I'm going to editorialize a little here - I rarely ever do this, but the subject matter intersects two big parts of where I live.
Some quick personal notes by way of credentials before wading in. I'm a hardcore gamer. Grand strategy, RTS, RPG, MMO. Not a high priest of the PC Master Race by any stretch, but when I'm not working, I'm gaming or thinking about gaming. I often express the physical realm in game terms for clarity's sake.
I'm a former game developer with Big Huge Games, Sony Online Entertainment, Sulake, and a handful of other projects and games here and there, so I've seen it on the inside as well as the outside. I've lead a few garage games teams additionally - one of the many indie efforts that tried and failed, but had a lot of fun doing it.
On top of this, I'm also a Community guy, and have been in the gaming arena too. Being the Community goober, you live at the nexus of communications to and from the game, so you see more than anyone else from not only the players, but the devs. The unending stream of thought that pours through as text is seen by me and my mods, whether it is a forum, in-game chat, or emails, Community's job is to take that stream and sift the coherent essence from it, then communicate that to the people who need to hear it. It's a lot like a game where you are sorting the intent of the consensus from the volume of the collected voice. I get a nice little jolt of endorphin when I get it right and that concentrated desire is translated into action with an outcome - not unlike leveling.
Credentials established? Yes? Cool.
I have two main takeaways from all this:
• Gaming Journalism Sucks.
I've only ever written three items Tom's. My first was the call to arms on SOPA/PIPA. The other two were reviews. Both were for games that got stellar reviews from nearly every major established gaming news outlet and that sucked so hard I had to climb away from the forum to pen a series of scathing truths because my friends were (like me) getting bilked for $50 a pop for a steaming pile of detritus and hadn't been warned. It wasn't that the games had received mixed reviews before launch, or that the games were just iffy or a matter of opinion. Games that stink like garbage juice are released constantly with 4/5 stars, 8.5/10 ratings and B+ grades from top-tier news reviews sites. The games are played for one or two hours, then discarded as the review is written. As a result, reviewers miss the meat of the game, AND publishers pack all the polished goodness they can into the first playable hours, leaving the middle and endings half-finished, shallow and rushed. The "AAA" titles out right now play like E3 demos from 5-10 years ago, great at first, but oh god, don't play more than 30 minutes or the game starts going into murder spasms on your hard drive and you wish you were dead from boredom.
None of the major gaming journalism sites dare say to the AAA publishers what they need to, or rate the games what they are worth. Take a peek at Metacritic and check out the gaming section. See the massive discrepancy between average review rating and user rating for most games? That's not just because gamers are pickier than movie-watchers. It's because gaming review sites suck. They are paid to suck. You, the attentive audience, are not their master. Their master is the AAA publisher with the massive ad buy and site takeover to get ready for launch day (patches/dlc incoming, we promise!). If they give that heaping train wreck the rating it rightly deserves, how will they be able to ask for the same CPM when Facekicker 7: The Bludgeoning expansion rolls out 6 months down the pike?
Maybe I've gotten snotty or stuck-up working with Tom's for so long, because we don't do that kind of crap. Our pedigree is in telling OEMs to fix their stuff when something is horribly wrong - that's how we got our start, and it's why there's this big 40 foot wall between Sales and Editorial that the bosses get red-faced about keeping super-strong whenever they sense an overreach. Maybe it's the expectation, and the requirement that we meet that expectation that has kept us to that? I don't mean to condescend, but maybe this is the missing element from gaming journalism - an expectation that a gaming news site exist independent of the graces of the top-tier publishers and their ad buys. NewEgg, Valve, you guys busy?
• Women Aren't Treated Well in Games
On top of the above background, I've also lead a guild of thousands in an MMO or two. As a player, as a dev, as a leader of players, as a community guy, I can pretty well say that women aren't treated right or even remotely equal in games. Female game devs get big targets painted on their backs, and speedily are painted as either a b*tch or a slut with little middle ground. In the development world, there are rules women end up having to follow just to survive that guys don't have to deal with - stalkers, threats, harassment are very much a real thing, and WAY disproportionately higher than anything even remotely resembling what a dude has to deal with. When I first broke into the industry, I was astounded by the gap between how the different genders were treated. Women are expected to grow thicker skin, fast, in order to keep up with the unending torrent. Women who are gamers often get criticized for not being a "real gamer", subjected to inquiry about their gaming bonafides.
Individually, I could give a crap what Zoe Quinn or that Sarkeesian person said or did in their personal, private lives. The corruption I've been witness to in just the MMO genre of the gaming industry dwarfs even the most absurd extrapolations those individuals at the center of this latest controversy - but perpetrated by men, a blip on the radar, a fart in the wind. Daikatana produced under conditions that would have made Bernie Madoff blush. Vanguard development lead by an opium-addled sociopath. Sex with GMs for in-game items in Ultima Online. So some flawed people said women are mistreated by the gaming industry. Yep. They are. Ad hominem doesn't change that. From a gamer perspective, there are no games that I can think of that objectify men the same way women are objectified. We've all seen the hilarious comparisons of female combat armor to male combat armor - female combat armor is wet spaghetti strings, male combat armor is a metal 3-piece suit. Chalk it up to artistic direction if you like, but Samus Aran and Chell are damn few and damn far in-between Skimpy McNothingpants and her billion scantily-clad sisters.
This difference in treatment does not end at games either. I see the moderation alerts and I've been here a long time. While our audience is more restrained and considerably more polite than the average FPSer crowd (a generalization formed from direct, hardcore experience moderating both), our female reporters get more vitriolic crap on average in commentary than our male reporters do. I posted the above earlier reminder about civility being compulsory after removing a comment indicating "You and your kind...", and the cesspit of sexist commentary is not constrained to one media type.
A last note on the GamerGate thing, specifically. I object, intrinsically, to the portion of the manifesto released by one side of the controversy that mandates expression not be limited in any way. This is our house, and all here are guests. Discussion occurs here at our pleasure, and none in the discipline of community will brook the discourse of personal destruction through insults and ad hominem attacks. Talk all you like, argue and debate as you are wont, be welcome in this place and in the exchange of contrary ideas and thoughts we are bettered - but those going personal will experience the community team bringing the might of the ban hammer down upon the heads of the savage and uncivil. We will cling to the rules of hospitality, and expect visitors to obey the rules of comity. The pseudo-anarchistic push via manifesto for unfettered free speech, even and including the most reprehensible attacks on real people will end poorly. A community founded on the idea of allowing anyone to victimize anyone else through their words will eventually run out of victims and implode, or stutter along demeaning a small fraction of its own population for sport, sustained profiting off traffic generated through those interested in watching sickness on display. Not going to happen here, and the rules of conduct are sacrosanct.
-JP
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