The Fine Young Capitalists
| File:The Fine Young Capitalists logo.jpg | |
| Abbreviation | TFYC |
|---|---|
| Founder | Matthew Rappard |
| Legal status | Active |
| Purpose | Supporting work by underrepresented labor in the media industry |
| Location | |
| Website | www |
The Fine Young Capitalists (commonly abbreviated as TFYC) is a self-described radical feminist group founded by Matthew Rappard set up to organize production initiatives for underrepresented labor in the media industry. Their first project was to facilitate the development of a video game by throwing a women-only game design contest, whereby five nominees would offer proposals and the winner would see their game developed and released through Steam. The winning entry, Afterlife Empire, was designed and written by Danielle Maiorino, and was released on August 21, 2015. The group has also pursued two other projects, including a character design contest named SNless, and a STEM scholarship with funding raised from a pornographic web cam show.
The group became associated with the Gamergate controversy after independent game developer Zoë Quinn criticised the group's initial design contest. 4chan users began providing significant financial backing for the project and collaborated with TFYC to create promotional videos on female game developers. During the group's fundraising efforts, TFYC's Indiegogo account was hacked and the campaign briefly shut down. After 4chan users donated over US$5,000 to the Indiegogo campaign, they created Vivian James, a character designed to look like an ordinary female gamer.
History
The Fine Young Capitalists is a radical feminist group founded by Matthew Rappard and based in Toronto.[1] In an interview with APGNation, Rappard said that the mission of the group was to create media with underrepresented labor and demographics for funding non-profit organizations. Rappard noted that the inspiration for the group was the prevalence of underused game ideas due to a lack of interest from business communities, and the financial cost of hiring experienced developers to develop an idea for a video game. The group was also skeptical of education-only projects, opining that these projects could not result in finished video games. They noted that the lack of interest of game development or programming by women mostly comes from socialization, saying that women were in no way less capable than men in computing fields. The group accepts donations from people of any background.[citation needed]
Projects
The group's first project was an initiative to increase the involvement of women in the video games industry, in which anyone who identified as a woman prior to the start of the contest was eligible to submit a proposal for a video game. Five nominees were selected and the nominee who received the most crowd-funding would have their game produced and distributed. The winner would receive eight percent of the profits, with another eight percent going towards future contests, ten percent going to the production company, and the remainder donated to charity.[2]
The winner of the contest was Afterlife Empire, designed and written by Danielle Maiorino, who worked with an all-female team from Bogota, Colombia-based developer Autobótika to create the game. The game was approved through the Greenlight system on the Steam video game service in late April 2015, allowing it to be included on the Steam storefront.[citation needed] It was originally scheduled to be released on August 14, 2015,[citation needed] but was later delayed due to bug concerns[citation needed]. The game was finally released August 21, 2015.[citation needed]
In collaboration with a charity set up by pornographic actress Mercedes Carrera, TFYC administered a scholarship for people looking to work in the STEM fields. An Indiegogo campaign was set up along with a porn stream dubbed "The View of Sex" to help fund the scholarship. Carrera chose to collaborate with TFYC after a planned charity porn stream with The AbleGamers Foundation failed to pan out.[citation needed] The campaign managed to raise over $11,000 on Indiegogo with an additional amount of over $3,000 from the adult web cam show hosted by Carrera.[1][3] Applications for the scholarship ended on March 15, 2015,[citation needed]; the scholarship was awarded April 2015.[citation needed]
Involvement in Gamergate controversy
After independent game developer Zoë Quinn learned of the women's game design contest, she spoke out against TFYC on Twitter, saying that she disliked their stance on transgender people, and thought that the women involved would be working without being paid.[citation needed] The game design contest was also accused of being exploitative towards women and transphobic, which resulted in TFYC receiving harassment and having some of its personal information posted publicly without consent.[citation needed] TFYC made a statement in response reiterating that while the winner would receive a portion of the profits, most would go to charity, and that all rights would remain with the women who submitted proposals. They also clarified that their transgender policy only required submitters to have identified as female prior to the contest as a means to prevent men from lying about their gender identity in order to participate.[citation needed]
Social media attention remained negative and TFYC found itself losing financial support and struggling to gain media coverage due to the criticism, with many major video gaming websites avoiding TFYC.[citation needed] One business partner, who was planning to contribute $10,000 dollars, left the project, because he did not want the rest of his work to be referred to as transphobic. After a delay to review the inclusiveness of their policies, TFYC decided not to change the wording and opened the project up to submissions on March 28, 2014.[2]
After the Gamergate controversy began in August 2014, the details of TFYC's earlier dispute with Quinn over the women's game design contest became one subject of discussion. Users of the site 4chan who were critical of Quinn began providing significant financial backing for the women in video games production project on Indiegogo. During the group's fundraising efforts, TFYC's Indiegogo account was hacked and the campaign was briefly shut down. [4][5]
After some 4chan users told TFYC that they wanted the group's promotional videos to talk about female game developers, TFYC released a video on Roberta Williams and her influential role in the early gaming industry.[6] Later, TFYC also released videos on Corrinne Yu and Anna Kipnis.
After 4chan users donated over US$5,000 to the Indiegogo campaign, they were allowed to create a character who would appear in the winning game. The character created by 4chan, named Vivian James (meant to sound similar to "video games"), was designed to appear like an ordinary female gamer. The donations did not stop after the creation of Vivian, amassing over US$23,000 total in funds for the group.[7] Vivian James met some criticism, mainly for the character's association with 4chan. Allegra Ringo of Vice called Vivian James "a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists".[8] Allum Bokhari of TechCrunch, in turn, described her as "an entirely ordinary, non-idealized female role model".[9] The 15-second opening cinematic of Afterlife Empire featured a still image of the Vivian James character and a shoutout to GamerGate.[citation needed]
TFYC later lowered the monetary requirement for donors to create a character to US$2,000, and announced that Reddit was also eligible to create a character.[10] The character inspired by Reddit is named Gilda Mars, but some Reddit users have disputed whether the character is actually what they wanted.[citation needed]
The group's decision to work with 4chan prompted criticism due to the alleged involvement of 4chan users in harassment of Quinn and feminist video game critic Anita Sarkeesian. TFYC responded to this criticism by stating social justice movements that would not let people take part in a project because they participated at 4chan were, by definition, oppressing them.[8][11] Users saw a show of support for a feminist cause against Quinn and her supporters as something that could benefit their public image.[8] David Auerbach said "It’s a good cause, and doing the right thing for the wrong reason is still doing the right thing."[12] TFYC responded to criticism of its association with Gamergate and alleged harassment of Quinn by offering to sell Vivian James T-shirts with profits going to iFred, a charity Quinn was supporting.[5] Later, the group was reported to have resolved its disagreement with Quinn, though founder Matthew Rappard later told an interviewer at APGNation that their agreement never went through.[citation needed]
References
- ^ a b Chandrachud, Neha (January 23, 2015). "These Porn Stars Fisted for Charity". VICE. Retrieved November 12, 2015.
- ^ a b Weber, Rachel (March 28, 2014). "New game design contest for women". Gamesindustry.biz. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ Morrongiello, Gabriella (January 26, 2015). "Students encouraged to apply for porn-funded scholarship". Campus Reform. Retrieved January 27, 2015.
- ^ Perez, Sarah (August 25, 2014). "Indiegogo Campaign Hacked This Weekend, But Wasn't Part Of A Widespread Attack". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ a b Hurst, Samantha (August 25, 2014). "Indiegogo Campaign Hack Due to Compromised Password". Crowdfund Insider. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ Khan, Imad (August 23, 2014). "4chan is actually behind this educational video about women in gaming". The Daily Dot. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ TFYC [@TFYCapitalists] (September 11, 2014). "Final Total from the referral link is $23,601 from /v/ and 4chan" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
- ^ a b c Ringo, Allegra (August 28, 2014). "Meet the Female Gamer Mascot Born of Anti-Feminist Internet Drama". Vice. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ Bokhari, Allum (September 25, 2014). "#GamerGate – An Issue With Two Sides". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
- ^ TFYC [@TFYCapitalists] (September 1, 2014). "With out having a referal(sic) link, reddit has managed to direct $3700 dollars to TFYC. They may claim the character design perk. #reddit" (Tweet). Retrieved November 7, 2015 – via Twitter.
- ^ Daly, Stephen (September 3, 2014). "The Fine Young Capitalists' Seemingly Noble Goals Don't Excuse them from Scrutiny". Gameranx. Retrieved September 16, 2014.
- ^ Auerbach, David. "Letter to a Young Male Gamer". Slate.
External links