TBH at this point i don’t really care what happened or is gonna happen.
This whole situation is clear indicator that industy is becoming toxicly mainstream, Phil and Zoe are basically Paris Hilton/Kardashians of gaming industry.
They are more famous for who they fucked and what they said and not that much for their games or industry expirience.
IMO their fame as “developers” is undeserved.
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Not anyones business who these people fuck/don’t fuck with. It’s their private (sex)life and this doesn’t have any impact on their credibility and competence as developers.
I didn’t play Depression Quest yet, but I did play FEZ and I do think it’s okay to call Fish a developer for creating this great (imo) game.
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Well… When they fuck “game journalists” for positive rewiews and “getting ahead” it will raise few eyebrows.
About Phil, i meant that he got more famous than he should have because of his online behaviour and opinions.
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Is the game good/bad, just because the press says yes it is/no it isn’t?
Sleeping with game journalists doesn’t say anything about their competence as an actual developer, it’s only once again a proof that game-journalism is as corrupt as every other industry.
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Who are those people?
I develop games, rather than reading gossip sites like Kotaku…
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They didn’t get famous for their competance, they got famous because of the drama and that’s the part that i don’t personally like and i would’t want that to become a trend. That’s what i mean by their fame being undeserved IMO.
And yet you’re posting in a subforum called “Unity Gossip.”
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I*'*ve been waiting for exact that clever remark 
But still give a crap about Phil Someone, or Zoe blah. Why care about the lives of some attention whores?
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I’ve heard about Phil. But who is Zoe?
I think you are confusing the cause and effect a little bit. You’re acting like these developers use drama to make themselves famous, where in actuality they are just outspoken people who happen to cause controversy. If you really think these developers want to be famous because of the drama, just ask yourself if you’d rather swap places with Zoe or Phil at this point.
The reason why these people are famous is not a concerted effort on their part, but rather because of people like you who want to talk about them because of their “controversial” actions or words. So, if you really don’t want these people to be famous, then just stop talking about them.
This is a good video on the subject that might help clear things up a bit:
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My biggest worry with the whole Zoe scandal is that it looks very much like there’s a clique where if you are part of the clique then you will get coverage of your game. If you are not then it becomes much more difficult to get coverage.
I was amazed to see who knows who. Game developers and game journalists being friends and hanging out and that the game developers who know the right people get their games mentioned even if it happens to be a choose your own adventure text game. I mean Zoe’s game is basically a glorified text website and yet she managed to get her “game” on Steam.
The publicity has also done wonders for her. If you look at her Patreon page she has gained a lot of support and with that a lot of money.
It’s unrealistic to think that game developers and journalists won’t be friends but from the outside it makes it look a bit more difficult to get your game talked about on the major websites if you aren’t friends with the right people. Am I wrong in thinking that?
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Wot I think:
- The abuse people have been throwing at Quinn and Fish - including, but not limited to, releasing Fish’s bank details online and hacking Quinn’s online accounts - is absolutely unacceptable. Regardless of the actual truth behind all this, I’m not interested being on the same side as the people who are making a concerted effort to destroy lives.
- Fish’s game Fez is a clever and competent game (though not as mindblowingly original as some people make it out to be). I’ve not played Quinn’s work but any thought along the line of ‘she’s not a real developer’ is both elitist and completely irrelevant.
- If it actually is true that Quinn slept with journalists in exchange for coverage - and given that this whole thing was kicked off by an angry ex-boyfriend, I find it all pretty dubious - then the people to be angry at are the journalists, not Quinn.
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This, so much. Also, I’m not sure games “journalism” is the right word. There are a handful that are truly doing some great journalism, but mostly its just subjective opinions. Like, how many actually have journalism degrees? And with the huge number of reviews and coverage out there, how much weight do 5 “swayed” journalists have to the success of a game?
I absolutely love games journalism, but I’ve always equated it to like listening to a buddy talk about a game.
When the whole scandal broke we where applauded with what people do for money. Then we started thinking about how we are developing our game (we live stream everything) and when we start adding more developers we are going to keep this setup where we will combine the feeds to make one live stream showing what everyone is doing. We did this for many different reasons. One to let our players know what is going on with the development every step of the way, and let them get to know the developers. Two, when we start adding more developers it will keep everyone on the same page and keep goofing off to a minimum. Three and most important get feedback from the players while we are working on the game (we all ready gotten some great ideas from this).
We already informed all of the people that work on our game that even if we have a hint of someone doing this they would be removed from working on Tectuma.com and we would have nothing more to do with them. We did this publicly and will back it up like a rabbit pit bull on crack.
But then with Tectuma.com we are not worried about turning a profit or have any investors we have to please. We have personally backed our project for 3yr now without making a dime and can keep going this way for a long, long, long time if needed. Our goals are a little different than most deployment we are not in it to make money (would be nice but not our primary goal), we focus on learning and building a community and making friends to that goal we are a huge success! And we do not plan on changing this.
Maybe if there was some reliable info about what happened, useful opinions could be formed about it. But there is none, and there isn’t going to be.
Don’t harass people.
Meh, I’d blame Quinn as well as the journalists. Assuming she slept with them with the intention of getting positive coverage for her game.
It takes two to tango. For example, if someone was selling stolen goods and the buyer knew it, both the buyer and seller would be in the wrong legally and ethically–likewise with an illegal drug transaction.
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“Game Journalism” is pretty much an oxymoron these days, and I don’t care for twitter drama. Phil Fish could sleep with the entire staff of IGN, and I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
What does bother me is the backlash. And not just over this, but the amount of abuse and vitriol that gets generated towards game devs these days (or really, anyone that bothers to have an opinion on the internet). It’s really made me question if I want to bother trying to sell my games at all. Yeah, I won’t be saying anything on twitter, and probably wouldn’t be making anything popular enough for people to care…but still, are these hateful, misogynistic man-babies an audience I want to put any effort into entertaining? I know it’s probably a vocal minority, and I’m overreacting to things a bit, but the whole market seems incredibly toxic at this point.
I think that’s a bad analogy. Leaving aside the fact that ‘a biased video game review’ is not even in the same phylum as stolen goods or illegal drugs, the journalist is the one with a responsibility to their readers, not the developer.
Journalists are surrounded with attempts to seduce them into subjective coverage - from buddy-buddy emails, to flights out to exclusive press conferences with fancy dinners. Resisting all of that and providing accurate coverage is their job. It’s Ethics of Journalism 101 stuff - not that very many of the journalists in the games press have actually studied journalism.
So I don’t see any substantive difference between sleeping with a journalist in the hope of getting a good review, and taking a journalist out to a nice restaurant in the hope of getting a good review. The reasons I think people are reacting differently to when that usually happens are a) because Quinn is female and b) because sex is involved, and sex makes people stupid.
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Exactly. I have yet to see any of this anger directed at the 5 male journalists, who’s names are rarely even mentioned. Had this been a male developer and female journalists, I feel we would see the female journalists harassed, along with the ex-girlfriend of the developer.
Quinn earned her coverage for her unique game, simply for bringing up the topic of depression. I hope to see more games from Quinn, and more games dealing with mental health issues.
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Good points, and maybe Quinn didn’t act quite as unethically as the journalists because of their responsibility to readers. But she still did bribe the journalists for favorable coverage and bribing is, in my opinion, dishonest behavior for both parties. Dinners and friendly emails is lobbying. Gifts of cash, vacations, luxury items, sexual favors, etc. is bribery.