Analysis of The Escapist interviews

I posted the first part of my analysis of the series of male developer interviews published on The Escapist on G+ and will add them to the end of this post. For now, I'd like to examine the core questions that were asked of 13 of the male developers.

What is your definition of "gamer"?

This is an important question to ask, although in a few cases it wasn't asked until after the interview was otherwise completed. Since the definition of gamer varies, knowing how each one defines it provides much needed context to the answers.

Do you make games for gamers? (I'm using "gamer" here to mean "core game enthusiast")

Ok, things have already gone off the rails a bit. Really this question should have been "For whom do you make games?" With the current atmosphere surrounding gaming, a "no" opens people up to abuse. It's additionally difficult when the interviewer is using his own definition of gamer, meaning "core game enthusiast." Not only is the term "core game enthusiast" problematic but he's centering on the stated expected audience of his site. Not a good position to put an interviewee in if the interview is supposed to lack an editorial voice, in my opinion.

Do you think gamer culture more toxic than other enthusiast cultures on the web (political enthusiasts, fashion enthusiasts, car enthusiasts, gun enthusiasts, etc.)? (I'm using "gamer" here to mean "core game enthusiast").

What does this question even mean and why would these interviewees be in a position to really answer it? While I get that many people have multiple interests, the number that reach enthusiast level is likely to be rather small. This question would be better served by people who study such communities in the aggregate. Also, why does it matter if group A is more or less toxic than group B if there is toxicity. Finally, the question suggests an assumption of toxicity which some may disagree with but there's no easy way to signal that given the question construction.

What is your reaction to this sentiment, expressed in Gamasutra: "Gamers are over. That's why they're so mad."

I feel strange about this being included in here. I get that this was probably included due to Intel's decision to pull their ads from the Gamasutra site, but there were a lot of articles written around that time period that expressed similar arguments. Also, I'm not entirely sure why I should care about a game developer's reaction to that statement. This seems like a softball question to those interviewees that align with GamerGate but a poor question for just about anyone else.

What is the root cause of GamerGate? Do you see it as part of a larger "culture war"?

I thought GamerGate was supposed to be about journalistic ethics. Why isn't the question here about those alleged ethics violations? Why reference a culture war, especially when that's part of an unsubstantiated and quite lacking conspiracy theory?

Imagine a development team composed of middle-aged white men creates a game explicitly aimed at young men called AMERICAN VENGEANCE that features a lantern-jawed white American soldier attempting to save his exotic-dancer girlfriend (complete with jiggle physics) from torture at the hands of Jihadists. Violence is the only way to advance in the game and the girlfriend's torture is as graphic as anything in the movie SAW. But as far as violent shooter games go, it is exceptionally innovative, gorgeous, and fun. Is it fair to give the game a low review score for lacking inclusiveness? Is it fair to give the game a lower review score for having violent or misogynist themes?

What? Why not just ask what the purpose of reviews are? What people should or shouldn't review? This is needlessly inflammatory if you are trying to conduct an impartial interview with people from many different points of view. Also, these are game developers NOT journalists or people necessarily knowledgeable about ethical standards for reviews. While I would hope that developers would be open to critiques to their work from a variety of lenses, I don't particularly care if they are or are not.

Do you believe videogames can affect the personality of their players, making them more violent or sexist, for instance? If so, how do you as a creator respond to this? How should the industry respond? How should society respond?

Again, how are these people necessarily in a position to answer this? Why not conduct interviews with people who know about this instead of asking someone's beliefs? Why is this a core question when the issue is supposedly journalistic ethics?

Ultimately, which is more important: The individual artist's right to create artistic works, regardless of how distasteful we may find them; or our society's right to create an environment free from bigotry and hatred?

First, this is not how rights work. You can't declare that in all cases one right will trump another. Second, this is a slanted question. I don't know of a single person who is demanding a societal "right to create an environment free from bigotry and hatred." In fact, what I do see are a lot of people who are saying it's ok to enjoy problematic things, in part because people are complex, but with that comes the responsibility to acknowledge their problematic aspects.

These are terrible interview questions. They are stacked towards the point of view that Alexander Macris himself acknowledges he has. They also reveal the true intents behind GamerGate. Notice, not one of these questions addresses questions of corruption or the relationships between developers and press or between developers and fans. I get that other questions ask that but they are not part of the core questions he asked 13 out of the 16 interviews currently on the site.

The whole thing was terrible. As an attempt to provide a variety of points of view, it's a failure because the questions are so tilted it feels like it should be on the Colbert Report. I understand that he put a lot of work into this and that it took weeks, but that doesn't excuse the sloppiness. To top it all off, he didn't disclose his personal relationships with at least two of the interviewees. One is someone he has called a friend for over 15 years and the other is a person who's IndieGoGo campaign he recently contributed to. Jenn Frank was driven away over a much lesser relationship, and while it's not part of The Escapists' ethics clause to disclose these things, I think it's hypocritical that people like Jenn Frank are viciously attacked whereas Macris is applauded.

Anyways, here's the rest of the analysis. This analysis suggests that there are some real issues with the balance between the women's and the men's presentations, the questions asked each, the amount of time given to each, and the like.

Approach
First, let's compare the approach. The female developers were asked to give statements by a fellow female dev, not by the staff of The Escapist. The female developer was one of the 7 who gave statements. It's unclear how long they had to give their statements but multiple of them mention that there is a deadline. Their statements are published on September 24th. Since some of the female developers wanted to be anonymous, all were made anonymous.

The mostly male developers (one of the interviews is with a game design studio that has male and female members) on the other hand is an actual interview and it is clear with several of them that there was a back and forth with questions. Seventeen interviews were conducted although one was removed later due to evidence that he was allegedly involved in harassment of several other people. At least one staff member is conducting the interviews and they happen over several weeks and are published on October 10th, a good two weeks after the female developers statements are published. There is a mixture of anonymous and not.

Format
The female developer statements were presented one after another and are not given separate pages on the site. Only one developer has a statement that goes multiple pages.

The male developer interviews are presented in a table with names and summations of part of their interview. They each have their own page on the site and many of the interviews are consist of multiple pages within each. Information about their credentials is provided along with the type of game design work and other links to the games industry are included.

Questions Asked

For the female developers, they were asked to address the following talking points if they wished.

What do you think about the term "gamer?" and about #GamerGate?
What you think about the press and any corruption you think occurs?
Should controversial games be available (whether that controversy comes from content like rape or a strong "social agenda")?
Do you feel like "social issues" or pressure have changed your personal work or your work for an employer, and if so, in what way?
Has #GamerGate affected you personally or professionally--has it changed the way you feel about your games, your audience, or your work?

For the male gamers, the questions varied. Here are the core ones that the majority were asked.

What is your definition of "gamer"?
Do you make games for gamers? (I'm using "gamer" here to mean "core game enthusiast")
Do you think gamer culture more toxic than other enthusiast cultures on the web (political enthusiasts, fashion enthusiasts, car enthusiasts, gun enthusiasts, etc.)? (I'm using "gamer" here to mean "core game enthusiast").
What is your reaction to this sentiment, expressed in Gamasutra: "Gamers are over. That's why they're so mad."
What is the root cause of GamerGate? Do you see it as part of a larger "culture war"?
Imagine a development team composed of middle-aged white men creates a game explicitly aimed at young men called AMERICAN VENGEANCE that features a lantern-jawed white American soldier attempting to save his exotic-dancer girlfriend (complete with jiggle physics) from torture at the hands of Jihadists. Violence is the only way to advance in the game and the girlfriend's torture is as graphic as anything in the movie SAW. But as far as violent shooter games go, it is exceptionally innovative, gorgeous, and fun. Is it fair to give the game a low review score for lacking inclusiveness? Is it fair to give the game a lower review score for having violent or misogynist themes?
Do you believe videogames can affect the personality of their players, making them more violent or sexist, for instance? If so, how do you as a creator respond to this? How should the industry respond? How should society respond?
Ultimately, which is more important: The individual artist's right to create artistic works, regardless of how distasteful we may find them; or our society's right to create an environment free from bigotry and hatred?

Here are the number of questions each male developer was asked
Brad Wardell 35
Greg Costikyan 23
"Royale" 23
Crowned Daemon Studios 23
James Covenant 22
Scion 10
Daniel Vávra 8
James Desborough 16
Dave Rickey 23
Kyle McConaughey n/a since he wrote an essay
Tadhg Kelly 23
"Damion Schubert" 23
"Oakheart" 22
"Xbro" 8
"Glaive" 16
Roo 21

Word Count

For the female developers
Developer 1 497
Developer 2 1806
Developer 3 667
Developer 4 837
Developer 5 527
Developer 6 262
Developer 7 363

For the male developers (These numbers include the questions since 1) there is a back and forth and 2) the questions are often needed for the context)
Brad Wardell 5015
Greg Costikyan 2627
"Royale" 1202
Crowned Daemon Studios 1672
James Covenant 1370
Scion 1565
Daniel Vávra 1800
James Desborough 1670
Dave Rickey 3950
Kyle McConaughey 720
Tadhg Kelly 1905
"Damion Schubert" 4449
"Oakheart" 3284
"Xbro" 3059
"Glaive" 1182
Roo 1778

(Yes, that's right, the questions and answers in Brad Wardell's interview included more words than the female developers' combined,)

Pull-out Quotes

For the female developers, the layout had 1 pull-out quote per page meaning all but Developer #2 had 1 pull-out quote. That developer had 3 because her statement took 3 pages.

For the male developers, there's no clear rule for pull-out quotes. This is troublesome because these quotes are a break from the supposedly objective, we'll just publish everyone who responded stance because what to put in a pull-out quote and how many of them to put in is editorial discretion. The numbers for the male devs:

Brad Wardell 7
Greg Costikyan 5
"Royale" 3
Crowned Daemon Studios 2
James Covenant 1
Scion 4
Daniel Vávra 4
James Desborough 2
Dave Rickey 5
Kyle McConaughey 4
Tadhg Kelly 3
"Damion Schubert" 4
"Oakheart" 3
"Xbro" 3
"Glaive" 3
Roo 3

Availability of Content

As noted above, the male interviews each have their own page but the female developers' statements do not. This also means that even when on a page that displays what is supposed to be all the different views, the female views are left out.

There are many other issues with article published on Friday, but hopefully this helps show some of the issues with the structure and some of the outcomes of their approach.