GWJ (Doesn't) Play Kingdom Come: Deliverance

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Hey folks. After sleeping on it I've decided to remove this video from the front page of GWJ and the Youtube channel. While I stand by my personal views expressed below in the comments, I don't believe that GWJ or its front page are a platform for reflecting my views alone. We're a community here and my coverage of this game has understandably upset some of our members.

I'd like to express my gratitude to Ozy and others who spoke up and also to Hypatian and Dee for stepping in when it wasn't appropriate for me to be involved with this moderation issue. I apologize for dragging this out and any harm I caused to people who have been affected by the developer's comments in the past. My sincere hope has always been that while the GG movement has been painful and harmed many, it would be a wakeup call for developers and gamers alike to reevaluate their stances and create positive shifts in the wider community. I have to believe that's why we all stand up in our own ways to combat it.

So thanks for speaking up and once again showing me that my ideals aren't always a match with reality. They're certainly not worth hurting the people in this community that I care about.

Comments

I think Pebbles is a peeping Tom.

I have no interest in anything from one of the more enthusiastic Gamergate supporters out there and, frankly, I'm disappointed that GWJ is even giving airtime and attention to a voice like that.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

I have no interest in anything from one of the more enthusiastic Gamergate supporters out there and, frankly, I'm disappointed that GWJ is even giving airtime and attention to a voice like that.

I feel like there's an interesting discussion in this about supporting the work vs the creator, but I'm not sure how to frame it. Someone smarter and more eloquent than me needs to weigh in so I can absorb both sides' insights.

And let's keep that discussion in the appropriate forum section.

"Ballsy" is definitely the word for the game. Wish I had time for this one; the sense of place in the world looks amazing and I'd love to be able to fully dive into it.

I'm waiting a couple weeks/months in hopes thst they fix some of the bugs.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

I have no interest in anything from one of the more enthusiastic Gamergate supporters out there and, frankly, I'm disappointed that GWJ is even giving airtime and attention to a voice like that.

I didn't realize that. Frankly, agreed. Separating art from artist is a privileged position.

I think that's a fair perspective. The GG stuff was news to me when it came up in the GWJ thread; I haven't been deep in the trenches like Ozy has so I wasn't aware of this particular dev until now. I did some digging and came across this thread from last month where the developer in question directly addressed his role in GG, politics and other stuff.

I don't agree with his views and he strikes me as a loud mouth asshole who was on the wrong side of things, but the apology felt genuine and the context of his fear of censorship given his personal history I at least understand a bit better. I also didn't see any encouragements or support of death threats, doxing or any of the other heinous sh*t that went on or continues to go on. If I missed that please let me know and I'll pull the coverage.

I don't begrudge anyone boycotting the game or expressing their disappointment here. That's where I landed on this particular product and it was totally my call.

Certis wrote:

I don't agree with his views and he strikes me as a loud mouth asshole who was on the wrong side of things, but the apology felt genuine and the context of his fear of censorship given his personal history I at least understand a bit better. I also didn't see any encouragements or support of death threats, doxing or any of the other heinous sh*t that went on or continues to go on. If I missed that please let me know and I'll pull the coverage.

What a convenient standard. Outside of the bloodthirsty misanthropes on 8chan, you won't ever see open support of that behavior from anybody with anything to lose from supporting Gamergate; that rhetorical shell game is how the movement gained what traction it had, even when it was clear that its concerns were completely manufactured.

But, as always, I know that civil engagement in good faith is the highest priority, even when it elevates utterly reprehensible viewpoints into momentary positions of respectability. Vavra can make his well-timed apology and be guaranteed the benefit of the doubt - it works!

It works so well that even you, in the same post, can seamlessly rationalize his "fear of censorship" with his enthusiastic support of a movement that framed feminist critique as part of a wide-spanning media conspiracy to censor video games. Normalization.

And I get it, just like the old Zisek quote that "an enemy is someone whose story you have not heard." But I have heard Vavra's story. It's the same story as everybody else with anything to lose that's ever supported Gamergate. All for a "historically accurate" video game that carries its own hidden curriculum.

If that apology is truly enough for you, then don't let me inconvenience you or anybody else that wants to enjoy the game. But please don't pretend that this coverage is so carefully distanced either; you describe my complaint "from the trenches" as though you haven't hosted a video game podcast for over ten years. You haven't missed a thing.

I've always respected your fire and willingness to engage directly with GG'ers (as evidenced by your sig) but I just don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on how to combat them or engage with people whose viewpoints we don't like. I hold out hope people can grow and change and do better, I also believe people like yourself have an important role to play in that by pointing out where the problems are. Entrenchment and defensiveness is usually the first reaction and then we see sh*t like what Vavra was spouting in 2014. Now maybe that time has passed something has shifted, I don't know. As much as you claim otherwise, you don't really know either.

There's a reason your account is still active here even though the only time you seem to participate these days is to call me out. I do my best to take it in even though I think you're pretty unfair at times.

I won't be engaging further with you on this though, once the lens gets widened out to that far and you start implicating I'm lying or being disingenuous there's really nowhere to go. I've read your posts a number of times and they've given me plenty to think about. Thanks for that.

I wasn't insinuating that you were lying at any point in that and, if that's how it came across, then I apologize and I'll clarify:

When I mentioned that you rationalized Vavra's explanation for supporting Gamergate, my intended point was that you probably didn't even realize that you did it - that's how normalization works. Everything can be orderly and civil and then, when you look down, you realize the lines have been redrawn under your feet. You realize that you've seen someone draw an equivalence between a totalitarian regime and feminist critique and you've effectively accepted that here.

When I said you "haven't missed a thing," it boils down to your own admission in this thread that you had seen all of this -- not just from me but from other posters in the Catch-All -- and you made the judgment to provide coverage anyway. And I appreciate that you own that judgment because, as you are sometimes eager to point out, it's your site and it's your call.

But that also means you get to own it when you openly insinuate that you'd like to ban someone for making you uncomfortable when they hold you to account for that judgment. If you want to characterize it as disagreement, that's fine - I'll own that too - but you've literally moderated me for posting a question mark in response to you in a thread. You've moderated me for telling someone that cited a "Catholics For Trump" link as a legitimate news source to "get that sh*t out of here" while you have a writer on your site that has claimed in the forums that Muslims are inherently violent. I think you're pretty unfair at times too.

So, if you don't want someone pointing out that you're signal boosting a developer that has supported Gamergate as loudly as anyone, then spare everybody the posturing and just pull the trigger already. And take my pieces off of the site too - I'd do it myself, but I mysteriously lost access to the writer's guild when we transitioned to the new forum software.

Frankly I have no problem looking at creator's politics when weighing weather to support their art. But in this case, like Certis, I had no idea about the dude prior to backing the kickstarter. Since I paid for the game, I'm going to play it, that is all there is to it. And since I'm going to play it, I'd like to discuss it.

The game is very flawed, though there are nuggets of greatness in it. The saving system sucks, it doesn't seem to be terribly optimized, a lot of the sub-systems (like lock-picking and archery) seem designed to punish the player, and there is no difficulty level. The melee combat seems interesting though it will definitely take a while to get it down. There are a lot of very long cut-scenes, to the point where my computer wants to go to sleep while some are still playing.

The story seems to have some historical depth and the world really does a living feel to it. I just haven't decided whether the warts and difficulty of the game are worth the time I'd like to invest in it.

Moderator:

Please note that I'm posting this in rather long form. I hope the reasoning I've laid out will be valuable to folks in understanding the issues involved.

OzymandiasAV, your mention of this issue with the game and the game's developer was totally reasonable as a response to this post, and despite Mr Crinkle's thought it is absolutely appropriate to bring it up in any part of the forum. If things get out of hand, it's up to the moderators to decide when something might need to move to D&D.

However, your later posts in response to Certis's response are not acceptable under the Code of Conduct.

I will give you a break down of what happened here from my point of view:

Certis accepted your criticism respectfully, noted that he hadn't been aware of the developer's stance until recently, and said that he does not agree with the creator's views but didn't find what he's found of them egregious enough to pull coverage of the game completely. He also said that he nevertheless respects anyone who feels strongly enough to boycott the game or express their disappointment.

In response, you immediately turned your rhetoric up to eleven, apparently assuming bad faith on the part of Certis and giving him an extremely aggressive dressing-down. Still, this response had some good points.

Certis replied again, again noting that he respects your position and your passion for this issue. He noted, perhaps unwisely, that you've not been banned despite the aggressiveness of your style of advocacy. A good-faith reading of this is that he respects your advocacy and despite your rhetoric taking the form of personal attacks against him, he has no intention of banning you.

In your final response, you again took a very aggressive stance, assuming bad faith on the part of Certis, dramatically and thoroughly responding to your own assumptions of what is behind what he said.

I will remind you of the standards of the GWJ Code of Conduct:

Examples of behavior that contributes to creating a positive environment include:

  • Using welcoming and inclusive language
  • Being respectful of differing viewpoints and experiences
  • Gracefully accepting constructive criticism
  • Focusing on what is best for the community
  • Showing empathy towards other community members

At this point, you need to cool down and think about these standards, because what you've done here is very much the opposite of all of these suggestions. By all means, continue to speak frankly and openly about issues like this, including the dangers of signal boosting terrible people who cover themselves in a cloak of respectability. But when interacting with members of these forums, including moderators speaking on their own behalf, please avoid turning criticisms into personally-directed diatribes, and respect people enough to take their words at face value and not read unspoken volumes into them.

We all, Certis included, understand and respect the position you have taken, and even agree with much of it. But for the sake of the community, we do in fact need to preserve civility here. Despite the aforementioned dangers of a veneer of respectability, this is necessary because it does no-one any good if this site burns down under the weight of invective.

To sum up:

Nothing Certis said was said as a moderator. He was unwise to note the fire of your rhetoric in the terms he did, but that was not a moderation action, nor a threat. (And as a note, we've also spoken to Certis about his choice of words there.)

But this message is a moderation action. Your positions are valuable and valued by many members of this community, but if you continue to respond to polite agreement with some points of difference by assuming it into whole-hearted disagreement and tearing into the people who disagree with you, we will be forced to take more drastic steps. I very much hope that we can avoid that.

Thanks.

FWIW Certis, I think you handled it pretty well. I have not read the dedicated thread over in Games.

Hypatian wrote:

Moderator:

...

In your final response, you again took a very aggressive stance, assuming bad faith on the part of Certis, dramatically and thoroughly responding to your own assumptions of what is behind what he said.

In that response, I opened with an apology and tried to clarify my comments to be less abrasive, even if they were still in disagreement. I'll concede that the rest of the post was emotionally charged, but it was also in direct response to being told by the person that runs the site -- something that was explicitly reasserted in Shawn's earlier posts -- that I was basically lucky to still be a member of the community. You've made the clarification that his comments were not made as a moderator (and I appreciate the explanation), but I don't know how I can respond constructively to that.

Hypatian wrote:

We all, Certis included, understand and respect the position you have taken, and even agree with much of it. But for the sake of the community, we do in fact need to preserve civility here. Despite the aforementioned dangers of a veneer of respectability, this is necessary because it does no-one any good if this site burns down under the weight of invective.

If you respect my position, then you will understand why I would ask Erik or whoever is around that has the keys to please remove my contributions from the front page. It's a short list - three Fringe Buster pieces and a GWJ Plays video from 1994 week - and I can provide links if needed to expedite the process. If the front page posts can't be removed, then please blank the text and remove my name as the author. I didn't contribute that work to this community to have it be associated with something like this.

Look this is really simple.. GWJ f*cked up again. There is no both sides here. There is only wrong and right and this developer is wrong. Either we take a stand and try and do our small part to make the gaming world and community a better more open place to the marginalized or we acquiesce silently to the status quo and go about making the gaming world largely a hostile place to many of our friends.

It's one thing to have a public forum discussion about a problematic game and/or developer its another thing to have the official website owner actually promote the game. That's bullsh*t. We have to be better than this. GamerGators are basically the alt-right they exist to promote the norm of white dudes > * , they hide behind bullsh*t like historical accuracy and any number of other bullsh*t lines.. but in the end its exactly what it is.

Thanks, Guru.

Everyone, please see original post for an update.

Much love to everyone involved in conversation.

Thank you for this decision

Nothing Certis said was said as a moderator. He was unwise to note the fire of your rhetoric in the terms he did, but that was not a moderation action, nor a threat.

I've been debating on whether or not to respond to this. I know the preference for this site is that moderation issues be addressed privately. I am also well aware that both my friendship with Ozy and my participation in IRC makes it likely that any comment I make will be viewed as dog-piling or brigading. But I strongly feel it needs to be said: this is bullsh*t.

Unlike you and Dee, Certis does not and never has qualified when his comments have come from a position of moderation and when they have been personal comments. You and I joined this site within days of one another; have you ever seen the kind of "mod hat" clarification from Certis that you use every time you moderate? I haven't. There is no need for him to clarify for others when he is speaking from a position of authority the way there is for you or Dee.

Everything Certis says on this site is as a moderator. His is the final authority (his site, his rules) and every direction he gives is expected to be treated with that weight. He is the only person able to freely ban members from the site as he sees fit.

And that's fine. It's his site. But there's no reason Ozy or anyone else should have read his comment as anything other than a threat or insult from a moderator. From the top moderator. I was disappointed by what he said, but I'm equally disappointed to see you rolling out this Huckabee-Sanders garbage to cover for it, to clarify on his behalf what was really meant, and to act like we should have known that all along.

That's not moderation; that's gaslighting.

I expect better of this place and of you. I am grateful to Certis for pulling his video upon further reflection, but for me, personally, the biggest disappointment was in what came after.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Nothing Certis said was said as a moderator. He was unwise to note the fire of your rhetoric in the terms he did, but that was not a moderation action, nor a threat.

I've been debating on whether or not to respond to this. I know the preference for this site is that moderation issues be addressed privately. I am also well aware that both my friendship with Ozy and my participation in IRC makes it likely that any comment I make will be viewed as dog-piling or brigading. But I strongly feel it needs to be said: this is bullsh*t.

Unlike you and Dee, Certis does not and never has qualified when his comments have come from a position of moderation and when they have been personal comments. You and I joined this site within days of one another; have you ever seen the kind of "mod hat" clarification from Certis that you use every time you moderate? I haven't. There is no need for him to clarify for others when he is speaking from a position of authority the way there is for you or Dee.

Everything Certis says on this site is as a moderator. His is the final authority (his site, his rules) and every direction he gives is expected to be treated with that weight. He is the only person able to freely ban members from the site as he sees fit.

And that's fine. It's his site. But there's no reason Ozy or anyone else should have read his comment as anything other than a threat or insult from a moderator. From the top moderator. I was disappointed by what he said, but I'm equally disappointed to see you rolling out this Huckabee-Sanders garbage to cover for it, to clarify on his behalf what was really meant, and to act like we should have known that all along.

That's not moderation; that's gaslighting.

I expect better of this place and of you. I am grateful to Certis for pulling his video upon further reflection, but for me, personally, the biggest disappointment was in what came after.

This is a reality check, and it's a good one IMO. I think that any worthwhile community needs folks who will put stuff like this out there plainly, and that includes Ozy's criticism as well. (I couldn't care less what prompts him to post as long as the posts are reasonable.) It's a gut check. It's the voicing of a valid perspective. It's also far from the end of the world if we're willing to see it that way.

I think we can all agree that somehow this is Q-Stone's fault.

Note lack of mod hat

(Apologies if this is a little rough. I wrote it up once and was pretty happy with it, then my computer ate it. That was downright upsetting, because writing stuff like this is hard as all get out.)

It's true that Certis has been a moderator here for a very long time. The only moderator, for the vast bulk of that. That left him no room to be anything but a moderator, 100% of the time, and during that time he basically never said when he was acting as a moderator. Lately, he's been fairly good about marking when he has on his mod hat, and we've encouraged him to make sure he does so consistently. I think it's a good thing that he can participate more fully in the forums, even if he has to be careful.

Certis is also human, and makes mistakes. He's not marginalized in any way, and that can make it easy for him to not notice what things might mean to those who are more vulnerable. Both Dee and I have taken him to task for this in the past, which is a not insignificant part of why we were chosen as moderators in the first place. He's markedly improved in this respect over the last few years, but he still puts his foot very firmly in it sometimes. (Like this time.)

We've explained to him that his position on the site means he has a great deal of power, that his words carry more weight than most people. It's important that he always remember that he has to watch his words more carefully than most people do because of that. He's also taken Ozy's words more to heart, along with some other reactions people have had, resulting in his choice to remove the original video that caused all this.

In my opinion, it's better that Certis be able to participate in the site more fully as an individual. That's part of why it's a really good thing to have more moderators and for us all to be explicit about when we're speaking officially as moderators.

Moderation is hard, because we're basically the tone police. I'd say that everybody in this conversation right here understands that tone policing is dangerous, but our job is absolutely to keep the peace. Most of the time on these forums, it's not too bad. We tell people to cool off a bit, or declare that a thread is way off track and close it, or eject an interloper who's way out of bounds. The difficult cases are way way harder. Everybody hates us, even when they call us in. We do our very best to make sure that moderation is done fairly and to balance the need to keep things civil against the need to let people speak truth to power.

I'm very very glad that the hard things don't come up too often, because they're exhausting and upsetting and I don't know how long I could manage to do that.

As part of how I work to moderate things, I do my best to cast everybody's words in the best light possible, including in this case Certis's. I happen to have a little more insight into Certis's mental state at times because we talk behind the scenes. Certis stepped back because he realized that things were awful and he was not someone who could moderate the problem because of his involvement, and he explicitly asked for help. So, we were talking some. A combination of talking with him and assuming good intent is what produced my interpretation of what he was trying to say. It also lead to my recognition of the need to point out to him that he needs to be more careful with his words.

Assuming good intent on the part of OzymandiasAV is what resulted in a long message explaining my take on the situation ending with a simple but formal request to cool off a bit.

You are correct that it is not fair to expect everybody on the forum to be able read that into Certis's words the same way. He has outsized power, and his words could be read quite reasonably to mean "toe the line, I can end you." That's why we made a point of calling him to task about that privately, and gave a passing mention in my post of doing so.

However, I'm reasonably satisfied with the outcome of this moderation. I do believe that Ozy was over the line with respect to making things personal and taking things (I'm not talking about the "you're still here" thing) in the most negative light possible. I explained my reasoning, and am satisfied that most of what I was trying to say got across. I emphasized that it was the approach that was the problem, not the content of what Ozy was saying, and that Ozy made some very good points. I'm also happy that Certis took to heart the idea that he needs to be more careful because of his power, and I'm very happy that after reflecting on what people (including Ozy) had said, he chose to take the video down.

Nobody was banned, even temporarily. Ozy requested that some materials be removed from the site, and they have been. Nobody's particularly happy, but that's not at all the worst ending I can imagine.

I would also like to thank you, Clocky, for taking me to task. It sucks to hear, and it's kind of exhausting, but it's also part of the job. If anything, I think the lesson I take from this is that we should be very explicit about our censure of other moderators when something involves them. Since keeping the peace is the job and we'd talked among ourselves to make the point, it didn't seem that needful. But it doesn't give a good look to things when one person involved gets a detailed explanation of what they did wrong, and the other only gets a brief mention of the problem and no detailed explanation. So, we will do better.

And one more final final thought:

If I hadn't been moderating, I would happily have joined in with Ozy, perhaps explaining what he was saying from my point of view with a little less vitriol. I didn't, explicitly because I was moderating. You can't really participate in a conversation and moderate it at the same time. Even when we note our mod hats, that doesn't work well at all. So I did my best to make sure it was clear that Ozy had important points, and let Ozy's words speak for themselves.

Basically, when my mod hat is on I'm doing everything I can to get people back to a place where they can have a conversation and learn from each other. After that, I have to take a step back and let the people involved work out the importance of what everybody's saying.

So, that was me just addressing the things that needed moderation: the approaches that Ozy and Certis took in their conversation. Next time I'll do better and if I'm publicly explicit about things I'll come down on both sides with equal thoroughness.

Mod hat

I invite anybody who wants to discuss this all further to PM me, or Dee, or Certis directly. I'll be locking this thread now.