The Zoe Quinn sex-for-reviews scandal
- Thread starter GasBandit
- Start date
What's funny is, in the long run, nothing really happened. But damn did people talk a lot of shit.
There are three things involved. Here is a quick list. I couldn't really make it any smaller.
Zoe slept with prominent game journalists and other men involved with the industry. Many of these same guys mentioned her game in articles and on twitter. All the while she was in a relationship with her boyfriend.
Zoe was coming out with a game on Steam Greenlight. It was not getting enough support to be released, but then suddenly she was being harassed by a web community called Wizardchan over the game. She used the victim card to get retweeted on twitter by journalists, including the ones she slept with, which lead to her game gathering the support it needed to be greenlit and sold on Steam. Wizardchan says the people badmouthing her were new posters doing such anonymously, implying it was staged.
Zoe was part of an MTV produced GameJam reality show, which tanked on the first day as Zoe and some others walked out due to a supposedly overzealous producer. Months later two articles from journalists that were also in the event, both of which it was confirmed she slept with, posted articles about the whole thing and how it failed. The same day those articles went online, Zoe had setup a website promoting her own game jam, that linked to her personal PayPal.
This has led to a lot of implications that she and her lovers were doing things to promote her, either through fake outrage, timed articles, or various backroom deals.
P.S. Forgot a forth, Zoe uses her connections in journalism and various websites like Reddit to squelch all conversation about her about the above three things.
Female indie Dev with "1 game" to her credit is well known in the gaming industry for being a rarity. Was recently caught cheating on long term boyfriend with several men, amongst which are a few gaming journalists who've covered her and her game at various degrees. This brings out the conspiracy theorists of douchbaggery going on in the game journalists universe as well as giving her a hard time for being... well a slut. Social justice warriors come out, feminists and all that. Twitter chaos. Internet chaos. People do a long history look at the girl and find out she does all kinds of things to stay alive, including smut pics on a pay per view website. Find more conspiracies. Suddenly game journalism back her on most sites on THE SAME DAY. More conspiracy. Rise, repeat.
She's also a terrible person and various previous event come to light including one where she personally killed off an event where people were trying to get some type of thing going for women dev makers to get into to get their game published and made. For apparently... "women would get exploited". but I feel otherwise. Zoe wanted to close that game dev contest because you see as much as these women bitch and moan about not enough female representation in the geek culture women like Zoe thrive on their "rarity". So as long as she's one of the few prominent female game devs (with 1 "game" to her name) she can make her living by being a novelty (as seen on her patron - pay me site). So if a few more female game devs, with more talent suddenly appear.... she's lose her living. She was worried about women being exploited.... she was worried about these other women becoming noteworthy enough in the industry to kill her off because... she SUCKS (literally).
GasBandit
Staff member
A cheated-on Ex's blog posts about how his "indie game developer" girlfriend cheated on him with 5 members of the gaming journalism and game development communities became the loose thread that, when tugged, unraveled to expose even further how incestuous and self-promoting the indie gaming journalism/development world is.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest abound, manufactured professional victimhood for profit is the order of the day, the central characters in the story leverage their connections and notoriety to stomp out competing organizations that promote the same causes they purport to (women in gaming, etc), and to cap it all off the implicated journalism outlets spent a week publishing articles declaring that "gamers are over as an identity" to try to neuter a sudden swell of outrage at the corruption, dubbed #gamergate by Adam Baldwin, and literally dozens of thousands of posts on reddit and other internet discussion mediums (even 4chan) get deleted by moderators with known contact to Zoe. There's a big ol' rat's nest of interconnectivity via intimate relationships or plain old money changing hands between a lot of names in the indie development world, the Social Justice scene, and most of the websites that cover gaming - ironically the only one that seems to have clean hands in this affair is IGN.
Those are three of the most biased overviews I've read yet
I laughed at this:
It should be noted that the group running the event in question don't think she had the malicious intent being ascribed to her, see their statement here. Relevant quotes:
They think she didn't know what she was talking about when she criticized their event, but not that she was trying to get them shut down for her own benefit.
Or if the initial accusation was just angry ranting on the internet without actual support.
Welcome to the internet, bro. Go on and type out your own break down, and marvel at how it, too, is not 100% unbiased. Not even the people experiencing it the most right now go into it without some form of personal confirmation bias.
GasBandit
Staff member
I've got charlie's version right here:
"All gamers are misogynists who hate zoe because she's a woman in their treehouse, and all this stuff about gaming journalist corruption is a smokescreen to hide the bashing of women."
I'd post a version, but I've had a hard time following all the twists and turns since most of this story occurs after the fact with who's mad at who. It feels like somehow it was decided THIS would be the big thing to get pissed about with game journalism, when there's plenty of other crap for people to get angry about too, and yet they don't show this level of internet rage. It all reeks of the same shit that goes on during election season, except there doesn't seem to be anything to gain.
Most fair and balanced version I can manage:
- Quinn enters the industry, has trouble drumming up support for projects, starts promoting herself as a female game developer
- Shortly after, people at wizardchan start giving her a hard time. This abuse catapults her into the limelight, though all of the accounts of the so called harassers were created just before this all happened, leading many to believe it was staged
- Around this time Quinn enters the first of several extra-relationship affairs, 3 of which were involved in the gaming press, 2 of which were indie devs (one of which was her boss on her game).
- Quinn is hired to work on a game (it was Depresson Quest?), right after allegedly sleeping with her boss.
- The whole Mountain Dew sponsored game jam thing happens. There is reason to believe that coverage was delayed so that Quinn could get the donation page for HER game jam up first, to maximize the take.
- Around this time The Fine Young Capitalists start their project to get more female developed games made. Quinn calls in exploit ion and suddenly (suspiciously) TFYC start getting doxxed. The project is abandoned for the time being.
- Quinn becomes a bit of indie darling, starts doing more game jams. More the alleged rendezvous happen, all at times when Quinn and her projects could use a boost in the limelight.
- Quinn and her boyfriend separate temporarily, as he has begun to get suspicious of her. During this time he finds out that she'd been with people while they were together. He calls her out on it and she spills the beans to him about, implicating at least 5 people.
- Ex-boyfriend puts all of this up online
- Internet Hate Machine clicks on and people reveal themselves to be monsters. People hack into Quinn's stuff, start spreading the naked photos of herself that she had been selling online. Death threats against Quinn, Sarkesian, and others start to pop up. Both Quinn and Sarkesian go into real world hiding to avoid getting ganked by some asshole who doesn't have any skin in this.
- Games Journalists flip on the people paying their checks, deny any involvement or claim that they weren't influenced. Many claim that it doesn't matter anyway, using the Palestine Defense to point out worse abuses than this one, or that the end game would still be small potatoes. These people have missed the point entirely.
- Phil Fish claims that people hacked him for his support of Quinn, revealing important business details for all the world to see. This would have been impossible for anyone to do due to the security of his web host, suggesting that Fish doxxed himself to ether drum up support for Quinn or justify his own exit from the industry.
- The Fine Young Capitalists renew their project, declare a truce after months of saying Quinn doxxed them. It is believed they've been promised support for their silence.
That she had the affairs really isn't in question. There is sufficient evidence to suggest she did. The real question is where or not these affairs were used as a means to advance her career. If you look at the timeline, it does appear that she only started getting bumps in awareness around the time she slept with these people. Now is this simply because she was friends with everyone involved or was it something more unethical? I'm old school when it comes to ethics; to me, it doesn't matter if she got this support via sexual favor or just friendship... the appearance of impropriety IS impropriety. As such, her actions and the actions of her paramours have tainted the credibility of not just the games journalism industry on the whole (which is a feat in and of itself) but also the indie development community. It's not the worse thing ever but these people should have known better.
That said, just about everyone on both sides have proven themselves to be terrible people. The journalists have shown themselves to be self interested and are downplaying the entire thing because the end game is low stake enough (people can LIVE on the money they get doing this?) that it's not a huge deal. The gamers are being fucking monsters, enacting a purge on the industry with threats of violence. Just about everyone is guilty of something...
- Quinn enters the industry, has trouble drumming up support for projects, starts promoting herself as a female game developer
- Shortly after, people at wizardchan start giving her a hard time. This abuse catapults her into the limelight, though all of the accounts of the so called harassers were created just before this all happened, leading many to believe it was staged
- Around this time Quinn enters the first of several extra-relationship affairs, 3 of which were involved in the gaming press, 2 of which were indie devs (one of which was her boss on her game).
- Quinn is hired to work on a game (it was Depresson Quest?), right after allegedly sleeping with her boss.
- The whole Mountain Dew sponsored game jam thing happens. There is reason to believe that coverage was delayed so that Quinn could get the donation page for HER game jam up first, to maximize the take.
- Around this time The Fine Young Capitalists start their project to get more female developed games made. Quinn calls in exploit ion and suddenly (suspiciously) TFYC start getting doxxed. The project is abandoned for the time being.
- Quinn becomes a bit of indie darling, starts doing more game jams. More the alleged rendezvous happen, all at times when Quinn and her projects could use a boost in the limelight.
- Quinn and her boyfriend separate temporarily, as he has begun to get suspicious of her. During this time he finds out that she'd been with people while they were together. He calls her out on it and she spills the beans to him about, implicating at least 5 people.
- Ex-boyfriend puts all of this up online
- Internet Hate Machine clicks on and people reveal themselves to be monsters. People hack into Quinn's stuff, start spreading the naked photos of herself that she had been selling online. Death threats against Quinn, Sarkesian, and others start to pop up. Both Quinn and Sarkesian go into real world hiding to avoid getting ganked by some asshole who doesn't have any skin in this.
- Games Journalists flip on the people paying their checks, deny any involvement or claim that they weren't influenced. Many claim that it doesn't matter anyway, using the Palestine Defense to point out worse abuses than this one, or that the end game would still be small potatoes. These people have missed the point entirely.
- Phil Fish claims that people hacked him for his support of Quinn, revealing important business details for all the world to see. This would have been impossible for anyone to do due to the security of his web host, suggesting that Fish doxxed himself to ether drum up support for Quinn or justify his own exit from the industry.
- The Fine Young Capitalists renew their project, declare a truce after months of saying Quinn doxxed them. It is believed they've been promised support for their silence.
That she had the affairs really isn't in question. There is sufficient evidence to suggest she did. The real question is where or not these affairs were used as a means to advance her career. If you look at the timeline, it does appear that she only started getting bumps in awareness around the time she slept with these people. Now is this simply because she was friends with everyone involved or was it something more unethical? I'm old school when it comes to ethics; to me, it doesn't matter if she got this support via sexual favor or just friendship... the appearance of impropriety IS impropriety. As such, her actions and the actions of her paramours have tainted the credibility of not just the games journalism industry on the whole (which is a feat in and of itself) but also the indie development community. It's not the worse thing ever but these people should have known better.
That said, just about everyone on both sides have proven themselves to be terrible people. The journalists have shown themselves to be self interested and are downplaying the entire thing because the end game is low stake enough (people can LIVE on the money they get doing this?) that it's not a huge deal. The gamers are being fucking monsters, enacting a purge on the industry with threats of violence. Just about everyone is guilty of something...
Small people acting like douches outrages other small people.
Nice people fucked over by douchey people.
Small insignificant section of general population gives a fuck.
Zappit
Staff member
Making it more confusing, apparently 4Chan went way the hell out of their way to further stir up more shit between gamers and the SJW crowd.
https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
This is news? I fully expected this was going on or would start the second the Quinn news broke. Everyone was calling for 4chan to ether exonerate, incriminate, or just plain go vigilante on Quinn. That they chose to make fools of EVERYONE involved is perfectly in character but ultimately irrelevant. The Journalists are pointing this out as some kind of vindication... it isn't. They are still guilty of improper business relationships, no matter what your lax standards are.
It's possible to be friends with the people you cover professionally. Most of the people involved in this could not maintain that professionalism. It's not the worst thing in the world, but you don't suddenly become innocent because someone else did something worse.
I just want the ugliness in the "gamer" community to go away and to stop driving good people out of it. They're supposed to just be random things you do for fun, not an identity about other-ing and marginalizing all women.
Like it or not, for a lot of young people it's the only group they get to be part of and as someone who spent most of his childhood and teenage years excluded from his peers for one reason or another, I get why it matters. It's the same reason why a lot of people still carry around their KISS Army cards or Boy Scouts of America cards and it's just as important.
There being a community makes sense, but I agree with Charlie; there's no reason for it to be so infused with douchebags. Part of the problem may be that while the gaming draws people who are outcast without reason, it also draws people who are outcast because no one wants to put up with their shit. From what I gather, it used to be a lot of teenagers, and yeah, there are people who are shitheads as teenagers, but they grow out of it. These ones don't, for whatever reason.
What I don't understand is the sweeping "no girls allowed" type of crap. In my groups during school, and even just as much online, guys were happy to have girls getting involved, hanging out, etc. But then I've talked to my wife who grew up in the mid-west and she said the guys in her neighborhood didn't want girls playing video games. I'm just ... what? Why would you not want girls around? Girls are great. Women are great. Having friends is great. I don't get it.
See, you don't get it because you were ALLOWED into those groups in school. People wanted you around. These are the kids who had no one and nothing to turn to, turning them into bitter, frightened assholes. What they are seeing now are the people who rejected/reject them in their lives (cool people, jocks, women, etc.) coming into the one place that accepted them and changing it to fit THEIR needs... and now they are scared that the only home they've ever known is going to throw them away just like everyone else did. Why do you think the gaming community rails about rehashed yearly franchises like Madden, FIFA, Call of Duty, and the like? It's not just because these are terrible games... these are terrible games being made for dewchuggers and dudebros. You know... the people the industry caters to but don't give a shit about anything else in it? These kids and maladjusted adults are seeing the industry turn it's back on the kind of stuff THEY want in order to make money off of the casual audience and it scares the crap out of them... and now they have to worry about women too?
This kind of thing happens in every hobbyist industry. D&D is getting a lot of shit right now for being inclusive to minorities and the LGBT community... women still get treated as unequal players in collectible card games... female heavy metal fans are generally considered to be ether groupies, girlfriends of metal fans, or sluts... I'd be willing to bet there are hobby train enthusiasts that are upset that some woman is building her models in a less than realistic fashion. This isn't limited to gaming, it happens everywhere that disaffected people come together around a passion. Hell, it's basically how skinheads, the KKK, and neo-nazis operate: find rejected youngsters, give them a home and identity, and they will cling to it like a life raft. No one wants to face the world alone.
Mind you, this is all reactionary bullshit. Gaming is for everyone, for better or worse. The great unwashed and rejected underclass of gaming aren't right to be doing this. I'm simply saying that, as someone who was rejected by his peers growing up... I get why they are doing it. It's wrong, but I get it.
I really don't want to make this about me, but ...
This is before reading the rest of your post. I think I posted about this before, but I don't blame you for not remembering. People didn't want me around; I stuck around anyway and pretended to have friends, and my brain interpreted abuse as affectionate teasing. But I still watched how they interacted and learned about them, hence my girl observation. I'm gonna cut it there; I just wanted to correct this.
I didn't turn out like these guys.
For the sake of the discussion, I'll assume that based on how I am now, having not been a teenager for 9 years and having grown-up and had friends for a long time now, I have Friend Privilege and am ignorant to the situation of a lot of other people.
But they've been saying that stuff since GTA got big in the late '90s. And if these guys hate Call of Duty so much, why are they the jerks one Xbox Live, shouting obscenities and racial slurs?
Still doesn't explain this. Women can be outcasts too. People can be outcast because of their race, their gender, sexuality, religion, their hobbies, their ideas, etc. If you're an outcast, there's a wide pool of people who you can get to know and won't push you away, because they know how that feels. Something's got to be wrong before the outcast-ism sets in that says they still can't be friends with all these other kinds of people, even though they all know what each other is going through.
And to make my point stronger, you're not like these guys either. So I really feel something else is at play, be it regional or in each person's personal background, or if there's some undercurrent thing that feeds this. Because they don't rally like this against the dudebros, but women? Holy shit, does that ever stir the wasp nest.
This most certainly does NOT NOT NOT happen in every hobbyist industry. Most hobbyists are more than happy to share their passion with other people and get others involved.
The gamer community is petty and juvenile because its main demographic is 15 -20 year old boys (and up to 30 year old *boys*). Period. There's a reason I play TF2 with everyone muted.
Also this:
Have you been to a metal concert? People there may look scary, but typically respect the hell out of women. You don't see this "lol sluts whores whores rape" Frank Miller shit.
Could you share your sources for this statement please.
I don't have links offhand, but I've seen comments pulled from Twitter and somewhere else. Bunch of rejects are pissed that the Human page in the new books is a black woman. I don't know if there are other things they're pissed about, but I presume they're a minority in the D&D community. At the very least, I can verify that this has occurred from my own observation.
Nah man... it was out of line to say it like I did and you didn't deserve it. And no, I don't think I'd ever seen that post, sorry.
It's probably more than fair to call that 40% dudebros that do it for kicks/40% gamers abusing their anonymity/20% who actually hate gay people. But as for why it's still going on... it's because they are an easy target. It's easy to look at the self interested dewchugger and proclaim him and everything he does is what is wrong with the industry (and it IS part of the problem) but it's done because the alternative is to examine what is actually wrong with the industry right now (it's toxic members) and deciding what should or even can be done about it. Dudebros are the dragon ravaging the countryside... toxic gamers are the advisers telling you that the dragon is the problem while they rob the kingdom blind. You can fight the dragon, but it's hard to keep your house in order.
Some people react to pain by gaining empathy. Some people react to it by isolating themselves. Others lash out at anyone and everything that gets near. It's not hard to see which people are the ones causing the problem right now.
I've had 24 years of drugs and therapy, 2 suicide attempts, and almost a 5 years of self reflection since I've been off the medication and out of therapy. I'm not like them because there was actually something WRONG with me beyond my lack of social experiences and I had an outlet beyond gaming (a psychologist). I gained empathy instead of learning to hate others (instead I learned to hate myself). But not everyone is that lucky. If they were, we wouldn't have a problem to begin with.[DOUBLEPOST=1410095153,1410094979][/DOUBLEPOST]
Here's a fine example of hatred. I got it from an article Rich Burlew (Order of the tick) tweeted today.
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It's no big deal; I try to mention pre-college as little as possible because I don't like remembering it anyway. It's easier to say "high school friends" than explain that the people I'm talking about didn't even like me, let alone weren't friends.
If there's a silver lining to this stuff, it's that these guys aren't really gaining traction and really never could.
Well, I'm glad you're with us now.
A viewpoint like in that first link seems to come from the idea that gender stuff, sexuality, race, etc should only be mentioned when making a defense of it, and that to state it for the sake of inclusiveness is only a political gesture, not as a welcome to different kinds of people. It's the same perspective that sees no importance in greater diversity of characters, as if minorities in different aspects only exist to assert their existence as opposed to because they're people.
Perhaps "a lot" was a mis-measure. Regardless, some people are giving them shit over it because of course they are. Ironically, it's mostly people complaining that D&d was inclusive before (and it was, in practice) and saying this pandering like Esc said.
You can look around tumblr is you REALLY want to look it up.
GasBandit
Staff member
Dear lord yes. "Rekt brah" "Get Rekt brah" "Nah brah" "Yah brah" "Rekt, brah" 24/7.