Aram Zucker-Scharff

Extending the branch (with tweets) · brett_douville:

I reach out to someone who jumped in to insult someone on Twitter.

Hello: Videogames Are For Everybody | Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

It’s time for us to talk about a difficult and complicated series of issues which have affected the gaming community in recent weeks. This is one of those

No-one has responded to it this time, because there is so little coherent argument to respond to. In fact, most of what is out there seems to point more concretely towards a conspiracy of misogynists to silence progressive writers and their supporters, than it does towards a conspiracy to corrupt or destroy games as a medium.

While there are certainly people who feel alienated from the games press, or who are (for whatever reason) unhappy about how the games press functions, many of the people who have pushed their ideas and opinions during this furore are people whose views are extreme and sexist. There are numerous individuals criticising the games press who are simultaneously harassing and abusing women. Many of these people have a history of attacking women. Their main intention is to attack women, not to improve practice across games. It’s deeply ugly stuff, and has little to do with ethics or games. It has to do with politics and hate.

“It took me a while to realize that the feminists were asking for action, support and consideration. Anita Sarkeesian wasn’t saying that I was personally to blame, or that because I had played games with objectionable content that I was directly promoting misogyny. She was saying that I was operating within a certain framework, a framework that I should really take a step back from and regard. And then consider what I might do to change that relationship. It was one of her Feminist Frequency videos, about how female characters in games are often reduced to a single class (the tall one, the fat one, the weird one, the girl) and depicted using pink coloration that finally made me understand.”

– The Sorry State Of Gaming’s Truthers And Their #Gamergate.

“”While ostensibly a movement to “focus on corruption in gaming media,” it’s actually about the harassment of women and minorities and freelancers in an effort to cut off their voices from the gaming medium. It’s a thoroughly disgusting movement for many reasons, but there are a few well-intentioned people in among the hordes of people behaving in bad faith.””

– Traditionalism, Astroturfing, And Growth: How Games Are Changing.