Confirms what I've been noticing lately - the only thing these folks are actually "liberal" about is their use of censorship.
Amen to that.
Time for the news blast.
* So speaking of assholes, let's check in on Ian Miles "Hitler Was Great" Cheong. Those who've been following Gamergate since the outset will recognize that Cheong was quick to duck below the radar and then not resurface, perhaps engaging his own autistic version of stealth mode. As it turns out, right before he went radio silent, he had promised to do an interview of Matthew Mitchum (of AesopGames fame) on Gameranx. The interview allegedly happened, but then Cheong never posted it. The reason Cheong never posted it? Because Mitchum is pretty openly Pro-GG and was since the get-go.
You can read the whole thing here. Likewise, links to the conversations that led to Mitchum making these public are
here and
here.
* Leigh Alexander
has begun a steady slide into irrelevance. Since she's been refusing to cover anything GG related, or, apparently, relevant to her job as a reviewer, she's entered something of a decaying orbit, which, paired with how bad Kotaku's doing, has made me smile. She also takes a shot at TotalBiscuit here, which is
hilarious to watch - she essentially goes on a tirade about how HE DOESN'T HAVE THE RESPECT OF CRITICAL INSTITUTIONS AND INDIE DEVS, to which the indifferent masses went "Yes, Leigh, and nobody fucking cares." How was it you originally so eloquently put it, Leigh?
Oh, honey.
* Birds Fly, Sun Shines, Grass Grows, and
Margaret Pless shits another article on DailyKos that is currently struggling to reach double-digit likes. In this one, she prattles on about what an awful, awful man Hotwheels is and how his new-fangled Eight Chan site is ruining the lives of many a feminist - but she doesn't stop there. She accuses him of pedophilia tolerance (because of the infamous Dan Olson Incident and the fact that he doesn't give a shit if 8chan's /b/tards post loli or shit), claims he's
pro eugenics (You know, because that's
a thing apparently), and she tries to extensively tie him to /baph/ and the likes of the GNAA. Clearly, she does not know how chans work and isn't aware of what happened the last time some SJW tried to start shit against a *chan.
* This one's big. No, scratch that. If this is true, it's fucking
earth-shattering. Have you ever wondered why it was that the mainstream press threw everything behind the likes of FemFreq during Gamergate's outset? Well,
read this and wonder no longer. The TL;DR is that a massive media group based in London, called United Business Media, has been bankrolling their operations - either openly, or behind-the-scenes - and placing their hands firmly on the likes of the IGDA, Gamasutra, and even the GDC. They have
huge pull in the industry, and Reaxxion's been the only publication with the balls to even cover this so far. To give some info on it:
Leader of Gamergate said:
Gamasutra, the SJW gaming website formerly edited by Leigh Alexander, is owned by UBM and falls under their “Other Marketing Services” category. Alexander is a vocal opponent of GamerGate and a shameless corporate shill: she actually ranked Kim Kardashian’s cash-grab mobile game as one of her favorite releases of 2014. Alexander also helped kick off the wave of “Gamers Are Dead” articles last August, which inspired the rise of GamerGate.
GamerGate managed to score a victory against Gamasutra by convincing Intel to pull their ads from the site. GamerGate pulled this off by mass emailing Intel, informing them of Alexander’s Tweets endorsing racism, bullying and other social faux pas. Unfortunately, the victory was short-lived, as Intel resumed advertising on Gamasutra not long after.
Why would Intel reverse course so quickly? Some GamerGate supporters assumed it was because Leigh Alexander was blackmailing them. If Alexander had the resources to blackmail Intel, one of the largest corporations in the world, she could have blackmailed UBM into keeping her as Gamasutra’s editor. This FanFiction.net mythologization of Alexander discounts the very real power UBM has.
It’s far more likely that UBM directly pressured Intel to reinstate the ads. Gamasutra is a tiny slice of UBM’s empire; as noted above, 84 percent of the company’s business comes from PR Newswire and Events. Whatever revenue Gamasutra earns is dwarfed by PR Newswire, one of the divisions of UBM that enables them to grab other corporations by the balls.
As a rule, I'm not a fan of theories that sum up "this is why everything bad happened" in a single bullet point, but the above reveals, if true, explain a critical piece of the puzzle we've lacked from the beginning: a compelling
financial reason for why so many Games Journos decided, seemingly apropos of nothing, to turn on their own industry and audience. If this Reaxxion's reveal is true - and it looks like it might very well be - and it thusly turns out that a lot of them are openly being paid off by a corporation with a political axe to grind (and it is; UBM is pretty openly socialist,
even by the standards of a lefty like me), then this is starting to make a chilling amount of sense.
* As if to drive the above home,
Kotaku ran an article on why everyone should want politics in their games.
* We need some fucking levity to end on. Thankfully, Youtube obliges with a dramatic reading of Rich Stanton's meltdown last night on Twitter:
What an edgelord. At least he had the decency to choose a fitting Twitter icon.
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