🎭 Dramacow Gamergate / Depression Quest Shitstorm

[teheviltwin]

Not GG related, but for some reason she tagged it with #Gamergate. There were people on 8chan really wanting to go after this too, as well as a dozen people trying to sage the thread and convince everyone to ignore it, insisting that GG isn't about Zoe anymore.

At this point I'm starting to wonder who they're trying to convince.

Yeah, no. Quinn is a part of GG because she slept with journos and other devs to further her career. Obviously very few people seem to care about the precedent being set by these fuckers. If your publicity and reviews are based on how well you know people and sometimes how intimate you are with them what does that mean for new female devs? What if they have social anxiety or other issues? What if they make amazing games but they don't get on with the in crowd? You are talking about pressuring women into, at least, making friends with people they don't want to. To let this crap slide is to put pressure on future female devs to do things that make them very uncomfortable to get their game noticed. They may even feel that they have to have sex to be noticed. But no one cares about that crap because being angry at Quinn is MY SOGGY KNEE.

Quinn is interesting as a horrorcow. People will want to read about the horrendous shit she has done. Unless they're utter hypocrites and are Christorians who are suddenly squeamish about laughing at a vindictive pile of trust fund edginess because said trust fund babby called itself a "feminist".

People who use the #gamergate will be interested in this story because it shows how much of a lying cnut Quinn is. And just so you know. That photographer did not need to ask Quinn's permission as she had already signed a model release. The level of maturity and respect that was being shown to Quinn is amazing. You can see how horrendously manipulative she is in a work setting. And the lie about killing a guy. As if that could be covered up. Why shouldn't people use the hashtag that will get their info to people who will be interested?

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Un-GG-related Zoe ggls.

View attachment 6969 View attachment 6968

If more shit like this drops then Zoe will officially be a lolcow just for the drama she always finds herself in. Gamergate would just be a section in her ED.

Edit: The nutjob she's dating right now could even have his own little section on her page.

 

[Trickie]

Yeah, no. Quinn is a part of GG because she slept with journos and other devs to further her career. Obviously very few people seem to care about the precedent being set by these fuckers. If your publicity and reviews are based on how well you know people and sometimes how intimate you are with them what does that mean for new female devs? What if they have social anxiety or other issues? What if they make amazing games but they don't get on with the in crowd? You are talking about pressuring women into, at least, making friends with people they don't want to. To let this crap slide is to put pressure on future female devs to do things that make them very uncomfortable to get their game noticed. They may even feel that they have to have sex to be noticed. But no one cares about that crap because being angry at Quinn is MY SOGGY KNEE.

Quinn is interesting as a horrorcow. People will want to read about the horrendous shit she has done. Unless they're utter hypocrites and are Christorians who are suddenly squeamish about laughing at a vindictive pile of trust fund edginess because said trust fund babby called itself a "feminist".

People who use the #gamergate will be interested in this story because it shows how much of a lying cnut Quinn is. And just so you know. That photographer did not need to ask Quinn's permission as she had already signed a model release. The level of maturity and respect that was being shown to Quinn is amazing. You can see how horrendously manipulative she is in a work setting. And the lie about killing a guy. As if that could be covered up. Why shouldn't people use the hashtag that will get their info to people who will be interested?

Quinn is quite a piece of work, and definitely worthy of the attention she gets, but the original "sex for favors" claim was dubious at best. I could imagine nepotism going on in the indie dev scene, but not to the point where sex favors are the main currency. At the very least, there's no good evidence for that, and that's the main sticking point. The best they have is circumstantial evidence, the kind that the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" was made for. Despite that, though, it sparked all of this fury, and they've since moved on to bigger, more provable cases as they've turned up.

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Quinn is quite a piece of work, and definitely worthy of the attention she gets, but the original "sex for favors" claim was dubious at best. I could imagine nepotism going on in the indie dev scene, but not to the point where sex favors are the main currency. At the very least, there's no good evidence for that, and that's the main sticking point. The best they have is circumstantial evidence, the kind that the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" was made for. Despite that, though, it sparked all of this fury, and they've since moved on to bigger, more provable cases as they've turned up.

Eh, dating/sleeping with someone while you write anything about them and not disclosing it isn't exactly circumstantial. All the other stuff? Yeah. What really pissed people off was the fact they got censored when talking about it, that nobody took them seriously, and by the time Kotaku actually changed anything they had already stated it wasn't of importance. Can you imagine what could have happened if reddit hadn't deleted every discussion about it? If right away Kotaku said "You guys are right. We should be more thorough and offer more transparency. From now on we'll have anyone who writes for us offer full disclosure or consequences will never be the same yada yada". This situation could have possibly been diffused very quickly. The thing is when you tell an angry group of people that what they're talking about is of no importance and yet put so much effort into shutting them up sooner or later they will start asking questions and start digging. While nobody found anything that definitively prove that Zoe slept with people and got perks in exchange they did find leads to some very interesting information about her friends.. Again. Nothing definitive but enough to keep the fire going long enough for it to develop some kind of name. When it got a name? Holy fuck. Now people can say "I hate GamerGate" or "I support GamerGate" and next thing you know those two sides are fighting, digging their heels even deeper just to spite the other. So now we have a clusterfuck. Why? Because a few people thought they could control the situation with censorship or just by not addressing it and hoping it'd go away. I think that's what it comes down to. Zoe was just what pissed people off. She was just one aspect of a perfect storm. Hubris was the bigger contributor here.

 

[QI 541]

Quinn is quite a piece of work, and definitely worthy of the attention she gets, but the original "sex for favors" claim was dubious at best. I could imagine nepotism going on in the indie dev scene, but not to the point where sex favors are the main currency. At the very least, there's no good evidence for that, and that's the main sticking point. The best they have is circumstantial evidence, the kind that the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" was made for. Despite that, though, it sparked all of this fury, and they've since moved on to bigger, more provable cases as they've turned up.

It's not that simple. Bias usually isn't something that's consciously done. If you're on a jury and you have to say, make a decision about whether a close family member's committed a crime, the fact that it's your family is going to affect your perception of the evidence and your decision even if you're actively trying to avoid the bias. Generally, the ethical thing to do would be to either not participate at all, or make your relationship known.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

People that spark something big, be it positive or negative, will often do whatever it takes to continue their fifteen minutes of fame. Quinn can't exactly talk about being harassed and persecuted online if no one pays attention to her anymore, so she could have easily tagged this to get weens to attack her online again so she can preach out more about GamerGate being about being against female involvement in games and whatnot. Draw out the small, ugly side of the movement and present it to the public as if it was the majority.

Of course, she could have a completely different reason for tagging it. My explination is just a potential theory at best right now.

 

[Trickie]

Eh, dating/sleeping with someone while you write anything about them and not disclosing it isn't exactly circumstantial.

Except that the two articles he wrote that even involved her happened before they were involved romantically, they never really overlapped in any meaningful way. The second one was very close, and there are people who will insist it started with a supposed drunken kiss that Zoe might've admitted to somewhere, but that was the extent of their "sex for favors". One measly article, one that wasn't even about her or her game, and then he never wrote about her again.

EDIT: Actually, this is getting really... discuss-ey, and I'd rather not get this thread locked, so I'm just going to stop this right here.

 

[Xander]

Right, because a legitimate company is really going to listen to someone who suspiciously knows about someone who may, or may not be in their employ. And obviously that person does not work there, and the company would want some pretty compelling evidence, other than that person saying mean things to someone over the internet. Swatting however, is easy to duck, just play games with friends, and have your gaming profiles privatized Don't accept strange friend requests. Oh, and do not be internet famous.

Unfortunately, sometimes a company will listen if there's enough people complaining about a particular person. Maybe you get branded as a racist and the almighty HR gets involved, maybe you work for a small game dev and the boss is SWJ friendly etc. There's lots of situations where this can go wrong. Operation Disrespectful Nod works exactly in the same way: one person emailing Intel would have had no effect while lots of them complaining got the ads pulled from Gamasutra. People have been fired due to GG (like the guy who started the #notyourshield tag). Granted others ducked this (there was someone who's boss sided with him).

Regarding smear campaings, there's situations where you don't give a shit about it. However, there's also people like me who could be affected by it. Just by getting some articles about you out there, indexed by Google, is not good. I'm a programmer, do lots of open source and due to that I have a vast online presence on which I depend. Getting hired means people look online for me. Having some smear articles where I'm branded a mysoginist or something similar (and they can quickly get out of control without you being able to respond) could very well mean that a lot of companies would not hire me. A lot of people don't really have time or care about getting the facts right, they will just go to the next candidate.

Swatting has no relation to gaming, all they need is your address. You could be having your morning tea and have the feds bust in your home while you're still half awake in your underwear.

Part of me understands the folly of the internet though when it comes to social media and publicly available information . I read an article in Wired about how a female programmer was attending a pretty(in her opinion) male-centric conference about programming. She overheard two guys making comments about female programmers, told then nicely that it was improper. They ignored her(granted that was not right of them to do, but not my point)Said programmer went on to make a scathing rant over social media. All parties involved found out and that eventually cost those two men, and herself their jobs. So, these kinds of things work both ways. It's not always in their best interest either to "dox" anyone.

You're talking about Adria Richards and the Python dongle gate. It was a bit different: the guys were making some jokes about dongles and forking a GIT repository, she heard them and thought they were sexual jokes (Adria is not a programmer, she does not know about code repositories or dongles), didn't talk with them or the organizers but rather took a photo of them and exposed them to everyone on Twitter. Only after that she contacted the staff.

One of the guys got fired and Adria herself was fired after Sendgrid was DDOSed and had lots of complains about her sent their way.

 

[Arctic]

 

[Batman VS Tony Danza]

Except that the two articles he wrote that even involved her happened before they were involved romantically, they never really overlapped in any meaningful way. The second one was very close, and there are people who will insist it started with a supposed drunken kiss that Zoe might've admitted to somewhere, but that was the extent of their "sex for favors". One measly article, one that wasn't even about her or her game, and then he never wrote about her again.

EDIT: Actually, this is getting really... discuss-ey, and I'd rather not get this thread locked, so I'm just going to stop this right here.

They were friends/dating/sleeping together/whatever. According to thezoepost Nathan didn't sleep with Zoe until early April (1st-6th) and the article didn't come out until March 31st so that shit is really iffy. It's hard to get really solid info from Zoe since she lied about several things while confessing the affairs (she claimed she was tested then quickly admitted she wasn't tested, unclear about when the affairs happened or later changing the time frame, etc). Regardless they had a relationship of sorts (whether it be friend/lover/whatever). Nathan wrote an article which was heavily influenced by Zoe's experience regarding a game jam she was involved in but tanked.

http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game-reality-tv-show-that-went-to-hell-1555599284

Interesting enough one of the people who also helped Nathan fill out the article with his testimonial was Robin Arnott who Zoe banged DURING the time of the Game Jam. Now if we're to assume the info Eron got was spot on then Zoe slept with Nathan Grayson the DAY after his article was posted. So it's safe to say they were pretty good friends prior to that and I personally think that's worth a disclosure when using her information to write an article about how a project she participated in fell apart. Especially when that article is putting the failure of the project on a specific person.

Okay, so even if the suspiciously close timeline for Nathan is accurate then we still have Josh Boggs, the guy who hired her for Framed. She slept with him prior to getting the job and she's still working on that game. Can it be flat out stated she slept her way to that job? No, but... holy fuck. She needs to stop fucking people in the industry.

But yeah, my point is there is enough info to make people upset and suspicious. When they gathered on reddit to discuss it they got told to STFU and oddly it just made them angrier. Chain reaction. Huge explosion. Nothing makes sense anymore.

 

[Judge Holden]

They were friends/dating/sleeping together/whatever. According to thezoepost Nathan didn't sleep with Zoe until early April (1st-6th) and the article didn't come out until March 31st so that shit is really iffy. It's hard to get really solid info from Zoe since she lied about several things while confessing the affairs (she claimed she was tested then quickly admitted she wasn't tested, unclear about when the affairs happened or later changing the time frame, etc). Regardless they had a relationship of sorts (whether it be friend/lover/whatever). Nathan wrote an article which was heavily influenced by Zoe's experience regarding a game jam she was involved in but tanked.

http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-indie-game-reality-tv-show-that-went-to-hell-1555599284

Interesting enough one of the people who also helped Nathan fill out the article with his testimonial was Robin Arnott who Zoe banged DURING the time of the Game Jam. Now if we're to assume the info Eron got was spot on then Zoe slept with Nathan Grayson the DAY after his article was posted. So it's safe to say they were pretty good friends prior to that and I personally think that's worth a disclosure when using her information to write an article about how a project she participated in fell apart. Especially when that article is putting the failure of the project on a specific person.

Okay, so even if the suspiciously close timeline for Nathan is accurate then we still have Josh Boggs, the guy who hired her for Framed. She slept with him prior to getting the job and she's still working on that game. Can it be flat out stated she slept her way to that job? No, but... holy fuck. She needs to stop fucking people in the industry.

But yeah, my point is there is enough info to make people upset and suspicious. When they gathered on reddit to discuss it they got told to STFU and oddly it just made them angrier. Chain reaction. Huge explosion. Nothing makes sense anymore.

Amusingly her fucking everyone in the industry and beyond from what it seems, is pretty mch the least relevant thing to the debacle, which has been always about gamejournos favouring devs within their personal cliques/friendship circles and happily screwing over everyone else to ensure their friends/fuckbuddies get all the attention, be they competitors to their friends/fuckbuddies whose hard work and dreams get crushed because game journos refuse to pay them attention/actively chase them away on the whims of their friends, or people who criticise their friends/fuckbuddies and thus get mass smeared and censored by others in the clique and beyond.

The only people who have given a damn about zoey quinns sex life have been zoey quinn and her white knights

 

[StallChaser]

I wonder if SJWs realize how much they're responsible for holding women back in the game industry. I mean, with people like Zoe or that dongle lady. It has reached a point where the people making the hiring questions are going to have to seriously consider whether the person being hired is going to force everyone to walk on eggshells. And even if they do, whether it'll matter, because they might just start lobbing SJW grenades anyways.

The Zoe things are unrelated to gamergate, but they're still valid points in a "we warned you, dawg" sort of way. I'm just waiting for her to blow up any more projects she's involved in, so I can point and laugh at them for hiring Zoe Quinn. I'm pretty much following a lolcow at this point -- it just happens that this lolcow has a cult following for some weird reason.

 

[Dr. Octo-PARKER]

A part of me hopes when this blows over, Zoey Quinn and her ilk reveal themselves as Crab People.

It would make all the damage they caused make sense.

Wishful thinking, I know.

 

[teheviltwin]

Quinn is quite a piece of work, and definitely worthy of the attention she gets, but the original "sex for favors" claim was dubious at best. I could imagine nepotism going on in the indie dev scene, but not to the point where sex favors are the main currency. At the very least, there's no good evidence for that, and that's the main sticking point. The best they have is circumstantial evidence, the kind that the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" was made for. Despite that, though, it sparked all of this fury, and they've since moved on to bigger, more provable cases as they've turned up.

Do you think it means that they organise it like a business transaction? She has sex with people who will further her career. She and other game devs have had sex with organisers of jams, journalists etc. and they have received favourable treatment. You don't have to be fucking as a by the hour business to set a nasty precedent. There will be devs coming up and trying to get noticed who will go to conventions and see that the ones getting praise, write ups and awards are all hanging out with the same clique. They'll know that certain games got hype because of relationships, sexual or not. Because people created this incestuous friendship circle it means that others will feel pressured to join it.

It's also been pointed out that it's not just sex it's any kind of relationship. If you want to keep Quinn's behaviour beyond reproach by doing mental gymnastics then go ahead but no it isn't circumstantial. The journalists were all sending each other messages about how to make their friend Quinn feel better. It doesn't mean they all had to have sex with her. Any relationship should stop them writing about a person.

 

[Jaimas]

Some very interesting things can be extrapolated from Zoe's behavior, but the general gist is thus:

Gamergate stopped being about the woman ages ago, but she can't stand that the issue is no longer about her. She's a fucking egomaniac. You can see this in - literally - every fucking correspondence she's ever been involved in. Even people who have had more-or-less friendly relationships with her have espoused that she's a fucking atrocious human being and willing to say or do anything, no matter how bug-fuck insane, to advance herself. She's now trying to stretch her 15 minutes of fame into an hour, and is pretty much fucking irrelevant in the face of everything else Gamergate's about at this point. In the end of this, she'll be a footnote, the equivalent of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 - a mere symptom of the greater shitstorm to come.

I gotta warn you, this next segment contains some politics, but it's pretty interesting. Click if you want to know why the Intel thing has Anti-GG Scared.

Spoiler: WARNING: Contains Politics, Hope

More on topic, the second barrage has been fired at the Gawker Advertisers. This is rapidly turning out like the infamous "Flush Rush" campaign against Rush Limbaugh, where those contacting the advertisers have turned the otherwise greatest assets of the so-called gaming press into giant liabilities for the entire company, costing them advertisers and ultimately forcing them to change for the better, or risk going under. To writ, their campaign against Rush has caused hundreds of advertisers to drop support and by all accounts, they've cost Clear Channel millions in this tactic. A number of areas, Rush runs ad-free, not because of any desire to keep the airwaves open, but because no advertiser will run ads on his show. Several of the biggest networks that used to run Rush are now running 24/7 music stations instead. Whether you agree with Flush Rush or not, it's a simple truth that their tactics of contacting advertisers and using Rush's own words against them is working.

This is why they're so shit-your-pants scared about it - Gawker knows full well how well this works, and knows equally-well that there isn't a damned thing they can do to stop it. Companies have to satisfy their customers, or they will have no one to sell to. This organized assault can shatter the titans of Media presence themselves by making them toxic in the eyes of their owners. It's a good bet Rush's contract won't be renewed at this rate due to the damage dealt by Flush Rush. If an attack like that can defeat one of the most visible talk radio presences in existence, then it can sure as shit work on a bunch of clickbaiting asshole sites that are already reeling from the rise of Youtube, Blip, and Twitch.

 

[teheviltwin]

Some very interesting things can be extrapolated from Zoe's behavior, but the general gist is thus:

Gamergate stopped being about the woman ages ago, but she can't stand that the issue is no longer about her. She's a fucking egomaniac. You can see this in - literally - every fucking correspondence she's ever been involved in. Even people who have had more-or-less friendly relationships with her have espoused that she's a fucking atrocious human being and willing to say or do anything, no matter how bug-fuck insane, to advance herself. She's now trying to stretch her 15 minutes of fame into an hour, and is pretty much fucking irrelevant in the face of everything else Gamergate's about at this point. In the end of this, she'll be a footnote, the equivalent of Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 - a mere symptom of the greater shitstorm to come.

I gotta warn you, this next segment contains some politics, but it's pretty interesting. Click if you want to know why the Intel thing has Anti-GG Scared.

Spoiler: WARNING: Contains Politics, Hope

More on topic, the second barrage has been fired at the Gawker Advertisers. This is rapidly turning out like the infamous "Flush Rush" campaign against Rush Limbaugh, where those contacting the advertisers have turned the otherwise greatest assets of the so-called gaming press into giant liabilities for the entire company, costing them advertisers and ultimately forcing them to change for the better, or risk going under. To writ, their campaign against Rush has caused hundreds of advertisers to drop support and by all accounts, they've cost Clear Channel millions in this tactic. A number of areas, Rush runs ad-free, not because of any desire to keep the airwaves open, but because no advertiser will run ads on his show. Several of the biggest networks that used to run Rush are now running 24/7 music stations instead. Whether you agree with Flush Rush or not, it's a simple truth that their tactics of contacting advertisers and using Rush's own words against them is working.

This is why they're so shit-your-pants scared about it - Gawker knows full well how well this works, and knows equally-well that there isn't a damned thing they can do to stop it. Companies have to satisfy their customers, or they will have no one to sell to. This organized assault can shatter the titans of Media presence themselves by making them toxic in the eyes of their owners. It's a good bet Rush's contract won't be renewed at this rate due to the damage dealt by Flush Rush. If an attack like that can defeat one of the most visible talk radio presences in existence, then it can sure as shit work on a bunch of clickbaiting asshole sites that are already reeling from the rise of Youtube, Blip, and Twitch.

It's my opinion that GG isn't about Quinn herself but Quinn's actions, in getting reviewed by friends, winning awards from people invested in DQ and TFYC's inability to get their story published, are incredibly relevant.

 

[Partyboy]

It's my opinion that GG isn't about Quinn herself but Quinn's actions, in getting reviewed by friends, winning awards from people invested in DQ and TFYC's inability to get their story published, are incredibly relevant.

I agree with what Jaimas said about the whole GG issue. It's shifted from being all about zoey and to a much lesser extent,anita. But I think a lot of the drama from it is still flooding in because people keep mentioning her, and the SJW's take her side because they can't, or wont form their own opinions on the issue, and the people involved themselves. I think zoey has been more or less trying to make herself feel like a pariah, to drive SJW's to rally to the issue, when at the meat of the matter, it boils down to outright one-sided selfishness.

 

[CWCissey]

I agree with what Jaimas said about the whole GG issue. It's shifted from being all about zoey and to a much lesser extent,anita. But I think a lot of the drama from it is still flooding in because people keep mentioning her, and the SJW's take her side because they can't, or wont form their own opinions on the issue, and the people involved themselves. I think zoey has been more or less trying to make herself feel like a pariah, to drive SJW's to rally to the issue, when at the meat of the matter, it boils down to outright one-sided selfishness.

Too right, one of the other forums I visit has a Gamergate thread and the majority of the site is yelling about how sexist Gamergate is while refusing to even accept that it's about ethics in game journalism.

 

[teheviltwin]

I agree with what Jaimas said about the whole GG issue. It's shifted from being all about zoey and to a much lesser extent,anita. But I think a lot of the drama from it is still flooding in because people keep mentioning her, and the SJW's take her side because they can't, or wont form their own opinions on the issue, and the people involved themselves. I think zoey has been more or less trying to make herself feel like a pariah, to drive SJW's to rally to the issue, when at the meat of the matter, it boils down to outright one-sided selfishness.

That's why I said her actions were relevant but she isn't. She's still interesting as the arsehole she is. Hearing the obnoxious lengths she went to to ruin people before this all started is popcorn worthy for me.

 

[Partyboy]

Too right, one of the other forums I visit has a Gamergate thread and the majority of the site is yelling about how sexist Gamergate is while refusing to even accept that it's about ethics in game journalism.

Exactly. And even then, when the level-headed, non-trolling GG supporters try to re-focus the issue, it turns into a circular argument about how zoey is being affected, and then spouting rambling nonsense about how gamers debase women, and such and so forth. What most of the anti-GG people fail to realize is that their martyr has put her foot in her mouth numerous times(along with so many foot-bullets) to the point where the Anti-GG people go:"hurr hurrr feminism, logical fallacies, zoey is the victim, LEVE ZOEY QUINNALONE!LEAVE HER ALONE!" Then the most rational pro-GG people will be like:"ummmm...what does zoey have to do with any of this now? We're trying to bring attention to the corruption in journalism..."

It's just baffling how the anti-GG people use flawed logic in this issue.