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Thargor

pleasant Co. wrote: »

That new batman spiderman game looks quite neat

OptimusTractor wrote: »

Definitely would have got GOTY back in 2004.

Robert ninja

Techraptor deleting old gamergate articles. Now both gamergate & anti-gamergate crowd seem to dislike the site for either not condemning gg enough or for attempting to appease SJWs. Lose-lose situation for them it seems.

Varik

The articles they've deleted seems to be just the pro gg one in hindsight as they're from before gg Became a thing.

Journalists blacklist
Zoe Quinn
Conflicts of interest between journalists and developers.

Won't do much, gg love their archive sites so none of that is going anywhere.

gizmo

Good move from the Editorial staff to be honest. The article listed there on Mitu Khandaker, the Redshirt developer accused-but-not-accused of conflict of interest, was absolutely atrocious and the decision to publish it in the first place, never mind keep it on the site despite the numerous edits it required after the fact, was one of the main reasons I chose not to visit the site again.

Not particular surprised Usher is rankled by this given his involvement in the same story.

Robert ninja

https://youtu.be/Yt05dIuoFgY This guy (previously wrote for TR) seems to think it's politically charged. I doubt it's directly political and more so just to do with just them getting in line with the The Narrative™ spun by the majority of other outlets.

The timing is too convenient with the whole steam thing, too.
https://twitter.com/mombot/status/927022878817640450

gizmo

While the timing is certainly odd, you still have a situation where their own current Editor is saying...

Some articles will indeed still be removed due to the nature of their content, such as accusing people with little to no evidence. That is 100% against our ethical practices and that sort of content is not redeemable. The redirects will remain until the process is complete.

These articles include one he himself wrote back in 2014 so while he can complain about there being "no editorial process to be heard of" with their previous Editor, it still doesn't reflect particularly well on their site for that content to still be there, especially when they've been thrown into the spotlight again.

That being said, the series of Accessibility Reviews by Robert Kingett have all been moved into that Archive section too. Not only that but he's since commented that the site never paid him for any of the articles either which strikes me as one of those delightful instances of "do it for the exposure" which plague the creative fields.

Dyr

gizmo wrote: »

These articles include one he himself wrote back in 2014 so while he can complain about there being "no editorial process to be heard of" with their previous Editor, it still doesn't reflect particularly well on their site for that content to still be there, especially when they've been thrown into the spotlight again.

Jog my memory, how were they thrown into the spotlight again?

gizmo

Bambi wrote: »

Jog my memory, how were they thrown into the spotlight again?

I imagine mainly due to the Internet drama referenced in the above tweets? Not particularly surprising that folk have an issue with publications featuring accusatory content with little to no evidence.

Dyr

I think it was because that paragon of journalistic integrity nathan greyson was triggered when Steam put techraptor front and centre on their curators page which led to calls from his piss posse to have companies blacklist them

If you were going to pull articles for baseless accusations then most of greyson and his pals pieces would be eradicated from the internet

gizmo

Bambi wrote: »

I think it was because that paragon of journalistic integrity nathan greyson was triggered when Steam put techraptor front and centre on their curators page which led to calls from his piss posse to have companies blacklist them

If you were going to pull articles for baseless accusations then most of greyson and his pals pieces would be eradicated from the internet

Well yea, he was one of the people in the tweets above. It doesn't change the fact that if Valve were to ask him, or anyone else quoted above, what articles annoyed them so much they'd be able to point to ones which TechRaptor's own editorial staff now admit contain accusations with little to no evidence. Isn't that the most important point in all of this?

And yes, it'd be great if we could nuke all articles which contain baseless accusations from orbit, I think we'd all be better off in that scenario.

kunst nugget

How many people are still actively involved in gamergate related activities (a dozen? twenty? a hundred?) and what kind of effect is it actually having on the industry. I only hear about it now when Robert Ninja occasionally puts up some oneangrygamer links.

Saruhashi

Bambi wrote: »

I think it was because that paragon of journalistic integrity nathan greyson was triggered when Steam put techraptor front and centre on their curators page which led to calls from his piss posse to have companies blacklist them

If you were going to pull articles for baseless accusations then most of greyson and his pals pieces would be eradicated from the internet

I don't understand how the fact that they published some articles in 2014, regarding a subject that everyone was talking about, should exclude them from being featured on the Steam curators page in 2017?

Wasn't there a similar issue with Tim Soret, designer of The Last Night, a few months back where they were dragging up tweets he made from 2014?

I can't imagine what it must be like to work as an indie developer in an environment where people will trawl through your social media posts looking for things to use against you.

If you had the "wrong" opinion on something that happened 3 years ago you will be bullied into apologizing or they will try to bring you down.

Seems like the indie scene is absolutely infested with bullies and little cliques that try to act as the gatekeepers to success.

Sonics2k

kunst nugget wrote: »

How many people are still actively involved in gamergate related activities (a dozen? twenty? a hundred?) and what kind of effect is it actually having on the industry. I only hear about it now when Robert Ninja occasionally puts up some oneangrygamer links.

The whole thing is basically over.

At this point it's just down to a few outliers on both sides who still want to kick up a fuss to try and get clicks.

Saruhashi

kunst nugget wrote: »

How many people are still actively involved in gamergate related activities (a dozen? twenty? a hundred?) and what kind of effect is it actually having on the industry. I only hear about it now when Robert Ninja occasionally puts up some oneangrygamer links.

It depends on what aspect of the industry we are talking about.

For the big budget games it seems to have had almost no effect as the big companies seem to have just kept their heads down and are doing their thing regardless of online drama.

For indie developers it's a completely different story as they are not so able to ignore internet drama. So you might see some indie games become battlegrounds over political topics. Whether it's pressuring a developer to fire a voice actor or bringing up old tweets to try and have games boycotted.

In this case with Techraptor you have people trying to control who gets to be a featured Steam curator.

That seems like it's not great for the indie side of the industry as you are strongly encouraged to pander to certain people or your game could be released in a storm of controversy that could damage positive media coverage and sales.

I'd say there still many people actively involved in trying to keep gamergate relevant but, strangely, most of them would actually be against gamergate.

If I google Gamergate and click news the top result is an October 2017 article from Rolling Stone talking about the link between gamergate, Trump and the alt right.

The second result is a Guardian article, also from last month, about Anita Sarkeesian (who I think had nothing at all to do with gamergate).

Then you do see the Breitbart and One Angry Gamer blogs, and a 24th October article about Zoe Quinn, so it seems to still be an ongoing "thing".

gizmo

kunst nugget wrote: »

How many people are still actively involved in gamergate related activities (a dozen? twenty? a hundred?) and what kind of effect is it actually having on the industry. I only hear about it now when Robert Ninja occasionally puts up some oneangrygamer links.

The Reddit forum on the subject is still quite active and generally a good one-stop-shop for checking out what folk are talking about. For the last considerable amount of time it's been mainly political/social justice related postings rather than games-orientated which probably a decent reflection of how things have calmed down. Every so often though, the hornet's nest will be kicked when someone like NBC run some garbage like this or in the current instance with the Techraptor thing. Oneangrygamer, on the other hand, will always be just that by the looks of things.

As Sonics2k said, there's still a few outliers here and there. Some of the larger publications also bring up the subject in the context of the current political climate in the US given how some of the more notable players from the earlier days now feature on that stage and the more general involvement of internet/social media based movements. There was also this precursor to the Valve posting which kicked off the current Techraptor topic, "Steam Is Full of Hate Groups", which is also rather topical at the moment although timing aside, the two seem unrelated.

Dyr

TBH it depends on what you mean by gamergate, if you mean the bunfight between the indie/journo SJW axis and the likes of breitbart, its simmered down. Or it got Donald Trump elected depending on how hysterical you are

If you mean the attempt by the identity politics lobby to foist their world view on gaming culture it's still ongoing but with limited success. Apparently comic books are the new front that have opened up in that culture war.

Benzino

Didn't see mention of this, but Sony introducing ability to convert your Trophies into PSN credit. It only counts trophies earned after the feature goes live.

https://kotaku.com/playstation-trophies-can-now-earn-you-a-very-small-amou-1820163899

Nice idea, not a trophy hunter myself but won't say no to getting a few euro's back for playing games.

gizmo

The penny finally drops at Microsoft as they announce their intention to either acquire or open new studios.

Microsoft Shifts to Make More of Its Own Video Game Software

maximoose

Benzino wrote: »

Didn't see mention of this, but Sony introducing ability to convert your Trophies into PSN credit. It only counts trophies earned after the feature goes live.

https://kotaku.com/playstation-trophies-can-now-earn-you-a-very-small-amou-1820163899

Nice idea, not a trophy hunter myself but won't say no to getting a few euro's back for playing games.

US only I think, good idea though.

Benzino

gizmo wrote: »

The penny finally drops at Microsoft as they announce their intention to either acquire or open new studios.

Microsoft Shifts to Make More of Its Own Video Game Software

It's only taking them 10+ years to get that games are more important than hardware. Lets hope they can get some good studio's up and running.

Benzino

maximoose wrote: »

US only I think, good idea though.

Usually the case alright, but no reason why it's can't come over here eventually. Maybe in time for PS6 :pac:

Mitch Connor

Benzino wrote: »

It's only taking them 10+ years to get that games are more important than hardware. Lets hope they can get some good studio's up and running.

Wonder could they go after Visceral or Irrational - or given both of those were shuttered have all the people already moved on elsewhere?

I think the creation of a brand new studio(s) could be something longer term, but they need to simply buy a couple of Devs and shore up some more console exclusives in the short term too.

Will certainly be extremely interesting to see where they go with this.

Benzino

Mitch Connor wrote: »

Wonder could they go after Visceral or Irrational - or given both of those were shuttered have all the people already moved on elsewhere?

I think the creation of a brand new studio(s) could be something longer term, but they need to simply buy a couple of Devs and shore up some more console exclusives in the short term too.

Will certainly be extremely interesting to see where they go with this.

You'd imagine a lot of good studios would be weary of joining up with them, I mean they don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to acquiring studios.

gizmo

Benzino wrote: »

You'd imagine a lot of good studios would be weary of joining up with them, I mean they don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to acquiring studios.

Or being particularly hands off during development.

Kiith

Benzino wrote: »

You'd imagine a lot of good studios would be weary of joining up with them, I mean they don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to acquiring studios.

If you've just come from EA, there might be nowhere to go but upwards :pac:

CastorTroy

Any studios they acquire will have to go through the initiation period of making avatars and Kinect games

gizmo

CastorTroy wrote: »

Any studios they acquire will have to go through the initiation period of making avatars and Kinect games

Kinect is dead, man, it's finally dead...

Robert ninja

kunst nugget wrote: »

How many people are still actively involved in gamergate related activities (a dozen? twenty? a hundred?) and what kind of effect is it actually having on the industry. I only hear about it now when Robert Ninja occasionally puts up some oneangrygamer links.

Well one of the reasons you probably rarely hear about it or only from one perspective is because the a large amount of game journalism industry worked and seem to continue to work together to suppress it. I recommend this article as an introduction as to why as well as some early gg accomplishments. It's also worth noting that many online communities like forums have rules against discussing gamergate either by banning for supporting harassment or the the thread/whatever will be locked/deleted for being off topic. Even 4chan banned discussion of this stuff (turns out they possibly had some involvement) which is why many migrated to 8chan to continue. I actually found it hilarious that the whole neogaf thing could be discussed on boards.ie while it was being censored on 4chan.

In news,
Not exactly hot off the presses but Valve is telling publishers not to post patches on their forums that put back cut content from adult games listed on steam. I'm not sure if I can post the article here since it's a NSFW site (it's featured on lewdgamer.com).

Valve don't want people to leave steam to go pick up patches (that sometimes you have to pay for) that recover content that is removed from them to be able to be published on steam. I don't see this working out so well because people will now just leave steam to get that information as well as the patch, meaning less time spent using the steam community. I'm also pretty sure crafty devs/publisher staff can somehow mention it on the forums or somewhere else without breaking rules. For example they could create a throwaway steam account and make a post on the forums containing all the information a user may need to uncensor the game as it's not against the rules for users to do it and it's also not stipulated that the moderators have to actively censor users discussing such things. It's still not a good sign that valve are further policing what kind of content users have access to even when it's akin to modding and the actual content is completely off of steam.

gizmo wrote: »

The penny finally drops at Microsoft as they announce their intention to either acquire or open new studios.

Microsoft Shifts to Make More of Its Own Video Game Software

Anything they make will be XBO or Windows 10 exclusive. For me that means they might as well have announced that Bill Gates farted this morning.

CatInABox

Robert ninja wrote: »

Valve don't want people to leave steam to go pick up patches (that sometimes you have to pay for) that recover content that is removed from them to be able to be published on steam. I don't see this working out so well because people will now just leave steam to get that information as well as the patch, meaning less time spent using the steam community. I'm also pretty sure crafty devs/publisher staff can somehow mention it on the forums or somewhere else without breaking rules. For example they could create a throwaway steam account and make a post on the forums containing all the information a user may need to uncensor the game as it's not against the rules for users to do it and it's also not stipulated that the moderators have to actively censor users discussing such things. It's still not a good sign that valve are further policing what kind of content users have access to even when it's akin to modding and the actual content is completely off of steam.

It's not really an issue though, Valve are protecting themselves legally. Anything that changes the rating of the game is a potential legal minefield, you only have to look at the Hot Coffee outrage from GTA.

Mitch Connor

IO Interactive are the crowd I was trying to think of yesterday as a dev that MS should look at making a 1st or 2nd party exclusives dev house. They still own the Hitman IP so it would be a very good pick up and starting point, imo.