The Zoe Quinn Conspiracy..

[Wrathborne]

Yep. Sarkeesian is a publicity farmer, its really sick that it seems that no game news sites are reporting on this, but now we know why.

These "journalism" sites need to disappear. They're absolutely shit and the people who run them are horrible.

Video game news is simple. Its all about video games, or developers...Instead its all one big Jerry Springer show behind the scenes.

I love video games, they're an artform, an interactive novel, a movie, and a great experience to share with friends. These parasites have tainted something thats supposed to be fun, thats there for everyone to enjoy, and its time they were ejected from the scene and held accountable.

[Dracarys]

There is a lot of evidence the recent threat that cause Anita Sarkeesian to evacuate her home was faked. Nobody seems interested in reporting that either. Is all promotion for her, so certainly a motive for it.

[Wrathborne]

Actually Rombie, its not just hatred of Zoe for the corruption, its the journalism industry as a whole. Zoe is a key player in this, but shes not the real issue. Thats the gaming news industry, they are getting hatred for this and people are starting to figure this shit out.

Also, the reason most people don't like Anita Sarkesian isnt because "Anita Sarkeesian for doing nothing more but making videos on her opinion and the history of female gaming tropes." Its because shes a scam artist.

Her kickstarter wanted, what 5k? to research video games as well as purchase new camera equipment for her web series.

5k to do what she wants is about 4k too much. Her camera equipment was fine as it was, and nothing new was needed. I cant deny that games can be expensive, but lets look at her initial goal of doing 6 episodes. Who uses 5k to purchase new camera equipment and video games for a 6 episode series? Thats way too much money for a simple 6 episodes, a large chunk of which is Anita herself in front of a green screen. If she had been asking for 1k for all this, that would have been more down to earth. But 5k? No. A new higher end camera costs a little over 1k, unless you're going to purchase something as expensive as possible, which she clearly didn't because her video quality actually looked kind of worse in her 'video game vs series'.

She was looking to get paid for her project, which in all honesty is just a vanity project. When she was being harassed by the trolls and all the white knights came to her rescue and she got 160k for her series, I cringed. Mostly at how many stupid trolls on the internet ganged up on her initially. But when I watched some of her videos, I kind of understood why she became a target.I'll explain that in a moment.

As for all the video game research, a large chunk of the gameplay footage she used in at least 2 episodes of her series was taken from other youtubers videos, theres also the fact that what shes presenting is not evidence, as she claims. Its her opinion, which she presents as facts. Not to mention the fact that she presents a very noticeable bias against male gamers in general and isn't shy about calling them all sex starved manipulative rapists murderers.

I take offense to that, because I'm not any of those things. I'm just a guy who likes to play games. At most I screw around with trollish players on 2fort when I play TF2. But her methodology and "matter of fact" attitude she uses as she talks down to her audience about how evil male gamers are, and how video games are all about enslaving women and empowering men. No. That says so much more about her than it does the gaming audience.

I'm not going to defend the actions of the constant trolls of the internet who love to fuck with people, because they're always going to be there. I've been trolled for daring to animate on the internet, but as I know that the internet is full of trolls, trolls don't make up the internet as a whole.

But I am going to say that whatever points she makes, are negated by everything that she gets wrong. This is why shes a target for trolls(more so gamer trolls now), and that's she presents bullshit as facts. I mean hell, I think it was her first video she posted she brings up Bayonetta, gripes about the character but understands that Bayonetta is a protective mother of her daughter...A friend of mine cringed hard at that vid, and told me that Bayonetta was actually guarding her younger self.

I'm tempted to leave a few video links from people who have refuted her as they can explain their own points better than I can paraphrase them, but from your position on the situation I'm not sure you'd be all that interested in the vid links.

Still, I'll leave this vid of Anita basically confirming what a lot of us figured out pretty fast. She isn't a gamer and doesn't like video games(despite her claiming to be one in her Kickstarter vid).

https://[url]https://www.youtube.com...[/url]

Anita isn't an idiot, she knew how the internet would react to her project and played the trolls for the idiots that they are. Now shes a "gaming" celebrity who has a lucrative career and is a consultant for video game companies who want to be "pro-active".

Women wont get respect in the industry acting like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, or Maya Cramer. All three play the victim, and all three are toxic human beings out there to promote themselves, and nothing else.

Smallish update:

Sites involved in this bullshit journalism are currently...
Silverstring Media
Gawker
Polygon
Eurogamer.net
Kotaku
The Escapist
Dorkly
Gamefaqs
NeoGAF
r/gaming at reddit
r/games at reddit
Devin Faraci

and now the Guardian is getting involved, because I guess its not a real scandal unless the tabloids pop up. unfortunately the person writing the article defending Zoe, is one of Zoes friends.

[News Bot]

Most of it was pretty uncalled for, whether or not she was a dick.

Can't sympathize with her nudes being posted when she has them on a fully public website, though.

[Rombie]

Ugh. Sorry to call you out on this Wrath, but simply the fact you're regurgitating this shit is half the problem with this story. I'm not pro Quinn but geez, even if she's done things wrong, the level of hate and e-stalking involved is well beyond what anyone should consider normal, and the fact that inherently it seems to be mostly a male-aggression thing as well speaks volumes of the problems with the internet (and gaming, but I'll come back to that).

First, the simple reason most gaming sites aren't reporting on it is.... well actually they are. The just haven't often reported on it in an angle that is suitable for this guy in this video, nor the sites he's demanding should, can, because they're somewhat involved. I don't quite get his demands for the companies that have already been blasted for having inbalance in their reporting to then report on something they're at some level involved in - because that's true unbalanced journalism right there. Anyway, it's funny because the first time I heard about it, was a report on the fact it's been blowing up, and linked to a bunch of information about it and then provided some sort of soapbox on what it means for the industry.

Secondly, she slept with ONE gaming journo, not plural. She cheated on some guy with five people in total apparently according to a big sob-story blog, but that's neither here-nor-there. It's her choice to make her own mistakes and deal with them on a personal level - it's clear she has some issues if you read the guys blog - but that's for her to deal with, not the internet. The blog was put up all before this became a bigger thing, and even the guy who wrote it did it to deal with Zoe's deeper relationship issues and lies to him, and is asking for these attacks to cease... and this never had to turn into a bad Jerry Springer episode.

The journo in question never wrote any reviews of anything she had to do with, merely two articles - one for Rock Paper Shotgun seemingly well before their relationship, and one for Kotaku which is around the time they got together. In the latter case the EOC of Kotaku has already made a statement that he feels the article in question wasn't colored by this (and considering she is only mentioned as one of two sources for some news, that's not surprising) yet some people, like the guy who's making the videos you're posting, aren't happy with the outcome (as mentioned above) so his videos are just a soap box to bitch and moan about the state of gaming journalism, or so you'd hope, but mostly he just uses is to yell at people and make bulling and/or sexist comments towards Zoe, gaming developers, and gaming journos.

Thirdly, most of the attack seems to be focused on Zoe and not the journo in question... which also tells you much about the comments being made and their reason. The guy in the videos is a bit more even handed than most, he states it's a two way street, but that sort of statement is very much in the lower response... most of the complaints are directed only at Zoe rather than Nathan, and so anyone's excuse then about the state of gaming jornos is often not even true. Most of the stories I read also mentioned how often Zoe had pissed off communities at other places, like on 4chan and the one mentioned in the video, so it seems the attacks are also about return leverage on her. I haven't seen those personally, but I know her game on Valve was, much like something else I'll come to, attacked immediately for pushing against status-quo. This is more to this than the background of the video implies.

The issue here comes down to cyberbully tactics... I mean, look at this guy for example who speaks only, never showing his face or confirming his identity... because he is happy to try and sit anomalously, who are also happy to slander people (out of the five guys, he names the two previously undisclosed people as two other industry people without proof and later has to retract it - if he was a newspaper with an editor and a name attached, that sort of thing would get you sued, but sitting behind an unlabeled video apparently allows you to say whatever you want without any consequences)...

If you want to add this idea as a potential issue to the already mountain sized pile of issues with gaming journo's then, sure I'd get it, because it's not far removed from the idea of free perks, and if it was clear it got a positive review out of it here I could see why people MIGHT be up in arm but you get the feeling this has nothing to do with standing up for integrity in gaming information or sexual favors for reviews but this has a much deeper hatred towards women sleeping with multiple men behind it, internet and gamer use and privilege, female gamers pushing the status-quo, as well as the way people on the internet treat women, and that's a far bigger deal.

The biggest crime of it all is the fact all this Springer like bullshit is actually overshadowing a far bigger, more interesting, and far more problematic situation which has unfortunate connections to a bunch of mouth breathing dbag's who believe they're standing up for the sake of 'gaming' and 'gamers.' The continued attacks on Anita Sarkeesian for doing nothing more but making videos on her opinion and the history of female gaming tropes. Which have gained absurd (and stupidly sexist) and threatening comments, the same sort of anonymous response videos, but worst of all direct threats to her, her family members, and other gaming developers who've done as little but link to her videos on twitter. I think this says a lot about the state of gamers privilege and especially that on the internet, and why things like the Quinn issue have blown up.... I'm not going to post links to her series, it's not the point to see that all she offers is a stance on the way gaming is for right or wrong, but it's worth seeing this TEDxWomen talk she gave which just outlines what happened with her Kickstarter a few years back before she'd even made the series. If this is the same thing that happened with Quinn's game launch on Valve, I wouldn't be surprised one bit.

There are obvious problems with gaming journalism, that's obvious, it's been obvious for years that there is a certain level of incest and perks and all that stuff... and I can understand if someone had direct reasoning for a sexual relationship providing direct perks to be a major concern, but the thing is I don't think Quinn's case is that... I think she's just a girl who slept with a bunch of guys, one of them happened to be a gaming reporter, the internet blew it up, and is looking for as many ways to nitpick at her as possible.

There are some connections to the concept of the attacks here with those on Sarkeesian, but the latter is far far more troubling to me.... that people need to make the level of threats to someone because they want to make/do make a video series sharing an educated opinion on some problems with the industry (and also provides some ideas on how to fix it) comes under attack for it is far more disgusting.

Fuck I hate this industry sometimes.

[TheSelfishGene]

I actually really like the Kotaku review system. The rest of the content on the site I find to be very hit and miss. The Australian version exclusive posts I mostly enjoy though.
The local poster also seems to veto a lot of shit that comes out of their head office too and curates it pretty well.
I'm 13:00 in watching the above video, it's still a bit tricky to have an idea what's happened.
Aside from that, I think games journalism has been a joke for a very long time.
Look at the couple of examples in this article (ironically by Forbes, who get slammed in the above video).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/10/26/all-the-pretty-doritos-how-video-game-journalism-went-off-the-rails/

Personally I just don't buy games until they are marked down and the reviews are well and truly in. Saves a lot of pain in the long run.

[Dracarys]

Can't dare criticise women in the gaming industry. You're sexist if you do. Doesn't matter how much a c*** they are.

[Wrathborne]

Ya know, I'm not entirely surprised that this shit has been happening...I am surprised at how much deeper the rabbit hole seems to be getting though.

So basically there was an Indie game developer who was banging game journalists for positive reviews on her game...but shes also kind of an internet celebrity who has leeching off donations from god knows how many people, has some connections in the industry and has been caught in the act for being a disgusting parasite.

But apparently no video game news sites would report on this, or any of her other negative actions in the past, well all the information has been bleeding out the past week or so and really, its pretty vile and disgusting the lengths sites like Kotaku, R/gaming at Reddit, Polygon and others have gone to protect her/demonize gamers who want answers.

Normally I don't feel the need to post this kind of shit...but theres so much wrong here exposed in the current video game journalism area that its become something moderately relevant.

There is still information coming out, and its mostly exposing how awful video game journalism has become and which sites you might want to consider avoiding in the future, if you arent avoiding them now.