HoloDust said:
Here, educate yourself a bit:
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It seems most of the discussion or disagreements came when talking about gender politics in gaming. Now, I don't think there is anything wrong with having these discussions (although I certainly don't think reviews are the right place for that), but I think we need to change a few things:
First of all, as TB hinted at, but didn't directly say, the media has a lot of power. That is something that always needs to be kept in mind in these discussions. The games media are immensely powerful when it comes to influencing opinions, with things like giving certain games more publicity or outright denying publicity in addition to the power of review scores and aggregates. The media is powerful enough to destroy a game before it is even released.
Second, I think sensationalism plays a decently large part in many of our gender politics conversations. While freedom should be granted to journalists to express their opinion, we reach a point where we are no longer receiving video game news, so much as tabloids printed to piss people off. There is no real way to quantify this, but it does seem fairly obvious when looking at how GamerGate was handled by the media. Either there was a massive wave of ignorance and a lack of investigations within the media, or sensationalism took hold and they printed stories for hits. How do we condemn this practice while allowing discussion to happen? I think the first step is to change the way you write about these issues. Many times these stories are accusatory and scandalous instead of being open minded and constructive. Unfortunately there is no way to push sensationalism out of the media, but if anyone wants to take steps towards a civil discussion, don't try to do it in a way that is designed to piss people off (just look at all of those anti-gamer pieces that I believe were referenced in the video).
Third, I think the collaboration between the media needs to be severely restricted. While it is natural that many of these people may become friends, it limits the ability to express views counter to the popular belief. This creates a very strong group thinking atmosphere and makes people scared or reluctant to post their honest opinions. This is really dangerous. Having people who speak up about gender issues is quite fine, but this needs to be a discussion, not an assault. We need people on both sides. Many times, GamerGate has been painted as being the attacking side, but people on both sides get a lot of flak for their opinions. When you are in the groupthink atmosphere of journalism, counter opinions are really dangerous. Instead of sitting down and thinking about how you are all going to orchestrate an anti-gamer movement, just let everyone come up with their own opinions...I don't think this particular side of things gets enough discussion.