What Games Journalists Need to Understand About GamerGate


I had one of those "see the Matrix" moments.  I guess before that particular pop culture trope, we'd call it a flood of inspiration; one of those "snap your fingers, holy shit you guys, I fucking GET IT" kind of moments of realization that come rarely in life.

I'm one of the people GamerGate would call "anti-GG" and I felt like there was this weird impasse.  Were the GamerGate people just refusing to understand what was so obvious?  Did they really, *REALLY* think that the rape/death threats were fake?  Or from random trolls?  Or their side was getting it just as bad?

Are they really being tricked?  Don't they get why Milo Yiannopoulis is in this, really?  They must see through Mike Cernovich, right?  I mean, he's not as good as Yiannopoulis.

The whole thing was disheartening, wasn't it?  You say anything about it, you get flooded in your comment section, on Twitter, whatever.  You start to think, "what did my audience become?" and then more depressingly, "maybe it was always like this."  Or, "maybe I'm an adult in a world of kids."  Didn't #StopGamerGate2014 feel great?  Like the world maybe hadn't gone insane?

I get it.  I'm right there with you.



This is supposed to be the point in the article where I describe why I'm uniquely qualified to talk about GamerGate or my personal experiences or other dumb shit like that.  But I have a D-list YouTube channel with some pro-GamerGate fans.  They don't like my stance on it, and they think I've been tricked.  For a long time, I thought it was bi-directional.  But two things happened.

The first was when a couple friends and I were talking to one guy on Twitter who told us how he cried while filling out a report, well, reporting one of Brianna Wu's death threats.  "Crying?" I thought, internally, totally not understanding.  I chalked it up to him being one of the "true believers."  A weirdo.  Who'd sob over this?  How do you get so invested in GamerGate?

The second piece of the puzzle came yesterday, when someone talked about how angry they were with the "Death of Gamers" articles.  They contended they didn't know or care a thing about Zoe Quinn, and that GamerGate wasn't about it.  I wondered how deluded you could get about it before... ...

Then, it hit me.



The Moderate GamerGater (dear GGers reading this - I apologize if this following section reads like I am talking down about you, but this is addressed to non-GamerGate people.  I'm doing it to help THEM understand.)

This is your average GGer - the person who makes up the bulk of this online movement.  This is someone who calls themselves a gamer.  Let me illustrate this.

Imagine you are very young for a moment, and you see something *so cool*.  It's maybe video-game related.  A baseball cap like Ash Ketchum wears.  A Triforce lunchbox.  A Sonic the Hedgehog backpack.  You buy it, and are *super* excited to show it off at school.  You convince your parents who spend more than they think they should be spending for such an item.

Excitedly, you can't wait to get to school and be the envy of your class.

Instead, they make fun of you for it.  Maybe it's a group or one kid in particular, but your classmates hate it; you feel like a fool.  Your heart drops.

You love video games; you love the characters, the story, the challenges.  It's a world unto itself, a part of your life.  You're so happy with it - but no one else seems to get it.  Your parents, your siblings, etc.

This stupid story I invented on the spot happens in its own way to kids, teenagers, even college-age folks.  They feel isolated - maybe they have a core group of gamer friends - but they feel a bit ostracized.

Then along comes the Internet and - holy shit, there are other people who feel like me?!

There's websites to read!  News - NEWS?! - about video games!  Art by people who can draw and like games like you!  Even our own celebrities - your mom may wrinkle her forehead when she reads about Pewdiepie in a Forbes article, but you think his videos are awesome.  There's your own words that only you and your online pals understand, and websites that other people don't go to.

You feel like you have people who *get* you, and you have your own name: Gamer.

One day, something happens.

Maybe you know about the Zoe Quinn thing, maybe you don't.  It doesn't quite matter.

One day, a bunch of games journalists on websites you read declare "Gamers are Dead."  They tell you this culture you love is horrible, even embarrassing.  They're imploring game developers not to make games you'd like.  They're even making fun of merchandise that you either own, or have something like.

...And you read their websites because IGN/Gamespot were too mainstream and corporate.

How fucking betrayed do you feel right now?

But get this.

Unlike the dicks at school, the parents who don't understand, the siblings who think games are stupid?  This time, you get to fight back.

A lot of gamers felt insulted like you do, and there's a movement called #GamerGate.  They're taking their advertisers away.  Those pieces of shit you wasted your time on?  Who turned their back on you?  You get to get some of them fired.  You're not going to take this sitting down and you are thousands - THOUSANDS! - strong.

A journalist joins your side!  That TotalBiscuit guy too!  Your favorite Let's Players are staying quiet, but you're sure they're on your side too.  Non gamers are becoming sympathetic!  And this might go to the mainstream media?  Yes!

The death threats?  You'd never do something like that.  The people you talk to wouldn't either.  It's trolls and at first you think people will understand this, but they don't.  You have to convince them you're not the bad guy here (and you're not - they libeled you first.)  Non-gamers take advantage of hardcore feminists (maybe there's some collusion?) to turn the story around on you.  They're trying to get the mainstream media to ostracize you too.

They're not going to win.  They can't.

The fire rises, after all.




Now, there's obviously more to GamerGate than this.  It's an anti-SJW movement combined with ethical reform in gaming journalism (and if we can get Phil Fish arrested, hey, he sucks anyway), and a great many people are going to point out some or even all of this is not correct.

But let me get back to the games journalists for a second.

I get it, too.

I was right there with you.

The Quinn sex scandal thing?  You don't talk about that shit in polite company.  You're here trying to legitimize gaming.  These folks don't know how good they have it.  In our day there was no Internet.  You played games alone, or you convinced your parents to give you $10 in quarters and let them shop at the mall while you played Operation Wolf.  (Had a metal Uzi on the arcade - how cool was that?!)

You're older now and it's honestly gross how people bandied about her private life like that.  Then they spread around nude pictures.  They passed around her address and phone number and had the balls to even contend she'd done it to herself for attention.  The woman had to leave her house for fear of her life!

And you know what this is?

This is the weirdos.

This is those basement dwelling shitheads.  Those redpill dateless idiots who actually - ACTUALLY! - prefer their women to be of the animated variety.  These morons who seem hellbent on keeping gaming from cultural importance - hellbent if not for their sheer ignorance.  They're not the majority of gamers, they're poor saps who just have nothing better.  If they only got some therapy and some fucking sunlight.  If only.

They raked Quinn over the coals and really showed the horrible underbelly of an industry that you love and actively try to improve.

Leigh Alexander writes an article taking them to task and you know what?

Thank God.

Maybe she's right.  Maybe there is a silver lining in all this - that the industry is really growing up as a whole and these lone holdouts are the last gasp of vicarious humiliation that had plagued you all along.

You.

A gamer.

A real one.



This is what emboldended GamerGate beyond August.

It was what we call a disconnect in corporate America - not just a miscommunication, but a fundamental bilateral misunderstanding between two parties.  The journalists appalled that someone's dirty laundry was being aired like this looked like the work of pigs rolling around in their own shit, and taking gaming with it.  The "gamers" feeling further bullied by people who were supposed to be on their side.

They strike back, and decide to declare it the death throes of a counter-cultural element but use too broad a brush in the counterattack.  There's a lot of innocent bystanders in the collateral damage and the people who believed in GamerGate at the start - your Adam Baldwins - are all too happy to capitalize on this sweeping reaction.  Weld SJW to this and kill two birds in one stone.

The fire rises.




So.

Now what.

Well, unfortunately with the threats scaling and distributing further, concessions to GamerGate seem impossible for the non-GamerGater.  Like it's kowtowing to some form of online terrorist.  It might even be months late, even if such a concession were amenable.

As far as I know, the only followups have been Alexander mentioning that people misunderstanding who was being targeted in the "gamers are dead" articles were doing so out of willful ignorance.  I agreed at first, actually, but thinking about it more and talking with some GG people more, I don't know if it's entirely true.  (I'm sure there are some who are.  Everybody's got their extremists, right?)  Rock Paper Shotgun did not retract, but attempted to clarify their article.

So, what game journalists need to do is reassess not how GamerGate used their articles against them; but rather, how many people felt more sympathetic to GamerGate.  For various reasons, this is a movement that seems controlled by puppet masters, but there's a large faction of moderates.  People who want restitution and if that means forcing an ethics code, so be it.  The ethics presented may not be realistic, or even consistent on all fronts (it's a leaderless movement, right?) so...

Maybe a first step is to reach out to the moderates, explain why these articles were written, and publicly retract?

A few people are licking their wounds after the Colbert Report.  Maybe it's time to offer a hand?