Videochat January 2016 + Writer Auditions

[ThePest179]

Well like I said in the video, the side of Gamergate focused on countering feminist claims isn't the part that I'm particularly interested in.

 

The problem is that this isn't a "side" of GamerGate - it's what most of GamerGate is.

 

"GameJournoPros was a mailing list set up by Kyle Orland of Ars Technica just to be able to let people at other websites keep in touch, possibly to even bounce ideas off each other and suggest new freelance writers to hire"

"Everyone else from the outside looking in saw the list as completely benign in nature."

"The only people seeing any issue with GameJournoPros are Gamergaters who were already prejudiced to think there was something resembling collusion and corruption going on"

 

Those last two statements are hyperbolic. What's more is, they use an article written by Kyle Orland as the citation for making them.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/09/addressing-allegations-of-collusion-among-gaming-journalists/

 

This already doesn't work well for me as good journalism. First off, I DO think it's kind of alarming that there was a secret mailing list among game journalists, which they admit is used to help select which writers to hire. In my eyes, that already makes it an "in" club as to who stands a chance at becoming a more mainstream journalist. Then they're saying "everyone else" finds this completely benign and the only people seeing any issue with this is Gamergate. I think statements like that are intellectually dishonest, because they're speaking in absolutes, not allowing for the possibility of someone seeing this mailing list as problematic. Furthermore, to state that and then cite Kyle Orland, the founder of GJP as the source for these being factual statement is poor journalism. You can't be a character witness for yourself, but that's how the article you linked is structured. Anyway, this doesn't mean all the information there is necessarily wrong, but it does make the the defense of GJP look very poor, and evidence of corruption / collusion is the part I'm most interested in.

 

Also your article doesn't even mention the leak of Phil Fish's records showing that Brandon Boyer invested money in Fez prior to judging it for the IGF. Don't get me wrong, there's a LOT of noise associated with Gamergate, but when valid points like this are glossed over and dismissed, I think that makes the anti-GG side look very bad. Anyway, the bottom line is I don't want gaming media looking like this anymore than it does already and GJP is certainly a step in the wrong direction:

 

Valid points, but that does not make up for what GamerGate has done and what it stands for. Even at their worst the anti-GamerGate side never pulled even a quarter of what the pro-GamerGate side has.

 

So again, while I am all for combating corruption in gaming journalism and in the gaming industry in general, and there are points to be made and battles to be fought on that front, GamerGate is far too hostile to support, and the gaming community has been harmed by GamerGate far more than it has been helped.

[Ross Scott]

Valid points, but that does not make up for what GamerGate has done and what it stands for. Even at their worst the anti-GamerGate side never pulled even a quarter of what the pro-GamerGate side has.

 

So again, while I am all for combating corruption in gaming journalism and in the gaming industry in general, and there are points to be made and battles to be fought on that front, GamerGate is far too hostile to support, and the gaming community has been harmed by GamerGate far more than it has been helped.

Well the basic problem is NO ONE ELSE seems to be doing anything regarding the corruption and it's obviously there to various degrees. I personally wouldn't mind having an organization focused solely on that, that's divorced from the feminism / misogyny issues, but best I know, GG is the only game in town.

[ThePest179]

Valid points, but that does not make up for what GamerGate has done and what it stands for. Even at their worst the anti-GamerGate side never pulled even a quarter of what the pro-GamerGate side has.

 

So again, while I am all for combating corruption in gaming journalism and in the gaming industry in general, and there are points to be made and battles to be fought on that front, GamerGate is far too hostile to support, and the gaming community has been harmed by GamerGate far more than it has been helped.

Well the basic problem is NO ONE ELSE seems to be doing anything regarding the corruption and it's obviously there to various degrees. I personally wouldn't mind having an organization focused solely on that, that's divorced from the feminism / misogyny issues, but best I know, GG is the only game in town.

 

True. I wouldn't know the first thing about making a better alternative to GamerGate, but the need to do so is critical to the gaming community and would be a big help both short term and long term.

[Heliocentrical]

Ross if you haven't decided on an empire yet how can I go get experience before the meetup? I think once you choose an empire the game locks you to that empire. So if I joined the Vanu Sovereignty and you chose the New Conglomerate I couldn't join the meetup. Also how will this work for people who already have PlanetSide 2 accounts? Odds are that most of your audience will be pretty split across the board and you would have to exclude 2/3rds of your audience. Unless there's a way to work around this I could be completely wrong.

 

Also my favorite UT 2004 character is Abaddon. I spent a ton of time playing UT 2004. I recently beat the campaign again on masterful difficulty. I thought that was pretty good since that's the third highest difficulty along with inhuman and godlike. Ross which difficulty did you usually pick when you played UT 2004?

 

Edit: Ok did some googling and found that you can make other characters for a different empire but your unlocks don't carry over to the new character. Ross I was thinking what you could do is make a poll before the meetup for the people who are currently playing PlanetSide 2 for which empire they're currently playing as and choose your empire based on which empire ranks the highest in that poll.

[Bankrotas]

Ross if you haven't decided on an empire yet how can I go get experience before the meetup? I think once you choose an empire the game locks you to that empire. So if I joined the Vanu Sovereignty and you chose the New Conglomerate I couldn't join the meetup. Also how will this work for people who already have PlanetSide 2 accounts? Odds are that most of your audience will be pretty split across the board and you would have to exclude 2/3rds of your audience. Unless there's a way to work around this I could be completely wrong.

 

Also my favorite UT 2004 character is Abaddon. I spent a ton of time playing UT 2004. I recently beat the campaign again on masterful difficulty. I thought that was pretty good since that's the third highest difficulty along with inhuman and godlike. Ross which difficulty did you usually pick when you played UT 2004?

 

Edit: Ok did some googling and found that you can make other characters for a different empire but your unlocks don't carry over to the new character. Ross I was thinking what you could do is make a poll before the meetup for the people who are currently playing PlanetSide 2 for which empire they're currently playing as and choose your empire based on which empire ranks the highest in that poll.

I rather believe, most people won't be usual players of Planetside 2 anyways, nor would have too much interest in investing into a game just for the meet up. They're gonna join, have fun and probably leave, rather than be usual players of PS2.

[hyperjon]

ArsTechnica? The source is tainted. Much like kotaku, polygon, etc., it acts as a speakerpiece for the anti side.

 

Anyway...

 

Regarding bionic augmentations, it's generally a bad idea. The Ghost in the Shell series (most notably Arise) presents a strong argument against such augmentations. Simply put, the possibility of having memories erased/rewritten (among other things) is a nightmare in itself. Not to mention the expenses in maintaining such high-tech equipment.

 

And if that's not bad enough, there's the dilemma of upgrading a system that can't be upgraded further (which the GITS Arise movie portrays very well).

[Bankrotas]

ArsTechnica? The source is tainted. Much like kotaku, polygon, etc., it acts as a speakerpiece for the anti side.

 

Anyway...

 

Regarding bionic augmentations, it's generally a bad idea. The Ghost in the Shell series (most notably Arise) presents a strong argument against such augmentations. Simply put, the possibility of having memories erased/rewritten (among other things) is a nightmare in itself. Not to mention the expenses in maintaining such high-tech equipment.

 

And if that's not bad enough, there's the dilemma of upgrading a system that can't be upgraded further (which the GITS Arise movie portrays very well).

I do believe least in GitS series, the tech of maintenence side is pretty far advanced. Though, I'd say Deus Ex: Human Revolution talks about maintenence of cybernetic augments way better than GitS series. The latter does talk more about software side issues more indepth, but not the mechanical wear of parts as much.

[Heliocentrical]

I rather believe, most people won't be usual players of Planetside 2 anyways, nor would have too much interest in investing into a game just for the meet up. They're gonna join, have fun and probably leave, rather than be usual players of PS2.

You mentioned that if Ross has around 47 people at the meetup that he'll need more experienced players. Do you mean as in actual experience with the game or in terms of what they've unlocked? I don't know how much the unlockables matter in PS2 but judging by what you're saying they don't seem to matter that much. Is that true?

 

I went over to the PS2 website and right on their front page there's an alert that says PS2 is now available on Playstation 4. I wonder how close they were to saying PS2 is now available on PS4.

[Stygian Emperor]

Have your biological head hit hard enough and your memories are erased all the same (and worse). If you're really scared of hackers, just don't connect your bionics to Wi-fi. But hackers can't do anything worse to a cyborg than a psycho with a scalpel can do to a human. Or a car wreck, or slipping on a wet bathroom tile...

 

@ Heliocentrical: Abaddon is fantastic.

[Heliocentrical]

@ Heliocentrical: Abaddon is fantastic.

I know, right? I loved how distinct his 3d model was from all the others with his giant robotic arm and unforgettable grin . By the way how did you re size your UT 2004 portrait? I want to do something similar with Abaddon's portrait without blurring it to hell and back.

[Descriptor]

Valid points, but that does not make up for what GamerGate has done and what it stands for. Even at their worst the anti-GamerGate side never pulled even a quarter of what the pro-GamerGate side has.

 

So again, while I am all for combating corruption in gaming journalism and in the gaming industry in general, and there are points to be made and battles to be fought on that front, GamerGate is far too hostile to support, and the gaming community has been harmed by GamerGate far more than it has been helped.

Well the basic problem is NO ONE ELSE seems to be doing anything regarding the corruption and it's obviously there to various degrees. I personally wouldn't mind having an organization focused solely on that, that's divorced from the feminism / misogyny issues, but best I know, GG is the only game in town.

To be fair, a lot of the feminism thing comes from the concern that a lot of that media corruption was due more to ideological reasons, rather than greed.

See, much of the backlash isn't necessarily against feminism as a concept (in fact, most GGers I see discussing the subject specify that their concern lies with the modern "third wave" feminism, rather than the core concept. Specifically, the sort that push concepts like trigger warnings, microagressions, and stuff like that), it's against the concept of the news losing objectivity due to pushing ideology. In fact, that's what kicked off a lot of the whole thing, as it all started due to controversy around the game Depression Quest. This game was a free choose your own adventure sort of thing made by a woman named Zoe Quinn that was available on Steam, which received a lot of media praise despite a lot of reviewers finding the game fairly mediocre, and a poor interpretation of depression. This wasn't really a big deal at first, though, until a post came out from Zoe Quinn's now ex-boyfriend that accused her of infidelity. Specifically, infidelity with a number of men, some of whom were game journalists related to article that praised her game. This is where things started to get a bit crazier, with people accusing the journalists of favoritism and the like. Now, most Anti-GGers are quick say that actual relationships involving the journalists were fabricated or taken out of context, which I personally can neither confirm or deny. However, even that wasn't what really kicked things off. What really set up the conflict we see today is the slew of "Gamers are Dead" articles that came out as a result of the controversy. These were a series of articles that all came out on roughly the same day that all accused the gaming culture as being sexist and misogynist and all sorts of other "ists". Naturally, gamers took issue not only with the accusation, but also with the fact that all of these articles came out at roughly the same time. This was in fact what lead to the discovery of the GameJournalPros list. Basically, this lead to a lot of GG supporters becoming super paranoid of feminism and other social justice-y folks, due to how seemingly widespread this ideology had become among the games journalists, and conversely, from how quickly gamers were thrown under the bus by these journalists, and the whole industry suddenly appeared to become hostile.

Additionally, a lot of concern comes from the perception that a lot of modern feminism encourages censorship in games, with a lot of vitriol being pointed at Anita Sarkessian and her supporters. Specifically, GG folks tend to take issue with the idea of political correctness stifling free speech in gaming (as well as other media). Basically, a lot of GG's objections against feminism mirror similar objections to the videogame violence moral crusades of the 90's and early 2000's.

Well, that's at least from my perspective, at any rate. As far as outright blatant misogyny goes, though, I don't usually see it very often in the more active GG communities. I don't doubt there are a-holes on Twitter or whatever who might be (while claiming to be GG supporters), but that's a sad aspect of almost any groups, honestly (like those people that convinced Joss Weadon to quit Twitter over something they deemed offensive in one of his movies). That's not excusing it, of course, but I simply don't like seeing GG being painted as this weird monolithic group due to the dickishness of some people.

[dharmanetwork]

Ross, I strongly advise you to do more research on GamerGate, as evidence has been pretty clear that GamerGate is little more than a misogynistic reactionary subculture in both gaming and the internet. Make no mistake, I'm all for combating corruption in the video game industry, but at the same time I cannot in good faith support GamerGate due to their frankly terrible track record. Here's a helpful timeline of events kept by RationalWiki and here's a really good and really detailed rebuttal against many of GamerGate's claims (it is incredibly long though, so heads up). I hope you take some time to look through these and see for yourself what GamerGate actually is. Thank you for your time.

 

Rationalwiki and for that matter mainstream media is overly biased to the Anti-GG side. And if you think GG has a terrible track record, then you should check out what prominent Anti-GGers do. Thankfully TotalBiscuit has already got in contact with Ross. He's more level-headed in this topic.

[Heliocentrical]

I almost forgot that Unreal Tournament 4 is currently in alpha. UT 4 looks promising but then again it's in alpha so it's subject to change. I'm glad Epic's done with Gears of Muscular Meatbags Super Dude Bros Deluxe. Remember when Epic awkwardly mashed Unreal Tournament with Gears of War with UT 2008 and didn't make anymore UT games for seven years? That was fun right? Oh well better late the never.

[Bankrotas]

You mentioned that if Ross has around 47 people at the meetup that he'll need more experienced players. Do you mean as in actual experience with the game or in terms of what they've unlocked? I don't know how much the unlockables matter in PS2 but judging by what you're saying they don't seem to matter that much. Is that true?

 

This might be a long post and if you have any questions (because usually I am terrible at explaining shit) feel free to ask.

 

To start the number I mentioned is not random. That's the maximum number you can have in a platoon, which is divided into 4 squads of 12 people. Each squad has a squad leader (SL) and there also is a platoon leader (PL). Most these guys need to do is issue orders, but SL's also can have a device called Spawn Beacon, that let's squad members spawn on it every 2 minutes (1,5 min with upgrades). That device is locked behind battle rank 10 (BR 10). Now I don't remember currently, if change went live so that all platoon can spawn on any SL's spawn beacon or not, but it's probably irrelevant, because the more we have, the better it is.

Furthermore, while PL coordinates everyone at the platoon, it's the SL's job to properly micromanage PL's orders. They require experience in the game to do it, as in leading experience and game playing experience, to be able to make it as fun as possible, it needs to be as micromanaged as possible with new players and even with veterans, only few are able to lead others, most rather not do that and follow. Now, if as far as I imagine, people would like to follow Ross, even if he doesn't really like to do it, they won't be as happy to follow some random shmuck while playing alongside Ross. So Ross is probably end up being a PL, whether he wants it or not. While shmucks can be the veterans, who SL and micromanage and assist him with decision making. And the more we have people, the higher number of squad leading qualified veterans we'd need. We also might run into an issue, where we get over 47 people, then there's question how to deal in which platoon would Ross be? There is a lot of things to talk on that alone, but it's more for the organisational personel than everyone.

 

Getting to another question on unlocks themselves. Well, you can do most things with basic stuff on infantry level and doing significantly better than starter gear you'd need to put way over 100-500 hours into the game. So I'm not even counting on that. To do something like combined arms you'd need vehicles and the difference between well upgraded vehicle and base one is in way bigger than one between newly created charachter and someone who put his hours into the game on infantry level. I'm not even talking about flying, some if not majority of Planetside 2 veterans can fly decently. The flying is practically behind a skill and lvl wall bigger than infantry and ground vehicle differences combined.

 

Now this is not to say, people would be totally screwed. In planetside 2 team play is king, way bigger king and way bigger power than any of other skill and time investment differences. That's why I believe good veteran SL's would help us out to have the most fun in the game. And since I believe, most of people joining Ross will be newbies, who can barely shoot straight, I believe we need to strategize taking that into account more than anything else.

[Jcw87]

Ross, I strongly advise you to do more research on GamerGate, as evidence has been pretty clear that GamerGate is little more than a misogynistic reactionary subculture in both gaming and the internet.

 

I regret to inform you that you are horribly misinformed about this.

 

http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2015/05/gamergate-isnt-a-harassment-campaign-states-wam-report/

 

I don't blame you for being misinformed, though. The google results for Gamergate are full of slander. The Wikipedia article is incredibly biased, as with any Wikipedia article about anything controversial. There is always a slant, and which way that slant goes depends on the personal beliefs of the people who spend most of their time editing Wikipedia. Rationalwiki isn't nearly as rational as they would like you to believe, so you shouldn't use them as a source for anything.

 

Then you have the numerous articles written by the very gaming media that Gamergate protests (gee, I wonder why that may be?), followed by the articles written by news organizations that don't care about video games and just parrot whatever the games media says.

 

As someone who has been following the situation since the 'Zoe Post', I can safely say that the vast majority of the 'anti-feminism' sentiment is directed toward those who would try to censor intellectual discussion, those who shout 'harassment' when receiving constructive criticism, those who shout 'harassment' when they are exposed to opinions they don't like, those who shout "I'm triggered!" involving anything that isn't PTSD, those who use feminism as an excuse to bully people and be 'morally correct' (which is fucking stupid), those who unironically say #killallmen, and those who blatantly lie about video games and gamers for profit. I'm sure there's a few things missing from this list, but hopefully you get the point. Gamergate isn't against feminism, they are against terrible people.

[Jeb_CC]

Off topic Jcw87... Don't need to talk about it on this thread or continue on with that discussion. If you're serious about it, create a thread in the Serious Discussion forum.

@Everyone else: Let's keep this thread focused on Writer Auditions only. Thank you.

[BTGBullseye]

Off topic Jcw87... Don't need to talk about it on this thread or continue on with that discussion. If you're serious about it, create a thread in the Serious Discussion forum.

@Everyone else: Let's keep this thread focused on Writer Auditions only. Thank you.

What about Planetside 2 planning? We still need at least the server that we are going to be using... (at least then we can start training for the lag times for our location)

[Ross Scott]

Off topic Jcw87... Don't need to talk about it on this thread or continue on with that discussion. If you're serious about it, create a thread in the Serious Discussion forum.

@Everyone else: Let's keep this thread focused on Writer Auditions only. Thank you.

I'm alright with people talking about it here if they want, it did get brought up in the chat.

[BTGBullseye]

So Ross, is the PS2 thing gonna happen on one of the EU servers, or on a US server? The US East server would probably have the lowest ping average for the most players, (unless more than half the players are coming from Europe or Australia) but it'd probly give you a little bit higher ping than most.

[Mr Nutt]

If anyone's interested, TotalBiscuit had something to say in the comments. As for Ross being offered to be on the Co-Optional Podcast, might be enough to get me to actually listen to an episode.