Question (possibly off topic for which I apologise)
I play videogames. I did it before it was cool because I was not ever cool. I got my Genesis the year it came out, motherlovers. I identify as a feminist. I consider myself well-educated and well-informed in feminist thought and feminist issues. I have had some exposure to the Gamergate coverage, and I believe I possess the basic facts regarding the original Zoe Quinn incident, plus some of the following coverage.
I find myself unable to give a single fuck about anything relating to Gamergate. Can someone explain to me why the fuck this is supposed to be important to me? I see that I am supposed to belong to the group that are very angry about Zoe's ex boyfriend posting their relationship drama on the internet, but I find my fucks-given counter holding steady at zero.
Can someone from either side of this farrago enlighten me what the big fucking deal is supposed to be?
To give a general synopsis:
Fuckhueg. I would give you a full primer, but I'd be looking at a six-hour post and 20 or so pages of work, so for now, I'll struggle to be concise and give you this.
You needn't get involved, pick sides, or even pay overt attention - but you should definitely take notice of what it is and why it's going on.
Gamergate began not due to Zoe Quinn, but rather, the response due to the Quinn scandal. See, almost immediately after it broke, people noticed something. This incident with Zoe Quinn was virtually
identical to a similar incident that had occurred relatively recently - but with a male dev accused of sexual harassment. He was eventually proven innocent of this, but not before being dragged through the proverbial muck for weeks. This piqued peoples' interest, because these outlets seem to thrive on tit-for-tat journalism and scandal, and the fact that they essentially said WE ARE NOT LOOKING INTO THIS, NO STORY HERE, FUCK OFF tripped a few red flags. When people started noticing familiar faces circling the wagons around Zoe, however, such as Phil Fish, Anita Sarkeesian, et al, that's when people started getting suspicious and doing proverbial digging.
The response to digging into this? 14+ allegedly-competing journalistic outlets running some permutation of the same article on the same day - the proverbial "Gamer is Dead" barrage.
That is what triggered Gamergate. At this point, it became obvious that there was conflicts of interest going on, so it was very apparent that this was a quintessential declaration of war - on their
own audience. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.
All of these "Gamer is Dead" articles would turn out to have a unifying source: One Dan Golding, who worked for a think-tank known as DiGRA. If you haven't seen Sargon's video series on them, I highly recommend them (
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3) as they explain the ridiculous intellectual dishonesty behind the very work that led to the event that quite literally started Gamergate. The especially surprising part is that IGN turned out to be one of the
least corrupt outlets in this whole affair - and to say that after IGN's misdeeds makes one feel like we've stepped into fucking Bizarro World.
Gamergate has always been about one thing: Transparency and ethics in games journalism. Unfortunately for Gamergate, you cannot discuss this without discussing the toxic culture of corruption that led to Gamergate happening in the first place. As such, you are always going to run into discussions of So-Called SJWs and Third Wave Feminism in this whole affair, because they are literally wrist-deep in this scandal. A number of well-known criminals from said movements, such as Randi Harper and Laurelai Bailey, are deeply involved, as are well-known lolcows like Peter Coffin and Ryulong.
Insanity from the opposition was thus a bygone conclusion, is what I'm getting at.
From the moment Gamergate began, it has been subjected to one of the most brutal, ridiculously over-the-top attack campaigns ever organized in our age, with quite literal constant assault by the mainstream press. Gamergate has been compared to terrorists, Nazis, natural disasters, Ebola, and AIDS. And that's
just in the first month.
There's been constant accusations of harassment and threats towards women from Gamergate, the
overpowering majority of which are false flags. Seriously, if there was an actual incident, they'd point to it and scream about it, but there's never been one credible death threat, and Gamergate essentially self-polices (go to 8chan some time, shitpost about killing a prominent Anti-GGer, and watch how quickly you're mocked and banned). They've tried literally everything to stop Gamergate.
We now know why this is. Almost everyone involved with the opposition to Gamergate, from the initial individuals who dropped the "Gamer is Dead" barrage to those in the Indie Dev scene behind them are some of the most openly corrupt motherfuckers one might ever encounter. They not only openly sponsor one another economically, they buy into the same organized political opinion, the same culture of victimhood, the same attempts at controlling through intimidation. They did everything they could to stop Gamergate as it gained traction, from 24/7 shrieking on their own outlets to open attempts to false-flag attacks against their own side (Brianna is particularly infamous for this). They are a continuation of the same attempts at cultural dominance we've seen hit other communities (look up Atheism+ some time - you'll see some familiar faces).
Take a good long look at this, because this is synonymous with these people.
The opposition to Gamergate has been repeatedly exposed to be in open collusion of one another, from economic involvement in the indie scene to the huge number of them that promote themselves via one another on Patreon. They are some of the wealthiest motherfuckers ever to claim to be oppressed, from Zoe Quinn's claiming to be homeless when pulling down almost 5 grand a month and living with the son of the head of one of the wealthiest companies in the United States, to Wu claiming she had so much trouble in life when her parents gave her $200K for a start-up and she's married to someone who is likewise fantastically wealthy. But that's not what's terrifying about it.
This is:
This is the mindset of Gamergate's opposition, and this is what it seeks: Nothing less than total control over what is and isn't culture, what is and isn't art, and what is and isn't gaming.
They want control. Nothing more, nothing less. They're openly pro-censorship, as we saw when they got GTAV pulled from store shelves and crowed relentlessly about how they tore down the most misogynist game of all time. They constantly push their own angles, irrespective of whether that angle belongs in video gaming at all, as we saw in the Dina debacle where one exceptionally dickish woman, who, through virtue of fucking a dev, got into a spot that she then used as a platform to push her own agenda, blacklisted anyone who disagreed with her, and single-handedly cost Mighty No. 9's kickstarter hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No one's saying that gaming can't be political - We have
Bioshock Infinite,
Spec Ops: The Line,
Final Fantasy Tactics, and countless others dismissing that claim. The problem is demanding submission to a specific mindset, conformity, and changes where they are neither wanted nor welcome. Sargon's own video series linked above lists that studies showed that the claims of lack of inclusivity and diversity was utter hogwash, but they used it to push their Gamer=Misogynist agenda irregardless. We've already started to see the fallout of these people pushing their agenda so hard, with "sexy" female characters seen as
halal by them, regardless of their personality, achievements, or strengths, and the only female character being considered "acceptable" by them being, coincidentally, someone they themselves designed. People rightly called
Dragon Age: Inquisition out on this foolishness, for example, when they noticed that various characters who were sexually open (Morrigan, Leiliana) were not available for romance options, and the female desire demons were likewise gone, which could be dismissed except for the fact that Bioware's open pandering to this same community is well-documented.
It gets more sinister. Big reviewing sites can have a massive impact on a game's release, when a lot of companies focus heavily on launch week. "Do this or I'll say your game is misogynist" is
something that's already happened, and we've seen how one sociopathic temper-tantrum by an Anti-GGer can rattle enough cages to get them to change lines of dialogue in games or edit content in the Obsidian Poem Debacle. They're actively changing games
right now in places they can, because they feel they know more than you, and because they believe that they have the god-given right to inject their political bullshit into your vidya.
And they
don't want you to have any say in their ability to do so.
It doesn't stop in gaming, either. The same people on the Anti-Gamergate side of things, though open censorship,
essentially killed 4chan by selling out to the political correctness police. They were
overjoyed at this prospect, before 8chan effectively supplanted it. They've already pushed for being able to control comments by Gamergate supporters on pretty much every forum they can. Twitter is particularly infamous, as is
Reddit. In fact,
Reddit recently had its mods take a stand against the corruption exhibited by the admins of the site. Annd they'll openly lie, stating that Gamergate is tiny, it's all white men, etc. Put up evidence that this isn't the case, and
they'll pretend such evidence does not exist.
What we are fighting, right now, is, in essence, the equivalent of a fucking
tree worth of corruption growing right through the heart of video gaming as we know it.
Thankfully, Gamergate is also
kicking its ass.
The initial "Gamer is Dead" article headliners have either been fired or are now on little no-name sites that are struggling hard. Sites have implemented sweeping ethics reforms because of Gamergate. The Escapist is now solidly pro-GG, and a huge number of sites like TechRaptor and the like have come into prominence with the downfall of some of the biggest names in Game Journalism. Gawker has lost millions through targetted boycotts, and Gamergate got their CEO to step down. It's donated hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of charity, and all the while Anti-GG has pushed away game devs, journalists and more for daring to have an opinion contrary to their own. But why Gamergate is important
isn't just because of dragging these assholes down a much-needed peg. It's the ripple effect Gamergate has started.
The mindset behind the Antis is not a new phenomenon, and it didn't emerge in a vaccuum - they've been around for ages, trying to gain control of various things they think they can use as platforms to spread their agenda. Gamergate's been the first time they've not only lost, but lost huge, and other groups are already learning from Gamergate's example, from the tech field, to tabletop gaming, to comics.
Even the Bronies are now standing up to these assholes, proving that even a community of lolcows isn't willing to suffer these peoples' shit. The tide's turning against these assholes, and Gamergate is what started it all.
Gamergate has
plenty of spergs. We have Homer, the likes of Jace before his reveal, and so on, and a host of backers who are just
dicks. It's a leaderless movement, with all the upsides and downsides that comes with, so there's ample reason to not go along with it or simply not get involved. It will, however, effect you on some level or another, regardless of what you do.
One thing I will say is that regardless of where you stand, don't worry about it. Gamergate at this point is self-sustaining - it's going to keep going until it's not only demolished its opposition, but kept going after everything tangentially associated with its initial targets, until the entire tree's dug up by the roots. It literally gets bigger by the day. Nobody can stop it at this point, and it's going to be
amazing to watch, especially when assholes like Wu self-destruct.
