So, “gamers” aren’t their audience. And now PewDiePie’s fans aren’t their audience either? At this rate the game journos will only have themselves to talk to. I hope PewDiePie and TotalBiscuit bury them all in the dustbin of history. They deserve it.
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Maybe it’s simply because PewDiePie isn’t an unethical insider who bashes his own audience or lectures them about social issues. He plays games and keeps his audience entertained without tired ass “long-form feature stories”. The writing is on the wall, and they’re starting to read it.
It’s no secret that the “journalists” hate youtubers. They are taking their share of the pie, getting a bigger cut, largely independent and doing it because they want to. Why you think they try so damn hard in burying Totalbiscuit? I remember an indie dev saying that TB shitting on your game will give it better exposure than positive coverage on Kotaku and Polygon.
The Killer Queen game seems interesting, in that it’s a FemFreak approved game. Guess we’ll see how the public reception is if the game comes out. Wonder how much indy corruption the developers are a part of, and if they’ll be the darlings of the game blogging sites because FemFreak approved and they fit their narrative.
I still think it’s interesting that it’s FemFreak approved when the whole goal is to kill the other queen with your masses of male drones…
Wait -
Queens = female e-celebs “harassed” by GG
Drones = white knights defending each e-celeb
Killing the other queen = “I’m a bigger victim of GG than you are!”
They finally done it! The first step to total e-celeb victim warfare meltdown! It’s ripe with symbolism. It makes PERFECT sense why FemFreak would approve. FemFreak is going to destroy the others! Just you wait, you’ll see!
Anyway, the only relevancy this has is now indy game developers are using FemFreak for approval. This is not a good trend to set, seeking approval from critics during game development? They’re not developers, they’re critics, and in the case of FemFreak, a poor one at that. Games are supposed to come out first, and then be critiqued, though we know that isn’t objective anymore anyway. I hope this doesn’t become a thing. Imagine if scientists got critics involved in the scientific process.
Critic: "Hey, what’s going on with that ice there?"
Scientist: "It’s melting."
Critic: "You shitlord! Do you realize what melting ice means? It’s offensive! You realize you’re striking fear into the hearts of eskimos everywhere?! What on earth is wrong with you! Toxic scientist! Problematic! Problematic!!"
Scientist: :"But…"
Critic: “No buts! We need to make sure the ice doesn’t melt. Do whatever you can to make it not melt, or else we’ll smear your ass, fggt!!”
*Edit: LOL f g t is censored? Anyway, using it for irony.
Hey, at least they finally have a game built by them, for them, right? I mean if a game about white knights defending a queen and killing other queens and their white knights isn’t relevant, I don’t know what is, lol.
Anita is using her exposure to get money and more exposure. Playing you guys for straight fools and yet you keep falling for it and giving her more money.
That is why she is sexy though and that is why I love her. <3
It’s certainly interesting how the professional victims find ways to inject themselves into gaming and a culture they pretty much hate. If it isn’t being a media darling, then I guess now it’s using Steam for a pity platform and indy devs as street cred boosters. At least this time we’re all discussing them is relevant to a degree and not just stalking their twitter tantrums. I wonder how many days until the bloggers repost FemFreak being a “legit developer” or “legit consultant” and see how the gators were wrong.
Edit: From KiA - chalk another media outlet up to pushing the narrative https://archive.today/Cx0ho So long CNET, I won’t be needing your services anymore.
So I have a question for you all: Do you feel GamerGate relates to journalism on the games industry as a whole, or only within the indie sphere? There’s no denying that the indie scene, especially at the IGF/IGDA level, is possibly one of the most cancerous things in the gaming industry. But by that token, how does this relate back to AAA games and developers?
I ask this because we will be damned if we can’t point at something significant and find a problem. ~90% of gamers (afaik) do not give even half a shit about random indie devs. But when we can look at stuff like the Doritos-Pope and point out something that affects the trillion-dollar sector of the gaming world, then we can create real change. You want to hurt Kotaku/Polygon? It sure as hell won’t be by deconstructing their interactions with basement Visual Basic programmers.
The whole, it’s just that indie devs are easier to expose as person-to-person breaches of ethics rather than possibly being someone in one department not talking to someone in another department, etc. There’s plenty of examples of large devs/publishers doing things that are obviously intended to sway the opinion of the journalists where the latter party has accepted without any complaint or disclaimer until readers noticed and kicked up a fuss.
All of gaming journalism is borked. Devs buying reviews is clearly something that happens. Microtransactions still not being treated like the horse shit they are is also a bunch of crap. The people covering these let the ball slip because the payola was pretty good.
The difference in the indies is that the people were kind of doing it to help out friends. Unfortunately they advertised a bunch of incoherent tumblr writing and half assed games. Some of them did it for a bit of pussy, others invested in it and profited from it. Doesn’t make it better than the AAA stuff, just different.
Things have been bad for a while. The big difference is that the Zoe Post forced everybody to look at the nonsense. Mind you, a lot of these people weren’t hiding their bullshit because nobody cared enough to that point. I think it was McIntosh that gave some speech and said it was ok for the writers to take bribes from the AAA studios.
Its all bad. The only differences is that the fucking idiots slug it out on twitter for no good reason. The people writing about indie games are more visible than those getting flown to random hotels to play the next CoD.
As a whole, and AAA developers are definitely not off the hook. This is why I’m hesitant when I hear “AAA developer X is behind the gamers, we just can’t say it yet!” I mean that’s good and all, but they are largely biased and reap the rewards of their publisher’s shady dealings.
Indy devs, well, they’re way more likely to get into bed (sometimes literally) with the blogging sphere because indy development is a much more personal level of work. Not saying that AAA developers don’t feel their work is personal, but in AAA dev on a team of 100 to 300 people, you’re a nobody. In the indy scene, on a team of 5 to 30 developers, there is a much more personal level going on. It’s easier to get buddy buddy and chummy with other people, and create cliques like we’ve seen. It’s far too easy for a blogger to say “scratch my back, I’ll scratch your’s” and once you’re in that kind of relationship, who holds far more power? The scales are tipped in the blogger’s favor by a large margin. They’re the ones making free public relations and marketing, they hold the key to exposure. If an indy dev says fuck off, they get no coverage and have to do the work themselves. It seems to me many of them are lazy, too, and rather than rely on word of mouth and letting the product stand on its own, they work together to push shit that doesn’t always deserve it. Throw on top of that the lines blurring between subjects and friendship, then you have guilt tossed on top of the mess as to should I cover this game or should I give exclusive interviews to this blog?
AAA devs, the relationship is the complete opposite. AAA devs hold all the power, if you talk shit about their latest and greatest, you can get fired, blacklisted, and so on. You’ll never get swag, early access, early hands on, developer interviews, all the stuff that was once objective to a degree in game journalism (when it was journalism to a degree, and not blogging) and that is death for a publication. Except these days, it’s death in ad revenue and click bait. It amazes me AAA developers stuck with them as long as they have considering how many articles came out damning AAA behavior such as yearly releases and day 1 patches, or even day 1 DLC. I suppose that made them look somewhat objective and the publishers held off, but now a days, no one needs the bloggers with YouTube being a near universal platform. If a blogger tries to get chummy with a dude or dudette at the bottom of the barrel of a 300 man coughs excuse me person team, they’ll get no where. However, publisher X says let me fly you out here to check out our latest alpha, and check out all this beer and babes at our studio, yeah, who is who’s bitch then? Complete opposite power scale. Bloggers are nobody, and a publisher, all they have to do is send a free Xbox with a copy of their game to a random YouTuber and bam, all the exposure you need.
Edit: Also, we actually have pointed out shit in the past. You have TotalBiscuit on record saying he was offered free shit to skew his bias, you have the whole DmC debacle and how the bloggers completely sided with the dev and not the fans, you have Dewritos-Pope and his hypocritical shit about ethics, you have Gertsman, and I’m sure we could find more if we dug really deep. Oh, you also have stuff like how the bloggers are selective on who they’ll shit on. Mass Effect? Fuck you BioWare. DmC? Fuck you fans. Then, the harassment articles about how people were sending death threats to BioWare writers. Make up your minds, you want to defend them, or you want to slander fans?
More: https://archive.today/rKfXh So, the trial was removed from iOS prior to the PC release so no one can play it before buying. LOL. Shady shady. Also, their forum topics are being locked left and right and topics deleted. Even legit ones, lol. I can’t wait to see the Ukatok article about how GG is harassing the developers forum.
Personally, I’d look at it like this: “I respect dude for voicing his opinion, but I don’t want him within an astronomical unit of GG.” The aGG narrative is that GG is just a bunch of right-wing, conservative, white males. So, to break the narrative, you have a right-wing, conservative, white male write about you favorably?