On Demands
Some followup from my brief foray into the herpderpery Wednesday:
Mark Kern still can't speak. No, he's literally speechless, despite people telling him exactly how to speak. I am not making this up.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571345545001742337
I'm not sure why Leigh Alexander is keeping Mark from speaking, save that since Gamergate has anointed her one of the High Priestesses of Evil, she is CLEARLY the source of all bad things that happen to good game developers, but by gosh, Mark is not going to stop talking about not being able to talk, and he's clearly on a roll. And finally, his quest bears fruit!
https://twitter.com/simoncarless/status/571358491085967360
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571359323827253248
Maybe Mark thinks Mr. Carless is Leigh's FINAL FORM, I dunno. Or maybe he just wants to keep invoking Gamergate's villainess as a spirit animal. Or maybe he's just confused!
https://twitter.com/simoncarless/status/571360230048534528
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571360416414064641
Riiiight, we'll go with "confused", then. As of this writing, Gamasutra is still cruelly preventing Mark from speaking. That's OK, though, he's moved on to world peace.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571511022319755264
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571521948397801472
How can you be against PEACE? What kind of MONSTER are you? Clearly, Mark's message of... what was it again?
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571513024042938368
So, he's not here to talk about Gamergate, which, actually, is about ethics in game journalism, but is here to talk about ethics in game journalism. OK. Does he have any specific beefs, other than Dick Wolf's crime procedural dramas?
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571494573970735104
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571494704489091072
OK, having seen this myself, with you so far, anodyne statements that are impossible to disagree with, go on...
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571494982110056449
Hmm. You don't say. He might have a point. I have heard that game journalism is pretty suffused with scoundrels just wanting to cram social justice and colored hair down your throat. Let's take a quick look at the top stories on the most popular gaming sites right now.
Welp, he's got me, that narrative is definitely under an iron fist of control, hammering home the message that gamers are all reprehensible over and over.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/571495872124608512
If only gaming websites would give game developers a chance to speak...
...OK, maybe not like that.
...OK, probably not like that, either.
Right, that should be good. OK, so I think I have it. The path to ethical game journalism is to have game developers write articles about their own products, ideally in a way that makes their current project look good. This is clearly the path to expunge corruption from games journalism and achieve peace.
Oh, and also, without that annoying screaming.
https://twitter.com/Grummz/status/570981711175028736
Yes, sports fans, he means my article.
...where, mind you, the paragraph of ALL CAPS was my imagining Mark Kern talking after talking for about 10 hours - not an exaggeration - of tweets and retweets about WHY WON'T YOU LET MARK KERN SPEAK.
I think he kind of missed the point there. So let me make it QUITE CLEAR, since Kern is probably going to read this, being the self-googling type.
There is no conspiracy in games journalism to say anything. There, in fact, is no real "voice" of games journalism. There are *voices* within games journalism who say things. Some of them you may disagree with. Some of them you may agree with. This is how a free press works. People have opinions, and other people respond to them.
In fact, the real failing of games journalism isn't a hatred of its audience (what I think Kern was trying to express, if flailing about unable to actually express that); although some writers absolutely do hate their audience at this point, and why wouldn't they? Have you READ the comments lately? Anywhere? Yet still they write. But not enough do. They don't see it as a vocation or a challenge, they see it either (seldomly) as a rote drudgery to slump through on the way to another day's paycheck or (more often) as an enthusiast with no desire to critically engage with what they write about, but only to gleefully reword press releases sent to them by oh-so-solicitous PR agencies.
You see, that's the actual corruption in games journalism. Not that there is a viewpoint - viewpoints are awesome! Even viewpoints that disagree from mine! Especially viewpoints that disagree from mine! But that for so many, there is no viewpoint. There are only top 10 lists, recaps of the latest video cards, and the same 12 screenshots you saw everywhere else on the Internet that day. This is probably why people don't even pay attention to games news websites any more and just watch people stream games on Youtube mumbling to themselves while calling other writers drunks. telling them to fuck off, and complaining to their employers if they happen to be game developers.
Oh brave new world, that has such journalism in it.
Meanwhile, my taunting Gamergate by mocking one of its anointed and poking it with a stick had some mild results:
- a few emails to my employers demanding I be severely talked to. The best response to that came from Facebook:
- some mild taunting from Gamergate diehards on Twitter. The weirdest was this entry. I'm thinking it says a lot more about them than about me.
(part of it's true, though, I am totally a goony beardman. holding a cat. Heck, that's a painting from Everquest on the wall behind me! You can't see it because my goony beardman head is too big.)
The weirdest, saddest, and most cogent commentary?
Leigh Alexander got harassed for 2 days (and counting, if you count Totalbiscuit's diatribe as descended from that) for tweeting agreement and discussion of my article.
I got attention bordering on mild harassment for about... 4 hours.
Something's wrong with this picture, and it's not the color of anyone's hair.