IMO, the only salient issue to come out of this whole thing (regardless of the usual obvious conclusion of “it’s a bit misogynistic to care so much about her sex life”) is the business with Women in Gaming.
Women in Gaming was, in effect, a self-described 2nd-wave feminist project to get women into the industry. The idea was that a woman could propose an idea and do anything else she was qualified for that she wanted to do for her game – art, programming, anything. People would vote on ideas and concepts, and the winning ideas would be made into a full game by the people running the competition, and released commercially.
All proceeds from the game would go to a feminist charity, except 8% royalties which would go to the woman who proposed the idea.
For reasons I’m not entirely clear on, Zoe Quinn decided something about this was misogynistic? Something about exploiting women’s labor or… I don’t know, I came into this late so all the articles I’m finding on it are really muddy by now. Either way, it got taken down by Indiegogo based on this blowup and there were a bunch of DDOS attacks against their website and stuff.
I have to admit I’m not really clear on the specifics beyond the basic premise, but from what I’ve seen, despite all the articles backing Quinn, I couldn’t figure out how it was in the least bit “exploitative” or against women in any way. If anyone understands this better (and isn’t blindboyard) I’d appreciate some clarification if there’s something I’m not privy to.
I looked briefly at them. I don’t know anywhere near enough to evaluate the claims of doxxing, and a lot of what I saw looked like petulant conspiracy bullshit. Can you be more specific? Are there any specific charges that you think have clear evidence to back them up? Not trying to be difficult, but if it’s just a Gish Gallop, I’m not interested; I’d much rather look at evidence for one or two damning claims than a crapload of evidence for a crapload of claims.
That’s why I asked for any articles that attempted to do some organized digging. The revocation of the DMCA and the apparent collusion between Zoe and reddit moderators are what I’d most like cleared up if possible.
And who knows, maybe we’ll never know or it will only be possible in retrospect once tempers have cooled and people have moved on. I don’t care who people want to have sex with, but I do care if I can’t trust the reviews on games I might be interested in purchasing or can’t find any reviews because the creator(s) have made it difficult to post any reviews.
Let’s be real here: Zoe is responsible for a game called Depression Quest which is a game to help people understand and deal with clinical depression. The “scandals” about reviewers is centered around purported sex in exchange for positive reviews (despite the fact that none of the journalists involved never even posted an outright review of her game, the most she’s ever gotten is a handful of “first impressions” article) of her game.
Even if she has a small handful of reviewers under her thumb, which I find doubtful, she has in no way undermined the reviewing industry. Not that the video game reviewing industry was exactly an a great profession filled with journalistic integrity to begin with. Gaming Journalism at its finest
Kotaku has stated that its journalist with whom she had a relationship was not reviewing her games at that time. I have a somewhat reflexive level of distrust for anything I hear from the Gawker properties, but I haven’t heard any dispute of this point, so I think the charge of ginning up fake (or at least conflicted) reviews for her games seems to be unsubstantiated.
Yes, I was obviously intimating that slut shaming would be the best and most effective method of reducing quid pro quo game reviewing. Well done, gumshoe.
He might be talking about things like the relationships between journalists and the people and companies they write about, which is actually something worth paying attention to. The OP’s motivations are obvious enough.
A post I can get behind. Other than that, a good OP might actually have told us who Zoe Quinn was and why we should care, rather than just assuming we knew part of the story.
As a part-time game journalist, this is an overblown concern. It’s video games, the idea that there are even “hard questions” to ask is hard for me to even fathom. And no one’s giving good reviews because a developer asked.
That’s a little disconcerting. I understand you’re not digging through the Pentagon Papers, but if you’re going to review anything, your audience does need to have confidence in your impartiality or at least your honesty. I have no idea how much of an issue it is in the videogame industry, but it’s fair grounds for discussion because it’s a legitimate concern in any type of journalism.
That’s my point. It’s not an issue. There isn’t one person (or even a handful of people) that can tip a game from flop to bestseller. So no amount of friendliness between writers and devs is going to much matter.
That said, friendliness typically involves the occasional email and saying “hi” at big events. No one is buying drinks or offering to sleep with anyone.
