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Why are Uighur issues getting ignored by gaming journalism?
- Thread starter Rosenkrantz
- Start date
You probably don't want sites like IGN or Gamestop covering this. At best you'd get "this is terrible and we feel bad for all the victims", everyone gives themselves a "we did good for feeling bad" moment, and then they move onto being excited for Bravely Default 2.
Also for those bringing up the Hong Kong protests, I want to remind you that entered the gaming sphere because it happened at a gaming tournament and a player got banned for infringement on their freedom of speech. Same with last weeks GME short squeeze happening only because it was Gamestop. If someone like Sonicfox after winning Evo said "fuck the CCP liberate Uighur" then it would probably get talked about on all the podcast.
Also for those bringing up the Hong Kong protests, I want to remind you that entered the gaming sphere because it happened at a gaming tournament and a player got banned for infringement on their freedom of speech. Same with last weeks GME short squeeze happening only because it was Gamestop. If someone like Sonicfox after winning Evo said "fuck the CCP liberate Uighur" then it would probably get talked about on all the podcast.
It goes beyond just gaming journalists. There'll be an article on a major site here or there every few weeks but it NEVER gets traction. It does not go big on Twitter, it doesn't stay active here, it doesn't cause protests or marches, no celebrity takes it up as a cause. Nothing.
There's gotta be someone or some organisation willing to go to bat for it.
There's gotta be someone or some organisation willing to go to bat for it.
Because a bunch of TransEra members worked hard to make that happen (and I salute their efforts wholeheartedly). The treatment of Cyberpunk 2077 did not come out of thin air; it was the result of a lot of pain, effort and discussion. If you want more done on this site to raise awareness and action regarding Uighur exploitation, I would suggest organising with other users and opening a dialogue with site management.
Also I'm just going to say it; white mainstream culture just doesn't care about horrible stuff being done to Muslims. The genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian, Uighur and Rohingya people just doesn't get the airtime these issues deserve. Can't let human lives get in the way of hegemony and profit.
This right here.
98% of gaming press is simply PR extensions of game companies.
And as for the sentinment that it's hard to report on it, there's no need to uncover any new information. The Uighur situation is pretty much confirmed by now. Some signal boosting though would go a long fuckin' way, but I guess all parties involved don't want to know/cover how the sausage is made so they don't feel bad.
Probably because it's not in their best interest to run negative stories against the companies keeping them in business.
My stance on it.
There IS the odd actual work of journalism sometimes. Fairly rare though.
Most of it? Opinion pieces - which wouldn't be an actual issue if the actual news/reporting was up to par - or outright hype/pr work.
When someone gets to interview someone big they don't really choose the questions. They need to be approved first.
They can be brave and ask anyway, but it would never end in the final article/video.
Should it be so difficult though? And it's not just white mainstream culture. There's a lot of shit happening that lots of cultures don't seem to care about. I see your point though.
Because the folks that would potentially report on it in the Western gaming sphere will almost certainly not have the contacts in China to report directly and, at the moment, it's not like there's in-person interviews going on with folks at Sony, Nintendo and Xbox (it's a bit more difficult to press someone over private Zoom interviews I imagine).
That's before getting into stuff like metrics and the like.
That's before getting into stuff like metrics and the like.
They had live video feed and thousands of news articles on both HK and Capitol. What is going on with the Uighurs is more hidden, complicated etc and for lack of a better term...needs real journalists to write on this.
Your last statement is unfortunately bang on. While the BBC, guardian etc do report on it, it certainly does not get the same focus, space or time that other topics do. That is a real discussion to have. Not why are video game journalists not covering it.
Gaming is white mainstream culture - But youre right - it should not be difficult to have this pinned.
They don't need to go to China to uncover the atrocities. Let BBC do that. What they can do however, is do actual gaming journalism by reaching out to companies that do business with China and get their stance on the concentration camps. Are they still OK doing business with countries whose governments systematically rapes, abuses, tortures and brainwashed its own people? Are they OK with instances of forced labor from these camps making their devices?
OP
OP
Honestly, I'm looking at some of the replies here, and imagine if Variety, THR and Deadline remained silent on Weinstein after WaPo, NYT and other "real" journalists published the story of his abuse, this is what some of your arguments sound like.
Because western white games journalism is a crock of shit like their way of life.
They don't care. You don't need embedded correspondents to highlight atrocities.
They'll gladly give you round the news coverage when a Chinese company helps to clamp down on Hong Kong dissidents who aren't nearly as disenfranchised as Uighurs.
One's a fashionable cause the other is not.
They don't care. You don't need embedded correspondents to highlight atrocities.
They'll gladly give you round the news coverage when a Chinese company helps to clamp down on Hong Kong dissidents who aren't nearly as disenfranchised as Uighurs.
One's a fashionable cause the other is not.
You're talking to JudeoChristians who don't care that Muslims are being killed. They use any excuse to absolve themselves of any blame or complicity.
What goes around comes around though. And that day ain't too far
I am sure I am one of the replies you are talking about and I will admit this is a very good point.
Also, cheers for updating the OP with link to other thread.
I did not want to involve myself in this topic but it's too late now. But so much this. Video game websites report and reference off other video game websites and sources all the time. Are you telling me they can't report or mention the journalistic reporting the bbc has done already.
Some of the misguided rationalizing going on in this thread about why people haven't said anything and by mods no less is sad and privilege being preserved at its best. I feel sympathy for Trans Era if this is what they had to go through.
I bet half the people giving excuses are not minorities because they would spend more than half their lives like me and others noticing what people don't talk about and don't say versus what they do talk about and do say.
it's often what doesn't get said or talked about that is more important.
Also it's hard to escape the grasp of what is happening because everything we own is being tangentially affected. No one wants to look in the mirror and see a hypocrite.
but hey what do I know I bought a ps5 and Xbox seriesX.
So I guess I am the biggest hypocrite. I wanted to add that in there so I can save people the gotcha they got coming up.
Yup. This is why I say the answer begins and starts with islamaphobia in our culture and in us. Thats all it boils down to. You cannot address this question without addressing the Islamaphobia it stems from.
You can see it here in this thread. Some ppl on Era genuinely believe journalists in the gaming world should not report on this, which is just astonishing.
Imagine ppl here saying sports journalists should not report on BLM.
These fucking media outlets are jokes
I used Kotaku's search and looked for mentions of Uighur/Uyghur
You know what I found? Only 5 articles. The last article was from 2019. The mentions were in the Hong Kong protest articles.
I used Kotaku's search and looked for mentions of Uighur/Uyghur
You know what I found? Only 5 articles. The last article was from 2019. The mentions were in the Hong Kong protest articles.
Yes and his story on CDPR was great and I appreciate the work done there. Sadly I feel that other 'journalists' or sites wish Jason would just shut the fuck up.
I can't remember which clip it was I saw but some guy was interviewing someone from CDPR about cyberpunk and he asked about crunch to which the CDPR employee basically gave a standard response not really answering the question but the interviewer never then pushed back. If you going to ask the question then at least try to get an answer or what's the point?
Polygon? 4 articles
Nothing focused specifically on this. The most recent mention was in a Monster Hunter movie article that also mentioned Mulan filming near these camps.
IGN? Big surprise. 0 articles.
GameSpot? 0 articles
Nothing focused specifically on this. The most recent mention was in a Monster Hunter movie article that also mentioned Mulan filming near these camps.
IGN? Big surprise. 0 articles.
GameSpot? 0 articles
It is a double no-no for the Western media.
Muslims? Fuck that.
A Turkic ethnic group? Fuuck that.
This is the sad reality.
Muslims? Fuck that.
A Turkic ethnic group? Fuuck that.
This is the sad reality.
I really don't disagree that this has been underreported; after a few cursory searches I've seen that most bit sites only really touched on it in regards to the anti-Blizzard protests which themselves were a step removed from the Uighur issue anyways.
I do think it would be extremely appropriate for them to cover it more than this (I believe USGamer had a good piece on it), but I'm inclined to agree with an early post in this thread about how this is an incredibly challenging topic for the average game journalist to meaningfully add to considering the genuine logistical challenges. Nonetheless I do agree that I think sites could do better here. Having interviews on the topic with other people who study the field would probably be constructive.
One thing that sort of disappoints me in this thread is the mass-accusation that game journalists aren't journalists. In the same way that the folks who write the sports section of a newspaper are journalists, game journalists are absolutely journalists. There is a lot of straight PR printing that happens because hey, the bills have to get paid and unfortunately that PR printing is news in their field (please also remember that just about all journalism is struggling extremely hard with the reality that virtually no consumer wants to pay for it any more) but this conversation is teetering really close to stuff like "QA aren't game development staff".
I do think it would be extremely appropriate for them to cover it more than this (I believe USGamer had a good piece on it), but I'm inclined to agree with an early post in this thread about how this is an incredibly challenging topic for the average game journalist to meaningfully add to considering the genuine logistical challenges. Nonetheless I do agree that I think sites could do better here. Having interviews on the topic with other people who study the field would probably be constructive.
One thing that sort of disappoints me in this thread is the mass-accusation that game journalists aren't journalists. In the same way that the folks who write the sports section of a newspaper are journalists, game journalists are absolutely journalists. There is a lot of straight PR printing that happens because hey, the bills have to get paid and unfortunately that PR printing is news in their field (please also remember that just about all journalism is struggling extremely hard with the reality that virtually no consumer wants to pay for it any more) but this conversation is teetering really close to stuff like "QA aren't game development staff".
One small article every week by each big website would be good. It doesn't have to be this big article that has new info. What i care about is not being forgotten about. The more people hear about it the more likely it is for change.
Just saying "they are gaming news!", "they can't go to china to cover it" etc etc isn't good. Anything that keeps this in the light is good.
Just saying "they are gaming news!", "they can't go to china to cover it" etc etc isn't good. Anything that keeps this in the light is good.
You can want what you want, I guess, but IGN and Gamespot aren't where I go to learn about international politics.
I listen to Triple Click with Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers and Kirk Hamilton, and they'll occasionally talk about the difference between games journalism and the enthusiast press, and I totally agree with that. 95% of games journalism is actually just enthusiast press.
If you can do PR printing, you can report based on a BBC article. It's wilfully ignoring this stuff at this point while going into deep dives of what's under the hood of the PS5 or how much the Switch is selling knowing they were partly made in these camps. This has been known for a long fucking time and not even bothering to have a single article on it is a huge black mark on these websites.
Gamers probably need to care before gaming outlets provide coverage on a topic. We struggle daily to get gamers to engage with germane topics like labor/sexism/bigotry issues in the fandom and software development spheres that do get written. Supply-chain stories would die on the vine.
Who said they should not report on this? They should if they can.
The US is not governed by the CCP, you can make articles about BLM, Trump, Weinstein etc freely. This is what we're talking about here:
'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
In new testimony, former detainees of China's detention camps describe systematic rape and torture.
www.bbc.com
(edit: wrong link)
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They could routinely ask Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo etc. about their response to this situation, for interviews and such.
Now I remember that time when Jeff Gerstmann asked Phil Spencer, live, to his face, what it'd take for games to not launch broken.
Fun times. That's like the one time I can recall anything of that nature ever happening.
They could and should put the tiniest amount of pressure on the companies belonging to their sector.
I don't know how many sites have ever even mentioned the concentration camp-sourced slave labor at all.
Regardless of the reason why, the silence on this is fucked up.
Huge amount of respect to the journalists taking the risk to investigate and report on this topic.
Here's three of them.
www.bbc.com
As long as the thing doesn't impact us or anyone close to us, we just want to eat that Matrix steak.
Now I remember that time when Jeff Gerstmann asked Phil Spencer, live, to his face, what it'd take for games to not launch broken.
Fun times. That's like the one time I can recall anything of that nature ever happening.
They could and should put the tiniest amount of pressure on the companies belonging to their sector.
I don't know how many sites have ever even mentioned the concentration camp-sourced slave labor at all.
Regardless of the reason why, the silence on this is fucked up.
Huge amount of respect to the journalists taking the risk to investigate and report on this topic.
Here's three of them.
'Their goal is to destroy everyone': Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape
In new testimony, former detainees of China's detention camps describe systematic rape and torture.
www.bbc.com
Yeah, this seems like a notable reason why.
As long as the thing doesn't impact us or anyone close to us, we just want to eat that Matrix steak.
Did I miss something? Is there a noteworthy outlet that meets these criteria?
But it IS related to gaming if slave labour is being used for gaming products.
The first response has it on point. Games journalism isn't really journalism. It is an absolute joke. The BBC seems to be the only outlet that is constantly reporting on the plight of the Uighurs. I may have missed it from other big outlets but it'd be nice to get more exposure on this.
And so-called gaming journalists, please grow a fucking pair of balls and report on some real shit where it's relevant.
Not the gaming journalists itself but the industry they cater to and the capitalism economy is heavily China dependable.
I Got Death Threats For Reporting On A Video Game Delay [UPDATES]
Last Wednesday, I reported that No Man’s Sky had been delayed. For two days, up until the game’s developers confirmed the news, I received a stream of nasty messages, angry tweets, and, as has become a standard part of gaming culture, threats against me and my family.
kotaku.com
"BuT WHy GArm JRUORNOS no HAeV BALLs?" Ask gamers
Same here. I had only read about it on twitter, and it was from people who thought it was a conspiracy theory pushed by the right wing US against China. Liberal People who I usually agree with, so when I saw era talking about it, Liberal people who I also usually agree with, I didn't really know what to think.
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You can count the number of outlets that do any investigative journalism about games on one hand and none of them are going to have sources in China, let alone sources that can provide any information on this incredibly controversial subject. All they can do is report on what bigger outlets like the BBC report and given that there's maybe one expose on the issue per year, it's hard to say much of anything about it.
And if all you're doing is restating the work of others it's hard to justify putting out an article about such a controversial issue since there's a good chance you'll get bombarded with abuse for writing it.
And if all you're doing is restating the work of others it's hard to justify putting out an article about such a controversial issue since there's a good chance you'll get bombarded with abuse for writing it.
I think the issue is that the situation is pretty well documented. It's no secret. I get the gaming media isn't going to go over there and actually investigate. But they aren't even doing the bare minimum of even signal boosting it.
did the press stop reporting on delays after 2016 or somethingI Got Death Threats For Reporting On A Video Game Delay [UPDATES]
Last Wednesday, I reported that No Man’s Sky had been delayed. For two days, up until the game’s developers confirmed the news, I received a stream of nasty messages, angry tweets, and, as has become a standard part of gaming culture, threats against me and my family.
"BuT WHy GArm JRUORNOS no HAeV BALLs?" Ask gamers
what's your point
that gamers are going to go after the gaming press for talking about other press reporting on video games boxes being made in these camps?
Indeed. Non of the large media websites are going to go for it , as they are all gagging to be let in to the Chinese marker, if they aren't already their.
Gamer Network are owned by a massive events company for example, they already make millions in China and Hong Kong; there is no way that the parent company will allow them to jeopardise any future opportunities.
It's the same reason other governments can't do anything about it, because China is somewhere you want on your side
This is my thought as well, the same people who cover a Sony press release aren't likely going to be the same people reporting from a warzone or a prison camp. These are very serious issues and need to be covered but it's unfair to call people out as not being real journalists or the like for not covering stuff not in their wheelhouse. Should the companies they work for and the journalists themselves maybe take a stance and make it known yes but that doesn't mean they should stop coming the industry and issues they are suited to cover.
the games media does not report on
Basically yeah. Out of sight, out of mind.
- the shit labor conditions in the Foxconn factories that make these consoles
- the disastrous effects that new game consoles has on the environment
- the carbon emissions stemming from big data centers from cloud gaming and services
- Gaming companies working with and supporting the military
- the propaganda and chauvinism in games
Basically yeah. Out of sight, out of mind.
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I think the reason this issue does not get more awareness in general is that most people expect anything that reaches the shelves in first world countries to be for the most part ethically sourced. When it is not they expect the regulating bodies and industry leaders to fix the problem. Blood diamonds are an example of this. Even in tech there was/is a huge conflict minerals issue that is still ongoing AFAIK. Sadly, this might be a really naive way of thinking about it, but it is probably closer to the truth than just saying that people don't care.
I also think this issue is bigger than gaming and should be treated as such. If these reports are correct, you probably have something that contains parts that come from ethically questionable sources in your home right now that you use day to day for your entertainment or communications needs. I'm all for signal boosting, but to get upset at "gaming journalism" is pointing your emotions in the wrong direction. As a community we have access to leaders and insiders at every one of those gaming companies listed in those reports. Why aren't we holding them directly responsible as loudly as we held Microsoft responsible for the Xbox Live Gold price increase for example? If we were doing that I guarantee the story would be quickly picked up by gaming journalists across the globe.
EDIT: I also want to say thank you to OP for bringing this up. The articles were enlightening and I was unaware just how deep the rabbit hole went on the issue.
I also think this issue is bigger than gaming and should be treated as such. If these reports are correct, you probably have something that contains parts that come from ethically questionable sources in your home right now that you use day to day for your entertainment or communications needs. I'm all for signal boosting, but to get upset at "gaming journalism" is pointing your emotions in the wrong direction. As a community we have access to leaders and insiders at every one of those gaming companies listed in those reports. Why aren't we holding them directly responsible as loudly as we held Microsoft responsible for the Xbox Live Gold price increase for example? If we were doing that I guarantee the story would be quickly picked up by gaming journalists across the globe.
EDIT: I also want to say thank you to OP for bringing this up. The articles were enlightening and I was unaware just how deep the rabbit hole went on the issue.
