Mystery Dev From Based Japan Drops Bombs on Terrible Games Journalism

by · September 10, 2015

truthbombcover

I was alerted to a hot new Twitter account a couple of evenings ago. What was so interesting about this one, is that it was supposedly being run by a longtime video game developer from Japan. Not only that, this person was claiming to be a female as well. I can’t verify any of this, just so you guys know. This dev  hasn’t revealed their name, even though they’ve talked with several known figures so far. So, take all this for what it’s worth. I will say one thing, though. It is one damn good fake if it does turn out to be bogus…cause it sure looks legit to me.

The user goes by the name of @ChihiroDev, and they’ve also written two columns on VGChartz. Here’s a couple selections from those, before we take a look at the Twitter highlights:

As I am myself a woman in the games industry – one that has worked on a number of major blockbuster titles – I have been approached a number of times from news outlets such as the BBC and several US news stations requesting an interview, and each and every time this has happened I have been asked various questions about my experiences in the industry and “what I think about how Anita has been treated”, and each and every time when I have made my opinions clear, the desire to interview me moves swiftly from wanting to nail down a specific day and time to conduct it to “thanks for your time, we’ll be in touch”, which is seemingly journalist lingo for “you don’t have the right opinions we want to share, bye”.

This experience, coupled with the extremely one sided coverage of the GamerGate debate for the past year from literally all gaming news outlets makes me genuinely sad to be a part of the games industry. As a developer – and I speak for most of us in saying this – we love gamers. They are the reason we do what we do, both because having millions of people want to buy something you made is intensely satisfying and because, on a much more frank and literal front, without them we would all be without jobs.

(article one)

As we all know by now, the consensus from the gaming media and, more recently, the general media is that being a woman in the gaming industry is fraught with danger, misogyny, and unfair treatment. Primarily, indie developers such as Briana Wu and Zoe Quinn spearheaded this claim, along with a few others.

The problem is, it just isn’t like that in reality. When I started at my first studio in 1998, the environment was relatively welcoming. At the time the rest of the team were hard at work closing in on the release of a major holiday title and nobody seemed to really give a hoot if I was male or female. The only interest the rest of the team had was what skills I could bring to the table and what part of the project I could tackle to help get the project finished in time…

I have actually been a victim of bullying in the workplace. Around 2003 I was working for a development firm on a project that was farmed out to us from a major developer. It was a smaller studio but had a higher number of women working there. If memory serves, including myself, there we 11 women and 23 or so men.

My aggressor was another woman, who found issue with me receiving a salary increase for my continued hard work and long hours. She decided she would take it upon herself to “knock me down a peg or two” and this was compounded by the fact that, as I was a Japanese woman working in the US, she took issue with the idea of a foreign employee earning more than her.

(article two)

This is all stuff we’ve heard before from other devs who were inspired to speak out, but rarely, if ever, have we seen it put this well. This is only a small sampling, by the way. They’ve been rocking the shit on Twitter as well. Here’s a Storify chronicling some of that work, as well as some more tweets below:

https://twitter.com/ChihiroDev/status/641611540357976064

Like I said, this whole thing looks pretty legit to me. There’s way too many details and co-signs for this to be a con, in my opinion. Now, I’ve been wrong before. So keep in mind that this is being offered to you readers with no verification from me, other than the tweets above. The story itself is the biggest thing happening in GamerGate at the moment, though, so it has to be discussed here on the site. Lemme know if you think things look as solid as I do. If more comes out, I’ll talk about it again. Also, feel free to send out some more love to Based Japan. What a fucking amazing country that is. I’ll be back in a few. I’m going to try to get some actual work done this afternoon. So, I’ll see you back here again in an hour or so.

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TheRalph

Founder, Owner, & Editor-in-Chief of TheRalphRetort.com. Political fiend, gamer, & anti-bullshit.

  • CaitlynVonHampton

    Given that some of the details given correlate with my own experiences, and that now VGChartz *and* @NotCameraLady are sticking their necks out to vouch for authenticity, I got no reason to believe this is a sock account. I’ve been wrong before, but my guts tell me there’s more to come.

    • http://TheRalphRetort.com/ TheRalphRetort.com

      Yes, the VGChartz confirmation also gives me a lot of confidence.

      • hurin

        My guts also tells me she’s real. But no court will allow you to cut open your belly and preset the contents as evidence. And until we get that her articles are interesting to read but nothing more,

  • http://twitter.com/indiedevil Yuji Nakajima

    I like her but she need a pixel avatar holding up big penis and balls.

    • ArmoredBoar

      She’s got bigger balls than the rest of ’em but I don’t think that accounts for a testicle-donned pixel avatar. lol

    • Kellen Joel

      I see what you’re doing. LOL

  • Mark Samenfink

    “There I am, Gary”

  • hurin

    Her articles and Twitter feed are very interesting to read. But the sad reality remains that GamerGate will look very foolish indeed, if it turns our she’s Japanese, female, lives in the US, but has never worked in the games industry, and is a troll.

    She has been a huge morale booster, but until we get some kind of confirmation she’s the real deal, we have to put disclaimers in every time we speak of her.

    If she could please contact @mombot and @Sargon_of_Akkad and have them confirm she’s the real thing, I’ll gladly believe.

    • Fail Burton

      As you say, it’s a morale booster, nothing more. We already know what’s been at work. Wu, Sarkeesian and company do nothing more sophisticated than attack men on the thin excuse men everywhere act like a sexual version of Jim Crow or a KKK. Of course, that’s according to their bizarre and paranoid feminist principles. You’re dealing with bigots and it’s as simple as that. Treat them like bigots and supremacists; that’s all they are, many of them mentally ill.

  • Wisdomcube2000

    I’ll wait for verification thank you very much lol. I’ve been trolled by stupid sh!t like this before so I’ll wait before I go celebrating her info drops.

    As Oliver said: Trust but Verify.

  • Silence Dogood

    And here the media wants everyone to think it’s just “misogynist gamers” who want to “erase the experiences of women in games” when in reality it is the media erasing/denying/ignoring the experiences of women in games that don’t align with their bullshit “so-far-to-the-left-they-look-like-right-wing-christian-fundamentalists” narrative.

    • JasonC5

      It’s all some sort of elaborate sock puppetry to the MSM even when they do the notyourshield type videos because it can be brushed off as “internalized misogyny.” Oh and I’ve recently discovered that Georgetown has bought into the misogyny bullshit from a group of people I know that went to that school and are now indoctrinated to believe the MSM garbage.

      *okay I just found a Breitbart article about CHS and Georgetown making this nothing new…. now I want to punch those acquaintances in the face for saying she’s a threat.

  • ever heard of a bro on a diet

    keep her steady, boys. we dont know if this is a siren of the deep trying to lure us to our demise.

    in other words, waiting for real true confirmation and not everyone wanting it to be true :p

  • Motherfucking Deadpool!

    Also never forget that one of these 2 women on the pictures gave us great games like Kings Quest and Laura Bow. She also never complained about “da sexist manpigs” and “muhsoggyknees”. She is also nice to her fans.

    The other one made one IOS game that got paid by her parents, lied about her birth (she denied being trans at the beginning) and stirs controversy to call others sexist, homophobic, transphobic. She also tried to vandalize Wikipedia and got banned for it.

    If and I mean IF GG only existed to come after the Wu it would not be for being a trans woman as you can see by the examples I listed.

    • Mr. Saturn

      Difference between a passion for gaming and a passion for attention right there.

      I have a lot of respect for Mrs. Williams even if her games aren’t my particular cup ‘o tea.

      • Motherfucking Deadpool!

        Someone on twitter told me a great story (I sadly forgot who): He walked up to roberta in the 90s on a con and told her how much he loves Kings Quest. When he tried to shake her hand she replied: “hugs for you”, and gave him a hug.

        Brianna on the other side would shout “MOLESTER” when someone tried to hug her.

        • JasonC5

          Why would anyone want to attempt to hug that… thing? Even if hopped up on various drugs that would be highly unlikely.

    • shinningprodigy

      Ugh… the second pic. I’ve seen ugly and it got nothing on this.

  • http://mukos.deviantart.com/ Mukos

    Damn she’s layin’ down the rain of pain.

  • Zach Puckett

    Funny how the SJWs keep saying we silence and bully women when this woman has to hide her identity because of the backlash she’ll get from these people. These people are the definition of irony.

    • JasonC5

      And yet the narrative keeps on going in the MSM where it’s starting to affect the real world in terms of finding employment. The media needs a good ass kicking.

  • ゾーラック ナニャビズ

    I don’t know who “Chihiro Onitsuka” (obviously an alias — a J-Pop artist goes by the same name and the mystery dev is probably a fan) is, but what I’ve read from her so far has been on point.

  • GeekVariety

    Don’t know if its real or not, but I can confirm that the 10 tweets they did citing specific types of maleficence, I’ve seen a lot of them personally and can confirm that shit to be true.

    I think out of the 10, only like 3 were things I wasn’t personally familiar with. These are a couple I thought were really interesting from the list and that I know to be absolutely 100% true.

    “#8 Several major sites used flashed 360 consoles and modded PS3’s to review games that publishers would not provide.”

    “#6 Gifts, gaming swag related to the game being given, or special editions provided to reviewers which are rarely ever disclosed in review”

  • Duce Ralli

    Japan you are awesome for produceing stuff like this. though you still got issues. but again mostly awesome.

  • Mr. Saturn

    I think the biggest problem with Zoe and Wu is that while they may (may being the operative word here) have a passion for video games, they obviously lack the talent to be any good at making them. So instead of getting good they complain and demand to be treated like gaming rock stars or something. And when that doesn’t work they attack gamers and when reacted upon whine about how they are being picked on for being “gurls”.

    This seems to be a trend with the SJW indy game makers. They all want to be regarded like Miyamoto, Kojima, Wright, Williams or any of the other big names but don’t realize that those people earned their admiration. It happened because they made great games and continued to make great games.

    • Lost Question

      really I thought that they possess the same sense of decorum a opportunistic vultures. If the patrion/paypal/gofundme rules changed so that their accounts were disabled for e-begging they would be gone… until they found a some other service that they can use to e-beg on while fleecing their flock of useful idiots. the instant they think up something easier to do and get more money for it is they instant they would do that full time.

    • Sevuz

      I think in ZQ’s case it was more about easy money. Wu did at least make something that look liked a game.. from early shitty 90’s that is. The bottom line is, that they both suck at making video games as you said yourself and now plays the *special snowflake* victim cards 24/7.

      • BlueLight

        Not sure if LW had any intention of making money directly from her game. She did release for free. However i do believe that was making it to add to her resume.

        • Sevuz

          Ah my bad

    • Critical Equality Studies

      People who complain about trivial social issues universally lack talent to be good at anything. The two things are strongly related, if not mutually causative.

  • shinningprodigy

    If she does reveal herself, why am I imaging some bayonetta type climax reveal?
    *edited for clarity*

  • JasonC5

    Just want to say that there seems to be a slight nVidia circle jerk going on at KIA when it came out that AMD is giving certain sites review samples but so far the reviews I’m reading have been quite fair especially Anandtech but the fucking trolls are out in full force derailing the review. It’s not like nVidia has been a clean entity during its history. My experience has been that even if the GPU is cost competitive some reviewers will shit on it when it’s not warranted which is why I’m not surprised with AMD’s handling of the R9 Nano.

  • JasonC5

    Oh fuck off Intel… how about you put that $300M towards a solution where I don’t have to buy a new mobo for new Core i5 iterations? http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/09/10/intel-cuts-300m-in-jobs-research-education-and-talent-to-fund-feminist-frequency/

  • NightmareNear

    I knew you guys were going to talk about this article. I even commented on the second article myself.

  • Random Marine

    Like they say on CS: “The bomb has been planted” (It’s on CS, right?)

  • Critical Equality Studies

    Why do they still hold up Anita and Brian Wu as relevant game developers? These people don’t deserve any more attention than some random guy cranking out bad iPhone games.

    Their notoriety comes entirely from “activism” over irrelevant issues, and being rightfully attacked for their disruptive behavior. So it’s time to call them what they are: Whiners.

  • masterninja

    She gives zero fucks at the moment and i like it!

  • SonofaGlitch

    I dunno. Smells fake as hell to me. Japanese devs usually give no fucks when it comes to western identity politics. I mean, you’d never get a western dev making Resident Evil 5 because of the “implications”, but Japanese devs just go “yeah we have a white protagonist, and the game is set in Africa and that means the infected are a bunch of Africans . . . so what?”, or more recently, look at Kojima and the whole Quiet outrage. Gave no fucks whatsoever.

    It just seems to “exactly what Gamergate wants to hear” to cotton well with my suspicion-o-meter.

    • ThatGuy

      Japanese Devs who live in Japan usually don’t give a fuck because they are separated both geographically and culturally. This woman appears to have been Stateside for a long time, which would make her more invested in what’s occurring here.

    • Spider Jerusalem

      Confirmation from vgchartz and CameraLady.

      You want a burning bush to go with that? Maybe some stone tablets as well?

      • SonofaGlitch

        Cameralady has unfortunately, been wrong before. She isn’t the word of god. Neither is VGcharts, which has never published how they source their datagathering and questions have been raised to the veracity of their claims (mainly on sales figures) before.

  • Michael P

    Hmm, a shame she won’t reveal herself as it’s all just a rumour without a name and face. Why hide from it when all Anita and her cult of victimhood could do to a Japanese female dev is cry “internalized muh soggy knee” and promptly run out of ideas?

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