GamerGate? Da fuq is a GamerGate?

[Aldurin]

So I've been watching this fly back and forth on twitter for a while without fully being able to grasp what was actually happening. Then I found http://gamergate.giz.moe/ which I guess is the go-to site for supporters of that hashtag and I've been trying to figure out what's going on.

What I've been able to grasp of the timeline so far:
1. There was a kerfuffle over Kotaku's conflict of interest with Zoey Quinn, due to a writer's past relationship with her.
2. People call for transparency in games media in response, with some amount of this outcry putting excessive blame on Quinn (though I'm not clear about how much).
3. Gamers are dead/not actually dead/you're using the term gamer wrong, #GamerGate (which is calling out the scandal) and #NotYourShield (a hashtag used by minorites that are enraged on when game journalists use racism/sexism to shut down discussion) flood the discussion.
4. ??? After this point I can't keep track, between deleted discussions and seeing the "well then you're against us" rhetoric toward people who are trying to slow down and understand what's happening, I'm having trouble following what's actually fact and what big names are part of what side (confusion intensifying regarding the discussion about Anita Sarkeesian that seems to claim that she's siding with the journalists or trying to capitalize more fame off of the entire scandal, but hell if I know if that's even true).

So I have to ask, can NPF clarify what's going on? With both sides, hopefully, so I can parse the who-the-fuck/what-the-fuck/where-the-fuck of this whole situation.

EDIT: I should probably put up front that my disposition going into this is that most if not all gaming journalism sites have had varying degrees of undisclosed conflicting interests in their work, and that transparency is something that we desperately need to improve the industry as a whole, not just the journalism side.

[Kim]

GamerGate is garbage.

The people mad at Quinn are a bunch of misogynists who already hated her using the fact that she had sex against her.

The original "Gamers Are Dead" article was by Leigh Alexander, who GGer types already hated, and it was actually, "Gamers Are Over" and was about how the idea of gamer as some special identity was gone because the types of people who play games are expanding so much, and devs don't need to exclusively cater to those types anymore.

Not Your Shield was primarily GG using minorities as a shield. It was used far more often to shut down criticism from minorities who weren't using anyone as a shield than to call out people speaking for minorities. I say this from personal experience.

The movement is overwhelmingly conservative. All the major voices are conservative. From Jayne from Firefly who thinks Obama wants Ebola in the US, to a Breitbart muckraker, to an MRA who calls herself a feminist, to Actual Literal Nazis. It's fucked and its leaders (tho GG will deny those people are leaders) are fucked, and even if a GGer calls out the leaders the group turns on the person doing the calling out.

Oh and just for a final bit of info here's a post about GG as a "latent group" http://pastebin.com/t7bVpF9Q

---------- Post added at 07:39 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:34 PM ----------

What GG boils down to is that a lot of gamers feel threatened by increasing feminist critique around and about games and they've convinced themselves that Obama Sarkeesian and the "Social Justice Warriors" are going to take their games away or ruin them or whatever. At its core, that's what they're most upset about.

[Aerozord]

This is not a topic I have researched heavily nor do I wish to because pretty much anything involving a female game developer brings out the ugliest parts of the gamer community.

Though I did come across an article by Movie Bob about it. Which raises a good point, you are naive if you think people in the industry don't know each other. That they dont have friends or loved ones that work on one project or another.

From what I can gather there was no conflict of interest, since while they were involved he didn't write anything about her. This is something they blew way out of proportion and apparently it got into very ugly slut-shaming territory.

[Solid Snake]

I'm playing Persona 4 Arena Ultimax right now and, boy, if there's any series out there that single-handedly justifies the existence of feminist criticism of videogames, it's everything related to Persona 4.

The sad thing about GamerGate is that there is a unique discussion that needs to happen about videogame journalists being too closely intertwined with the companies to make videogames to offer objective criticism. What's bizarre is that the logical conversation that needs to happen has been completely overtaken and usurped by misogynists who are disproportionately directing their rage at women (like Zoey Quinn) and Indie developers, when AAA developers are twenty gadzillion times worse than Indies ever could be. The rage is all about titles like Depression Quest and Gone Home and, honestly, I really don't even give a shit about journalists being 'in bed' with developers of those kinds of titles because, seriously, what's a good review of an Indie title going to do? Increase its sales trajectory by a couple dozen? Even as Indies get more and more exposure these days they still have a long, long way to go before I'm feeling seriously threatened as a gamer by the fact that an Indie title might get a positive review it doesn't deserve because the journalist and the Indie folks like each other.

On the other hand there's all the AAA developers doing all kinds of shady shit, but no one wants to talk about that, because the AAA developers are disproportionately male and there's no sexual intrigue in a scandal that just involves lots of money and no women. Hell, recently Jim Sterling pointed out some incredibly shady shit done by Shadow of Mordor's publicity team to promote that game on Youtube, and it's far far far worse than GamerGate but receiving comparatively little public outrage.

(And lemme get this straight, I love Shadow of Mordor! It's a fucking phenomenal game and may well be my favorite game of 2014. Doesn't mean it was right for them to try to censor Youtuber commentary on their title.)

[Ryong]

Originally Posted by Kim

The people mad at Quinn are a bunch of misogynists who already hated her using the fact that she had sex against her.

Quinn was where it started happening, but this whole thing was not about her. Granted, what you said is right.

Originally Posted by Kim

The original "Gamers Are Dead" article was by Leigh Alexander, who GGer types already hated, and it was actually, "Gamers Are Over" and was about how the idea of gamer as some special identity was gone because the types of people who play games are expanding so much, and devs don't need to exclusively cater to those types anymore.

The thing is that several sites suddenly posted articles on the same tone stating the same thing on the same day. It's kind of weird.

Originally Posted by Kim

Not Your Shield was primarily GG using minorities as a shield. It was used far more often to shut down criticism from minorities who weren't using anyone as a shield than to call out people speaking for minorities. I say this from personal experience.

I saw that being thrown around but I've no idea what it is about.

Originally Posted by Kim

The movement is overwhelmingly conservative. All the major voices are conservative. From Jayne from Firefly who thinks Obama wants Ebola in the US, to a Breitbart muckraker, to an MRA who calls herself a feminist, to Actual Literal Nazis. It's fucked and its leaders (tho GG will deny those people are leaders) are fucked, and even if a GGer calls out the leaders the group turns on the person doing the calling out.

On both sides, there are far too many people and they are far from being anywhere close to being organized and a lot of ridiculous extremes will pop up.

GGers have vague objectives and anyone who wants to call themselves a leader will have a following in one way or another because that's just how many people there are.

Originally Posted by Kim

What GG boils down to is that a lot of gamers feel threatened by increasing feminist critique around and about games and they've convinced themselves that Obama Sarkeesian and the "Social Justice Warriors" are going to take their games away or ruin them or whatever. At its core, that's what they're most upset about.

In essence? Yeah, that's it. Sure there's also people mad at terrible journalism and censorship, people who're trying to change the definition of what a game is and so on, but yeah that's pretty much it.

Also, on the AAA vs Indies thing: Indies get a lot more flak than AAA because fuck if I know, but it's not like AAA devs don't get flak. I feel that this whole Zoey Quinn scandal was the last straw on a series of stupid events, not just about gaming journalism but also about a large part of internet culture. It hit all the "right" spots.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Ryong

The thing is that several sites suddenly posted articles on the same tone stating the same thing on the same day. It's kind of weird.

I don't find it weird at all, if only because I think any sane, rational person-who-likes-videogames reaction to all the bullshit that started being spewed was to desperately, desperately want to distance themselves away from that cesspool.

Like, any decent person who plays videogames would at least want 'gamers' to be 'dead' in the aftermath of that lunacy, so the worst I could do is 'blame' folks like Leigh Alexander of extremely wishful thinking.

Though, to be frank, I think the increasing success of titles like Gone Home, Hate Plus and To The Moon, as well as even AAA games' divergence from the Dudebro model with homosexual relationships in Mass Effect and Dragon Age and the exploration of mature themes and female characters with agency in titles like Last of Us prove the point Leigh was actually making -- that as more people in general are playing videogames, there's more and more room for developers to eschew appealing solely to the minority of privileged heterosexual men who lack sufficient maturity and/or imagination to place themselves in other peoples' shoes for a goddamn change.

It's not that 'gamers' are 'dead', insofar as there's always going to be another Dead or Alive and another Call of Duty 87 Trillion, but moreso that the monopoly the 'gamer' once held is eroding, and if you don't fit that mold there's going to be more and more content in the future that's designed with you in mind, and more and more criticism from journalists who are empathetic to your perspective. Games aren't just for 'gamers' anymore.

[Kim]

The articles were written primarily out of frustration with the abusive nature of the gaming community after it'd been harassing Zoe Quinn and they were fed up with it. Also apparently the non Leigh people that wrote those sometimes like to bite her style.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

The whole thing started out as a major concern about corruption in gaming journalism. It spiraled out of control when the Zoey Quinn incident happened.

Feminist jumped to her rescue. The GG guys thought the feminist movement was protecting and promoting corruption (it wasn't). And the minority of terrible folks on both sides really made things worse to the point where the only way to get the a good grasp of the story is to look at both sides. As both sides are basically refusing to negotiate.

No matter what happens always keep an open mind. Remember that neither side in this war is inherently evil. GG wants the corruption gone and the feminist just want equality (which at this point is only majorly held back from a social stand point).

Force only brings more force. Even when I deal with trolls I still keep a level head. Something both sides need to do. Instead of this back and forth shouting match that's getting no one anywhere and hurts both of their cause.

Kim I know you hate GG but remember that these people are not trying to attack women's rights (although some are). They just want the fake review scores, and under the table paid reviews to stop. Sometimes it really pays to be neutral, it gives you the chance to see the full picture. Sadly I don't see this ending anytime soon.

[Ryong]

You don't find weird that, in a scandal wherein journalism is at the center, several sites having articles in the exact same tone about the exact same thing on the same day, even using nearly the same headlines? Maybe I'm weird, then.

My issue with the "gamers are dead" statement is that it grossly generalizes that every single gamer that isn't one of the new, inclusive gamers who don't require non-stop shooting/brawling/breast bouncing action is, well, like that. Yes, there are a lot of people like that, but that doesn't mean that these ideas that are supposedly the work of the "new" kind of gamer is actually new.

Goddamn I wish I could word this better.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Originally Posted by Ryong

You don't find weird that, in a scandal wherein journalism is at the center, several sites having articles in the exact same tone about the exact same thing on the same day, even using nearly the same headlines? Maybe I'm weird, then.

My issue with the "gamers are dead" statement is that it grossly generalizes that every single gamer that isn't one of the new, inclusive gamers who don't require non-stop shooting/brawling/breast bouncing action is, well, like that. Yes, there are a lot of people like that, but that doesn't mean that these ideas that are supposedly the work of the "new" kind of gamer is actually new.

Goddamn I wish I could word this better.

Yeah that's really generalizing since not all gamers are like that. If anything the fact that gamers are having this discussion is proof that not all of us are terrible. Heck even the term Gamer is gender neutral.