Not that I doubt this exists but I feel like I've been fortunate. I've clocked about 20 hours of Mordhau on US East servers and have yet to encounter anything even close to the volume reported...
Not that I doubt this exists but I feel like I've been fortunate. I've clocked about 20 hours of Mordhau on US East servers and have yet to encounter anything even close to the volume reported here. But there are plenty of people in my region who seem to experience it.
It might be related to the time of day. Anecdotally, I had a couple of months of unemployment where I was playing DOTA a lot and it was pretty striking how much better behaved the community got...
It might be related to the time of day.
Anecdotally, I had a couple of months of unemployment where I was playing DOTA a lot and it was pretty striking how much better behaved the community got between 6:00PM to 8:00PM or during weekends. Same with Overwatch. When the player count is high with people who just got out of work, it dilutes the assholes out. I think those people also tend to only play for an hour or two and are more likely to just stop playing when they're frustrated rather than going on tilt and hurling abuse at people.
Tangential question: Did anything useful ever spin off from gamer gate? Like any sort of push for journalistic ethics in gaming journalism that WASN'T just a mask for being a huge douchebag?
Tangential question: Did anything useful ever spin off from gamer gate? Like any sort of push for journalistic ethics in gaming journalism that WASN'T just a mask for being a huge douchebag?
Not really. The problem persists that game journalism is still mostly funded indirectly (or sometimes directly) by video game devs because game journalists rely on early review copies of games....
Not really. The problem persists that game journalism is still mostly funded indirectly (or sometimes directly) by video game devs because game journalists rely on early review copies of games. The only one doing any real journalism is Jason Schreier on Kotaku (of all places) with his investigative pieces.
For everyone else, they have to play nice or they won't get any early copies of games to review. And if your review goes up a day later than everyone else, you're irrelevant. And if you're irrelevant, you don't make any money.
This is true of literally all enthusiast press. I don't see car guys or cigar smokers behaving this badly. Even the meatheads at Sherdog aren't this noxious. At the end of the day, we're talking...
The problem persists that game journalism is still mostly funded indirectly (or sometimes directly) by video game devs because game journalists rely on early review copies of games.
This is true of literally all enthusiast press. I don't see car guys or cigar smokers behaving this badly. Even the meatheads at Sherdog aren't this noxious.
At the end of the day, we're talking about toys and reviews of toys. Pretending this is a situation to get this worked up about is senseless. The actual business ethics issues, like loot boxes and F2P problems, do get covered by the tech press.
Occasionally. And way too little to be honest. Even if, there's still enough people jumping to the defense of the big companies whenever they try to sell gambling as surprise mechanics.
The actual business ethics issues, like loot boxes and F2P problems, do get covered by the tech press.
Occasionally. And way too little to be honest. Even if, there's still enough people jumping to the defense of the big companies whenever they try to sell gambling as surprise mechanics.
If anything one of the effects of Gamergate was that a large portion of the audience for these sites now immediately scoffs at reporting of actual issues like gambling mechanics or developer...
If anything one of the effects of Gamergate was that a large portion of the audience for these sites now immediately scoffs at reporting of actual issues like gambling mechanics or developer unionisation within the industry as "drama" or "too much politics".
This is a bit off topic, but what was gamergate even? I was vaguely aware of it happening but I’ve never really been clear on what went down and why it still has lasting influence in gamer culture...
This is a bit off topic, but what was gamergate even? I was vaguely aware of it happening but I’ve never really been clear on what went down and why it still has lasting influence in gamer culture (well, some gamer culture) today.
Back in 2013 a game called Depression Quest was released by Zoe Quinn. It was a text-focused game meant to portray Zoe's own experience with mental illness, specifically Depression, and it...
Back in 2013 a game called Depression Quest was released by Zoe Quinn. It was a text-focused game meant to portray Zoe's own experience with mental illness, specifically Depression, and it garnered generally favorable reviews.
The following year a man named Eron Gjoni (a freelance programmer) wrote a long-ass post about his ex-girlfriend (Zoe Quinn) that painted her in a very, very unflattering light. The post was a complete debriefing of their former relationship and breakup, including personal chat logs and other private data. Friends of Eron and users of the newly created #GamerGate hashtag based around the post quickly accused Quinn of having received a favorable review for her game based around her relationship with Nathan Grayson, an accusation that has been resoundingly refuted (Grayson never even reviewed the game, and had only ever mentioned Zoe in one article ever). Things escalated quickly and Zoe started to receive death threats over the controversy (which itself is just...even if it were true, why the fuck would you threaten to kill someone over a SINGLE FUCKING REVIEW? These people are genuinely fucking crazy).
They also went after Brianna Wu (another game developer) and Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who is known to criticize negative female tropes in video games, after both had came to the defense of Quinn. Eventually the whole thing petered out and the shitlords who got away with it faced zero consequences for their objectively despicable behavior.
It's up there in the "Darkest Moments of Popular Internet History" pantheon.
It was the moment the alt right figured out how to weaponize disingenuous shitposting into a form of political intimidation. It's how they refined most of the strategies we see them use to this...
It was the moment the alt right figured out how to weaponize disingenuous shitposting into a form of political intimidation. It's how they refined most of the strategies we see them use to this day. The very thin veneer of a "reasonable" grievance to give them cover, the places to dump large amounts of disinformation and nonsense the bury people in, the targeted harassment, etc.
All of that stuff existed before, but GamerGate was when it all got pulled together into one movement.
Not that I doubt this exists but I feel like I've been fortunate. I've clocked about 20 hours of Mordhau on US East servers and have yet to encounter anything even close to the volume reported here. But there are plenty of people in my region who seem to experience it.
It might be related to the time of day.
Anecdotally, I had a couple of months of unemployment where I was playing DOTA a lot and it was pretty striking how much better behaved the community got between 6:00PM to 8:00PM or during weekends. Same with Overwatch. When the player count is high with people who just got out of work, it dilutes the assholes out. I think those people also tend to only play for an hour or two and are more likely to just stop playing when they're frustrated rather than going on tilt and hurling abuse at people.
Tangential question: Did anything useful ever spin off from gamer gate? Like any sort of push for journalistic ethics in gaming journalism that WASN'T just a mask for being a huge douchebag?
Not really. The problem persists that game journalism is still mostly funded indirectly (or sometimes directly) by video game devs because game journalists rely on early review copies of games. The only one doing any real journalism is Jason Schreier on Kotaku (of all places) with his investigative pieces.
For everyone else, they have to play nice or they won't get any early copies of games to review. And if your review goes up a day later than everyone else, you're irrelevant. And if you're irrelevant, you don't make any money.
This is true of literally all enthusiast press. I don't see car guys or cigar smokers behaving this badly. Even the meatheads at Sherdog aren't this noxious.
At the end of the day, we're talking about toys and reviews of toys. Pretending this is a situation to get this worked up about is senseless. The actual business ethics issues, like loot boxes and F2P problems, do get covered by the tech press.
Occasionally. And way too little to be honest. Even if, there's still enough people jumping to the defense of the big companies whenever they try to sell gambling as surprise mechanics.
If anything one of the effects of Gamergate was that a large portion of the audience for these sites now immediately scoffs at reporting of actual issues like gambling mechanics or developer unionisation within the industry as "drama" or "too much politics".
This is a bit off topic, but what was gamergate even? I was vaguely aware of it happening but I’ve never really been clear on what went down and why it still has lasting influence in gamer culture (well, some gamer culture) today.
Back in 2013 a game called Depression Quest was released by Zoe Quinn. It was a text-focused game meant to portray Zoe's own experience with mental illness, specifically Depression, and it garnered generally favorable reviews.
The following year a man named Eron Gjoni (a freelance programmer) wrote a long-ass post about his ex-girlfriend (Zoe Quinn) that painted her in a very, very unflattering light. The post was a complete debriefing of their former relationship and breakup, including personal chat logs and other private data. Friends of Eron and users of the newly created #GamerGate hashtag based around the post quickly accused Quinn of having received a favorable review for her game based around her relationship with Nathan Grayson, an accusation that has been resoundingly refuted (Grayson never even reviewed the game, and had only ever mentioned Zoe in one article ever). Things escalated quickly and Zoe started to receive death threats over the controversy (which itself is just...even if it were true, why the fuck would you threaten to kill someone over a SINGLE FUCKING REVIEW? These people are genuinely fucking crazy).
They also went after Brianna Wu (another game developer) and Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who is known to criticize negative female tropes in video games, after both had came to the defense of Quinn. Eventually the whole thing petered out and the shitlords who got away with it faced zero consequences for their objectively despicable behavior.
It's up there in the "Darkest Moments of Popular Internet History" pantheon.
It was the moment the alt right figured out how to weaponize disingenuous shitposting into a form of political intimidation. It's how they refined most of the strategies we see them use to this day. The very thin veneer of a "reasonable" grievance to give them cover, the places to dump large amounts of disinformation and nonsense the bury people in, the targeted harassment, etc.
All of that stuff existed before, but GamerGate was when it all got pulled together into one movement.