Is Kotaku genuinely trying to clean up its act?
Well this is interesting. Fellow Pandagonians have probably already read Amanda’s follow-up to my previously-linked post taking apart an anti-feminist’s attempt to blame videogames for the loss of male excellence:
But what’s really funny is how the stereotype that feminists are scolds completely confused some men who want so bad to write off women’s equality as some sort of de facto drag on their pleasures. Women who whine that men don’t fill some Father-Knows-Best role are hardly feminists, and K-Lo, who suggested that men who refuse to play Ward Cleaver are the direct fault of feminists who don’t entice men with submission, are openly hostile to feminism.
I’ve done battle in the previous thread and pointed out that the reason we’ve suddenly got a bunch of hooting dickholes* was probably due to Amanda’s post being linked (albeit favorably) by Kotaku. And it is no surprise to any of us here that it resulted in a fair number of Kotaku posters upon seeing the word “feminist,” allowed their eyes to roll backwards in their head, and launched into barely-literate anti-feminist screeds. Even though, as I’ve recently pointed out and Amanda reinforced, they have a lot more to gain selfishly from the feminist cause than the anti-feminist cause.
Of course, I have serious problems detaching myself from these discussions, but I wanted to see what was happening “on the other side of the fence” so to speak, so I went back to Kotaku and did a little looking around. The original post linking to Amanda was actually pretty damn good for the site in comments, which I already knew but is worth pointing out. Most of the comments in there are along the lines of “girls game, it’s awesome, go Amanda.” There are a handful of idiots doing the idiot-thing, but considering the post actually uses the term “feminist” I was generally impressed with the Kotaku’s comments.
The problem, of course, is that everyone is nice to you and your best friend when you’re handing out gum.
Following another link, I checked out the Kotaku article about the Hymowitz article Amanda was originally blogging about, which was (understandably) negative because the article was an ignorant piece of trash. However, what do I see at the end of the article before the comments begin?
Eds Note: Keep the comments clean and respectful, or I’ll ban your ass in a heartbeat.
Now, I will be the first to admit that I am biased against Kotaku. It’s not like Joystiq is some sort of feminist paradise, but I always felt that with Joystiq, the Barrens Chat that is the comments section–while not adequately moderated–was at least not actively encouraged by such posts as “Jade Raymond Smells Pretty at London Game Fest” and “Soul Caliber IV Features Tasteful Greek Cleavage.” But with the Editor’s note and a fistful of positive comments to be found, could it be indicative of a sea change over at Kotaku to not be so actively misogynistic?
Reviewing the stories available, it does appear that Kotaku is toning down (although not eliminating) the “ZOMG B00beez”-style posts. And it looks like many of the bloggers there are trying to foster a less hostile environment towards women. However, as I flipped through the pages, building up my heart meter towards a site that was once so reviled, it was only natural that I would find myself down to a furiously beeping quarter heart when I encountered the boss: Brian Crecente–who is already known in these parts for his anti-woman hijinx.
He opens his review of Kate Hymowitz’s article with the following line in the sand:
Wow, there are a lot of hateful women out there. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are just as many hateful men out there too, but none of them have been given the space in large newspapers to spew their anger at video games and the men who play them, so I’ll limit my ire to them in this post.
…and it follows from there. It is unsurprising, then, that commenters left such lovely sentiments as “if she wouldn’t be such a c*%t then maybe the child-men she’s hangin with would put down the controller and shag the hell outta that dried up ol prune” and “shave your arm pits and leg hair cause i think they’re clouding your vision a bit gloria. need to look that women are just as equally to blame here or how about the parents that never taught the kids to go out and work hard for a living?”
Overall, it appears that Kotaku is taking steps to correct the turgid swamp of trollish stupidity and misogyny that it has allowed to fester for so long, but unfortunately, to mix a metaphore, this fish still stinks from the head.
* Thanks, Yahtzee!
February 5th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
You should see the email I’m getting.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Just an FYI: that last link there- “his review of Kate Hymowitz’s article” just leads back to your main page, not to the Hymowitz article.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Oh, thanks Roy. I was definitely taxing my clipboard there.
And Amanda: I do *not* doubt it. There’s a reason I don’t publish an email address for this blog.
February 5th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Amanda, let me guess: evenly divided between “OMFG u r so hot please come sex0rz me and cook me dinner while I play Crysis” and “3-D women like you suck!”
February 5th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
There’s a reason I don’t publish an email address for this blog.
Yeah, I once spent a good couple of minutes looking through your site to send you a link to an article. Oh well…
More relatedly: What is this “Ko-ta-ku”, and is there anything worth reading there? The only time I ever hear about it is when someone complains about how stupid they are. Since the people I read are A) smart and B) have the same 24hr days I do, I wonder why anyone seems to bother clicking on over…
February 5th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Kotaku is a gaming blog like Joystiq or Game Daily, but it’s a lot closer to Destructoid in the level of discourse to be found in its comments section. When I’m looking for stories I do tend to cruise by it occasionally as a last-ditch effort for content, but I’m generally so disgusted by what I see there that I lose the capacity to write coherently for a while afterwards.
If you ever want to tip me off to something you can definitely just leave it in a comment, I read everything that comes through this blog so I promise I’ll get it.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Good to know. And good to know
The next question is: what’s a site that does decent game reviews? More in depth than “pretty graphics”, or “this game is coming”. I would have loved _years_ ago to have heard of Phoenix Wright, for instance. And once I had heard of it, no one would tell me what it was all about and how it played.
I dunno. I’m just frustrated at my inability to find a site that put out a lot of reviews that actually told me if the game was any fun, and what the mechanics were like. You do a pretty good job– for the 1 or 3 games you review in a month…
February 5th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
There’s nothing quite like the comments section of a women-in-gaming article to make me despair for the future of my gender and favorite hobby.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
…Ouch! Hey! I try, but I work a 45-hour week and pay for all this stuff out-of-pocket!!!
But more to the point, have you checked out the Iris Network Directory?
February 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Overall, it appears that Kotaku is taking steps to correct the turgid swamp of trollish stupidity and misogyny that it has allowed to fester for so long, but unfortunately, to mix a metaphore, this fish still stinks from the head.
Well said.
I think the other writers on the site are conscious of the image of Kotaku as a journalistic outlet and probably do want to raise its reputation, but on the other hand Kotaku readership may be unlikely to support the higher standards because they’ve got a very visible corner of the gaming world to spew and validate their nonsense.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
I was trying to say more “wow, for a single person blog (for which you receive no money), you sure do put out a good many high-quality reviews.” I can see how you would have read it differently.
February 5th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
@ Punning Pundit - 1up.com provide fairly decent subjective reviews. They don’t go much into depth but they usually tackle the reviews insightfully, though often they’re a little lenient.
And there are others but I’m struggling to find links to them! And also, when the AV Club post game reviews, which is relatively infrequent, they’re usually pretty good too - http://www.avclub.com/content/games.
Unfortunately, if you want in depth reviews, the only place that used to do them was GameSpot, though their credibility is severely lacking nowadays.
February 5th, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Punning -
February 5th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
@ Punning Pundit: I go to Eurogamer for reviews.
February 6th, 2008 at 1:52 am
Ahh yeah, forgot about them
February 6th, 2008 at 3:28 am
[...] I follow the link to Feminist Gamers in the Gaming in the Media article (they express a similar disbelief that Kotaku is turning over a [...]
February 6th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Nice post. Good to see that I wasn’t alone with the sentiment that Joystiq isn’t as juvenile as as Kotaku. I used to read Joystiq for my gaminginfo but got recommended to use Kotaku instead by some friend. Among the things I feel that is better with Joystiq is that the climate there doesn’t feel as hostile as on Kotaku and that their pictures accompaning (sp?) the articles aren’t as juvenile(sexist?). I can’t understand how Kotaku(brian) can claim to fight the “boy’s club”-climate when they use the picture they use with the articles, or even the contents of the articles they post there sometimes. For example this article about THQ getting a new Chief financial officer
http://kotaku.com/352506/thq-gets-new-numbers-man
uses the follow picture:
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/9/2008/02/smallish_thqladies.jpg
So yeah about that boy’s club…..
Sorry for the incomprehensible english, it’s not my first language.
February 6th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Thanks for the link! And you’re absolutely right, it’s not like they don’t know what they’re doing. Just in that article alone there were a bunch of “I’d hit that!”-style comments that had absolutely nothing to do with the article and everything to do with the booth babes that they chose to put up to get the readers to click thru.
February 6th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Thanks for the links, everyone. I’ll check those sites out
I wonder if they (Kotaku) _don’t_ know what they’re doing. I mean, they may not have figured out the link between showing women as objects and their readers making objectifying comments. It would require a frame of reference they don’t necessarily have…
February 6th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Punning: Maybe they don’t agree that their objectifying behavior feeds the cesspool that is their comments section, but they’ve had it pointed out plenty of times and have acknowledged that. Hence the way Crecente makes a big passive-aggressive show about how oppressed he is by all the mean feminists every time he posts about women and gaming (generally, words to the effect of “Every time I talk about women I get crap from the feminists! Nothing I can say makes them happy!”).
February 6th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Won’t anyone think of poor oppressed Crecente? I mean, he hired some women bloggers! Why aren’t we feminists kissing his ass for the clearly huge strides that he’s taken to dismantle the boy’s club of gaming? I, for one, am ashamed — yes, ASHAMED — of the behaviour here. He goes out of his way to talk about women, and post pictures of women, and post pictures of video game women, and all we do is nag him and try to take away his sexy. If we were rational feminists we would clearly see that he is a champion of women’s rights and we would follow the lead he’s set in paving the way for a more equal gaming culture (now with more boobs).
February 6th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
At some point in his developmentally-stuck existence, he apparently got the impression that “feminism” meant “women who want to have sex with you lots but make no other demands”.
February 6th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
Myth — like the episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia in which the boys try to figure out which side of a clinic protest to side on based on who would have more chicks to hit on?
February 10th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
When I sent Marcotte’s article in to Kotaku, I did it in a rage over their recent obsession with random opinion columnists for the sin of being women not as aware of what games meant to some people as gamers seem to think everyone should be (including my boyfriend, who was rightly banned for one of his remarks). I really didn’t expect it to get posted. I expected it to be ignored like women who play games always seem to be there.
I understand your skepticism about Kotaku ever changing their tune (those college humor ads make me sick to my stomach), but here’s hoping against hope that it does.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:07 am
Since optimism is something I have yet to develop, I’m sure when Kotaku actually makes real, meaningful changes towards the way it treats women, Satan will pop up out of the deepest circle of hell complaining of Arctic circle temperatures. And even then, there will be trolls sniggering over DOA: All Girl Jell-O Wrastling and demanding even less clothing on Lara Croft.
February 11th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Eh, hell froze over back when they announced Sonic in Brawl…
February 11th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hell froze over around level 8, if I remember my Dante correctly.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I believe Dungeon is correct, unfortunately. Such ways are not easily changed, and certainly not overnight.
Ah yes; DOA: Bounce Bounce Revolution.
Yeah…I don’t see such intellectual gems going away from the game market anytime soon either.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Well, the Nordic mythology’s hell was frozen, and Lordi won Eurovision in 2006 despite cries that hell would freeze over before they did (I think the monsters in the band threatened to stomp Satan under their 10 inch platform boots and and eat him alive if he didn’t turn off the central heating - or Lordi just HARD ROCKS HALLELUJAH!!!! l…l l…l *double evil horns*), but I still don’t see any real change at Kotaku in the near or distant future. Maybe we can all chip in to buy Date a pizza, some beer and a strawberry sundae to get him to go kick some troll behind for us.