I’m quite surprised no one has posted it yet. It’s a very interesting interview with Dan. While it’s not directly related to the KCD, there is also some new info about the game. I highly recommend it, especially to those who are aware of the ongoing #gamergate affair.
Actually it has nothing to do with the game AT ALL (just to make that clear).
Still an interesting read, I agree. 
I know. It was meant as a clarification for Freix’ statement that “the interview [was] not directly related to KCD”.
heh he mentioned the queen of sheba debacle early on the campaign. on star citizens forum, some guy said he regret pledging because vavra was “trolling” gamergate. it’s sad how people don’t understand what’s at stake and why vavra doing this is an example to all game developers.
Ohh wait it has something to do with the game:
We had a strong playable female character before all this started. We have gay characters in the game, and we have different minorities in the game, because all I want is to have a mature, strong story. A story that I wanted to tell for years, and I am not going to change it because of outside pressure.
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This. AFAIK it hadn’t been confirmed before that there will be gay characters. While I couldn’t care less whether there will be gays, i know there are some huge threads about it here and i guess some people might find this information useful.
The best part of that whole comment thread was the person who said she disagreed with a lot of what Vavra said but was afraid she’d be attacked if she said more, then she spent another couple dozen comments not really saying anything after multiple people invited her to go ahead and explain and they’d try to keep it civil if the points were well-reasoned. Then she bowed out by basically saying “I don’t think a contrary opinion would really be welcomed in this comment thread supporting one guy speaking up.”
basically she invented a threat in her own mind. lots of social justice types have this mentality. that’s what happens when people buy into the propaganda of “rape culture”, “male domination”. it’s exactly like a cult. they are discouraged from seeking out answers, they just go back to their hiding hole like that poor woman.
It basically amounted to “Everybody’s praising Vavra, so if I speak up against any of his points I’ll be attacked!”
The sad thing is on many sites, that’s true. You can’t control how others react to you and we all know how anonymity makes a lot of people act. Hell, Vavra acknowledged a lot of it is from immature teens, though that’s not the only source of attacks online.
I just don’t like the angle of “Hey I disagree but I’m not going to get into why because you’re all just going to attack me,” thereby not even giving others a real chance to show her they’re better than some random jerk. As a commenter, that’d frustrate me because she’s already made up her mind about how she thinks I’ll react to her.
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Good find Yuusou.
I actually hadn’t seen this, I’m really glad you brought this up. This really goes to show that backing this game was a great decision, not only because its the sort of game I’ve wanted to see for a long time but also that Warhorse are one of these few devs who actually dare to make their own thing and stick to it. And proboably the company keeping the best touch with its fans unlike any other I’ve ever seen before.
Also, Dan Vavra, you’re a goddamn boss.
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interesting read, hope I got it right.
Journalism increasingly degenerating to personal opinion making. Public and range are used to spread their own ideologies. Topics are selected for attention value for (stupid) masses to generate clicks that bring revenue. Objective information as the basis of the reader’s own opinion has become rare - such as the concept of honor of the journalist.
WH will deliver an adult product, players will decide if they like it. Not pseudo journalists.
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Well, I think we should push the whole thing back to its actual proportions. This whole “corruption” issue is mostly tied to very small (and really unimportant) indie games, made by single persons. They got some unethical promotion by single journalists which is just poor taste and against the working ethos of any serious journalist, no question. But this doesn’t mean that “gaming journalism is dead” that some #gamergate people want us to believe. That’s even quite the irony because gamergate is their answer to the “gamers are dead” claims.
Most of the gaming journalists I know are just people like you and me. Gamers who like gaming and writing about games. They care about their working ethos and they care about good games. We shouldn’t damn the whole gaming journalism industry just because there are - surprise, surprise - some black sheeps under them. And then again, nobody really got harmed in the process. Some small, unimportant indie games got some extra-promotion or even higher scores. So maybe they sold some more copies. But when you look at the whole industry that’s really a minimal issue if you ask me.
I can understand that Dan cares about the issue and even is a bit angry but still the whole issue is way overblown. People who don’t follow the industry really closely don’t even understand what all the fuss is about. And they are completely right. Good games will still sell. Look at Divinity: Original Sin for example. I can guarantee you that all their media scores were honest or at least not rooted in corruption. It was just a good game and so a lot of people bought it and it got great scores, both from media and customers. So the world is still turning and we don’t have to call something dead, neither gamers nor the gaming industry nor gaming journalism…
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Never heard about “gaming journalism is dead” aproach. #gamergate actually very precisely differentiates between “bad” journalists and “good” journalists and doesn’t lump them all in one bag, unlike certain journalists did with “gamers”. #gamergate actually very supports and praises objective journalists and only boycots certain gamesites.
And it’s not only about some small indie studios getting better reviews for quite a long time now. This was just a start, but what drives people mad now is journalist bias and unethical aproach to the whole thing. If it was “just” about corruption of some unimportant indie devs, it would have ended 2 weeks ago. We are in a situation when practicaly all big gaming media simply lie or at least tell only one part of the story because of some sick ideology agenda and frienship ties. And this is not just a small thing, number and relevance of these medias is huge (Kotaku, Gamespot, RPS, Polygon to name a few), you can’t dismiss it like some minor issues, it’s actually pretty big. If it were not for unscrupulous censorship, avoidance of discussion, demonizing of opponents and false reporting on a huge scale, no one would have cared for an indies coruption after few days. It is about journalist ethic in general, and that doesn’t mean only corruption.
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There is no “general” #gamergate campaign. Just individuals using the tag to use if for their own agenda. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like it at all. It might be true that some people differentiate and use reason. But the very same people actually don’t need any campaignized approach like #gamergate for that.
- Friendship ties and political agenda are two different things.
- Friendship ties are indeed mostly bound to small indie devs and unimportant on the bigger scale. It’s a very small bunch of individuals.
- Your point about “all big gaming media simply lie” is just bollocks. It’s just not true. We talk about single individuals here and not about almost everyone involved. That’s blowing the whole thing out of proportion to make the issue way more important than it actually is. The problem here is that reasonable critique of single journalists is combined with the general paranoia of huge parts of the gaming community that the whole gaming media is bad and corrupt and biased and whatever. Instead of opening a serious discussion about the topics at hand that indeed leads to bland generalizations like you used it yourself here. Just because some people are involved who work at big gaming sites doesn’t mean that these sites are involved on a general level. That’s something called kin liability and should be avoided…
- Political agandas are a completely different beast. But the topic is complex which makes it even harder to tackle it with something like #gamergate. If a journalist really blocks content from being reviewed for example because a game doesn’t contain feature X he is of course overstretching his power and abusing a political agenda. But on the other hand, just talking about such things in a review is perfectly ok. This is indeed about journalists ethics but it’s something we should talk about with reason and not with some angry outcry and in the childish ways many #gamergate activists present their points…
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Apparently they do need it, they wouldn’t use it otherwise. It’s funny that you are now claiming that there is no “general” #gamergate campaign while it was you in the first place who stated that the whole thing is mostly about corruption of small indie devs. So is there some major common goal or not? You should think it out at least for yourself… It’s true that #gamergate has no hierarchical organization so it’s just bunch of individuals using it, but there clearly are very strong common elements and if there is a childish behavior involved, it is to ignore those main thoughts just because it’s not completely united voice. To do that is as stupid as condemning all feminists just because there are some crazy SJWs. This is what kills the discussion.
Anyone said they are not? However, they can be related because people sharing the same interests and opinions tend to socialize with each other you know…
No, friendly ties are not bound exclusively to indie devs. And to think that friendly ties can’t be important in bigger scale is really naive. Hell, do you have an idea how business and politics are made? How important contacts are? When the new FED Chair was about to be appointed, people in economics trying to guess who it will be, were mostly interested in with whom Obama plays a golf… A friendship not important for a bigger scale you say? I’m not saying we have here some huge conspiracy, but to dismiss friendly ties as something not relevant is just ridiculous.
It’s true that not every journalist in said gamesites is involved. Never said that. However, a gamesite (every newspaper in general) is represented by what it publishes. If a gamesite publishes only one part of the story and doesn’t give an opportunity to the other side to at least defend itself, it clearly shows where the gamesite stands. There is always some one in charge who approves what will be published, it’s not like every employee can decide what he will write you know? It’s also how politics of common newspaper is made, some are defined as right-winged, some are left-winged while it doesn’t mean that all journalists of that particular newspaper share the same opinion. Deal with it.
You still call for a discussion, but the problem here is that these very gamesites don’t allow it and do exactly what you do - marginalize one part of the conflict. Not a good start for serious discussion. And I ask you again, please don’t use these straw-men arguments about “all medias are corrupted paranoia”. No one says that, definitely not me and not even people on 4chan. You would know if you actually listened. However, I stand for that the medias mentioned above do publish biased and untrue articles without allowing different view.
Well, maybe many activists act in childish way, but so do many journalists and others. Many others don’t however. Also angry outcry can be heard from both sides. Should we stop talk to journalists because Leigh Alexandr threatens people on daily basis? This is really not a good argument to dismiss #gamergate.
You misunderstood me. It’s not my opinion to stop anyone from discussing the issue. But I don’t like the whole thing campaignized. So it’s not about valid and reasonable criticism which is good but about the form in which it is brought forward. For an example of that you can just look at Dan’s own twitter posts about #gamergate. 50% of them are just childish posts which do the whole issue at hand a disservice. If you ask me we should be able to talk about the topic without taking part in any campaign, rallying up with other more or less anomymous people on the net. The problem with the campaign is that there is a lot of misleading and even aggressive behaviour involved due to its open nature and by taking part in it you connect your own thoughts to all of these other posts and contributions. So you weaken every post of reason you bring forward. Nobody takes you serious if half of the campaign you take part in is just childish or overly aggressive, even if your own posts are reasonable. That’s MY problem with the whole #gamergate thing.
Of course people sharing same interests tend to socialize. But it depends on their position in the industry whether this has any real implications for other people in the industry or even the general behaviour in the industry. If there are friendship ties between single journalists and single indie devs there is imo no real effect on the industry as a whole, maybe only for a limited part of the industry or even only for a specific indie game. I don’t say that friendship ties leading to unethical behaviour is any good but I just don’t see the deep influence and importance for the whole industry others seem to see.
There is a different between “not relevant” and “not having a big effect on the greater scale”. I only said the latter. Just in case I’ve missed something: IIRC there is not even one known case of the last months or years in which any friendship tie or other connection between journalists and devs lead to unethical promotion of any AAA or AA game. I follow the industry very closely and I haven’t noticed such a case. Of course there is the real possibility that something like that could happen without anyone noticing it. But in the end, people tend to make mistakes and almost everything comes out sooner or later. Before we dismiss the whole gaming journalism industry as being in constant danger of being unethical or corrupt we also have to make clear that their working conditions require at least a good connection to devs and publishers. Journalism and the industry itself need each other and they are in constant contact. It’s illusional to think that there can’t and should be friendship ties between journalists and devs or publishers. In the end, it depends on the working ethos of single individuals. There are always black sheeps in the flock, no matter in which industry or group of people. Gaming journalism is by no means an exception. Of course there are weak people who sometimes misuse their position to promote their friends or who sometimes misuse their position to promote certain political agendas. But it’s not like journalism ethics were completely unknown in the gaming industry. So I don’t really see what the whole fuss of #gamergate is all about. To me (note: that’s only my impression after following the whole thing and reading a lot of stuff about it) many people just use the tag and campaign to just express their already existing deep distrust in gaming journalism. It’s the huge conspiracy theories which work here in the back-rooms. Some people - I don’t deny that at all - have noble intentions and they argue with reason but much of it seems just overblown and exaggerated to me. The typcial single examples which are often mistakenly used to claim general conditions are a very obvious sign of that.
It’s not my intention to belittle anything. I just share my own observations of the issue and I indeed think that the issue is kind of overstated. It should be in the intention of a serious critic to put the story in the fitting dimensions. Of course you are free to disagree. In my opinion it’s part of a serious discussion to also talk about dimensions and personal thoughts on general effects of an issue so I don’t actually see my censoring the discussion or stopping it from happening at all.
It’s true that a website/magazine is to make responsible for what its journalists write and publish, no question. But without further knowledge we cannot say whether website X or Y publishes “only one site of a story” on purpose (to follow a certain agenda) or whether they just don’t have a journalist who wants to write about the other side of a story. In classical newspapers we have something like the “commentary”. Many of the articles on #gamergate and connected issues were such commentaries and personal opinions of single journalists as well (although not clearly marked as such in some cases which is indeed to be condemned). They were published because there was no reason to not publish them. On the opposite, wouldn’t not publishing them mean that there was some kind of censorship in place? I very much agree with you that it’s deeply unethical to only publish one side of a story on purpose and for example forbid other journalists of the same site to publish a different point a view. But imo we don’t have proof for such a behaviour. One possible exception from that may be Polygon from which we know that the chief editor himself has a very strong opinion on the issue. But still we don’t know if he actively block other journalists of Polygon to publish their own views on the issue on the site.
But of course you’re right that on the big scale a newspaper usually has a certain orientated, constructed by the combined opinon of everyone writing for it. But what does that imply for the corresponding industry in general? People tend to read the newspapers which have a similar political orientation to their own. So if you don’t agree with a certain newspaper you usually just avoid it. Read something else.
I don’t use any straw-men arguments at all. I share my own experiences. And trust me, I’ve listened and read a lot, I would even go so far saying that I’ve read more about the whole issue than most of the people commenting in public about it. But nobody is unfailable and I don’t want to establish an argument of authority based on that (it was just meant as a defense against your statement that I should listen better). But ok, let’s talk about argumentation. Dan also just shared his personal experiences in the interview. He said that he doesn’t hire men or women if not for their qualification. He brought up Amy Hennig as an example of a female dev who made it with skill. But that’s nothing else than generalization based on single examples. It’s the same faulty argumentation you accuse me and other people of.
But we could even go a lot deeper. Many #gamergate activists claim that they only talk about journalism ethics and corruption in gaming but that’s not where the whole issue started. Many of them use terms like “SJW (=Social Justice Warriors)” and this term is clearly rooted in the gender/feminism conflict which came historically before the whole #gamergate issue. In fact, there are a lot of elements connected to the whole story (feminism/gender conflicts, journalism ethics, personal stories of single devs, harassment and ethics on the internet). Many #gamergate activists (like Dan) claim that they only talk about journalism ethics but that’s too short-sighted and finally not true. By using terms like SJW they of course talk about the gender/feminism conflict which seem to have started the whole story. The problem is that the whole issue has become so complex with some many elements and interest groups involved that it’s almost impossible to talk about it in full and in reasonable manner. Using terms with “bad connotations” doesn’t help at all here. On the opposite, it implies that there was an ongoing war between SJW and gamers which is imo nothing else than childish and actually harmful for any reasonable point you want to bring forward.
Of course both “sides” can be accused of that, no question. And you’re wrong if you think that I want to dismiss one specific side to promote the other. Instead, I agree on many points reasonable #gamergate activists bring forward. The problem is that I don’t agree on their strategy and their “war terminology”. It’s not about being silent, it’s about what you say and how you say it. If somebody like Leigh Alexandr misuses her position and people have proof for that they have every right to state that. It’s actually good that people do so because that’s a “hard case” for which people have proof then. But anyway, you don’t need any #gamergate tag for that.
Note: I’m not a native English speaker, so maybe I don’t always use the right terms/words. Sry for that, might cause some misunderstandings.
While I understand you don’t want to stop the discussion about the whole thing and I didn’t meant to say that, your intention of excluding the #gamergate campaign from the discussion because of some poisoned apples or “childish posts” and rather having it somehow “out” of that hashtag with individual people, would lead exatly to that. It’s because individualy, they would be ignored just like they were before the #gamergate. The hashtag has spreaded like that because people felt they are not represented and need louder voice which they’ll get only if there is a lot of them. Even weakened #gamergate representative has much stronger voice than individual from the “outside”.
Well, I meant “not relevant (for bigger scale)” as was that particular response all about and which is what you in fact said earlier, but I’ll give you that, I didn’t make myself clear.
For the rest of this part of your response, I think you way too much exaggerate the agresivness of #gamergate “representatives”. When searching for #gamergate hashtag on twitter, the vast majority is pretty decent and reasonable. I also think you don’t really understand the importance of symbolism. And not only in this case, but in society in general. Not a single political movement, happening or revolution could happen without symbols. They might be very simplified, they might be event dumb, but they are always neccesery to unite people and to make a difference. It’s not that easy to just dump symbols a say “I don’t need it, I’m better than that”. There is nothing like completely white lobby group. You always work with what you have. Without #gamergate, there would be no discussion at all.
I might respond to the rest later, I don’t have enough time right now. And don’t apology for your english, it’s pretty decent. I’m not native speaker either and I’m butchering it as well, so we are even. 
Well, after weeks of hard research, we #Gamergate ‘misogynist neckbeards’ have found that the issue with games journalists was not them on their own. Take a look at this article written over a year ago-
After that was made public, most of the major gaming sites started to implement that almost perfectly. On top of that, we’ve found that a group of academics who are members of DiGRA had an ‘action plan’ which we managed to grab before the documents were deleted- http://pastebin.com/LAmZNVKn A couple of choice quotes-
“So yeah. Over on The Twitters we (as in yours truly, +Ian Miles Cheong, +Brendan Keogh, +Rowan Kaiser, +Mattie Brice and +Annie Dennisdóttir Wright) started discussing our various attempts to undermine the heteronormative hegemony. And now we continue it where we don’t have wordcaps.”
“Adrienne: Why do we see such tension between academics and game designers? less of an issue with indies, but there are always some people in industry that have similar questions until industrial logic takes over later and how can we better intervene in industrial logics to disturb that process. How can academics bridge the gap to the industry audience to help them do different work? How can we disrupt the capitalist norms that facilitate this?”
Since I can’t post the rest of it in this post, due to me not having posted in the forums before, more below-