Not everybody who critiques the thing is an evil straight white dude Gamergater.
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This Gelatinous dingbat is clearly a total fedora, and Brianna Wu is plainly an actual game dev, but these screencaps do look like total arse, to a surprising degree.
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Oof. I was willing to grant that the game might actually have been good despite the eye-gouging art direction, but that review indicates thereâs really an emperorâs new clothes situation going on here.
Maybe someday weâll get a Sarah Palin moment when people can dismiss a particular game by a woman when itâs no good, and then move on. Itâs kind of amateurish and seems to fail at a number of its main goals, but thatâs ok. Iâve seen plenty of other games like that. It doesnât represent the potential of women in game development, and it doesnât have to be defended as such. Itâs a shame, but no reason to lower our standards.
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I apologise for making it seem as though I was defending an idiot troll. Nor did I intend to make it seem as though the term âinsidious oppressionâ was about anyone expressing views here.
Put it this way - do you have anything to say about the content of my argument, rather than the way I put if across?
EDIT
OK re-phrasing all this because itâs caused some misunderstandingâŚ
In totalitarian societies, dissent is often dealt with by labelling it as something it isnât. Rioting in the streets over lack of food? Counter-revolutionary. Opposed to a one-party state? Enemy of the people. Donât want your childrenâsâ genitals mutilated? Blasphemer. This is effective in shutting down the debate about the real issues because the average time-poor person finds it much harder to understand the issues around food distribution, democratic systems or how religion is immoral.
So if we get ourselves into a situation where a man criticising a woman is automatically labelled a misogynist, then that is very bad.
The way to avoid this is to use independent thought - in this case to ask ourselves whether we know the attack was based on the fact that Wu is a woman. I donât think you can reasonably say that it was in this case.
And more to the point, we can and should have the same debate about it without having to deal with any misogynist angle. Letâs be progressive. This is BoingBoing - boing.
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But the newsworthy item here is not the game; Boingboing is not a game review site. The post is about a game dev pwning a trolley. Why should we debate whether the game is any good, except insofar as it pertains to how clueless the trolley is?
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Iâm going to say that insomuch as the troll sought to elicit a reaction that taxed the respondent, he succeeded.
Aww. Iâm disappointed, so you probably are as well. Would you say youâre disappointed? In BB, and Cory? Go ahead, you can say it.
Breaking News: Context and nuance are a thing!
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Feh. Weâre social animals; eliciting a reaction is a paltry prize when weâre programmed by evolution to react to our fellow apes. I can elicit a reaction by walking through the wrong door, or wearing my pants on my head. Thatâs two-year-old stuff.
Maintaining a measure of self-respect by enumerating just how lazy this particular troll is being? Thatâs priceless.
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You donât seem to realize which side of this equation you are on. We are pleased that a woman who has to face misogyny every day (weâve heard of her before) has pushed back against some asshole. You came here to label that âmoral tyrannyâ because you donât approve of the words we are using. You are on the side of those with power, trying to make it impossible for anyone to point out what is obviously going on in the video game industry and in the world by applying an insurmountable standard of proof to each individual case.
You want to make grandiose comparisons, so here we go. Police kill people in the US at an alarming rate - much, much higher than any other civilized nation, and yet they are virtually never held to account. Each individual police officer in each individual situation canât be proven to have acted inappropriately. So the systemic problem continues because our response is entirely focused on the individual scenario. This is the kind of relabeling you are talking about: A crisis of police killing is relabeled as a series of unfortunate incidents and we are told not to draw conclusions by looking at those incidents as a whole.
At least in that case you can argue that the very high standards to prove criminal responsibility are necessary to protect individuals from abuse. In this case, what would motivate us (us being people commenting on a forum on the internet) to apply such a high standard of proof before we say, âWell, that walks like a duck.â
Weâve heard the argument you are making before. It is usually made by people who actively cheer misogyny as a way of trying to discredit the entire concept that women may face discrimination or hatred. By the same âwalks like a duckâ standard, probably a lot of people here have assumed that you are a misogynist trolley because whether you intend to be one or not, you are functionally playing the role of one. You are more worried about men who criticize women being thought of badly than you are about the fact that women leave the profession of game development because the atmosphere is too toxic. Thatâs not objectivity, thatâs prioritization.
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She was heckled for supporting women interested in game development. I donât think this misogyny is going to come out with Wooliteâ˘
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Report those, we can remove them â the URL especially is important.
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Steam, maybe?
When I first read her response I actually got the same gut feeling, like if someone says your game looks like shit you arenât really showing them by talking about polygon counts. But the thing is, the guy didnât just say, âYour game looks like shitâ he said, âYou arenât a real game developer.â Whether you think her games are shit or not, her response was âActually, I am a game developer, you moron.â The PS1 thing was just a launching point to make that point.
Realistically, I doubt Wu is terribly troubled by the fact that people think her games are garbage, if you create anything some people are going to think itâs trash.
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So, women should just shut up and take harrassment, because⌠free speech?
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So I am going to be called a gamergater/misogynistic woman hater if I call her game out for looking like shit? After 4 years and a budget of over 400k this is the end product? I have seen amazing Indy games being done on half the budget and half the amount of staff. Wuâs diverse team of 8 people was able to produce this abomination. Brianna seems to think that this game is perfection itself and that any possible criticism is just hatred against HER. Itâs amazing how massive her ego is. Not exactly empowering for women when youâve got people who claim to represent them with skin about as thick as a sheet of paper. I thought they were AGAINST damsels in distress but then they turn around and act like damsels the second theyâre faced with any kind of critique.
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Well, I think it looks terrible (artwise, I know nothing about the game).
The tweet directly said she wasnât a real game developer. That is most definitely an attack against her.
Someone said something mean to her, she told them off. Thatâs being a damsel in distress? If someone tells you they think you are shit at what you do, what reaction wouldnât be acting as a damsel in distress?
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I mean, I donât like the way Metal Gear Solid looks. Everythingâs the same shade of gray-green. Ergo, Konami are not âreal game devsâ right?
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Weirdly it proves that these people donât know jack shit that they think they can jump in with criticisms like this. People who are know-nothings donât stop talking because they donât know when to stop talking. I have this experience regularly when I get schooled on historical facts by my history-studying, museum-working friend. Itâs not that I know nothing about history. The problem is that I know something and donât know enough to know that I know nothing. I just fill in the gaps with my inevitable prejudices.
In this case, the prejudice is that women are ruining gaming (essentially through some mix of magical and improbable abilities), so clearly their skills can be criticized by some jackass whoâs finally figured out how to write helloworld.cpp.
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