#gamergate

People have been complaining about developers/publishers/writers giving magazines bennies and 'early access' for, quite literally, decades. Amiga Power ran an article on it in their September 1995 Issue. (Which is something, I must state, that I was aware of before this all blew up. The only thing I went looking for was the actual date). I read it back when I was 8 years old, and I'd been stuffed with a Magazine for The Computer to shut me up on a long drive.

It's not even unique to the gaming world. Just ask Apple. Or Ferrari. Both of which are notorious for punishing bad reviews by denying future access. Supposedly, Chrysler blacklisted the BBC to the point where they had to buy a Dodge Challenger for a segment. In truth, it's the normal part of PR management really. No company wants even a hint of negativity attached to their brand.

I suppose there're two ways to get the access. Either have a big enough audience that the PR department will be willing to put up with you potentially disliking it, because not sending it to you might suggest you're not confident in their product. Or, you're small and you have to be willing to schmooze a bit just to get the access and get enough of a readership interested in carrying on the to keep the lights on.

Even print magazines have to, on some level, be concerned if the same manufacturer who's latest sportscar they're reviewing has just bought a chunk of advertising space. The internet, with it's almost institutionalised deficit of attention-space and an obsessive hunger for the meagrest scrap of upcoming 'inside' information, has only magnified the effect. In some ways, it's a matter of survival. It's far easier to fall off the internet or lose market-share.
It really is nothing new under the sun. Truth is, I always assumed that it was just the accepted way things worked on the internet. There is a reason why I tend not to read any of the involved sites anyway. I voted with my feet a long time ago and haven't been concerning myself with it since. That's what I could do about the problem, and what I did do. Nobody else seems to have done it.

The reason these things happen is because they get the most clicks. It's what people want. It brings the money in and keeps the servers humming. In many ways, it's the same as all those people complaining about game content, and developers not respecting paying customers by giving them what they want, or adding more onerous DRM shit- but at the same time they're still paying for the status quo by buying the games anyway. It's almost quixotic, in a way. Buying the game, or clicking on the article, is effectively, supporting the position or at the very least, demonstrating you don't care. If you moan about DRM, but buy and play the game anyway (Anybody remember the L4D2 boycott)- or for that matter, complain about a site's methods of getting information while at the same time gleefully hoovering that information up - you're tacitly telling them that you really don't give a fuck, and that it's perfectly fine to do things that way because no matter how much you complain, you'll still happily pay/click.

You're entitled to no more than you'll willingly pay for and actually tolerate. And it seems to me that people will tolerate a lot. Comcast and Ryanair prove this. As does the TSA. Or the US Government.

A lot of people might have genuine concerns about it, but honestly, I don't expect better from anyone because of this. The market at large is speaking far louder than any 'protest' and the market is saying they don't care.  People are still clicking through for the latest tidbit on upcoming games.

There's very little online media that I read, outside of actual newspapers. I still buy ones of those on paper. Handy thing to read in traffic. The thing with newspapers though, is that while they will often have something of an editorial tone, at the same time different columnists will often give very different slants on the same issue. If, on the interwebs, you had the same thing on a website, where one of the site's writers gave one opinion, and another gave a countering one - the first thing that'd happen is that the site would either be accuse of betrayal, or hypocrisy for first supporting the other - or any other mess. Definitely not part of the right-thinkers, or the loyal - I'm not going back there.

'Being honest or having integrity' sometimes means tackling live-rail issues in such a way that'll earn a good hard internet backdraft. Nobody wants an internet backdraft when your business depends on the internet being happy with you. It also risks confining your audience down solely to people who actually agree with whatever line you've taken. Or for that matter, whichever one won't make the loudest screams. It's a limiter to your potential audience because now your site has taken a position - it's either Pro or Anti - there's no option to be in between. I could almost blame Google for that - modern search engines have the nasty tendency to link people to sites that reinforce that person's existing opinions and beliefs when they search on an issue because they're aiming specifically to serve up what people might be most interested in or might make them happiest. What makes people happiest is that which reinforces their existing opinions, rather than challenges them.

It's even funnier when it tries to predict your stance on issues. In which case, it actively develops your opinion on them instead.

The gamergate discourse, on both sides, seems to end up boiling down to the same basic thing. "They fucking hate us. The fuckers. They're all out to get us." along with some token justification. And everything else seems to follow from the desire to be a part of one group of 'us'. One forum on post on is clearly 'pro'. Another forum is clearly 'anti'. Which means I sure as hell amn't taking an outright side in this because I don't want to get flamed anywhere.

All I'll say is, I for one, would like to know if a game's actually in anyway decent before buying it, rather than just reading something that's been massaged by a company's PR agent. Especially since I don't buy so many of them. I tend to buy one and utterly obsess over it. Which means that right now, I tend to rely on word of mouth, or secondary sources that aren't especially part of the mileu.

And if you really want to change things, the easiest way to achieve that is to stop sending the message that you'll accept things the way they are by buying and clicking, even while moaning about it.  Otherwise, it is the bed that has been made, and must therefore be lied upon.

I also, quite frankly,  think there're a lot of shitheads out there using this whole debacle as an excuse to scumbag up the place. I don't think anybody will deny that. But they're the same sort of shitheads that infest fucking everything on the internet these days and take any excuse. The first rule of Internet should be to filter the shitheads, not to immediately assume that everyone who happens to be on the same effective side as them is equally a shithead just by association. It's like accusing every American of being a bloodthirsty racist because of one gunhappy copper.  Or every American of being Evil because of one President.

Muppets latch on to whatever will generate the most havoc.

While most people's base opinion is being established not out of a desire for hatred, but simply because of where they first ask 'what the fuck is gamergate about'. Depending on where you ask that, you'll get two different and for the most part entirely rational-seeming versions of events, and then subsequently view everything that follows through that lens. (In fact, I dare someone to do it and compare) It gets easier to dismiss everything contrary to that as either a lie, or a half-truth. It gets easier to accept some of the wilder things cranks are saying. And I'd say that applies to whatever side you take on this. It doesn't automatically mean that someone is a scumbag or a hater, or a wannabee bully or whatever - just that the internet has done its usual opinion-shaping thing. Because that initial description is going to inform the followup google searches. Then people start getting defensive because of the shitheads out there. The whole Watson hoax didn't help anything because it gave credence to some of the cranks because it was exactly what some of the cranks were saying - a false flag operation by people who hate them. That's just the only one that was proven...

Most of that, I think, applies to whatever side of the argument you're on.

I'm of the opinion that the vast majority of this is just being whipped up by a whole bunch of trolls who don't give two wet smears of shite about anything, but are just happy to watch the chaos happen. Everyone else, no matter how well intentioned, is just dancing for their amusement. You're ALL being trolled. And anyone who happens to be making a decent point in the middle of it all is just getting drowned out.

Whoever wins however, the real losers will be entomology students studying reproductably viable female ants this semester. Their google searches are going to be fun.

TL;DR: If you don't like the editorial style of a website, just don't click on it. Otherwise no matter how hard and loud you moan, you're still tacitly supporting them for it. That's how you really change things, not by generating reams and reams of waffle. Otherwise, they take the path of least resistance.  Most people's opinion are caused by where they first heard it, and is blinding them to the reality. Otherwise, shitheads are gonna shit. Nothing for it but to flush it away and see what's left behind in the bottom of the bowl.

(I also went through 8 goddamned drafts of this.... I really and truly hate trying to put together a rational and reasoned thought. I have so few of them. It took me four days to do this. For whatever good. If I had a blog, I would've posted it there where it could've been safely read by no-one and passed by uncontroversially. And if I don't want a part of it, why the fuck did I write that meandering obesity of a near-essay? Maybe I just had to get it out of my system. Carry on.)