This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
3/4
Okay, now we get to the main star of the show, which is this claim by Danskin:
This is not technically false, but it's a half-truth that's so egregiously misleading that it might as well be a lie. He is trying to imply that there was no journalistic ethical breach, whereas I would say the evidence definitively points to repeated and sustained ethical breaches.
The Totilo article that supposedly exonerates Grayson and Quinn states:
"On March 31, Nathan published the only Kotaku article he's written involving Zoe Quinn. It was about Game Jam, a failed reality show that Zoe and other developers were upset about being on. At the time, Nathan and Zoe were professional acquaintances. He quoted blog posts written by Zoe and others involved in the show. Shortly after that, in early April, Nathan and Zoe began a romantic relationship. He has not written about her since. Nathan never reviewed Zoe Quinn's game Depression Quest, let alone gave it a favorable review."
https://archive.is/8KjOG#selection-2701.170-2701.197
Again, nothing in this is strictly false, but this is not an honest or accurate depiction of what was going on. Furthermore it's necessary to note that Totilo was, as Danskin states, "editor-in-chief at Kotaku". This is basically "Kotaku investigated Kotaku and cleared Kotaku".
In order to understand what this leaves out, we need to look at the record of discussion between Grayson and Quinn. Mind, I am leaving a lot of discussion between Grayson and Quinn out because there is so much of it and a lot of it is just rehashing ground already covered. There is a lot to go through, and a lot of it is pretty incriminating.
23 Jun 2012: The earliest evidence of interaction between Grayson and Quinn I can find. Grayson posts on Twitter after a chat with Zoe Quinn.
Grayson: So, after a fantastic chat with @ZoeQuinnzel, I find out she's leaving the city tonight. GOOD JOB, SAN FRANCISCO. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY.
https://archive.md/Ih5fB
26 Jun 2012: Grayson responds to a tweet of Quinn's.
Quinn: Another loathsome rainbow. @ Charlton Service Plaza (Westbound) http://instagr.am/p/MWslkWErqC/
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Loathsome Rainbow would make an amazing addition to Lucky Charms cereal. Please make that happen once you're rich and famous.
https://archive.md/gWgHB
29 Jun 2012: Quinn and Grayson friend each other on Tribes.
Quinn: @Vahn16 This is the best idea and I think I must join you because all I am doing for fun is getting in to games as art arguments on OkCupid
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel YES. I will totally friend you and stuff on Tribes. What's your username thing?
https://archive.md/C8ZGD
12 Aug 2012: Grayson wishes Quinn a happy birthday on Twitter:
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Happy birthday! Well, what's left of it, anyway <.< >.>
Quinn: @Vahn16 I'm 3 hours ahead so it just started
https://archive.md/t71XS
5 Sep 2012: Grayson posts an article on RockPaperShotgun called "Green For Greenlight: Valve Now Charging $100 Fee" and namedrops Quinn in it a good couple of times, quoting her a bunch and making sure to include her accomplishments and upcoming games in the article. No conflict of interest is reported.
Some choice quotes:
"“$100 is a lot for me right now, because I’ve released all of my games [thus far] for free, and I’m supporting myself on freelance work and contracts till I get my first ‘real’ game done,” said Dames Making Games founder and It’s Not Okay, Cupid developer Zoe Quinn. “That’s eating for a month.”"
"Steam’s still not as open as, say, Desura – nor, in all likelihood, will it ever be. That’s not the point. Is it fair to charge $100 for that? The jury’s still out. But, for better or worse, developers shouldn’t go in expecting something entirely different. ... “It really just seems like an error in communication,” Quinn added. “Which, again, is one of the reasons I didn’t make a page for It’s Not Okay, Cupid yet. It’s clearly not Steam quality at this point [in development]. And if I don’t have a gameplay demo or video that shows that it should be up there, I don’t know why I’d put it on Greenlight.”"
This seems fairly innocuous for now. It is not an isolated incident, however, it ends up being part of a much larger pattern.
https://archive.md/WtK25
13 Nov 2012: On Twitter, Grayson offers to help Quinn with a game of hers she wants to develop. They also have another exchange where he calls her game It's Not Okay, Cupid (abbreviated as INOC) Game Of The Year (albeit a bit jokingly).
Quinn: Gonna make a game about social anxiety where you master moves like "lean against wall", "pretend to check phone", "avoid eye contact"
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I will totally volunteer to be a consultant on those things. I consider myself something of an expert.
Quinn: @Vahn16 low five!
https://archive.md/bZ3Fk
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Although actually, I've always wanted there to be a game where people actually, like, react if you just awkwardly stare at them
Quinn: @Vahn16 that happens in INOC, swear to god
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Gasp! GOTY.
https://archive.is/jQtyF
27 Jan 2013: More friendly communication between Quinn and Grayson.
Quinn: I am gonna start a place that sells 60's themed sandwiches and call it "Psychadeli".
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Never stop saying things.
https://archive.is/5fOUx
28 Jan 2013: Grayson on Twitter promotes an "awesome guide on making games" written by Quinn. As established, these two are already seemingly friendly with each other.
Grayson: Speaking of making games, @ZoeQuinnzel wrote this awesome guide that I fully plan on using in the future.
Quinn: @Vahn16 d'awww
https://archive.is/bb6QU
14 Feb 2013: Quinn's game Depression Quest is released on MobyGames. Nathan Grayson's name is in the special thanks section among others (Nathan will later claim he had no idea about this).
"Special thanks for their amazing support during a really difficult time. This game would have been dead in the water months ago without you all."
https://archive.md/LFrir
22 Nov 2013: Quinn tells Grayson "ilu", he favourites her tweet.
Quinn: @Vahn16 nathan ilu
https://archive.md/X2efl
25 Nov 2013: Quinn tells Nathan on Twitter she really wants to buy him a beer.
Quinn: @Vahn16 dude. I really wanna buy you a beer ASAP
http://archive.is/NyfXd
12 Dec 2013: Another indicator of closeness between Grayson and Quinn on Twitter.
Grayson: In other news, I've become a "listen to @ZoeQuinnzel because she's saying important shit" Twitter bot. So yeah. Bleep motherfucking bloop
https://archive.md/hrQyP
8 Jan 2014: Grayson posts an article on RockPaperShotgun called "Admission Quest: Valve Greenlights 50 More Games". The article, while only really being about Valve greenlighting more games, is for some reason named after Quinn's game Depression Quest, and he specifically gives a shoutout to "powerful Twine darling Depression Quest" as being one of the standouts of the bunch. It's easy to dismiss these things as arbitrary without prior context. It's not so easy when you see the communications that Grayson and Quinn have before this article.
As a little bit more evidence in favour of Grayson's probable partiality here, the article's tags are: "depression quest, Steam, Steam Greenlight, Treasure Adventure World, Valve." So the only two games that are highlighted in the tags are Treasure Adventure World, and, surprise, Depression Quest.
Again, please note how friendly public communications seem to be between Grayson and Quinn at this point, to the extent that Quinn posts "nathan ilu" on Twitter. No conflict of interest is disclosed.
https://archive.md/QwJbc
9 Jan 2014: A day after the publishing of the Admission Quest article, Grayson tells Quinn on Twitter that if she quits, he will "burn down the gaming industry".
Quinn: No wonder Phil quit. Is that gonna be me in a few years?
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I hope not. If it is, I will burn down the gaming industry.
https://archive.is/MDt0u
30 Jan 2014: Quinn tells Grayson and another person on Twitter that she misses them, and tells Grayson that she "owes him a bazillion hugs".
Grayson: Suffice it to say, @haydencd and I did really dumb stuff in a videogame today
Quinn: @Vahn16 @haydencd miss you two
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel @haydencd GDC is nearly upon us. Then there will be dumb shenanigans galore. Also karaoke. For real this time
Quinn: @Vahn16 @haydencd fuck yessssssssssssssss I owe you like a bazillion hugs anyway
https://archive.is/DgC9f
16 Feb 2014: More friendly communication between Grayson and Quinn.
Quinn: The Stanley Parable LARP: a British dude just follows you around cattily narrating what you do into your ear
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel Can we spend all of GDC doing that? It will be terrible for my interviews, but I don't care
https://archive.is/Q1oqX
21 March 2014: Grayson lets slip that he knows Quinn's middle name in a tweet which Quinn favourites.
Grayson: I'm the third person ever to guess @ZoeQuinnzel's middle name!
http://archive.is/OyfUh
Link to Part 4
4/4
22 March 2014: Grayson publishes an article in RockPaperShotgun called "A Game And A Chat: The End Of GDC Spectacularmathon". In it, Zoe Quinn and Depression Quest is featured again.
Some quotes:
"Part one’s guests include Papers Please creator Lucas Pope, Depression Quest creator Zoe Quinn, and Boon Hill dev Matt Ritter. Part two, meanwhile, brings in such luminaries and champion toe fighters as Gone Home writerly brain man Steve Gaynor, Kotaku features editor Kirk Hamilton, resident Vlambeer madman JW Nijman, Action Henk‘s Kitty Calis, and RPS god heroes Cara Ellison and Hayden Dingman."
"Among many other things, we talked everyone’s favorite GDC moments, diversity in the gaming industry, the virtual reality fuuuuuuuture’s growing pains, my Lost Levels talk, and what happens after you release a game like Papers Please or Depression Quest."
So again, Quinn and Depression Quest are highlighted alongside far larger games like Papers Please. Just like all the others, this isn't incriminating on its own, but it does form part of a larger pattern. No conflict of interest is reported.
https://archive.is/3pja1
23 March 2014: Quinn openly admits she hangs with Grayson on Twitter.
Quinn: @tha_rami I'm headed over to butter to hang with @Vahn16
http://archive.is/J6VGp
25 March 2014: Quinn and Grayson speak again on Twitter and send "solidarity" to each other. Quinn is calling Grayson "friend" and they are confirmed to be emailing each other.
Quinn: Realizing the degrees to which working on my art and career has destroyed like 95% of my personal life.
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel I am sending solidarity from my lonely bedroom work perch. I will be here until 5AM or so, I'm thinking
Quinn: @Vahn16 solidarity from the skies, friend. Also answer your damn email
https://archive.md/mmArt#selection-1387.0-1393.63
30 March 2014: Zoe Quinn speaks with Leigh Alexander on Twitter about going to Vegas with Nathan Grayson for a planned collaboration, the DAY BEFORE Grayson wrote an article about her.
Quinn: @leighalexander good thing I'm launching a gonzo games zine this week I guess
Alexander: @ZoeQuinnzel omg no way i wanna know about this
Quinn: @leighalexander it involves me and @notquitefrodo and @Carachan1 and @Vahn16 all going to vegas.
https://archive.is/7V9OH
31 March 2014: Grayson writes an article in Kotaku featuring Quinn, and it's his most incriminating yet. The article is called "The Indie Game Reality TV Show That Went To Hell". This happens only three days before they go to Vegas (where they have sex). The topic of the article is about the failed GAME_JAM which Zoe Quinn was involved in. He paints Quinn as the "good guy" in the drama that ensued and at the very end, he posts about Quinn's desire to start her own game jam.
"And while the experience was trying for all involved, it was also rife with important lessons. Quinn summed it up:"
""There was this amazing thing that happened after the production was over. Without any organization or prompting, we acquired and shared some refreshments around, set up some multiplayer games, invited production staff to just come be people and play with us, and had a spontaneous pop up party more or less. It was the first time I had started to feel like myself at all since landing in LA. I started to remember what life felt like off-set again, and it reminded me of what I love about game jams and the indie community in general. It felt like such a complete contrast to the 24 hours that preceded it, and a thought clicked into my head.""
""I want to run a game jam. I'd love to have the LPers do what they're so often so brilliant at and bridge the gap between the games and the audience, and do it super low-tech, low-budget, documentary style. Capture the inspiration, the hard work, the 3am delirium and the dumb jokes that come with it. Show people how we all band together and support each other through the deadline. That's what I want to show the world about game jams. That's the ambassador I'd rather be.""
This is incriminating because at least less than a month later, in April 2014, Quinn went on to solicit donations for her own game jam, called Rebel Jam, despite having no start date and no determined location. Clicking on the "donate" button goes to what looks like a personal Paypal account. Even more importantly, Rebel Jam never actually ended up happening. I'm going to be charitable and assume that Quinn couldn't get enough funding, but there's also the more unpleasant possibility that I don't think I have to mention.
Either way, it doesn't matter because this looks pretty bad regardless of the point of Rebel Jam. Grayson and Quinn's exchanges definitively seem to imply that they are close, and him creating publicity for her projects definitely violates any code of journalistic integrity.
Again, no conflict of interest is disclosed.
https://archive.md/mrVxK
2 April 2014: Quinn states that the Vegas trip is the next day.
Molinari: @legobutts @ZoeQuinnzel Did I hear someone's coming to Vegas? :o
Quinn: @OneMrBean @legobutts Yeah! I'm going there tomorrow for a few days with @Vahn16 and @notquitefrodo
https://archive.is/Bir5V
2/3 April 2014: Grayson and Quinn go to Vegas and even tweet at each other during the car ride.
Grayson: I've lost track of the number of hours we've been on the road (1? 2?!?). I've eaten both my bags of mini-Reese's. Morale dwindling
Quinn: @Vahn16 what the hell you already ate all that?
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel MY FOOT IS ON YOUR CHAIR WE WILL USE HUMAN SPEECH DAMMIT
Quinn: @Vahn16 I don't sound like a human right now tho also you just tweeted me telling me we were gonna talk instead of tweeting you boob
https://archive.is/LpUuY
https://twitter.com/UnburntWitch/status/451535398980706304
3 April 2014: Grayson posts a vine while in Vegas which features Quinn.
Grayson: The most Las Vegas thing I've ever seen in Las Vegas
https://archive.is/4xW7r
Here is the vine in question. You can see what looks like Quinn's hair in the bottom right when you play the video. It's easily distinguishable because of just how oddly coloured it is.
https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/FC9CA59AE21063416897040969728_168ae459224.4.17621807476874265758.mp4?versionId=HiUYmQ9CzaiMVJWoQG7TqZ6BFQsRG79j
At some point during the Vegas trip, they start having sex. This is corroborated by Gjoni's logs in The Zoe Post, and it is backed up by Grayson's admission in the Totilo article where he states that they started a romantic relationship in early April.
5 April 2014: The end of the Vegas trip. Grayson and Quinn act all mushy on Twitter talking about how they'll "miss each other's faces", and a mutual doesn't seem very surprised to see this lovey dovey behaviour.
Quinn: @Vahn16 yep definitely miss yer face already
Grayson: @ZoeQuinnzel aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame
Quinn: @Vahn16 <3 <3 <3
Harper: @ZoeQuinnzel @Vahn16 Guys, gross. At least invite me next time so I get to be all lovey too. sourface, bitterface
Quinn: @NikaHarper @Vahn16 fuck yes you are invited as HECK
https://archive.is/t56H4#selection-4233.1-4233.73
So let's recap what we have here. Grayson and Quinn seem to have been good friends whose relationship strengthened overtime (just going off their Twitter exchanges alone), and throughout the time they knew each other Grayson wrote not one, not two, not three, but four articles featuring Zoe Quinn all of which brought attention to her future or current projects in some way. The fourth of these articles is the most blatant, undeniable and egregious, and in it Grayson unashamedly shills for Quinn's upcoming game jam project that she solicits donations for (and which never actually ends up happening). And that article is set only a few days before they have sex in Vegas.
As a journalist, if you have a conflict of interest you have to recuse yourself or disclose the conflict of interest, and Grayson did neither. Grayson's excuse was that since they supposedly didn't have sex until a few days after the GAME_JAM article was published, they weren't in a "relationship" at the time, so it's apparently fine that they were at the very least friends before then and were doing a lot of stuff that indicated their blatant personal conflict of interest. But as this redditor notes: "personal conflicts of interest are not limited to people you are having sex with, and putting the sex a few days after the article doesn't really make it notably more ethical".
Funnily enough, Totilo himself stated back in August 2014 on Twitter that "reporters who are in any way close to people they might report on should recuse themselves". Wonder where that principle went.
https://twitter.com/stephentotilo/status/501817475097702402
Anyway, I hope you've noticed just how different the reality is from the portrayal in Danskin's talk to UC Merced, where he makes sure to completely brush over anything at all that might imply that there was a breach of journalistic ethics. The treatment of Gamergate by the mainstream has been an attempt at historical revisionism par excellence, where any indication of unethical behaviour has been stripped out of the record and replaced with some narrative where no one ever had any justification to be angry and Quinn was only ever a Poor Oppressed Victim being unjustly attacked by a virulently misogynist mob. It is an example of where if you repeat a falsehood enough, people will accept it as truth.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link