doors or that needs to be handled vastly differently from other crime categories.

        Now I agree that rape depictions in fiction shouldn’t be cavalier, but that’s very different from realistic portrayal of aftermath etc. Crime is depicted without aftermath in fiction all the time. Often times it just happens because IRL crime happens. There’s no problem with that and the attitude that rape is a special crime that is off limits for that sort of depiction is probably counterproductive.

        3. You’re arguing that The Iliad is bad fiction. To each their own I suppose – but thankfully not everyone shares your attitude about what types of fiction are acceptable. (“We need less of the Iliad and more of my Star Wars fanfic!”)

        4. Many feminists are not particularly kind to “The Accused” and some consider it exploitative. What you consider the right way to depict rape is what some other people consider the wrong way. There’s no universal agreement here.

        One of the reasons fiction exists is to explore these sorts of issues – grappling reality through fiction. (If you only read Star Wars extended universe novels this must be blowing your mind!) Nothing that happens in real life should be off limits in fiction, or handled only the way that Damion Schubert finds acceptable.

        If you want to limit yourself to message fiction and See Spot Run picture books that’s fine. Adult fiction deals with adult situations in a huge variety of ways, some of which you may not like – that’s very much a good thing.

        • Consumatopia

          Now I agree that rape depictions in fiction shouldn’t be cavalier

          Good, then you’re agreeing with Damion, disagreeing with Grim, and even contradicting your own point number 1.

          By the way, nice use of shields in this thread.

          • A Person

            There is a huge difference between depicting something not cavalierly and depicting it in the way Damion demands – “should instead try to depict the actual horrors and aftermath of sexual assault.”

            Furthermore when I say that rape should not be depicted cavalierly what is implicit, since I am not a censorious scold, is that I simply won’t read / watch something in which it is. Not that I’ll accuse the author of being a “rape cheerlearder” or a rape apologist, stamp my feet in outrage or any of that nonsense.

            When Damion says that authors should or should not do certain things the implication is that if they do things the wrong way he’ll call them names and accuse them of being pro-rape.

            That’s not my meaning at all.

            So no, I don’t agree with Damion. I’m not going to call someone a “fucking asshole” for writing fiction I don’t enjoy – I just won’t read it.

            One of my favorite authors is Clive Barker. He wrote a story about an ape that goes around raping people. It’s not one of his better stories, but not because it’s about a rapey ape – it’s just not a great story. You don’t like it? Then don’t read it. Problem solved. Clive Barker is a fucking asshole because he wrote a story you don’t like? Get over yourself.

            “By the way, nice use of shields in this thread.”

            I’m sorry, I don’t speak Twitter moron. By “shields” you mean I “shielded” myself by using real examples? Is that a bad thing now? Or by “shields” you mean I didn’t stamp my feet when women and minorities were hired?

            Aren’t you guys suppose to be “pro-diversity” and the people you’re fighting against “anti-diversity” who hate women and are trying to drive them away? That narrative makes no fucking sense – it is completely counter the actual positions the sides hold, at least in this particular case.

          • Consumatopia

            “There is a huge difference between depicting something not cavalierly”

            No, there isn’t. Grim is totally okay with lazy depictions of rape.

            “Not that I’ll accuse the author of being a “rape cheerlearder” or a rape apologist, stamp my feet in outrage or any of that nonsense.”

            Grim was cheerleading rape as a game trope. That’s what Damion accused him of.

            “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Twitter moron.”

            Yes, thank you, #NotYourShield was a moronic movement and hashtag.

          • Consumatopia

            Seriously, he just said “Incidentally, I totally stand by the idea that creators should be able to put rape into their stories if they want. I also stand by critics to tell them that they are fucking assholes if they do so in a way that is thoughtless or gratuitous. ”

            So they can do it, but they shouldn’t do it in a thoughtless, gratuitous or… cavalier … way.

            Yeah, I’m done with you. Have fun making up more strawmen!

          • A Person

            “Yeah, I’m done with you. Have fun making up more strawmen!”

            Why do you idiots always say things like this then return to spout more idiocy two seconds later?

            “Grim is totally okay with lazy depictions of rape.”

            Good for him. That’s not a crime or a character flaw, it’s an opinion. Different people have different opinions. Shocking news?

            “Grim was cheerleading rape as a game trope. That’s what Damion accused him of.”

            No. Damion said he was a rape cheerleader, not a rape-in-fiction cheerleader.

            “So they can do it, but they shouldn’t do it in a thoughtless, gratuitous or… cavalier … way.”

            We literally just went over this. When I say authors shouldn’t be cavalier the implication is “or else I won’t read your work.” When Damion says that the implication is that he’ll call the author a fucking asshole and a rape apologist and accuse them of supporting rape IN REAL LIFE, the way Damion did above.

            When I talk about what authors should or should not do it’s not a veiled threat, it’s merely an expression of personal preference. This is not a hard distinction to grasp.

            You lost an argument. I hope you’ll stick to your word and stop responding, I suspect like every other “I’m done talking to your” bozo you’ll run on home to mommy, tell her that a mean internet bully assaulted you with logic, (I harassed you with my knowledge of Greek lit!) then come running back after she kisses your boo-boos.

            In the meantime keep fighting the good fight against women and minorities being hired. It’s precious!

          • Consumatopia

            “Why do you idiots always say things like this then return to spout more idiocy two seconds later?”

            Just can’t stay away. Too much fun making fun of your nonsense!

            “Good for him. That’s not a crime or a character flaw, it’s an opinion.”

            It’s not a crime, it is a character flaw, and it means he “cheerleads rape as a game trope”, which is what Damion accused him of.

            ” When Damion says that the implication is that he’ll call the author a fucking asshole

            Calling assholes assholes is allowed, asshole. It is not censorship. Stop censoring my right to call people assholes, you censorious asshole. You and Grim are the ones trying to silence criticism.

            ” and a rape apologist and accuse them of supporting rape IN REAL LIFE, the way Damion did above.”

            Nope. As a game trope. As a “fucking awesome” plot element. That’s what we’re talking about in this thread. Read the OP. Read Grim’s post. That’s the context all comments here are in. He did not say “in real life”.

            “You lost an argument.”

            Nope, I won. You keep starting new arguments, making new shit up with every post, and I keep winning every time. It’s a pretty addictive game, watching you lose, pathetically, over and over again.

            ” I hope you’ll stick to your word and stop responding, I suspect like every other “I’m done talking to your” bozo you’ll run on home to mommy, tell her that a mean internet bully assaulted you with logic, (I harassed you with my knowledge of Greek lit!) then come running back after she kisses your boo-boos.”

            Logic? That would be new from you. But, go on, tell me about how literature departments back up your claim that everyone who doesn’t like the Illiad is ignorant, or that because something was worthwhile in the Illiad it must be worthwhile in any other work.

            Don’t you get tired of losing every argument with everyone, ever? The only “win” you ever EVER get is when people get sick of talking to idiots. That’s true of everyone in GamerGate, actually. That’s probably true in real life too. Remember that, asshole: Every single time someone stops talking to you, ‘A person’ in an argument is because your stupidity became too boring. Every. Single. Time. Deep down, you know that’s true.

          • Consumatopia

            “In the meantime keep fighting the good fight against women and minorities being hired.”

            Also, when the fuck did I say anything about anyone being hired? Keep making stuff up!

        • Kes

          Hey now, the Illiad is pretty bad. Just curious, have you read the Illiad? Or do you just know the plot? Cause the actual Illiad, as written by Homer, is pretty damn ponderous considering the epic, timeless story he was telling. There is a reason why most high school literature courses have students read the Odyssey instead, because it is a *lot* less concerned with petty squabbles and a lot more entertaining (not that it doesn’t also have its own draggy parts.)

          • A Person

            Yes I’ve read the Iliad.

            You should take your “the Iliad is pretty bad” theory to literature departments around the world so they can have a nice chuckle. The “petty squabbles” in the Iliad are largely the point.

            Make sure to argue that the reason the Iliad is bad is because it doesn’t deal with rape in the way feminist scholars like Damion Schubert approve of!

          • Consumatopia

            Yeah, he read the Illiad! He totally showed you!

          • A Person

            He asked me a question and I answered it. That shouldn’t be controversial or surprising except to an intellectual coward.

          • Consumatopia

            You answered it, and then you went on to make up crap like “Make sure to argue that the reason the Iliad is bad is because it doesn’t deal with rape in the way feminist scholars like Damion Schubert approve of!”

      • Dave Rickey

        Damion, does “The Accused” cheerlead for rape? Does critique that talks about how visceral, ‘raw’, and immediate the rape scene in that story is “cheerlead rape”?

        He follows that punchy quote with several paragraphs describing *why* rape is such a powerful plot element (you’re using the word ‘trope’ wrong). These paragraphs are *always* elided by those criticizing his piece (even as Consumatopia did above while claiming to ‘put it in context’ but removing precisely that), because they show he’s actually treating the subject with a gravity the punchy one-liner that leads it does not. If you want to criticize him for the cavalier way that he tosses off that line (at a time, almost 3 years ago, that was far less charged about such language), do so, but it is not fair to pretend that his entire career is defined by a single sentence in a single blog post.

        Would you really like to have your career judged by a single sentence picked out of all of your writing by your worst enemies? Or for being in the same group of interviews as those you are condemning above? Because there are conversations out there on the internet where we are all grouped together, tarred with the same brush simply for participating in that fruitless effort to approach a divisive issue with dialog.

        Rape scenes make me uncomfortable at best, outright angry and even nauseous on occasion. But they are *powerful* for precisely that reason. Evaluated as a whole, without undue weight to that one sentence, his blog article was a valid piece of critique.

        –Dave

        • Consumatopia

          These paragraphs are *always* elided by those criticizing his piece (even as Consumatopia did above while claiming to ‘put it in context’ but removing precisely that),

          Are you fucking kidding me?! Christ, If I pasted any more context into that post, I’d be guilty of piracy. No matter how much I put there, someone would be here making the same bad faith complaint. I would have thought, though, if someone were to attack me on this front, that they would at least go to the trouble of digging up and quoting the passage themselves.

          Remember, before this passage, he was saying that criticizing a work for being lazy or not “well-done” is “subjective” and therefore out of bounds. So the point of his essay is not to defend some instances of rape in media, but to defend all instances of rape in media, including lazy tropes. It’s a distinction that he elides in that passage.

          Without further ado, here it is. Apologies in advance for formatting issues..

          Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element, one of many.
          Rape can place a character in jeopardy where the readers’ care about what happens, without necessarily taking the character out of the story. It’s a threat with implications, but not as final as death.
          Rape can have interesting knock-on effects on a character’s relationships and their relationships with each other. If it does happen how does the character’s lover react? If their lover was the rapist, how do things change? Can you use this as a springboard to explore abusive relationships? Can love emerge from a violent encounter?
          What if a pregnancy occurs from the rape? How hard is it for the character to endure that? What’s the effect on the father? The child? Nature or nature? Bad seed? Does the mother resent the child? Are they given up? Do they mistreat them through seeing the rapist whenever they look at them?
          How does the event change the people involved? Is the rapist remorseful? Does the victim hate themselves or grow stronger? Does it change how they’re perceived? Can we use it as a springboard to examine the sexual culture in the story? Think about the differences in cultural reactions between, say, Arab/Muslim and Caucasian/Secular societies to rape even today. (Links added because someone played the racism card).
          If we’re writing erotica? Well, depending which study you read somewhere between thirty and fifty percent of women have rape fantasies. I’ve no idea what the figure is for men and studies are probably wildly off due to the danger of saying so. Forced sex, rough sex, transgressive sex? These things are all wildly popular though – as fantasy. Much more popular than they are to perpetrate ‘for reals’.
          There’s more, but I think that amply shows that it needn’t be lazy writing and as story material it goes right the way back to Greek myth. It’s a story-making tool that should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small.

          And, as I said above, very few people would say that rape is always lazy storytelling, only that it can be and often is, and that they should have the right to call it out as they see it. I didn’t quote the whole thing because I didn’t need to quote the whole thing to point out that it was arguing against a strawman.

          • Dave Rickey

            Consumatopia, I grew bored with your antics many months ago and haven’t humored them sense, but in fact, above you removed precisely the *most* relevant context, the part immediately following the sentence in question, dismissing it as merely:

            And you go on for several paragraphs cheerleading for a rape trope

            Now you attempt to bury it in a ‘wall of text’. Here is the context you chose to ignore:

            Rape can have interesting knock-on effects on a character’s relationships and their relationships with each other. If it does happen how does the character’s lover react? If their lover was the rapist, how do things change? Can you use this as a springboard to explore abusive relationships? Can love emerge from a violent encounter?

            What if a pregnancy occurs from the rape? How hard is it for the character to endure that? What’s the effect on the father? The child? Nature or nature? Bad seed? Does the mother resent the child? Are they given up? Do they mistreat them through seeing the rapist whenever they look at them?

            How does the event change the people involved? Is the rapist remorseful? Does the victim hate themselves or grow stronger? Does it change how they’re perceived? Can we use it as a springboard to examine the sexual culture in the story? Think about the differences in cultural reactions between, say, Arab/Muslim and Caucasian/Secular societies to rape even today. (Links added because someone played the racism card).

            These are significant, sometimes deep, sometimes “problematic” questions he is asking. They have been explored in other media, in works that are seen as important, informative, even towering classics of progressive and feminist art. They are the core of his critique, and your choice to remove them shows that you are not an honest respondent.

            These questions could be approached poorly, but that does not mean that they should never be approached at all, nor should simply asking the question “is there artistic merit in stories about rape?” be mischaracterized and used as cheap ad hominem.

            –Dave

          • Consumatopia

            So quoting once it still isn’t good enough for you! It must be quoted twice! No matter what I quote, it’s not good enough for you. If this kind of disingenuous nonsense is what you choose to “humor” me with, you don’t need to bother.

            The best part is that you are the one omitting the most relevant context here. Remember, he’s defending lazy and poorly-done rape scenes here. See my earlier posts. That passage is written as if he’s only saying that some use of rape in fiction should be defended, but he’s actually saying that because some rape scenes are worthwhile, all of them should be defended. (That’s what he means when he finishes that passage with “should be available to you as a storyteller, great or small”, which you strangely omitted from the blockquote.) So, yes, in context, the point of that essay is to defend rape as a lazy trope, not just to ask “is there artistic merit in stories about rape?”

          • A Person

            He’s defending people’s right to use it as they see fit. The problem with that is…what again?

            To one person a rape scene that is lazy and poorly done may be powerful and thoughtful to another. Defending artistic expression is meaningless if you limit it only to expression that you personally approve of, or that everyone on earth approves of. Expression that everyone approves of doesn’t need defending because it’s never attacked in the first place.

            There are many feminists who consider “The Accused” to be lazy and poorly done. – yet Damion “defended” it. So – Damion is a rape cheerleader?

            There’s nothing controversial or offensive in what Grimm wrote It’s a very basic freedom of expression argument. Different people have different opinions on what constitutes valuable expression, which is why it’s important to defend expression as a concept separate from particular instances of expression. Do you really have zero familiarity with even the most rudimentary arguments involving these sorts of issues?

            Your point has shifted again – from rape cheerleading to straw-manning to now purely semantic hinging on your use of the word “defended.” Next you’ll claim that the real problem with what he wrote is that he once forgot to tip a hotel maid or spelled a word incorrectly.

          • Consumatopia

            He’s defending people’s right to use it as they see fit. The problem with that is…what again?

            He wasn’t defending people’s right to use it, but attacking those who criticize it. That’s even clear from the summary he posted after he took the post down. “The mere existence of something nasty in a story, game or piece of art is not sufficient reason for the art – or the artist – to be pilloried. Nor should we only allow people we consider (subjectively) skilled or politically acceptable to tackle difficult subjects.” Pilloried. Not put in jail, not having your work seized by the government, and presumably he doesn’t mean literally put into a stockade. No, he’s pissed at people expressing their subjective opinion.

            “To one person a rape scene that is lazy and poorly done may be powerful and thoughtful to another.”

            Sure. And each of them should feel free to express their opinion.

            You know what? There is a huge difference between “some rape scenes can be worthwhile” and “Rape or attempted rape is a fucking awesome plot element.” The latter is cheerleading for rape as a plot element. Full stop.

            I think the context overall makes him look worse, not better. But even if you disagree with me on that, to accuse me of dishonesty for saying that something is “fucking awesome” is cheerleading? I mean, come on, at this point, there is NOTHING you guys could say that could possibly top that. Dave, you’re Damion’s friend, and I’m just a rando, I do understand that. You’re probably a great guy. But right now, tonight, you’re crazy. See ya. And yes, A person, this time I mean it.

          • A Person

            For a guy who was going to stop responding to me you sure are responding a lot. It’s funny how you lie so casually – when you said you were done we both knew that was just a completely disposable lie.

            “He wasn’t defending people’s right to use it, but attacking those who criticize it.”

            So he was…criticizing someone? So now your objection is that he was criticizing a certain group of people or shared viewpoint and you think…that’s beyond the pale somehow?

            You disagree with his opinion. That’s fine. That’s not a problem, it’s not offensive, it’s not you standing up to “rape cheerleading.” Sometimes people disagree. So what?

            Grimm: “The mere existence of something nasty in a story, game or piece of art is not sufficient reason for the art – or the artist – to be pilloried.”

            That sounds like a completely reasonable opinion, one that is shared by many people, including many artists and art scholars and consumers. Are you unfamiliar with Mapplethorpe? Or Nabokov? I would go as far as to say that this the dominant opinion these days.

            “Nor should we only allow people we consider (subjectively) skilled or politically acceptable to tackle difficult subjects.”

            That also sounds like a completely reasonable opinion. As I pointed out either who we consider qualified to take on these subjects differs from person to person. What’s so dramatically offensive here exactly?

            You’re free to disagree but these are completely uncontroversial and frankly milquetoast statements.

            “No, he’s pissed at people expressing their subjective opinion.”

            Kind of like you right now? Your level of self-awareness is absolutely zero!

            I don’t even understand what your objection is. “This person is advocating a fairly widely-held and accepted philosophy that I personally disagree with.” That’s it? That’s your big objection?

            “The latter is cheerleading for rape as a plot element.”

            There’s no need to summarize or characterize it with a word that doesn’t appear in the text at all when the full text is available. Damion moved from “cheerleading for rape as a plot element” to simply “cheerleading rape” with no qualifier. I don’t think the word “cheerleading” is particularly appropriate here – if you read his full piece it’s clear that the “fucking awesome” was for rhetorical effect and that the full thing is fairly thoughtful and considered. But beyond that, even if “cheerleading” is correct, he’s cheerleading for nothing being inherently off limits in fiction, not for the idea that rape makes any fiction automatically better or for rape in real life.

            Again – taken in context there really is nothing particularly controversial in what he wrote. You’re really grasping at straws to be offended but all you’re saying is “I disagree” or “it’s not right of him to criticize a viewpoint he disagrees with.”

            You desperately want to paint the guy as some sort of rape enthusiast but it just doesn’t work.

            And before you mention it – no, there’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with him or criticizing him. “Fucking awesome” was poorly chosen and maybe you also don’t agree with his philosophy – that’s fine. But using weasel words to imply that he’s pro-rape is idiotic. You can attack the opinion without attacking the person.

        • A Person

          “He follows that punchy quote with several paragraphs describing *why* rape is such a powerful plot element (you’re using the word ‘trope’ wrong).”

          You’re asking Damion to stop being a sad outrage blogger. Being a sad outrage blogger means twisting people’s words and ignoring context when convenient. He knows full well that Grimm is not a “rape cheerleader” – those are just words that get applause from dumb dumbs.

          When taken in context there’s nothing scandalous about what Grimm wrote. It’s not even interesting or controversial – it’s really “no shit” territory. The points he’s making are the same points any half-decent 7th grade English teacher could patiently explain..

          It’s only scandalous because people looking to manufacture outrage constantly quote it out of context or purposely mischaracterize it.

          “Without further ado, here it is. Apologies in advance for formatting issues..”

          Yeah…there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Notice that when Consumatopia quotes more fully the accusations of rape cheerleading mysteriously vanish.

          We started with Grimm being a cheerleader of rape as a trope (learn what a trope is sillies!), then we moved to Grimm being a cheerlader of rape IN REAL LIFE, now we’re at “well he was attacking a strawman.” So…basically nothing? All your accusations of rape apologia just amount to that he took issue with a position you don’t personally hold?

          This guy is a fucking rapist – err I mean I disagree that a position described by him is held by a significant number of people. Same difference!

          • Dave Rickey

            No, I know Damion, we’ve been friends a long time, and although we do not always agree on issues, I know that his intentions are honest. Maybe sometimes shadowed by emotion, and rape is certainly a subject it is hard not to be emotional about.

            Outrage is contagious, distress in others can trigger hasty judgements. I am not immune to that, I have occasionally gone on a tear about something I saw as a great injustice, to Damion in fact, and he has generally humored me and then pointed out flaws in the edifice of provocations that I was using for a soapbox, after I had stopped foaming at the mouth. The degree that this conflict has come to strike at fundamental questions of identity and moral values on all sides has made dialog difficult, and the intervention of shit-stirrers in it for the lulz has more often than not made it impossible.

            If nothing else, this has given me a new perspective on the difficulties of trying to “keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.” It’s enough to make me regret my youthful antics, throwing conversational bombs just to see the shrapnel.

            And then I feel old, because I can use phrases like “youthful antics” without irony.

            –Dave

          • Consumatopia

            All your accusations of rape apologia just amount to that he took issue with a position you don’t personally hold?

            He is performing what is known in some circles as the “two-step of terrific triviality”. Look it up. He started arguing against criticism of rape scenes when they are lazy and “not well-done”. Then he lists a bunch of instances in which rape scenes may not be lazy or poorly done.

            Strawman was the wrong term. He moved the goal posts. And, yes, he did defend lazy and poorly-written rape scenes.

          • Dave Rickey

            ^^Case in point

            the intervention of shit-stirrers in it for the lulz has more often than not made it impossible.

          • Consumatopia

            You’re speaking with A person, and you think *I’m the shit-stirrers in it for the lulz?

            You are fucking breath-taking, buddy.

          • A Person

            “No, I know Damion, we’ve been friends a long time, and although we do not always agree on issues…”

            Ultimately whether or not a person is a good person on the inside is irrelevant trivia if it doesn’t show through.

            Here’s what I can say about Damion, from the outside:

            1. He is frequently mistaken or confused about basic factual matters. (This is a nice way of saying he fibs)
            2. He repeats nasty rumors about people without the smallest amount of research into their validity, and in some cases starts rumors himself
            3. He claims to be “zero tolerance” towards harassment and abusive behavior but turns a blind eye from abuse that comes from his buddies or is aimed at the right targets
            4. He largely devotes his life to attacking people online – this blog is ostensibly a “game design” blog but it’s 80% vitriol.
            5. He reserves his most vicious criticism for women and minorities who disagree with him

            He’s an honest kindhearted all around great guy on the inside. Good for him I guess. Kind of seems like a pointless distinction to me.

          • Unbound

            Well you are a real winner, aren’t you? I hereby give you the Bryan Fischer award. Enjoy!

            The Bryan Fischer Award is given to those who exhibit a staggering lack of self-awareness or who accuse their opponents of their own worst traits

          • A Person

            “The Bryan Fischer Award is given to those who exhibit a staggering lack of self-awareness or who accuse their opponents of their own worst traits”

            Let’s take a look at what I accuse him of and whether or not I share those traits:

            “He is frequently mistaken or confused about basic factual matters.”

            This does no apply to me. It’s very rare that people point out factual problems with what I say and if it does happen I admit error and move on. The number of factual errors Damion makes, even after he’s been corrected on them, is impressive, especially considering that he has no day job and ample time to research and verify.

            “He repeats nasty rumors about people without the smallest amount of research into their validity, and in some cases starts rumors himself”

            This also does not apply to me at all, and unless you have some evidence that it does I think this can be easily dismissed. Next.

            “He claims to be “zero tolerance” towards harassment and abusive behavior but turns a blind eye from abuse that comes from his buddies or is aimed at the right targets”

            I don’t moderate this blog so I have no way to filter abusive comments – Damion does, and he lets them through anyway. Nobody on this blog is a friend of mine, so the buddies comment doesn’t apply. When I said “buddies” I didn’t mean “people vaguely ideologically aligned” – I meant actual buddies. His real life friend is the single most abusive person in comments. My real life friends are much more well-behaved!

            I suppose you could argue that I’m abusive to a handful of people like Damion and John Henderson . I think if you look at the history of my interaction with them why that is is clear, but let’s just give this one to you. One for you!

            4. He largely devotes his life to attacking people online – this blog is ostensibly a “game design” blog but it’s 80% vitriol.

            I don’t run a blog devoted to attacking people. I didn’t quit my job to become a full-time hate blogger. I don’t post on either KIA or GamerGhazi. In social media I very rarely call people out with indentifying information, I don’t retweet people saying things I don’t like so that my followers will attack them, I don’t . reply.

            I don’t make it my point in life to belittle people. When I say I’m going to write about game design I do exactly that – write about actual game design, not about the real and imagined failings of peers.

            So again, swing and a miss.

            5. He reserves his most vicious criticism for women and minorities who disagree with him

            This is exactly the opposite of what I do. Damion is an overstuffed white cis male. As far as I can tell so is John Henderson. It seems pretty obvious from my comments on these blogs that I reserve my most vicious criticism for those types, not for women and minorities. (That’s not really be design – it’s just that bloviating white men are saying the dumbest things)

            Are you suggesting that Damion and John are somehow oppressed minorities? If so that’s good for a laugh but very hard to take seriously.

            So I’m guilty of 1 out of the 5 things I accuse him of.

            If you’re going to come at me you need to come at me with something other than your limp dick in your hand. Come up with a real point and try again champ.

        • Damion Schubert

          In my response to him, I describe the Accused as an example that deals with rape well – with the gravity and seriousness that this life altering crime occurs. So no, and you knew that.

          • A Person

            “Does critique that talks about how visceral, ‘raw’, and immediate the rape scene in that story is “cheerlead rape”? ”

            This is essentially a rhetorical question that you, as is par for the course, didn’t get. You’re vociferously praising rape in The Accused, and praise is cheerleading, thus you are cheerleading. This is simple A implies B implies C logic.

            I assume the point of raising the question wasn’t to get an answer – the answer is self-evident. It was to make you stop and introspect for all of 2 seconds. It was a noble attempt but you’re far too obtuse.

            You’re a real piece of work. I can’t imagine the sigh of relief that went out from women across game development when you washed out.

          • John Henderson

            Now I know you’re trying to get Damion to ban you.

          • A Person

            He didn’t ban you for mocking a woman who reported threats against her and for repeatedly abusing a variety of users with personal attacks apropos of nothing but he’s going to ban me for understanding first order logic?

            Maybe. If he does I’ll be a laughing. It will only prove his own intellectual cowardice and the complete ridiculousness of his “zero tolerance” nonsense.

            Maybe instead of banning me think of something intelligent to say in response. Or is that like asking a pig to fly?

          • John Henderson

            If the woman you’re talking about had as much contempt for this site as you do, maybe you should tell her you’re fighting the good fight here so she doesn’t have to. Maybe she’ll give you a pat on the head.

            There’s nothing you’re pointing out that’s not been trodded in a deep, deep furrow. You have no stated goal that makes sense, and if you have such a low regard for this site, you really should just go away. So the conclusion is, you want to go out with a bang so you can feel superior in the end, even though you’re an anon rando coward.

            How’s my first-order logic?

          • A Person

            1. You don’t know what “first order logic” is. Hint: it’s not a term I made up on the spot, it has a specific meaning.

            2. Are you accusing me of being a white knight? Very rich!

            3. You’ve said at least a few different times that you were going to stop responding to me. So – stop?

            4. “You have no stated goal that makes sense” – what’s your goal other than to be as obnoxious as possible? Shall I state my goal then? My goal is to get Damion to stop spouting bullshit, and barring that to mock him for it the way bullshit artists deserve to be mocked.

            5. “So the conclusion is, you want to go out with a bang so you can feel superior in the end, even though you’re an anon rando coward.”

            Why would I be non-anonymous when people like you threaten and harass people?

            As far as being an “anon rando” – you might as well be given how irrelevant you are. Being non-anonymous doesn’t prevent you from being the single most abusive person in these comments, so I’m not sure what you’re on about. If you want to prove that lack of anonymity makes people act more responsibly maybe “look how dumb you are” shouldn’t be your catchphrase?

            Oh no, did I assault you with logic again?

            Go ahead and whine to Zen about how I should be banned – I really don’t give a shit. It will just give me another reason to laugh at you. Nothing I say in these comments is worse than what you say, but if I make you feel sad inside because you can’t take your own medicine go for it.

          • John Henderson

            Cracked like an egg. No, I’m not going to compete with you for who can be more obnoxious and obtuse. You win.

          • Consumatopia

            “understanding first order logic”

            Not that the rest of your post made sense, but you meant propositional logic, not first-order.

        • Damion Schubert

          James chose to write about rape in fiction in the single most inflammatory way he could possibly think of. He describes it himself as the most inflammatory piece of clickbait he could possibly have come up with. My point is that, when you are doing an in-depth discussion of whether or not GamerGate is something that women do or should find threatening, making him one of your interviewees is a signal flare. The fact that James pretty much dismisses rape as no more an overused plot point than anything else is a non-serious point of view.

          Content creators are more than happy to make whatever the fuck they want. James can make his Gorean game. Nobody has stopped RockStar from making GTA games. Nobody can really stop Vavra from making his game an Aryan paradise, Divine Divinity from embracing or ignoring their market by including/not including boobplate, or the Hatred team for making what looks to be a vile excuse to generate headlines to create sales. However, the right to make what you want doesn’t guaruntee you an audience, a marketplace that will sell you, or a critical pass.

          As for ‘would I really like to have my career judged by a single sentence’, I would just respond “You mean, like Leigh Alexander?”

          • A Person

            So what you’re saying is that because some unspecified people judge Leigh Alexander by a single sentence that it’s ok for you to do that to someone else, and to promote that sort of idiotic and thoughtless judgement as a valid method of evaluation?

            This is not even “well he did it first.” It’s literally “well someone else, somewhere on earth did it first.” A single person on earth was an asshole once so that gives you a perpetual get out of jail free card?

            Here’s a novel thought: nobody deserves to be judged by a single sentence. Anyone who does that should feel bad for doing so – yourself included.

            You’re unfairly trying to paint him as being pro-rape – a point you know is fundamentally dishonest. But hey, it gets a few dozen clicks and 5 other well-fed white dudes on Twitter to tell you you’re doing a bang-up job….so worth? And it’s ok because someone did something similar to Leigh Alexander so mumble mumble?

      • Bobby Flavor

        No, he’s saying it’s a great plot device. And it is. Have you not seen “I Spit On Your Grave?” It’s one of the best revenge movies ever made.

    • rarebit

      You’ve said that Rape Culture doesn’t exist.

    • Unbound

      Great job on scrubbing the article. But I’m sure you have nothing to hide or be embarrassed about, right?

    • Memento

      You might not “champion” it but you sure do look the other way when your friends send rape threats.

    • anonymous

      archon was the sole author of that article.

  4. INH5

    I don’t have any more inside information than you do, but I highly doubt that these events are due to people turning away from the Escapist due to its “support” of GamerGate. Whatever your feelings about those interview articles, I highly doubt the average visitor to the site cared much. As for the talent leaving, only Jim and Moviebob can solidly be described as “Anti-GG” (by the way, Bob vigorously denies that his departure has anything to do with this). Gavin Ford has mostly stayed out of this, but he regularly appears on podcasts with Totalbiscuit, and he once strongly criticized one of Anita’s tweets saying that only POC can be victims of racism, which as an Irishman he took exception to for obvious reasons.

    For the record, Yaghtzee has stated that he is deliberately avoiding talking about GG in his articles and video reviews. But in a few of his LP videos, he’s made comments on the subject that sound like he leans slightly towards the Pro-GG side of things. So while I don’t know how longer he’s going to stay at the Escapist, if he does eventually leave it probably won’t be because of this.

    However, I think the Escapist’s monetary troubles might be indirectly related to GG. If you remember, Joystiq closed around the same time as the Escapist’s layoffs were announced, also right around the beginning of the year. This could be a coincidence, but back in November there was an anonymous post on 8chan by someone claiming to have an uncle in an advertising firm who told him that the whole GG situation was going to hurt the ad revenue of the entire gaming website industry. Apparently, before this companies had assumed that video game websites were safer places to advertise than, for example, political websites, but all the controversy has made them much more cautious in these areas, and that when ad contracts came up for renewal at the end of the year a lot of companies were going to quietly pull out or negotiate for lower rates.

    https://i.imgur.com/fo9Cz6z.png

    Again, it’s entirely possible that this 8chan anon was making stuff up and the timing is just coincidence. But the scenario seems plausible enough to me, and if it did happen you would expect the smaller websites to be hit harder, which is exactly what we’re seeing.

    In any case, I don’t expect the, to be frank, blatant pandering to the GG crowd to make things worse. GG may be small, but the number of people who are vocally, actively anti-GG in symmetry to the average GG supporter is far smaller (just look at the Youtube ratings of the ABC Nightline piece if you want proof of that). Escapist also has a $20 per year subscription option, and if half of KIA’s subscribers sign up, that’s $280,000 per year. Furthermore, in the past 2 months GG supporters have gotten 3 different hashtags trending on Twitter, which could always be helpful. Finally, if you want to take a really cynical interpretation of events, one might suspect Archron of deliberately courting controversy in the hopes that the Verge, Gawker, or the like would publish an article about how the Escapist is being taken over by GamerGate, giving them a bunch of free advertising in the process.

    The real deciding factor for whether this works out is whether the Escapist’s new contributors can create content that appeals to a general audience that doesn’t care about Twitter drama.

    • Mockingbird5

      Wait, you are using an anymous post on 8chan where someone cites their uncle as evidence? That might be the least reliable source I’ve ever heard of. Was his uncle that works at Nintendo and knows how to get Mew not too busy to comment or what?

      • INH5

        I didn’t think much of it at the time, but with the events since then, I can’t help but wonder. I’ve also heard similar rumors from other sources. But like I repeatedly said, it’s entirely possible that this guy is just a troll that got lucky with his predictions.

      • Vetarnias

        Or it might be ad blockers diminishing their revenue. Nobody wants to get those unwanted scripts running on their computer, least of all if it’s to serve advertising.

        • Adamant

          Kind of. If Ad-Blockers were solely to blame, games media sites would have collapsed years ago.
          I do believe it was a powerful instigator though.

          Loose timeline:
          1) (2008 – 2009) Adblockers become popular with regular net denizens. Ad-revenue falls as a result, both due to clicks not being counted (due to blocked ads not playing) and due to advertisers slashing rates in response.

          2) (2010+) Sites publish more sensationalist content to attract a greater swath of users to shore up the difference.
          “Clickbait articles”, i.e., exposes, editorials and public criticisms of large “AAA” game publishers becomes an almost weekly feature (hilariously, many of those same publishers continue to advertise on the sites lambasting them).

          3) (2011) Controversial “Political Criticisms” emerge in gaming, and turn out to be powerful attention magnets; games media sites act with an obvious positive-bias towards said critics to encourage more of the same, due to their mutual benefit.

          (NOTICE: No shady back room deals, or any other stupid conspiracy theory crap is necessary for this to work; a simple refusal to publish any real criticism of their work while not-so-subtly promoting said work is sufficient. A tad hypocritical, given how eager these same sites are to criticize others normally.)

          Important point is: People are getting riled up over new controversy and it’s bringing in gobs of clicks and new viewership for an ailing business model.

          4) (2011 – 2014) “Social justice” stuff starts showing up far more frequently on game-related sites and social media.
          Including regular feature material. Internal antagonism continues to grow.

          5) (2011 – 2014) 2-3 years of antagonism and clickbait polarizes the gamer audiences politically in ways previously unknown to them. Gaming discussion becomes more openly about politics (especially gender politics), and less about gaming.

          6) (2014) “Gamers” engage the Zoe Quinn scandal…game media sites retaliate with a blackout of the subject and later those “Gamers are over” articles aimed squarely at shaming “them” and “their” culture…Gamergate is formed in response…blah blah blah…Category V shitstorm.

          7) (2014) Due to the actions of Gamergate and Games Media sites alike, advertisers experience a rude awakening to internal political turmoil in what was previously assumed an apolitical genre-hobby.

          8) (2015) Spooked advertisers pull out in varying degrees and for various reasons. Slashed budgets, layoffs, and sackings follow for a number of sites.

          9) (Present) Archon states a new focus for the Escapist, hires on new talent who are controversial before they even really start work because of their POLITICS.

          That’s just my take on the situation, as someone who was there from the start.
          Obviously I didn’t see everything, and I don’t know everything, but what I do know is that gaming became immensely more political in the past 3 years than it has ever been in the 25+ years I have been gaming.

          We’ve become so judgmental of others based on the loosest of associations, and that’s just pathetic.

  5. Ambient_Malice

    The Escapist have publicly stated they intend to avoid politics and focus on entertainment, making the political views of their contributors largely a moot point.

    If a gaming site hired three women as freelancers and content providers and offered a job to a black journalist, they’d be praised for their dedication to diversity. Unless they were The Escapist and those women had “wrong” opinions.

    • Dan

      I guess that explains why they just hired a bunch of people with the exact same pro-discrimination political views but no background in writing.

      • Malorie

        But they didn’t hire anyone who was anti-gaming, therefore I’m unaware of any discrimination taking place.

        • Dan

          Pretty easy to do, since nobody in any of this is ‘anti-gaming’ in the first place. It’s just a line that smart manipulative people in gamergate tell stupid gullible people in gamergate order to keep them in line.

          • A Person

            Is it fair to say that you’re anti-black and anti-woman? (AKA racist and sexist)

            You sure seem mad that women and black people are being hired. But let me guess – it’s because you’re just so darn pro-diversity!

            Oliver has a background in writing, as does Liana. I don’t know Lizzy’s background, but that’s still 2 out of 3. Arthur Gies had no background in writing, neither did Ben Kuchera, or a million other games writing hires. Did you object then, or only now that women are being hired? Isn’t it the case that minorities often don’t have strong backgrounds in professional writing because they can’t get the same jobs? I thought that was a pretty well-accepted progressive talking point – am I mistaken?

            How to fight for diversity in one easy step:

            1. Complain when minorities are hired and claim that they are unqualified.

            Classic internet diversity warrior.

          • Biggie

            Hey A Person, do you ever get tired of being a disingenuous lying prick?

            “You sure seem mad that women and black people are being hired. But let me guess – it’s because you’re just so darn pro-diversity!”

            I would be angry if Herman Cain and Ann Coulter were given prominent positions, too. The idea that “if you’re anti-racist/sexist, you must cheerlead every single instance of a POC/woman being hired regardless of their views or actions” is so hilariously wrong it’s astounding.

            I mean, it’s literally the SJW identity politics you claim to abhor (or at least a nonsense facsimile which genuinely seems to believe that a person belonging to a marginalized group means they can’t be criticized for their actions, see also the whining about criticism of Milo Y and Frederick Brennan because WAAH HE’S GAY/DISABLED HOW DARE YOU).

            There are plenty of women and black people who don’t have awful, reactionary, regressive viewpoints. If the Escapist had hired Maddy Myers, N’Gai Croal, Mattie Brice, Evan Narcisse? Fuck yes, that would have been awesome. But we’re supposed to cheer for women and POC who write awful shit, just because they’re women or POC? No thank you.

      • A Person

        Liana and Lizzy are pro-discrimination?

        It’s hilarious that you are willing to tell lies about women under the guise of being pro-diversity.

        • alphajony

          “it’ isn’t discrimination when we do it.”

        • Another Person

          Liana K directly compared the “struggles of gamers” to the “struggles of gay people”. I don’t know much about Lizzy, but they both support a movement that exists by targeting random women in gaming and terrorizing them.

          In every single witchhunt involving women in gaming this year, GamerGate was involved with the pitchforks. And the same GamerGate trolls appear to harass the victims.

          The false accusations with MagicAmy? The witchhunt of Maddelisk? Witchhunt of the victims of Alex Strife? Guess who’s involved. Kindly go throw yourself into a garbage bin where you belong.

    • Vex

      They’re not exactly doing a stellar job at that, are they?

  6. Dan

    http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/www.escapistmagazine.com

    For low-traffic sites like Escapist, Gamergate clicks can be a net gain. Its in the best interests for really successful companies like Sony/Blizzard/Intel to take a stance against abuse, sexism, racism and all the other exclusionary politics that GG promotes, while tiny outfits can benefit from niche-mining the reactionary crowd.

    • Mockingbird5

      That’s true, but the cost they have already paid in talent is pretty high. I don’t think the clicks they’ll get from gamergate will make up from the audience they lost from their content creators leaving en masse.

      • INH5

        Yes, but the loss of talent has to be sunk costs at this point. Jim Sterling left in November, Moviebob has sworn up and down that his leaving has nothing to do with GG, and Gavin is a pretty solid neutral on these issues. Plus, with the time scale that HR decisions usually work at, it’s likely that they’ve known for weeks that Bob and Gavin would be leaving, and reaching out to the new people was a reaction, not a cause.

        Or maybe Bob and Gavin are just the most recent layoffs due to budget cuts, and the goal from the beginning was to replace them with lesser known people who wouldn’t be able to demand quite as high a salary. Who knows.

        • Malorie

          More than likely.
          I wonder if any of them got immediate offers to return…like how the Meijers around my neighborhood fires and rehires people for BS reasons to knock them down a few pay grades. McDonalds has also been caught out doing that.
          Typically it doesn’t get out because IF the poor saps are smart enough to sue, they get a puny settlement in exchange for not getting a terrible reference.

          • Damion Schubert

            It’s pretty clear that Escapist is pursuing a new direction, and that MB and the Escapist just realized that it didn’t make sense to refresh their relationship at a certain point. This is pretty common in companies that try to change direction.

  7. An_Alternate_View

    I think the traffic stats from both sites you posted probably give a simpler reason.

    Note that Polygon has Equal Traffic between Mobile and Non-Mobile platforms, while the Escapist has a lot less mobile traffic. Polygon’s site, designed by Vox Media, is very modern and adapts to any platform. The Escapist has been stuck with some outdated CMS that is definitely not mobile friendly and you need to subscribe to get HTML5 ready video content. Plus the videos themselves seem to get really bogged down.

    People are moving to mobile more and more when reading content. I suspect that Polygon looks new and fresh and is easier to access. I spent a lot of time commuting on a train and I usually go to the gaming sites, and I’ve spent more time on the more adaptive sites than the non adaptive. The escapist is loaded with ads and the videos don’t work well. Plus, since the Escapist does a lot of video content rather than text, a lot of the creators nowadays can bypass needing a site and do YouTube directly, so the need for a ‘zine that primarily broadcasts video becomes a little archaic.

    • Damion Schubert

      I actually think its simpler than that – they were a movie-based business, and the audiences for the films are fleeing the escapist in favor of YouTubers who don’t need a parent magazine to foot the bills because they’re so ludicrously successful. This would explain why they have been slowly ramping down what was once a world-class content department.

  8. GG Anon

    I think I finally realized why I like you so much, Damion. You’re some kind of Bizarro World version of GG: just smart to twist everything into a context that fits your narrative, but lacking enough awareness to realize when that narrative no longer serves your goals.

    • Vex

      Lack of self-awareness seems to be a defining characteristic of a Gator.

  9. JustAnotherRandom

    “Progressive” white men upset over women and minorities getting jobs at gamign news outlets.

    You’re out of your waters here along with the rest of the ghazi goons. You’ve asked for diversity and here it is. Nope ye olde left leaning white hipster dudes are no longer going to be allowed to dominate the video game sphere. Isn’t that the progress you’ve all been asking for all along or are they the wrong kind of minorities for not towing the party line?

    Look, you’re writing this rant because somebody out there decided to cater to a different political leaning than your own. Because somebody had the audacity to not swallow the leftist narrative woven by you and your allies. Take two minutes to actually process that and maybe then you will realize how superficial your professed beliefs actually appear. You’re actually lecturing a black man on the importance of MLK in an attempt to shame him, as if he’s somehow wasn’t aware of that because of one tweet professing admiration for the amount of camaraderie going on within GG. Let’s put that into perspective. White liberal dudes dogpiled a black man for saying that he felt like he was witnessing MLK’s dream come alive with all these minorities being drawn together by one cause. Mock the casue all you want but are you really going to tell me he isn’t entitled to his own feelings now?

    Welcome to a world of genuine diversity, where your opinions will be challenged and where you will be routinely shamed for having them by your political opponents. This is what you wanted, right? I warned you of politicizing video games before but that obviously fell on deaf ears. Too late now so all I can say is congratulations on your new industry! You did it, guys!

    • Dan

      I didn’t even bother reading this.

    • A Person

      “Progressive” white men upset over women and minorities getting jobs at gaming news outlets.”

      Pretty much. Par for the course for incoherent progressive and “pro-diversity” rhetoric.

      They’re huge fans of diversity as long as it’s limited to a white guy with a liberal arts degree who went to Oberlin and a white guy with a liberal arts degree who went to Wesleyan. Any diversity beyond that is too radical for them.

      Racial diversity, gender/sex diversity, economic diversity, geographic diversity, diversity of opinion – they hate all these things!

      • Damion Schubert

        What you’re saying is that women and minorities should be immune from criticism when they write something dumb. Which I know you don’t believe, so therefore I know you’re just wasting everyone’s time spouting bullshit you don’t actually believe.

        For what its worth, I have no problem with the Escapist choosing to take a less objective point of view in their reporting. I just think it’s ironic, and somewhat tragic that they’ve destroyed what was an entertaining (although perhaps not profitable) web video business to do it.

        • A Person

          “What you’re saying is that women and minorities should be immune from criticism when they write something dumb.”

          I’m sorry, did you offer criticism of any of them beyond Twitter-friendly one-line snarks?

          No, what I’m saying is that fake pro-diversity people always have some excuse for how they can maintain a pro-diversity facade while being staunchly opposed to actual diversity. You’re pro-diversity until the rubber hits the road and you realize that sometimes women and black guys don’t think exactly like white liberal arts types.

          Liana K writes 10 times better than you and 10 times better than many male writers in the industry. (She does desperately need an editor though!) You’re really barking up the wrong tree if you think attacking her for being a dunce is a good strategy. I can name dozens of male writers in games journalism who are much worse.

          If they do a bad job I’m all for criticizing them – I’m an equal-opportunity critic. But that’s not what you’re doing. You’re preemptively dismissing them based on snarky one-liners of no substance. You don’t seem to even understand what criticism is. Or diversity. Or feminism.

          Here’s some criticism: you try to be both an entertainer and a serious critic and fail at both. You act as if you’re making real arguments worthy of careful consideration, but what you actually do is invent facts and rely on blog-standard snarky BS. At every fork in the road when presented with a choice between basic intellectual honesty and snarky bullshit you choose the latter, then stamp your feet about how you’re a serious critic. Because regardless of how shitty and vapid your blogging is you know that 5 people on Twitter will congratulate you for a job well done after every post.

          For someone with absolutely nothing else going on in their life I guess that’s the hit you need, but let’s not pretend what you write is in any way insightful or interesting. You write exactly what a very small but receptive audience wants to hear – that’s it. A robot or a dog could do what you do.

          Your entire blog is just spouting bullshit.

          • Ravinous

            I’m going to have to agree on this. Whenever the idea of “Criticism of X” comes up it’s always going to have people who fall into the us vs them category. Usually those being criticized feel attacked.

            Is transparency in Games Journalism (or Journalism in general) bad? No

            Is having an ethical standard to follow for said journalism bad? No

            Is harassment bad? I think we can agree on yes.

            Is criticism bad? Nope.

            The media was criticized on a lack of transparency and evidence of corruption, unfortunately via a Franz Ferdinand moment. They responded poorly and with little control in a very “How Dare You!” fashion. This lead to censoring of discussion, which via curiosity and a bit of “No! How Dare You!” by the respective audience lead to the mess we are in today.

            At the start I was a bit on the outside looking in. But as time went on the narrative started to fade and I saw some ugly truths. Yes there are trolls (such the Prius guy to tried to play up both sides), but the way the media refused to mention threats, harassment, black-listing, and various other things unless it followed the narrative, drove me further into siding with consumers of GamerGate, at least at the core values of Ethics and Transparency.

            If people could get over their blind hatred of each other and realize there are people on the other side of the screen and stop dehumanizing each other, I think the we could get on the road to something better.

            Damion Schubert, your a person, and I hope you the best. I know we may not share the same views, but I I think we of the gaming community can learn a bit if we just listen and communicate. Criticism doesn’t always have to be taken as an attack, just another point of view. 🙂

          • John Henderson

            “Liana K writes 10 times better than you and 10 times better than many male writers in the industry.”

            No.

        • Vetarnias

          Yeah, but whatever credibility The Escapist had was from the people whose work appeared there: Sterling, MovieBob, even Croshaw. Those who said the unpleasant truths about the industries they covered.

          But then you got The Escapist and its corporate owners, who were all about developing promotional synergies, blah blah blah. I know that this is the exact same problem in practically every newsroom, except that I never had the impression The Escapist could, ahem, escape it. If push came to shove, I suspected they wouldn’t hesitate to dispose of their writers, or at least the more recalcitrant ones, even if that left The Escapist as a shell of its former self.

          Archon (aka Alex Macris), I’m not sure where he fits in all of this. He was the founder, yes, but now he’s also a vice president at Defy. I’m sure his main preoccupation is to see The Escapist survive, but now he’s carried that to the extent where he no longer cares in what condition it survives, as long as the name endures. Meanwhile, it’s getting dragged down to the level of other Defy properties, and he’s not exactly in an ideal position to complain, is he?

        • alphajony

          do you call a view that doesn’t align with your own as less-objective?

          • John Henderson

            who are you

        • alphajony

          Bioware shouldn’t have let this guy go. He could’ve added more SJW-friendly romance subplots for the biodrones to drivel over.

    • Biggie

      Copy/pasting this because formulaic Gator talking points don’t deserve individually-written responses:

      I would be angry if Herman Cain and Ann Coulter were given prominent positions, too. The idea that “if you’re anti-racist/sexist, you must cheerlead every single instance of a POC/woman being hired regardless of their views or actions” is so hilariously wrong it’s astounding.

      I mean, it’s literally the SJW identity politics you claim to abhor (or at least a nonsense facsimile which genuinely seems to believe that a person belonging to a marginalized group means they can’t be criticized for their actions, see also the whining about criticism of Milo Y and Frederick Brennan because WAAH HE’S GAY/DISABLED HOW DARE YOU).

      There are plenty of women and black people who don’t have awful, reactionary, regressive viewpoints. If the Escapist had hired Maddy Myers, N’Gai Croal, Mattie Brice, Evan Narcisse? Fuck yes, that would have been awesome. But we’re supposed to cheer for women and POC who write awful shit, just because they’re women or POC? No thank you.

      • Dom

        I like your answer. I just want to add that the way gaters accuse us of hypocrisy illustrate a lack of understanding, or feigning ignorance for rhetorical purpose, of feminism and progressivism in general.

        When we protect minorities, groups who lack influence and power, we try to “fix” the balance. When GGers attack AS, LA or ZQ, they are basically attacked because they ARE women that GGers disagree for petty reasons ant are viciously harassed for it, far more than men that hold the same opinions. Since the hate is mostly groundless, they are even slandered for things that aren’t real. We don’t defend them because they are women, we defend them because they are women attacked by a misogynist horde that try to silence them by over the top means, including organized harassment, intimidation and death treats.

        Gaters, since they rarely show understanding of feminism, think or pretend to think that we shouldn’t criticize women on their side when they are wrong or we are applying a double standard. Women aren’t immune to criticism, they should be immune to abuse do to their sex, as men BTW. When GG women are wrong, they aren’t immune to critics. Claiming that allowing criticism and forbidding harassment is a double standard is ignorant, if not worse.

        That why #notmyshield is ridiculous. This is a way to deflect criticism from progressives without even understanding those in the first place.

  10. joe

    RIP escapist…… I’m really sad because I used to love them,

    • Trevel

      I really liked them when they were a weekly magazine about games, rather than a generic game-information website.

      I still read one column by a guy whose writing I generally enjoy, because I generally enjoy his writing, but that’s pretty much the sum total of my interaction with the Escapist these days.

      • Shjade

        So much this. The themed-week “issues” of the Escapist were the best.

        I still happily tout my Letters to the Editor badge there.

        But at this point…no thanks. 😐

  11. John Henderson

    I long since stopped reading anything on the Escapist except Yahtzee and his video series.

    • John

      I’m sure they’re traumatized by this 🙂

  12. alphadork

    Hey Damion, where was the SJWs rage when LizzyF got doxxed after voicing her opinions about #gamergate? And no, Kotaku and Polygon aren’t doing that well, less than 40% of visitor click through their ads. I use an ad filter when visiting them, not that I do it too often. I turn off the filter with theescapist though.

    • Biggie

      Kotaku and Polygon are doing infinitely better than literally any pro-GG site, and their numbers have only gone up. I can assure you, a lack of clickthrough and adblockers are actually taken into account by any ad department worth its salt.

    • DZ

      And no, Kotaku and Polygon aren’t doing that well, less than 40% of visitor click through their ads.

      Citation and comparison against industry average needed.

      • Trevel

        40% click through is amazingly high. Heck, I think 4% would be amazingly high for most campaigns.

    • Vetarnias

      What was strange with The Escapist is that it was, as far as I know, the only *established* outlet to side with Gamergate. All the other ones (based on those boycott/endorse list that GG had going at some point, then hid from view when they became public knowledge) were obscure websites I’d never heard about, presumably sensing there was some visibility to be gained by rallying behind GG. (I refer here to websites primarily about games, not Breitbart and other political websites with an ideological agenda.)

      The Escapist, counter-intuitively, sought to make games exclusive, not inclusive. Macris’ term at the time, “the games enthusiast” as the core demographic of The Escapist, implies they have lots and lots of money to blow on video games, which I’m sure isn’t disconnected from Defy’s desire for promotional synergy. Add to that a toxic forum community, with moderators whose sole accomplishment is to ban the voices that go against the grain, no matter how reasonable they are, and you get today’s Escapist.

      If Yahtzee Croshaw, Mr. Fedora-and-Obscenities himself, leans on the side of GG, then there is nothing more I want to do with him. He’s everything that’s wrong with video games.

      (Oh, and by the way, Mr. Schubert, I can’t avoid thinking that SHADOWBANE was exactly the kind of game that would have ‘Gaters purring, play to crush and all that.)

  13. alphadork

    btw, “gaming” websites are those that are really dead, not the gamers. Video watching like Twitch and youtubers are the future. Not Polygon, Kotaku and the like.

    • Damion Schubert

      Possibly, but I doubt it. Both kinds of content service very different kinds of need. As an example, TotalBiscuit is a terrible newsman, but a great pundit.

      Also, YouTube and Twitch content providers have bigger ethics problems than the web pages that still need to be sorted out.

    • DZ

      IMO, there’s always going to be a need for written media if only because many people don’t want to sit through a 30 minute video talking about news when they can just read it.

  14. Josef Kotlaba

    Almost every one of those said that their leaving was perfectly understandable business decision, no bad blood, no politics, etc.
    I guess Escapist wants to be more like Buzzfeed, easily digestible content, cosplay photos, gifs, press releases etc.

    • Damion Schubert

      I don’t think you make the hires I mentioned above if you want to become Buzzfeed.

      One of the cornerstones of being a media source is that you need to offer something the other guys don’t. In this light, moving to the ‘gamergate’ quadrant of the industry makes perfect sense. Other than minor players like RalphRetort and NicheGamer, there’s not a lot there, and as much as I rag on them, Oliver and Liana are orders of magnitude better writers than what any of those littler sites have to offer.

  15. Amalythia

    “The Escapist hired two women and a black but not the right ones, so I still hate them.” So go read Polygon then. They have diverse writers right? What with their three whole women who sometimes occasionally write for them, and their jumping on the bandwagons by having famous-because-I’m-famous women write for them just for the views.

    Yeah that’s great. And most of their writers who even cover “diversity” issues – white guys. Though I suppose, as a white guy yourself, you relate more to them.

    I don’t think the Escapist will miss you. It’s one thing to not like their views – it’s another entirely that they manage to hire four new people, 75% of them from underrepresented groups, and you have exactly zero nice things to say, when this is exactly what you’ve been demanding. Or is it: you want OTHER occupations to do this, but you don’t want your own. Last I checked, representation of women in gaming journalism is just as low as it is in the development industry. This is a step towards rectifying it, and you complain about it? Do you not like the competition? Did you get stiffed the job and now are trying to take down the entire ship?

    Don’t claim to speak for women and minorities then denigrate a company FOR HIRING WOMEN AND MINORITIES. It makes you look, well, like a massive hypocrite.

    • John Henderson

      “Don’t claim to speak for women and minorities”

      Who’s doing that? Damion’s speaking for himself. Women and minorities can speak for themselves.

  16. Adam Ryland

    the escaqpist is simply filling out a niche in the audience, which they have every right to do.

    I remember vividly many people saying GG should create their own media and contribute their own voices to the dialogue. it’s funny that as soon as one outlet even allows one person to write something from a GG perspective, people act like it’s a tragedy.

    • Damion Schubert

      Allow me to quote myself: ” At any rate, I think it’s very clear that the Escapist has decided to embrace a certain editorial slant for their future content, which is fine. Game journalists SHOULD be able to have slants and biases.”

      I’m not angry. (To be honest, I kinda predicted this outcome last year when they started bleeding videographers).

      I’m just fascinated. It’s a hell of a big bet by Macris and co. GamerGate is a small but passionate audience, and they can generate clicks. However, if they become the acknowledged GG house organ, it may well lose them some developer access.

      • Adam Ryland

        I’m sorry, losing access to who. Brianna Wu?

        And why would anyone care. In 2015 you really think the market is dying for one more “developer interview” that is dissected and spread across forums in seconds?

        That is old magazine/website logic that doesn’t work anymore.

        • John Henderson

          The Escapist is still a web magazine, and they recently lost a lot of talent. If they don’t get readership of some kind, they aren’t worth much as a business. Developer interviews get attention and do matter, but developers aren’t going to talk to just anyone. You have to build a relationship first.

        • Damion Schubert

          I’m already hearing rumors of publishers removing the Escapist from press lists. Nothing but rumors, though. Time will tell. But right now most major game publishers bend over backwards to not be associated visibly with the brand. The cozier that the Escapist gets, the more that the publishers will want to stay away.

          • Adam Ryland

            And again, so what? This is old logic. People on YouTube routinely review and talk about games after they release. Even big guys like pewdiepie or totalbiscuit make videos sometimes a week or more after the game is released. They are still popular. They still get views.

            People care about games when they have hands on it. When they are thinking about purchasing it. Not months before. Publishers may not send escapist press releases or early copies but what’s the value in a post YouTube world. Not much apparently.

  17. Karl

    I wouldn’t say The Escapist is trying to appeal to a right wing audience. GG is more of a reactionary movement based on a fear of organized feminism and (more generally) anyone on the left trying to influence culture. They’re not really in favor of anything.

    • Damion Schubert

      Right wing was meant to include Morse’s hiring, which even the Escapist’s readership was made uncomfortable of. I do think that a general trend in the writers is one towards libertarianism, which is also something that Macris himself has often spoken favorably about as well. But we should wait and see.

      I’ve heard them say that they won’t be covering politics. You don’t hire culture warriors and then ask them to write puff pieces, though.

  18. John

    Six months later, and gamergate is still around, exposing frauds like Sarkeesian and Quinn, and their pathetic beta male enablers like the author of this temper tantrum. Continue hyperventilating though, SJW tears are the saltiest 😉

    • DZ

      No, really, ethics though.

  19. John Markley

    “This includes Lizzy F, who described the ‘gamers are over’ articles as an attack on her 3-year old autistic daughter.”

    And beautifully expressed why I and a number of other autistics support Gamergate in the process. It’s also worth mentioning- since Mr. Schubert does not- that Lizzy is autistic herself.

    • Damion Schubert

      This is absurd. “Gamers are over” was condemning harassing gamers, not autistics, and it takes an incredible act of willful misinterpretation to read it as an attack on autistics.

      Most autistics are actually able to function in society without being jerks. Many are employed in the games industry, even.

      • Adam Ryland

        Uhh Leigh Alexander took an ugly stereotype about autistic people verbatim. Twisted it and applied it to gamers she doesn’t like.

        Its all right there in the text. Its not misinterpretation to see meanspiritedness as meanspirited

        • Dedj

          But it is meanspritedness to take a stereotype that also applies to more than one demographic and assume that the author was targeting the most vulnerable of those demographics.

          It’s especially mean spirited when the arguement requires taking the worst possible interpretation of the authors intent and then conflating the adverse and negative behaviours mentioned with diagnostic criteria that might just kinda if you squint a bit have very basic definitional overlap.

          At this point, it has to be asked if people are agreeing with Lizzy F because they think she is actually right (hint: No, diagnosis of autism requires a lot more than just meeting the triad of impairments, and not everyone who is socially impaired is autistic) or because they think leveraging the offence of a woman with an autistic daughter is a weapon to score cheap points against someone else.

          • Adam Ryland

            I’m assuming that because Leigh Alexander comes off as a huge asshole and has a history of antagonism. Even before GG. I don’t see any reason to give her benefit of the doubt.

            At the same time I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t believe Lizzy when it comes to her situation.

          • Dedj

            But it’s not about giving her the benefit of the doubt, it’s about not attributing content to articles that isn’t within those articles.

            I have no doubt Lizzy is entirely convinced that LA totally 100% described her daughter. Fine, fair enough. Quite how she thinks her daughter is an “obtuse shit slinger, whinging hyper-consumer” is utterly beyond my comprehension, but if that’s how lowly she thinks of her own daughter , then fine. I’ve heard a lot worse from parents of autistic children, including utter nullification. LA’s article is quite, quite tame compared to what some parents of people with autism think about people with autism.

            Lizzy could be utterly 100% correct about her situation (I think she is) and still be 100% wrong about the LA article. I personally think she is wrong, as the descriptions given by LA can be applied to a whole host of people that would not meet the clinical definition of autism even when Aspergers was still seperate. And even if she was right about the description, that doesn’t excuse the category error of conflating “All of ‘Them’ do this” and “People who do this are occasionally ‘Them'”.

            I guess LA *could* have made it clear that she was talking about a culture and not a diagnosis but…oh wait, no, she did actually talk about a culture not a diagnosis. People need to realise this.

            “a huge asshole and has a history of antagonism”

            So, she’s insensitive to other people and keeps on at a point until everyone else gives up? Gee, “asshole” and “antagonistic”, I’ve really never heard that as a stereotype of people with autism.

        • John Henderson

          Can someone quote what Leigh wrote and point out the article where the autism stereotype language appeared? Point of order.

      • Mizahnyx

        I don’t get why people is so mad.
        Why I, as a male gamer, have no option but to get my gaming news from sites where the writers think of me not as a person but as some mythologically evil bowl of potentially poisoned m&m’s?
        Liana K was one of the first targets of Milo Yiannopoulos. Is then she GamerGate? Or is she conveniently categorized now as GamerGater because she doesn’t adhere to the ‘official’ McIntosh stance?
        Her points are valid. If people in 8chan can be held responsible for harassment by dehumanizing, demonizing opposers even if they don’t personally rally followers to harass, then McIntosh can be held accountable of the same. Internet is vitriolic. Stirring the waters of the Internet against opposers is such a convenient way to elude personal responsibility when siccing followers on a target. That is valid both for GamerGate and Feminist Frequency.

      • GG Anon

        All of the “other” Gamers are Over articles were condemning harassing gamers. Leigh’s article was largely an attack on gamers as an outgroup in much the same language that autistics are often attacked as an outgroup for being gross and nerdy (and, in what should probably surprise nobody, there is a high correlation between these groups that could see the comparison plain as day).

        There is a reason GG always cites Leigh’s article. And it’s not because she’s a woman.

        • Damion Schubert

          This is absurd. Have you actually *read* the articles? Also, chan culture has a huge subtheme of mocking autistics and aspies. Somehow, though, GG only seems to save their outrage for Leigh.

          • GG Anon

            Again you use “articles,” plural. Frankly I don’t really care about the other articles. Leigh’s article actively conflates the worst parts of gaming culture with gross nerddom.

            And since this started with Liz, she (and many others) got into a HUGE public fight with KingofPol and other channers back around October or so over their use of the word “autist.” Whatever else you may think of her (and I admit, I still haven’t made up my mind on her entirely), this is provably an issue that is important to her and which she has been consistent on.

          • Dedj

            It’s doubly absurd when you consider that Leigh Alexander is in no way responsible for how other people choose to denigerate people with autism.

            You’ll notice that *most* of her critics are very careful to not make the claim that LA identifies people with autism as the problem group, but they merely beat around the bush and imply that because the LA article *could* be potentially read as identifying people with autism then it is identifying people with autism.

            The major, major, seriously offensive and utterly wrongheaded problem with their claim is simple: “These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers…” isn’t in any way descriptive of people with autism as a group at all. The ease with which LA’s critics associated that with autism speaks more to their own prejudices.

            But the even bigger problem is this: people with autism have no right to be free from criticism. If LA has identified a problem group who also happen to be autistic, then that’s still a problem that has to be dealt with.

            This bubble-wrap protectionism also has a nasty flip-side. When fellow autists have our adult behaviour excused on the grounds of autism, we also have our achievements attributed to autism too. Was my ability to recall entire presentations at Uni almost verbatim attributed to actually being engaged and paying attention? No, it was minimised as ‘being autistic’. Ditto with writing 2000-word assignments and exam papers from memory. Was it hours of repetition and practice? No, ‘autism’.

            Pretty much every single autist I know of has had their abilities, hours upon hours of practice, reduced to ‘because = autism’.

            If we allow “These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers” off the hook because *some* of them *might* be autistic, then wer’e doing everyone a grave dis-service.

          • John Henderson

            “Leigh’s article actively conflates the worst parts of gaming culture with gross nerddom.”

            Yes, it does. Because the worst part of what passes for gaming culture is what every geek/nerd cliche is about. It’s a challenge for people to have to deal with non-neurotypicals, and some people are less graceful about it than others.

            Doesn’t invalidate her core point, which was aimed at creators and their business partners — “gamer” as a demographic is a terrible target market, because of the alternately poor character and bad behavior that might be related to poor character but could also be the result of the Internet enabling people with mental, emotional or developmental disorders to express themselves in ways that only sound harmful and uncouth.

            The struggle continues to make it better, but instead of impotently taking offense at an article written 6 months ago, clear-minded individuals might strive to do better and present themselves better.

            But if you’re a GG anon rando, you might just want to stir the shit and pretend to care about anything that creates noise and chaos.

          • GG Anon

            Can’t reply to future replies – is there a max # of posts in a chain here? Sad anon.

            Dedj – my problem is not that “some of the shitslingers could be autistic so we shouldn’t criticize them” – but rather that it makes no distinction between those “gross nerdy/autistic” traits and being obtuse shitslingers, etc.

            To be clear: I don’t particularly ascribe to any autistic bent in criticizing the article, only that I don’t think it takes “willful misrepresentation” for someone to do so. For me personally, the cultural shaming of gross nerds was enough, whether you want to extend that to autists or not.

            My problem with the article is two-fold:
            1) The presentation of the socially awkward gamer stereotype as a thing of derision and shame
            and
            2) springing off of that stereotype into claims of sociopathic behavior as if they are one and the same

            I am a socially awkward gamer. I am also autistic, which probably has something to do with that. WIthout a doubt, the best moments of my life have been the three days a year I’ve spent at MAGFest for the past six years, where nobody knows how to dress, everyone is socially awkward, and you probably won’t find anyone that’s wasted time showering during the weekend. My people. My culture. I could not possibly undersell just how helpful these events, and the online gaming forums in which I grew up, were in getting me to come out of my shell and connect with people, because they were places where I could go to express myself without fear of the kind of cultural shaming of gross nerds that Leigh’s article draws upon.

            No, it’s not the worst article in the world. Yes, I still roll my eyes whenever a GGer uses “Gamers are dead” unironically. But it was absolutely an attack on my kind and my culture, not just “harassers,” and I have to scoff at any claim to the contrary. I don’t mind people agreeing with the basic premise – gaming culture absolutely has problems, but Leigh’s approach has consistently involved throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

            John – You’re certainly welcome to believe whatever you like about me. But for what it’s worth, my primary concern has always been for a resolution that doesn’t leave the good people in GG out in the cold. I don’t have one today – but tomorrow, I will try again.

          • Damion Schubert

            I think that this argument is probably bogus. I have known many, MANY autistic people (autism and aspergers are not uncommon in the gaming world) and few I’ve known have shared your interpretation.

            However, it’s the best defense of this point of view I’ve ever read.

            If you agree, I will front-page this. I welcome you to send me a cleaned up copy. It will probably be heavily scrutinized, and may well get linked by places like Ghazi. But I do think it merits discussion.

    • INH5

      It’s also worth mentioning- since Mr. Schubert does not- that Lizzy is autistic herself.

      Really? I never heard that. Do you have a link to where she talks about that?

  20. Steve L.

    Hi Damion. This is my first time visiting your website, so please be kind to a new visitor. =)

    I originally came here out of curiosity, but on a cursory re-read of the article, I happened to (finally, after missing it initially) notice your comments on Liana K.’s work regarding her criticism of “Feminist Frequency”.

    Now, while I’m not quite one of those people to *hate* on Anita S. , I do believe Liana K. brought up some rather valid points, regarding FF, and how she feels Anita has mishandled some things(and frankly, I agree!)…..and you call it “befuddling”? I’m sorry, sir, but did you actually read the articles? Any of them?

    I’ll come back with a more detailed response soon, assuming this comment goes through, but I’m feeling a bit disappointed, because I’ve actually talked to Liana K on a few occasions, and she is actually a rather decent person who actually believes in reforming games journalism, and(although speaking as a fan of her work), I do wish you had been a little more respectful, IMO.

    • Damion Schubert

      Greetings and welcome!

      I actually like Liana’s writing quite a bit, and I genuinely feel that of all the writers that the Escapist hired, she’s light years ahead of the others in terms of writing smart, fearless writing. She’s also unafraid to go after sacred cows on her own side of the fence, and lord knows the world needs more writers capable of calling bullshit on their own side.

      I just didn’t particularly like this article. I thought it was long and meandering (it’s already long and meandering at only 3/5ths done!), I felt most of her points about FF’s work was not very good strawmen, and too much time was spent on her own battles with SJWs who disagree with her, and trying to establish this as somehow discrediting Anita’s ideas. Much of the article came off as … well, petty.

      It was really surprisingly to me because normally I love her work.

      • A Person

        All 5 parts were finished ages ago dude. You didn’t even read it. Lol? You’re claiming that her piece was “befuddling” but the concept of a 5-part piece that is published one part a day is also apparently very befuddling to you.

        “It was really surprisingly to me because normally I love her work.”

        You implied that she was unqualified for her new work at the Escapist and motivated by jealousy, then called her work, which you now admit to not having read, “dumb.”

        Let’s get real – word got back to her on Twitter that you were bashing her so now you’re doing damage control – the first time you have something positive to say about her is right after you got caught with your hand in the cookie jar. The reason you’re posting these comments is so that you can say “look, I said positive things about Liana!”

        Well, let the record show that these positive comments were only made after you once again got caught with your foot in your mouth. This is pretty much your MO on this blog – attack people then walk it back when caught.

        • John Henderson

          “It includes Liana K, whose somewhat befuddling takedown of Anita’s video series is mostly that Anita is too successful, and Anita’s followers can be kinda mean.”

          That’s what Damion said. Liana’s had way worse things said about her and her writing. This wasn’t an attack on her. You don’t need to white knight in your pursuit of banme. Try less hard, or better yet, go ride your bike.

      • unsafeideas

        I feel empowered every time male feminist writes off opinions and feelings of woman I agree with as “petty”. It is really helping me to feel accepted and equal. /snark

        They might be petty for you, but they are major issues for me, especially what she writes about in later parts – especially when she writes about rejection of wrong kind of women. As much as you might not like it, there are women who feel this way and have these opinions. And while I am fine with you disagreeing with it, I take issue with being told that those concerns are “petty”.

    • Karl

      My only real problem with Liana K. is that she can go too far in assuming that people have legitimate concerns when they don’t.

  21. Ricardo Lima

    Im hugely disapointed that you keep attacking people unfairly even neutrals to defend a lying unfair narrative, that you chose to support corrupt journalism and dishnoest ideologues because you got too close to them.

    Freedom of speech is a thing that cuts both ways Damion and you dont demand respect you dont give.

    • John Henderson

      Is everything pointing out a change in the weather an “attack”? What do you think this post was for?

      Do you expect Damion’s worldview to change because you’re disappointed? How about anyone else on the Internet?

    • Damion Schubert

      I’m not particularly sure what you’re talking about. The gist of this article is ‘gee, Escapist sure seems to be turning the battleship in an interesting direction’. I’m not the only one that noticed it – so did KiA. They’re delighted by that change. I question whether or not the shift is good business decision, but I don’t see how pointing out the obvious is an attack.

      • A Person

        You don’t see how snarkily and personally insulting each hire is an attack?

        Here’s me pointing out the obvious: you’re very bad at playing dumb.

        • John Henderson

          You spelled “please ban me, Damion, I dare you, I have nothing but contempt for everything” wrong.

          • A Person

            Cry more about how I should be banned – it makes you look extremely intelligent and not at all like a whiny child!

            I’m sorry for lying about how Damion snarkily insulted each hire – oh, except that isn’t a lie at all, that’s exactly what happened, as anyone who can read the OP can independently verify.

            There I go again, mercilessly bullying you with logic!

            Better ban me before I hurt your little feewings even more by explaining the contrapositive!

          • John Henderson

            Hey, I found that thread where Liana K found out where Damion was talking about her.
            https://twitter.com/redlianak/status/519197660344225793

        • Damion Schubert

          I insulted Liana by pointing out her article is meandering? I insulted Oliver by pointing out a tweet that he loudly and proudly defended? Clearly we are now in a world where writers that GamerGate likes is supposed to be impervious to criticism. This is weirdly defensive and thin-skinned – you know, the same sort of attitude that normally Gators accuse evil SJWs of being.

  22. Arthur

    I agree with you that GG is not very big, but I would say that the population of conservatives in gaming is actually pretty big. I don’t have hard numbers, but I’ve observed over the years a strong Libertarian and even Paeloconservitive population within gaming. These sorts of groups have not always appreciated the progressive politics of mainstream liberal gaming sites.

    I think the big question is twofold:
    1. Are any of these people good enough writers to hold a large audience? To that, I would say they’re not terrible at the very least.
    2. Can they write about anything that isn’t GG, which I’m less sure about.

    If they’re goood enough and they can write about something other than identity politics, I think they could be a modest success. All this handwringing over their success seems a bit premature. Everyone did this about The New Republic and they are doing ok now.

    • Damion Schubert

      The thing that is lost in this argument is that there already is a large contingent of game sites that typically embrace ‘the way things have always been’. These sites are IGN and Gamespot, who rarely take on cultural issues in games. They also are the largest sites in gaming. So the question is whether or not the people who are ‘conservative’ with their games are happy with sites that leave politics entirely out of gaming, or whether or not they are actively looking for media sources to take on the culture wars.

      The other question is whether or not publishers are going to want to grant interviews and other content to a website that has embraced GamerGate.

      • Arthur

        I agree, but I think that there is more space than just “the way it has always been”. I think there is room specifically for a “Townhall of gaming” that highlights conservative politics in indie games as well as heavy coverage of major developers. A sort of Libertarian RPS, so to speak.

        I also wonder about press coverage, but I think that the escapist is so established that it will surely be able to use that to get access.

      • Mizahnyx

        A missing point is: Many gamers don’t want the things ‘as they were’, in the IGN et al. way. Many gamers want cultural context for what they play. In my case, after playing Xenogears for PSX I wanted to know more about Gnosticism, and other influences to the game. The problem is that invariably now game criticism sites have an overtly radical feminist worldview. I hope the niche The Escapist is pursuing is to provide cultural commentary (something that the status quo sites like IGN usually don’t do) but without adhering to the extremist feminist clique.

        • Arthur

          You have a much kinder worldview of The Escapest’s new direction than I do (as well as a dim view on feminism), but yes. This is basically what I was envisioning.

        • Damion Schubert

          A tiny minority of articles on Polygon and Kotaku talk about things from a feminist angle, and almost none has been from a radical feminist angle (Anita is NOT a radical feminist. Trust me. Or don’t, go google ‘radfem’ and see how close to mainstream Polygon and Anita actually are)

          • Mizahnyx

            Actually I’m not talking about Polygon/Kotaku who are mostly gaming NEWS sites to me, with a slight critical take. I’m talking about sites like Critical Distance and similar, mostly. The Escapist originally tried to be that, when I met the site many years ago. Sites that want to answer the question: “What do this games mean, to me, to my culture, to other cultures”. Since years ago this kind of sites have only one unified view (activism culture, extremist feminism). We need other views, so people’s energies can be channeled into dissenting in a civil way instead of targeting or piling on key figures who sustain opposing views.

  23. Greg

    Liana K’s criticism was primarily that the focus was exclusively on shame, and that the realistic outcome was actually decreased representation rather than more realistic representation. She’s also not even vaguely right-wing. As the kind of Anita fanboy that’s caused her problems before, I guess I can understand your confusion.

    • John Henderson

      Liana’s not the right-winger, that’s Brandon Morse. Thanks for playing!

    • Biggie

      Not to mention, it’s empirically untrue. We’ve gotten major devs making explicit attempts to do better representation in recent years. So the BAW IT’S SHAMING WE’LL GET LESS REPRESENTATION isn’t… what happened.

      • GG Anon

        “Better representation” and “less representation” aren’t actually exclusive. The argument is, since female characters are under intense scrutiny, devs will shy away from putting them in at all unless they are done to the nines. Liana uses Inquisition as an example, which, as progressive as it is, probably has the fewest female party members per capita of any Bioware game to date. I would also mention Dying Light, where the writers spoke at length about how important it was that their female character was well-written, capable, modestly designed – and then were attacked anyway because they used the wrong plot trope. I haven’t played DL so I can’t speak as to the writers’ vision (I’m told it’s not great), but the reaction alone is a good example of how politically charged making any prominent female characters in your game can be – even if that game is about killing zombies.

        Personally I think it’s far too early to say this is a trend of more/less female characters. But I can certainly see how unintended consequences could end up driving writers down that route, eventually.

        • Damion Schubert

          This is a fucking cop-out.

          So designing women is harder? Um, yep. Designing minorities is harder? Sure. It turns out that hard problems are PART OF THE FUCKING JOB DESCRIPTION OF BEING A GAME DESIGNER.

          I have more respect for designers who say that equal women dont’fit in their fiction than people who just say ‘THIS IS HARD’.

          If you ask any die-hard feminist for 20 good examples of women in sci-fi, they can give you some, and then you can actually try to replicate those or do better. IT’S ACTUALLY AN INTERESTING DESIGN CHALLENGE.

          Also, anyone who uses any of the above to not include women AT ALL is being a passive aggressive idiot of a designer. Let me know their names, and I will search them out at GDC and tell them that to their face.

        • Adamant

          “Better representation” isn’t universal either, since appeal isn’t universal amongst all audiences.
          The Big Bang Theory may retain high appeal and ratings, but I would never call it “good representation” of the average person that engages in genre-hobbies (or “nerd stuff” if that’s too obtuse a phrase).

          Far too often, I find it difficult to describe what a given “feminist” or “social critic” is truly asking for when they request “better representation”, because more often than not, they provide a list of examples or things that “offend them” rather than what they want to see from producers.

          That distinction is key, because there are an infinite number of potential guesses for how someone WANTS to be represented/portrayed, but only a finite number of “appealing” ways, with some of those ways being very unrealistic.
          (I’m sure someone like, say, Sarkeesian wouldn’t object to being unironically portrayed as the “Feminist saint that saved gaming” or such in a work)

          Worse, those ways may vary from person to person even within a given demographic. At some point, “tolerance” must be invoked, but so far, most of the cries for “equality” have come purely at the expense of “tolerance”.
          Something akin to “I’m angry as Hell (at your privilege), and I’m not going to take it no more!”

          There’s another possibility: All of these “social critics” might know what they hate in gaming, but NOT know what they actually want because they haven’t been exposed to it yet in the medium. Yet, most gamers (or those invested with more than a passing interest in the medium) already have a much good understanding of what they like or want from the medium.

          If so, that’s a rather dire situation given the current mass-market’s aversion to new ideas.
          Expect the campaign of “progressivism” and associated attacks on gamer culture to continue until they reach that point.

          …Or do the smarter thing: ignore the political narrative and just focus on finding games you like.
          Huh. I should do that. Why am I still here?

          • Dom

            1)Your position is not an apolitical one, is it a consumerist leaning one, a very political position.

            2)I think the video game culture has to admit that they have a representation problem. Claiming that we don’t know how to appease the critics is completely missing the point: there is a problem to admit. After that, it don’t matter if Anita disagree how it done

            Is it like claiming that climate change is bulshit because the models don’t completely agree. There is a phenomenon to acknowledge in the first place.

  24. Valen

    They ban just about anyone who is openly a feminist or socialist from commenting on their forums too, and have clear double standards in enforcement where someone who’s openly feminist can be banned for “trolling” without violating a single rule or saying a single nasty thing, yet actual trolls who break all sorts of rules and say all sorts of nasty things aren’t punished.

    Consider this from a thread about what Feminists do for men.
    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.872055-What-are-feminists-doing-to-combat-male-issues
    “One specific example of fighting gender roles for the benefit of men is in regards to their freedom to express emotions. Part of the contemporary feminist message is that men don’t need to conform to society’s idealized alpha and that they should be able to express and explore emotions previously deemed “unmanly”. This also extends to how they are allowed to express themselves in a broader context in ways that society may deem too feminine for a man.”
    ~User was banned for this post.(Permanent)

    • GG Anon

      Valen –

      I did not see that message about being banned on the post you’re referencing and the user had made posts since you posted this comment. Thought maybe the ban was reversed, but some of those comments were conversations with other users about why “user was banned for this post” was under every single one of that person’s posts. In response to the confusion of other members, the “banned” user said this yesterday (while “banned for this post” messages were still coming up):

      “It’s a prank the techteam pulled on Friday. They’ve been out of the office since then, so it will probably be fixed tomorrow :P”
      http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.872281-Undercutting-the-Competition#21885451

      That said, while I do post on the Escapist now and then, I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been deep enough in it to comment with any authority on whether the general problems you mention exist. I personally have never seen “feminists” banned, but the threads I visit are rarely political enough to identify who that would even entail, so.

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