#GamerGate and Ethics

It’s quite disheartening having watched the #GamerGate campaign unfold , as someone who is a self-proclaimed gamer who has logged endless hours on her multiple Nintendo gaming systems, either in Lumiose City battling Team Flare (Pokemon Y) or rummaging about in Hyrule after being tricked by Ganandorf trying to make everything right again (The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).  The gamer community was supposed to be a niche that welcomed those interested in the complex map work of a new indie first player, or someone who just wanted to cause havoc in a virtual city, because well, there are some serious repercussions for doing so in our physical reality.  The #GamerGate movement, however, I think caught a majority of true gamers off-guard. The (so-called) initial motif behind the campaign was for ethical concerns for journalism and writing in the gaming community, which being that this concern seemed to be targeted at one woman in particular (Zoe Quinn) seemed kind of odd if you ask me.  Truth be told, this campaign was the result of Quinn’s ex-boyfriend ranting in a blogpost about her having slept around while they were together with five guys, one of which was a gaming journalist from Kotaku, Nathan Grayson.  Subsequently, this journalist ended up writing a review about Quinn’s game “Depression Quest”, which was the ACTUAL cause of rioting within the gaming community. For this angry few, it seemed as if sex meant a good review, and women had no place in the “gamer” identity (read more here).

Now, despite the original intent of the #GamerGate rabble-rousers, which was oozing with misogyny and a pretty obvious sentiment of hate, their later transformed concern about gamer journalism ethics is something that deserves some attention.  Gaming is an industry, first and foremost, and within that industry (as with others) connections are made between reporters and developers.  Within that relationship, their should be some code followed so that reviews are legitimate and not the result of nepotism and so that there is a fair advantage of all out good games to speak for themselves.  As far as ethical concerns for the games themselves, well that’s a whole topic on it’s own.  One can argue that for the gamer community, Mills utilitarianism is applied appropriate within this community.  The games and their content (although massively appealing to the male gamer) makes most gamers happy, and that’s what matters.

Zoe Quinn

Anita Sarkeesian

When it comes to “Social Justice Warriors” (SJW’s) like Zoe Quinna and Anita Sarkeesian who have been brave enough to voice their observations and concerns about the gaming industry and their representation of women, various ethnic groups, and so on, they bring to the forefront a lot of genuine ethical concerns about the gaming community that hold a lot of meaning.  Video games are an extension of our society.  They are a medium in which we can live out alternate realities that are perhaps not recommended in our physical world.  Not to mention we can live multiple lives in a video game, which gives us ample opportunity to try different things.  Feminist like Sarkeesian and Quinn bring forth important issues that we perhaps overlook because we think a game is just a game, and nothing more.  But, we really should be outraged at some of the graphics and storylines of some games, because some of them are completely opposite of what we would allow in our society yet they are upheld and commended in the video game for doing so. Let’s not forget video games don’t just fall out the sky, they are coded, scripted and thought out by humans, *insert sarcastic voice* that’s right, a human, a mammal capable of ethical reasoning.  In “Media Ethics: Issues and Cases” by Philip Patterson and Lee Wilkins, they discussed (in chapter 9)  “new media: continuing questions and new roles”.  Although, this chapter was focusing on the journalism sphere it can be applied to the gaming realm as well.  A video game is a medium, and a message is being transferred through it.  For the most part, there is a code of ethics for every professional group that goes about the business of sharing information; as for video game developers, they actually do go by a code of ethics (International Game Developers Association), but theirs aren’t of the same quality as that of one sharing news.  This code is more of an internal relations code, as oppose to how communication with the public is perceived.  Which quite honestly makes any feministic and social justice argument fall on deaf ears because for game developers their code isn’t really in the business of making everyone happy.

Back to the #GamerGate “vigilantism”, in the midst of this revolutionary group trying to make their point they decided doxing (or publicly sharing private information) Zoe Quinn was an acceptable action (because broadcasting someone’s personal information is a great way to get your point across, NOT!)  Clearly in this instance Bok’s ethical decision making procedures were not followed because I guarantee if this group had a serious interest in ethics they could have found a professionally acceptable way to spread their concerns.  Or maybe even Mill’s valuational hedonism, pleasure not pain, because i’m pretty sure the obscure obscenities that were outed about these individuals online caused a great deal of pain with an absence of pleasure in all realms.  I don’t see any difference between Quinn’s doxing experience and Jackie (the center of the UVa Rolling Stone article).  The invasion of privacy is a crime no matter how you look at it, no matter what you are trying to prove.  Both instances potentially put lives in harms way and that should be taken seriously.

This is what makes the internet such a complex, scary and amazing place.  You can find or hack your way into getting information about anybody your desire, you don’t even have to use your identity, create a fake one, never be seen.  When the #GamerGate community decide to host a chat on ways to torment Quinn, as well as those who actually sent her hate mail and death threats, their access to anonymity on the Internet made their lives easy, but made it incredibly hard to Quinn to get to the bottom of who was attacking her.  It can definitely be seen as a cause for concern for the #GamerGate community to use the anonymity of the Internet for their movement because it left no one responsible for the actions they played out.  Think of it this way, if everyone could be anonymous in our real world, getting away with awful crimes and no one ever being able to find out who did what, we would pretty much be screwed.  Clearly, if you have to found behind anonymous identities and social accounts, you’re well aware that you’re taking part in less than admirable behavior and don’t want to be found out. 

Moving a bit back into the #GamerGate discussion, when Intel pulled ads from Gamasutra amid the #GamerGate conversation it made Intel look like a supporter of the misogynistic conversation.  Was it ethical? Well, I don’t believe Intel would be the type of organization to support that kind of behavior, plus they issued a public apology to those who may have had the impression that they did support such behavior.  I feel amid the conversation, it was something that Intel didn’t want their brand to be pulled in to, so in the midst of trying to erase their presence, ever vigilant eyes saw and had a different perspective.

Who knew the world of gaming could be so controversial?

“I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”

When it comes to Sony’s “The Interview” (last years crazy controversial film), the decision to produce a film with the plotted execution of a dictatorial leader in a country that already has less than great relations with the United States, and then to present this film as a comedy on top of that, obviously poses some ethically based questions. But, we aren’t going to focus on how ethically questionable the film it self was, because well, that would take many days, and many post and lots of coffee. Instead, I want to delve in to the way Sony handled the situation of releasing/not releasing/dealing with threats conundrum.

 Ultimately, Sony ended up delaying the release of the film due to threats received by a hacker group (known as The Guardians) who threatened to expose emails, personal information and, oh yeah, blow up theaters which decided to play the film. So, did Sony do the right thing in delaying release of the movie? On the surface, yes of course, when threatened by acts of homicide wouldn’t you stop your initial plans? But, if we flip how we look at this, we can argue that Sony deciding to not show the film when they intended, due to the threats received, this looks like a pretty acceptable case of freedom of speech being thrown out the window because someone doesn’t agree with what we have to say, now that doesn’t seem acceptable, does it? Viewing the situation from that lens, was it ethically sound for Sony to cancel "The Interview"? I’d have to say that given our society’s implementation and support of upholding an American’s freedom of speech under our first amendment this was a not so sound decision because Sony forfeited their rights due to an external opinion. Now, this is just one way to look at it, of course there are many things to be considered within this situation, so perhaps it’s safe to go with a pluralistic view. There are competing values present in the situation of “The Interview”; such as, North Korea's anger (rightfully so) at the film for how degrading it is towards their country, and the fact that the U.S. felt it was okay to produce a film that depicted the murder of another country’s leader. And of course, we have America’s view that we have a right to present our thoughts and speech in a multitude of ways, despite popular agreement or not, kind of like a “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” (Evelyn Beatrice Hall) attitude.  
When it comes to free speech you wouldn’t expect there to necessarily be an ethical component attached to it, because freedom of speech is supposed to allow individuals to relay their opinions, and thoughts without judgement and censorship but, I guess in some cases there can be ethical attachments depending on how enormous the audience the person/organization is relaying the message to.  Let’s look at Sony’s decision to create a film of this nature in terms of Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance.  This ethical perspective “asks decision makers to examine the situation objectively from all points of view”, now, it appears that Sony did consider this task, and still made the decision to create and had intentions of showing the film, they just chose to disregard the opinions of those who were against this film being made.  But again, in American culture we uphold the right to speak freely, meaning we present our thoughts and opinion in various mediums free of being restricted by unpopular opinion.

In an Op-Ed piece by Aaron Sorkin in The New York Times he brought forth probably one of the most overlooked realities of the hack on Sony systems in the midst of “The Interview” being released, Sorkin stated, “The Guardians just had to lob the ball; they knew our media would crash the boards and slam it in. First, salaries were published. Not by the hackers, but by American news outlets.” The American public would have known nothing of this hack into Sony systems if the American reporters hadn’t dug up and printed the hacked information themselves onto their news outlets. The ethical component attached to this reality was that these news outlets, decided that damaging information was “newsworthy” and needed to be printing, knowing that they would be the ones providing the information to place other in harm. Clearly ignoring Mills Utility Principle, which is to focus on the outcome; the journalist who decided to run with their new found information did not think about the danger in releasing information such as social security numbers, addresses or other personal information. Our journalist seem to have disregarded most ethical standards and will publish what sells for their paycheck. And what exactly is “newsworthy” about potentially putting individuals lives at risk, tell me more about how this is informative to the masses. We were supposed to be worried about hackers spreading the information around and potentially harming us, but instead we took it into our own hands and shared the information first, because newsworthy in our society seems to have a different meaning then it once had.

“Wouldn’t it be a movie moment if the other studios invoked the NATO rule and denounced the attack on Sony as an attack on all of us, and our bedrock belief in free expression?”, stated Sorkin. It would have been quite the site to see if something like this happened, instead of our journalist running to be active members on the destructive side of the net. When it comes down to the most ethical concerns, it looks like the most attention should be directed to our internal priorities and not so much what others are doing.

"I Always Feel Like (Somebody's Watching Me)"

When the barista at Starbucks has my caramel macchiato with whip ready before I even order it, I’m surprisingly okay with that.  I’m not even totally concerned that the guy at my local bodega (corner store, forgive the city slang) asks about my mom and boyfriend, even those he’s never met them.  But when Facebook ads are eerily accurate in terms of my political stand point and obsession with cats - hold the phone, stop stalking me Internet!  Data mining in the digital world seems to be a bigger threat to personal security than any other instance now days.  This doesn’t stand alone for social media platforms like Facebook or Myspace (if that’s even still a relevant platform to be a part of) but also huge corporations who utilize considerably illicit benefits of data mining.  In the article written by Kashmir Hill titled, “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”, thanks to the art of seeking out patterns in a persons shopping routine, the store was able to send coupons to the girl for discounted baby items; even though she never informed Target that she was pregnant based on compiled information of her shopping habits Target was able to infer (and correctly at that) that she was indeed pregnant.  Is this cause for ethical concern? Of course!  Stealing information, virtual stalking, these are at the center of most digital ethical concerns. If the tables were tuned, would the target corporation want their every move monitored? Probably not, because then we would have noticed a long time ago the amount of data tracking of customers they were engaged in.  If Target considered Rawl’s Veil of Ignorance as the metric standard for ethical behavior, they would have seen everyone’s interest and not just their own.  They definitely would not have wanted themselves on the receiving end of data mining.  

This type of “targeted marketing” is a great cause for ethical concern. Marketing in it’s purest form should be the selling of an product or service based on how efficient and and worthwhile investment it will be.  Marketing should not be based on the compilation of customers information and spending habits.  There should be a level of respect between retailer and consumer, and the level of professionalism and respect for privacy should go beyond the cashier and be embedded in the programming of the system.  Although companies want to be “helpful” and just give the customers what they need, there are boundaries that should not be broken in this process.  While our marketing and advertising motives have shifted heavily from good product promotion to customer exploitation and stalking, maybe taking in to account Kants Categorical Imperative would help these big companies choose whether or not they want to engage in their customer data hoarding.  If Target, and other companies considered a law being made on the tactics that they use to target customers than I guarantee they would re-consider their actions.  As if, 1984, The Matrix, and Minority Report don’t already give a grim possible look into a heavily surveyed society.

In the case of the targeted marking, coincidentally done by Target, in the article discussed by Kashmir Hill, the managers ethical obligation to the irate customer is to rectify the problem immediately, ideally.  But, the manager seemed to have no idea of what the customer was talking about.  Given the customers anger, the manager was right in apologizing profusely for such seemingly random and suggestive coupon dispersion to the customers daughter.

In the article discussing Target’s data mining technique, there was a discussion on the companies personalized coupon booking technique.  So, we already know that Target uses personal information to determine which coupon to send you, but in order as to not seem like the creepy peeping Tom, Target adds a bunch of miscellaneous coupons to those books as to not make customers weary to the coupons that are incredibly accurate to their needs.  This technique is questionable on many levels; one, while creepy, it’s also quite impressive the lengths that this organization is willing to go to achieve prime customer targeting.  Two, while blatantly using data to compile coupons for customers, they are trying to cover up by throwing in meaning less coupons; that’s kind of like of serial killer dressing up as your doorman so you’re unsuspecting of his true intentions.  While piling ethical concern upon ethical concern, Target may have benefited by checking through Bok’s Ethical Decision Making list: How do you feel about the action?  Clearly, they knew it wasn’t the right thing to do and customers would be creeped out by the accuracy in coupons, which is why they tried to hide what they were doing. Is there another professionally acceptable way to achieve the same goal that will not raise ethical issue? Oh I don’t, maybe legitimate marketing, and respecting the privacy of your customers, and seeing your brand and your product abiding by your institutions code of ethics, just a thought.  How will others respond to the proposed act?  Given the irate father who wasn’t happy with his daughter receiving baby product coupons, I don’t think they would respond too well.

The practices of Target’s advertising agenda seems to go against the professional code of ethics for advertisers and PR practitioners.  One of the first things listed is Native advertising and sponsored client, which states: “The blurring of lines between editorial/news content and advertising/promotional messaging (both in print and online/social media platforms) potentially threatens the ability of consumers to develop informed opinions and to make rational decisions. It is critical that a clear distinction between editorial content and sponsored content be apparent to the consumer.”  Although in the Target instance we aren’t talking so much about sponsorship, when Target is specifically using client data to target ads towards them, it leaves little to no room for original decision making on behalf of clientele.  What is thought of as a personal decision, which happens to be supported by “random” coupons sent by Target, is actually the meticulous logging of customer transactions, which leads to personalized coupon books, which inadvertently leads to a suggested (yet accurate) shopping list provided from the research that Target has done on you.  I guess their logo is more accurate than ever now.

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