professorcirno:

To those asking about the Escapist bit, here we go.

Most of this can be found here: https://storify.com/alexlifschitz/escapist-drama though I will be going into more detail on some of it.

The Escapist recently published an article titled “Female Game Developers on Gamer Gate” in which several female game developers all anonymously (by request) discussed the whole gerbergate thing.  They were, shall we say, rather negative.

To proved TWO SIDES, the Escapist then published an article titled “Game Developers on Gamer Gate” (see the first issue?) in which several male game developers talked about gamer gate with much more positive reactions.

And then a few problems came up.

For starters, not everyone in that list was an actual game developer.  Some were just dudes.  You see, the guy who actually did all this sourced it all from 4chan.  He has also been very unabashedly loud in his support of gamergate, so hey, corruption in games journalism, right?  This lead to most of the questions being incredibly biased from the start.  Then it turns out there’s other problems with the people being asked.  Again, some were not even game developers.  One, Slade Villena aka RogueStar, was one of the bigger harassers in the beginnings of gerbergate, eventually  trying to organize a harassment effort get Zoe Quinn to kill herself, also tried falsifying tax information to get Anita Saarkesian arrested, and even harassing and attacking other Escapist staff.  Another was Brad Wardell, who is basically a living version of those cheesy mandatory office videos that teach you how not to treat employees.  Yet another was James Desborough, a tabletop games indie developer “famous” for his constant books about demeaning women and engaging in harassment campaigns of anyone who even so much as disagrees with him, at one point writing a full essay on how much he loves to talk about rape.

This is who the Escapist felt was worth giving an open forum to.

And just to wander back, look at these fucking questions.

“Imagine a development team composed of middle-aged white men creates a game explicitly aimed at young men called AMERICAN VENGEANCE that features a lantern-jawed white American soldier attempting to save his exotic-dancer girlfriend (complete with jiggle physics) from torture at the hands of Jihadists. Violence is the only way to advance in the game and the girlfriend’s torture is as graphic as anything in the movie SAW. But as far as violent shooter games go, it is exceptionally innovative, gorgeous, and fun. Is it fair to give the game a low review score for lacking inclusiveness? Is it fair to give the game a lower review score for having violent or misogynist themes?”

That is a literal question the Escapist asked one of these people.

But it actually still doesn’t stop there.  In a few interviews, the interviewed listed personal information, real life names, and/or social networking addresses of their favorite targets to get others to attack them.  In one case, the aforementioned Desborough began listing the people he hated most – all of whom immediately went under attack as soon as the articles were published.

The Escapist has fixed a small number of these problems.  SOME of Desborough’s targets were edited out, though not all.  The added “Male” to the title.  RogueStar’s interview was taken out.  But the overwhelming decision to keep almost everything else intact paints a very grim picture.

At this point someone is bound to say “Well what about literally this one specific person that works there and isn’t terrible?”  Well, apologies to them, but it does not matter.  The website they work for acknowledged how much of the above was a problem, and then didn’t do a damn thing about it.  Several of the people listed out as attack targets are still being attacked – some of whom are friends of mine.

And that is why The Escapist is the website that hates women, rather then just the website with terrible journalism.  Because they KNOWINGLY TOOK ACTIONS that lead to women being attacked, and when confronted with it, shrugged it off.  Shortly after the articles were released, multiple women – some publicly, some privately – went under attack and had to momentarily drop off the internet.  Some had to go further and call the police.

The Escapist and Greg Tito, in turn, stated “we don’t condone harassment” and changed nothing.