Bay 12 Games Forum

The first shows a few pretty big names in German quality journalism and how they are connected to certain lobbying organizations for the arms industry - not as in "they talk to those people regularly" but as in "they are members and even parts of the committee of those organizations".
For example there is one who write a strategical paper for the Bundesregierung and then went on to write a positive piece about said strategical paper - one that promotes a more "active" role of the Bundeswehr in the world. There are other examples, but I don't feel qualified to translate them all.
Joffe is especially interesting because he actually sued for this particular episode to be taken from the web presence of the ZDF.
[Edit]The first also comments on how the association agreement between the EU and Ukraine contains military cooperation and the like, thus maybe explaining why Putin might become a bit nervous.[/Edit]


The second one showed a few misrepresentations a perpetrated by the German press.

It begins with some headlines which can be taken to be blatant warmongering. Translated:
"Enough of the talk"
"Show some muscles"
"Now or Never"
"End the Cowardice"
The commentary of the comedians: "That's not reporting, that's general mobilization!"

First example they show: 40 people are forced into a building and burned.
First proposal of the general: "That's just dandy, so just write 'Pro-Russian mob burns helpless Ukrainians!"
The problem: The victims "aren't citizens, they're just separatists."
They cannot write that, so they write this instead (and this part is actually quoted from the newspapers, translation boiled down to )

After fighting in Odessa between pro-russian activists and government supporters at least 46 people died.

Of course the whole exchange is exaggerated - it's satire.

Next is the passenger plain shot down above the Ukraine. Basically there is no evidence as to who actually shot the thing down, so it gets blamed on the separatists.
In the dialogue this is made fun of with "No evidence? That's good, this way we can operate independently of the facts."
A cover is shown that says "Stop Putin Now!" in front of the faces of victims (of the plain crash, I guess).
Next message about the plain is "it has been perforated" but without any evidence as to who actually did it. So, the general says, they can freely conclude that it probably were the separatists. Keep in mind that this is about what is called "quality journalism", not some kind of boulevard paper.
Following that is a reprimand by the "Deutscher Presserat" (German Press Council) for exploiting the photos of victims for political propaganda. The reaction of the guy sitting in the background: "Doesn't matter. We don't need to report that. As long as it's not shown on TV in front of an audience of millions..." (Yes, that's smug...)

The next picture - a guy holding a stuffed animal. This is first commentated as "A, look how he's strangling that Teddy! That's really great!"
That picture has been commented on with (by a paper called "Sonntags Blick" which manages to be grammatically wrong so it's probably not "quality journalism", so there's that)

What kind of humans are these? They are trampling the victims dignity!

Next they show the actual videoclip the picture is taken from. You can watch that part for yourself at 3:30.
Given, it might as well be that this is some kind of propaganda. That doesn't change the fact that the quote is as misleading as it can get.

Next: Someone is saying that the pro-russian separatists have done excellent rescue work (I doubt this is the correct translation for "Bergungsarbeit" in this context but it's everything dict.cc is offering) at the site of the plane crash. The one who did that was the leader of the Dutch investigation team. The reaction of the press - well, there was none. "We must all be very brave now. *dramatic pause* Ignore it!"

They then go on to the whole thing with the Russian aid convoy which immediately was called an invasion.

That is followed by footage of Ukrainian fighters actually sporting SS runes and swastikas. If you wanna see that directly jump to 4:35. Reaction: "We'll just go on calling them 'volunteer battalions'."
Because the rumors that there where fascists involved (long before Russia got involved) must clearly be shown to be false.

Next are photos of a convoy leaving/entering the Ukraine/not moving at all, apparently you cannot really tell. But, fortunately, there are satellite photos from the US! Oh noes, ex CIA agents say you can't see anything on those either.
The general panics and suggests finding someone in the CSU (a right-wing party in Bavaria which is maybe comparable to the Tea Party).
When the writer has problems with that strategy, the guy in the background suggests the "old double strategy: The claim goes into the first paragraph, the journalism into the last sentence."
He then goes on to dictate:
"Russian military convoy destroyed - paragraph end - by momentarily unconfirmed reports."

Now firing starts.
"Breach at the home frontier - readers are attacking the newspapers with letters to the editor!"
"Close them!"
"Which letters? It's all on the net!"
"Then close the boards!"
"NO! People are going to Facebook!"
"Then moderate, block, delete, DELETE!"
"But.. but... we're fighting for freedom of speech!"
"But in Russia, not here!"

Next: The ARD advisory board criticizes their own reporting as biased and one-sided. The general is shocked and calls this "Dolchstoß" ("stab in the back").

They finish with "A satire show on the ZDF is making fun of German journalists right now"
In memory of the (temporary) censoring of their previous episode the general starts screaming about how they are going to sue them to cease and desist until they won't be able to walk anymore.
The guy in the back finishes with saying they don't have time for that and finally manages to get through the screaming of the general to say that this episode of "Die Anstalt" is over.
Unfortunately I haven't seen "Downfall", but I guess the generals behavior channels Hitler in that film.

I agree with LordBucket. The definition for "post-scarcity" applied here basically says in itself "physicall impossible", so I don't see why one even should use that definition in the first place.

@Morrigi:
Modern neurology and pedagogy tend to disagree with that notion.
I know whole schools based on the notion that the best way to teach children is to provide them with abundant resources for learning and not put them under pressure. My experience with the people there tells me that they are far more independent, can keep themselves busy and generally do stuff they want instead of looking for reasons why they cannot do it. I predict the opposite of what you are saying.

@Stuebi:
I guess you've got the tough luck of someone who's present to the phase where the journalists are still learning to get that political stuff right.

I'm trying to buy a game from these people, not joining their Sith-Cult.

Funding their Sith-Cult is alright as long as you're not a participant. It's not like funding is much more important than member count in our modern world.

Tangentially related: It's nice how free-market people always talk about how the free amrket will regulate that kind of stuff, with the "informed consumer" and all. In the next breath they then proceed to bash communists for ignoring "human nature".

@Phmcw:
No disagreement there.

@DJ:
You don't know anything (or almost next to nothing) about my spending or consumption habits, my political goals or what I do to avoid making my social environment worse and what I do to make it better.

The unwillingness to even inform yourself while still taking part in discussions is a bit different from what you are accusing me of. It's not like you wouldn't be able to play any of the criticized games anymore after trying to get an insight into what might be wrong with them. Hey, even Anita says so - only because those games are sexist doesn't mean you shouldn't play or even enjoy them. Damn, almost any format I have seen shortly pointing out sexism in media had a kind of disclaimer somewhere that said that enjoying these media wasn't a bad thing and that it would just be nice if the existent sexism was acknowledged.

I actually do extend effort to know how what I am doing affects society and that is all I ask of others at this point. I don't see where you get the hypocrisy from.
Also I never claimed to exclusively optimize for social welfare. Also just not consuming isn't always the best or even an effective answer.

@Phmcw:
I thought Anonymous was rather a thing of hacker culture (which, in my experience, is quite distinct from gamer culture). I don't know much about gamer culture.
Originally I only wanted to comment on the apparent unwillingness of many people to even discuss politics in the first place. I get this feeling from people who talk about how their non-political safe-zone is destroyed by invading political people. I also never really saw a political piece about games that wasn't shouted down for, well, being political.

@Phmcw:
Sorry, when I searched for OCB on DuckDuckGo I could only find stuff not related to OCB at all.
And I explicitly called it a "rumor". That's exactly why we need reporting on that kind of stuff.

I cannot see the stuff behind your link and I don't even get what your point even is.
I also don't see why a site called "academia.edu" should be even considered to be a part of gaming journalism - it's not like this would be a place gamers use to look up what games to buy next.

Why the hostility/sarcasm? Is the call for more political awareness in gamer culture somehow taboo or are you going to claim that gamers actually are politically aware?
If you want to I can extend my demand to any other not explicitly political subculture - being aware of how your behavior influences the society around you is a good thing, after all.

@DJ:
What is outrageous is the unwillingness of some people to take responsibility of how they shape the society around themselves, for example people in cities complaining about how dirty everything is when the next day they throw their own trash on the ground or people complaining about how cold society is and how nobody supports them in times of hardship and then use that as an excuse to be cold and uncaring themselves.
So, yes, ignoring the politics surrounding gamer culture when you are a part of it is outrageous.

Then we have different expectations of what a review should entail.
For me a review is about how desirable it is for the reader to use said product. For me that also includes how desirable it is to support whoever benefits from the money I pay.
My OCB example is not different from what you said. It's just that what you said draws the conclusion that we shouldn't buy from anybody and rather wait to die, whether I only said that maybe one should pay attention to what they are promoting.

What Anita Sarkeesian is talking about (from my point of view) is the lack of attention to politics in video games compared to the abundance of political issues concerning gender in video games.

While reading an interview on the whole GamerGate disaster I noticed the following:

People started to wonder if those journalists were allowing their personal politics or maybe friendships affect what and who they were covering.

I can understand how friends affecting reviews might be a problem.
"Personal politics" is not as clear cut. As much as some people wish it wasn't that way, politics are a part of everything that's distributed between people who don't know each other personally (and politics also enter the spaces where all people know each other, but that's not important right now). Games are always involved with political topics.

I guess there are a lot of people who believe that politics shouldn't play into the evaluation of a game. I see that as a problem - if you ignore them they won't go away but instead they'll run rampant. Not discussing political problems will make them worse. So, in my eyes, a review of a game will have to cover the political side of that game.
At the same time a review is almost necessarily largely subjective. If it is not, it's probably not going to be read by as many people. That might not be a problem for a blogger who doesn't rely on revenue being generated by his writings, but it's definitely a problem for gaming magazines, so I think professional writers have quite significant incentive to write subjective pieces. Now this isn't as true for politics - opinionated articles on politics are probably bad for revenue (I don't really know), but it is probably really hard to write about the great graphical style and the awesome story with those dreadful game mechanics in a subjective tone and then switch to discussing improbable cleavage and marginalization of minorities more objectively.
So, when games journalists try to do the right thing (that is, accept their responsibility for what politics they promote together with the games they talk about) they aren't trained and experienced enough in writing about politics to not stir up a big controversy. Hence GamerGate'n'stuff.

Does that make any sense?