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[cormack12]

Source: https://humanevents.com/2019/08/21/the-real-history-of-gamergate
Pretty good article from the author's point of view. Thought this will become more relevant over the next weeks with the ion fury debacle.

Last week, the New York Times published a collection of articles commemorating the infamous gaming event that took the world by storm in 2014. “August Never Ends,” wrote GamerGate’s progenitor and catalyst, Zoe Quinn, one year after the event. A truism, given how the media insists on whipping out GamerGate as the mainstream media’s bogeyman to scare readers from exercising independent thought.

This was a concerted effort by a small network of people within the gaming press to set the narrative; I know this because I was a part of it. At the time, I edited a publication called Critical Distance, which curated collections of think pieces exploring the video game space through a “critical” (read: progressive) lens. During the 7-day period that the “Gamers are Dead” articles ran, Critical Distance curated a host of articles celebrating the demise of the core gaming community and bringing special attention to so-called “attacks” on feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian.

Video game journalists, completely out of touch with the consumers they supposedly served, chose instead to focus on insular reviews of atypical games, brushed aside consumer complaints in negligent coverage of games with serious problems, and participated in press events that served as little more than all-expense-paid vacations for games journalists.

Frustrated customers scrutinized these reviews and the compromised entanglements between the press and video game producers. Collaborations such as gaming luminary Geoff Keighley’s ill-conceived partnership with Doritos and Mountain Dew became some of the most propagated memes of the early 2010s. Earlier in 2007, Jeff Gerstmann, a high-profile games journalist, was fired from GameSpot after posting a negative review of a game that was heavily advertised on the publication that employed him.

To add to this disenchantment with gaming journalism, consumers noticed a troubling trend in the early 2010s. The gaming press had become quite obviously partisan, injecting progressive political commentary into their coverage.

When gamers refer to “gameplay” they are speaking of the mechanics—the strategic and technical elements that make a game fun to play. It’s more or less anything that isn’t the sound, setting, story, or visuals. This includes everything from how something like Call of Duty might “feel” as a first-person shooter, its competitive mechanics, reward systems, and so forth.

Gameplay, however, was largely uninteresting to journalists struggling to make their commentary politically relevant in the shifting climate of digital media. Simon Carless, former publisher of Gamasutraand who oversees the Game Developers Conference, wrote in a blog post in 2007 that “gameplay is a… dirty word!” Arguing that the vaguely-defined term promoted sloppy thinking, he compared the concept of “gameplay” to “moviewatch.”

 

[MiyazakiHatesKojima]

The greatest movement since the Civil Rights Movement

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Oh boy. I expect backlash.

But what happens when the "slippery slope" arguments of a "misogynistic" movement end up becoming true before our very eyes? It does make one reflect and reconsider what has been said about these chumps. The name is basically just an amorphous boogeyman, but I suppose it's good to document how the movement actually started.

 

[Boss Mog]

Man if you were a gater on GAF back in 2014 your life expectancy on the forum was really short unless you shut up and went along with the degenerate loons.

 

[V4skunk]

I thought gamer gate was about that waman crying about sexism?

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Man if you were a gater on GAF back in 2014 your life expectancy on the forum was really short unless you shut up and went along with the degenerate loons.

It peaked in 2016, through mid 2017, when the meltdown would start. I went on hiatus for much of the time, just watching after I caught a ban for the stupidest shit.
Soon as #MeToo started, a series of life changing events occured.

 

[Shai-Tan]

There's room to not buy the game journalist polemic about it while also not buying into stories told by a person with little self awareness who ended up writing clickbait articles for Milo Yiannopoulos.

Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself

This is about the influence of feminism and progressivism in gaming, and the sooner Gamergate can admit that, the sooner we can have a semi-functional debate.

www.thecut.com

This is driven home even more by the fact that the home bases for Gamergate and gamergate related discussion slant heavily conservative and have become even more so in the last few years i.e. it's a whole lot of political resentment, innuendo, conspiracy theories hiding behind feebly argued concerns about ethics

edit: there is some thoughtful discussion around some of those topics but it's almost all in spliter groups (see. for example, r/GGdiscussion). the main forums are all outrage, clickbait and dumb caricatures

 

[Birdo]

I was there day one. Ground zero.

It's hilarious seeing the media's version of events. Pure bullshit.

 

[Stimpak]

Man if you were a gater on GAF back in 2014 your life expectancy on the forum was really short unless you shut up and went along with the degenerate loons.

When it gets too hot (no matter where you are) burrow and pray they don’t have detection.

Only until you’ve picked your hill to die on.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Were there assholes in Gamergate? Of course there were.

Were they the majority? Of course they weren't.

Most people wanted journalists to take some accountability. A tiny handful were misogynistic assholes and, of course, the media that was being pushed against used that small group and pretended it was the majority. They had the power so it was easy for them to change the narrative.

 

[RSLAEV]

Man if you were a gater on GAF back in 2014 your life expectancy on the forum was really short unless you shut up and went along with the degenerate loons.

Gamergate was just one of many "hills that you could die on" if you didn't follow the mandated narratives. By then I had just become accustomed to keeping my head down most of the time.

I just remember that after I had a broad understanding of what had gone down I woke up one day and there were like 15 articles all over the web talking about how "Gamer's were over" and describing how an army of raging incels were ganging up on this innocent indie dev that dindu nuffin wrong. I had never seen coordinated lying by the news media before and it scared the shit out of me.

 

[petran79]

It is sad that those names will be mentioned in future video game history books and in a positive light too.

List of women in the video game industry - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

• Rieko Kodama, artist, director, and producer known for her work on the Phantasy Star series and other Sega titles including Skies of Arcadia and the 7th Dragon series.[16]
• Christine Love is a Canadian video game developer.
• Manami Matsumae, Japanese video game composer
• Carla Meninsky, video game designer during the early years of the Atari 2600
• Zoë Quinn, developer of Depression Quest and subsequently a spokefigure against the harassment from the Gamergate controversy.[17]
• Jade Raymond, Canadian video game executive, founder of Electronic Arts' Motive Studios, head of Visceral Games, and former Managing Director of Ubisoft Toronto

 

[Dr. Claus]

Zoe Quinn, hack who steals money and can't create games worth shit.

 

[-Arcadia-]

After over half a decade of character assasination, misleading claims, and flat out incorrect or made-up info from media sites, I’m surprised anyone still believes these claims about GG.

GamerGate was where all this started. A trial run for this kind of attack on anyone who questions you.

Resentment with the gaming media had boiled over, they were caught with their pants down in a very suspicious looking situation, and this was the result, along with every forum on the internet handing out bans for even politely discussing it.

 

[Domisto]

 

[-Arcadia-]

On a side note, unless I’m wrong, which I don’t think I am, GG was never about left vs. right, or politics. People who were part of GG had all kinds of political backgrounds and beliefs. It seems like some people on both sides may be retroactively applying the conflicts of today, to it.

It was a consumer movement, plain and simple. One where everyone with any idealistic dreams left of a mature, fair press built around classic journalism principles, one that would listen to, and learn from this criticism, had them smashed.

Along with finding out that the moderation of every discussion site would instantly shut down a discussion, if the right false allegations were made.

 

[switchback27]

There's room to not buy the game journalist polemic about it while also not buying into stories told by a person with little self awareness who ended up writing clickbait articles for Milo Yiannopoulos.

Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself

This is about the influence of feminism and progressivism in gaming, and the sooner Gamergate can admit that, the sooner we can have a semi-functional debate.

www.thecut.com

This is driven home even more by the fact that the home bases for Gamergate and gamergate related discussion slant heavily conservative and have become even more so in the last few years i.e. it's a whole lot of political resentment, innuendo, conspiracy theories hiding behind feebly argued concerns about ethics

edit: there is some thoughtful discussion around some of those topics but it's almost all in spliter groups (see. for example, r/GGdiscussion). the main forums are all outrage, clickbait and dumb caricatures

Good God, someone else that populated r/GGdiscussion! Thought everyone else in there was an algorithm, the points became so repetitive after a while. I appreciated what it tried to bring (a relatively nuanced discussion of culture war issues) but I think its slow demise and inactivity shows that the discussion around the topic does not allow for much, if any, nuance.

Edit: As for the article itself, it does lay out the background pretty well, but it feels like it just......ends, rather abruptly. Decent setup, but the payoff was meh.

 

[Kataploom]

The same thing people accuse GG of doing reminds me what some people does in another forum.

IDK if GG is really what they said they are, but after knowing Sarkeesian had a private organization with her mates that sold "political correctness" consulting to companies, it generated me doubts about what's the real story here, because I cannot think otherwise than she was trying to create (or force the creation of) a market using the media (the ones promoting her) as a trampoline to direct targeted attacks against game devs and then offer her "services".

If GG is really that shit they say, then I don't see how they are better by doing the exact same, tbh.

 

[InterMusketeer]

On a side note, unless I’m wrong, which I don’t think I am, GG was never about left vs. right, or politics.

I wouldn't say that. I actually remember reading an article at the time that argued GG would have never gotten as big as it did if there were more legit "conservative" video game news sites where people could discuss the Zoe post or voice their disagreements with Sarkeesian's videos, which I agreed with at the time. I think the political aspects as described in Cheong's article are fairly accurate. GG was also pushback against games journalists' silencing of conservative voices and opinions, while they replaced them with their own political ideas and ideology. GG was simply a group of people that disagreed with that, but far left types like those who used to hang out here obviously appreciated those journalists' efforts to make gaming more progressive.

Edit: As for the article itself, it does lay out the background pretty well, but it feels like it just......ends, rather abruptly. Decent setup, but the payoff was meh.

Indeed. I expected some kind of conclusion, but there wasn't any. The author seems to want to redeem himself somehow by putting the truth out there, but doesn't go on to say how exactly expects to do that. This article was just a summary of the events with a bit of background story, I expect more than this considering his tone.

 

[grfunkulus]

Gaming journalists demanded more diversity of identity, and not—as conservatives often suggest—diversity of thought.

LMFAO, that's rich. True conservatism in this country, at least as represented by elected officials, is entirely dead.

I guess I must not be hanging out with the right crowds because I haven't met an actual conservative whose opinions I truly respected and who was a proponent of diversity of thought for at least 5 years.

Further, it's just a throw away line that the author couldn't seem to stop himself from writing. It doesn't *completely* invalidate everything that came before it but in trying to garner some (re)consideration from the disaffected, that kind of blatant ideological partisanship isn't helpful.

And it's not true anyway. The true diversity of thought nowadays doesn't lay with liberals or conservatives because of how incredibly polarized and internet/meme-driven our culture is. It's somewhere in the middle. Probably with people that would never read, be persuaded, or even consider such noise

 

[-Arcadia-]

I wouldn't say that. I actually remember reading an article at the time that argued GG would have never gotten as big as it did if there were more legit "conservative" video game news sites where people could discuss the Zoe post or voice their disagreements with Sarkeesian's videos, which I agreed with at the time. I think the political aspects as described in Cheong's article are fairly accurate. GG was also pushback against games journalists' silencing of conservative voices and opinions, while they replaced them with their own political ideas and ideology. GG was simply a group of people that disagreed with that, but far left types like those who used to hang out here obviously appreciated those journalists' efforts to make gaming more progressive.

I don’t seem to recall that any silencing of conservatives existed. I was on the left back then, so that might have not been something I was aware of, but it seemed like the great push for leftist politics in the media and discussion sites occurred later, even much later, than the initial GamerGate controversy.

It seemed more like gamers got on the wrong side of a jackboot that would indeed later be used for pushing political ideology with force, but hadn’t yet.

 

[A Regular Guy]

Those were the days...... It always has been about ethical journalism practices and for those same journalist to treat their consumers with respect. It then devolved to doxxing, politics, and downright regressed the gaming journalist to overly entitled child-like adults.

Game journalist were getting in bed with game developers, and then praising their games like they were GOTG, much like Depression Quest.

 

[Outrunner]

let it rest already

 

[nush]

I didn't follow anything much about Gamergate, I picked up enough that it was about dodgy journalists and misogynistic gamers or some internet drama l had no time for. My life was busy and I just wanted to read about what games were good.

but...

It did manage to drop one of the best

I've ever seen.

When Alison Rapp was fired from Nintendo and all the journalists blindly rushed to put out articles as fast as they could mash their keybords about how "Evil Gamergate got this woman fired from Nintendo just for having a part time job". Only for the journalists not a couple of hours later ending up with egg on thier faces about the nature of the "Part time job" when it was revealed. Watching them stamp out discussion and censor the real story all the time they must have been sweating about what they defended was hilarious.

 

[goldrush80]

let it rest already

Your talking to NY times right?

Opinion | How an Online Mob Created a Playbook for a Culture War (Published 2019)

The powerful lesson of a 5-year-old harassment campaign: How to wage a post-truth information war.

www.nytimes.com

i assume this is a rebuttal to the ny times

 

[danielberg]

I didn't follow anything much about Gamergate, I picked up enough that it was about dodgy journalists and misogynistic gamers or some internet drama l had no time for. My life was busy and I just wanted to read about what games were good.

 

[Helios]

On a side note, unless I’m wrong, which I don’t think I am, GG was never about left vs. right, or politics. People who were part of GG had all kinds of political backgrounds and beliefs.

Completely right.
strange headache has a great post on this matter debunking all sorts of false narratives created in order to degrade anyone who was in support of GG

GamerGate: a discussion without internet-murdering each other about it

It was never about politics in gaming. Almost every game has poltical plots in there. Especially JRPGs which also feature a ton of religion in it. No one cared if a game was used to spread some political opinion or view. IT was about using these ideologies to change gaming instead of use these...

www.neogaf.com

 

[FreeThinker1990]

Thank goodness for clear, unbiased accounts like this.

 

[InterMusketeer]

I don’t seem to recall that any silencing of conservatives existed. I was on the left back then, so that might have not been something I was aware of, but it seemed like the great push for leftist politics in the media and discussion sites occurred later, even much later, than the initial GamerGate controversy.

It seemed more like gamers got on the wrong side of a jackboot that would indeed later be used for pushing political ideology with force, but hadn’t yet.

The unnatural attention games like Depression Quest and Gone Home got for their progressive message, and for fitting the mould journalists envisioned for the medium, was a clear sign of the great push happening way before GG. Sarkeesian's first video was released in 2013, a year before GG kicked off. We all know how that was handled by the media: Anyone who disagreed with her was deemed a sexist harasser. No publication was interested in picking apart her arguments, instead stating her criticism was important, and agreeing with it every step of the way. The Dragon's Crown controversy, where a journalist criticized the game's artstyle for being sexist and pandering to pedophiles, had already happened a year before GG was a thing. There's probably numerous other examples.

This push was already happening, and IMO was a factor in the forming of GG.

 

[alabtrosMyster]

This is driven home even more by the fact that the home bases for Gamergate and gamergate related discussion slant heavily conservative and have become even more so in the last few years i.e. it's a whole lot of political resentment, innuendo, conspiracy theories hiding behind feebly argued concerns about ethics

I'm not sure what you call conservative these days. If you mean that people asking games reviewers to remove their shallow social analysis from reviws (like dock a point for each of the following: straight white protagonist, not enough "minorities" NPC, stereotypical/not representative enough character of a certain ethnicity, females looking a certain way, females not being covered enough,etc). Then complain about it by saying we can do better it's 20XX, if everything is OK on that level, insist that some character's sexuality is mis handled in some manner and frame that as the future, pretty soon they will insist that more of the less common pronouns be used more often to represent.

I don't think that you have to be a conservative to be of the opinion that the intersectional critical theory is a detriment to games and movie criticism, it just makes no sense as a model of analysis, but once you learned it, it's pretty easy to apply the lens to all situations, like a 13 years old intellectual would.

Note that I was starchly against gamergate when it was in full force (except that I could see how games journalists were not acting like they used to, I just didn't like how it was centered around Zoe Quinn).. anyway what broke the camel's back for me was when Eurogamer complained about the lack of black NPCs in a game set in northern Europe in the medieval area, as if that was a hate crime of some sort.

If you concentrate on the crazies of any movement you won't find much to like in it.

 

[Bryank75]

There's room to not buy the game journalist polemic about it while also not buying into stories told by a person with little self awareness who ended up writing clickbait articles for Milo Yiannopoulos.

Gamergate Should Stop Lying to Journalists — and Itself

This is about the influence of feminism and progressivism in gaming, and the sooner Gamergate can admit that, the sooner we can have a semi-functional debate.

www.thecut.com

This is driven home even more by the fact that the home bases for Gamergate and gamergate related discussion slant heavily conservative and have become even more so in the last few years i.e. it's a whole lot of political resentment, innuendo, conspiracy theories hiding behind feebly argued concerns about ethics

edit: there is some thoughtful discussion around some of those topics but it's almost all in spliter groups (see. for example, r/GGdiscussion). the main forums are all outrage, clickbait and dumb caricatures

If splinter groups, outrage and dumb caricatures are how independent thoughts manifest themselves, then I don't see a problem with it. Not everything has to be exquisitely researched and academically presented. Raw emotions must be vented sometimes and that is healthy, you don't want to suppress people (as the media seems to wish to do) until they become frustrated and decide to show that in an altogether less healthy way.... whether that is self-harm, depression or violent outbursts etc.

I really think the articles proclaiming the death of gamers and the overall suppression of the wider communities thoughts over the last decade shows how detached, condescending and mostly irresponsible the gaming press/media has been.

The gaming media only use their power to bully, undercut, deplatform and manipulate gamers... they are mostly concerned with elevating themselves and disenfranchising us.

 

[Geki-D]

I'm glad he put this in because it's perfectly true:

What the progressive press fails to grasp, however, was that GamerGate was colonized by the “alt-right”—not the other way around. Right-wing activists like Milo Yiannopoulos (who is not a gamer himself) saw the controversy as an opportunity to promote themselves as the savior of games journalism. Yiannopoulos’s coverage at Breitbart was an attempt to capitalize on the resentment that had built up against the progressive agenda seizing control of games journalism.

After Yiannopoulos came the white nationalists. There weren’t very many of them, and their impact was minimal, but there were enough of them for the New York Times and other publications to circulate countless articles calling GamerGate a prototype for the alt-right. Though far from true, this characterization certainly does work to demonize anyone who disagrees with the progressive press.

Although only 2 paragraphs for something that had such an impact of GG's credibility and public image isn't much. You could probably write a whole article about the takeover of GG by right wing/alt right commentators to push their own politics.

Also this:

Remarkably, all these efforts to cultivate a politically awakened gamer class, strong as they were, had little impact on video game culture as a whole. After all, gamers just want to play video games.

Is utterly untrue. The shadow of the battalion of right leaning commentators who hijacked GG still looms large. Whenever a game with a female lead gets announced, or has gay characters, black characters or anything else the devs use their artistic liberty to put in their game, you get people forged in the fires of the alt right shitheads lose their shit and suddenly embrace "cancel culture". Suddenly artistic freedom doesn't mean anything, such a core tenant of GG originally, gets thrown right out the window when it's politics these people don't like.

NuGAF is a good example of this. So many triggered right wing snowflakes on here melting at the news of what a game will have in it. Taught by the right winger YouTubers to say "But it's not coz X, it's coz it's pushing politics!" Of course ask them how then a game can have these things in them without it coming across as politics and they squirm and choke. It's actually hilarious to watch them want to say "It's impossible, no gays in games" but try -and fail- to put it into words that don't come across as that because they know it's an abhorrent views to hold. Of course some don't even hide it, go to any Last of US Part 2 thread on GAF and count the number of lesbian jokes and people who say the trailer's "content" makes them sick (hint it ain't the violence).

Gaming forums weren't like this before, not on this level. GG had good intentions but it was dragged down to hell.

 

[Clear]

The way the media have reshaped the narrative to exclude the fact that there was legitimate distrust and dissatisfaction with the perceived too-cozy relationship between the enthusiast press and publishers is undeniably self-serving and dishonest.

The historical fact is that several sites adjusted their policies, and things like review junkets went away as a direct result. This had nothing to do with politics or misogyny, it was a problem of their own making.

 

[GHG]

The greatest movement since the Civil Rights Movement

Don't make me fight you.

I know you jest... but I actually had someone at the other place once try to tell me that people with birth defects (I think the Rage 2 cleft lip "controversy" was the topic at hand) go through the same thing as what black people did prior to the civil rights movements in America.

Good times.

 

[Dr. Claus]

I'm glad he put this in because it's perfectly true:

Although only 2 paragraphs for something that had such an impact of GG's credibility and public image isn't much. You could probably write a whole article about the takeover of GG by right wing/alt right commentators to push their own politics.

Also this:

Is utterly untrue. The shadow of the battalion of right leaning commentators who hijacked GG still looms large. Whenever a game with a female lead gets announced, or has gay characters, black characters or anything else the devs use their artistic liberty to put in their game, you get people forged in the fires of the alt right shitheads lose their shit and suddenly embrace "cancel culture". Suddenly artistic freedom doesn't mean anything, such a core tenant of GG originally, gets thrown right out the window when it's politics these people don't like.

NuGAF is a good example of this. So many triggered right wing snowflakes on here melting at the news of what a game will have in it. Taught by the right winger YouTubers to say "But it's not coz X, it's coz it's pushing politics!" Of course ask them how then a game can have these things in them without it coming across as politics and they squirm and choke. It's actually hilarious to watch them want to say "It's impossible, no gays in games" but try -and fail- to put it into words that don't come across as that because they know it's an abhorrent views to hold. Of course some don't even hide it, go to any Last of US Part 2 thread on GAF and count the number of lesbian jokes and people who say the trailer's "content" makes them sick (hint it ain't the violence).

Gaming forums weren't like this before, not on this level. GG had good intentions but it was dragged down to hell.

Got some evidence to support that GG was taken over by the alt-right? Seems more like you are doing exactly as the far-left tends to do and try to paint the entire thing as "tainted"by the political party you don't subscribe to in a vain effort to discredit them.

The majority of those talking about game news and info are left leaning liberals as has been proven time and again. Stop with the tribalism bullshit, Geki.

 

[Geki-D]

Got some evidence to support that GG was taken over by the alt-right?

The article in the OP makes a case for this. How many of the more famous GG supporters can you name that aren't right wing?

The majority of those talking about game news and info are left leaning liberals as has been proven time and again.

Got some evidence to support this?

 

[Dr. Claus]

The article in the OP makes a case for this. How many of the more famous GG supporters can you name that aren't right wing?


Got some evidence to support this?

It has been posted time and again, I would be very surprised if you were somehow ignorant of it given how you literally posted in it yourself: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/poli...l-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours.1460934/

The vast majority of those left leaning folk post on the gaming side and ignore the politics side. Now are you going to provide evidence that GG was taken over by alt-right? You have yet to do so.

Meanwhile, continued work by various folks like PSA Sitch, Brad Glasglow, and Sophia Narwitz (to name just a few) further shit on your concept that GG was "taken over" by the alt-right (which is not to mention the Federal Bureau of Investigation also failed to find any connection between GG and alt-right/harassment of minorities and women).

No, Gamergate is Not Right Wing -

You were sent here because you think Gamergate is right wing. You are wrong. (I have shamelessly stolen the idea and format for this piece from Ken White over at Popehat, who wrote a worthwhile [...]

www.gameobjective.com

 

[Geki-D]

It has been posted time and again, I would be very surprised if you were somehow ignorant of it given how you literally posted in it yourself: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/poli...l-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours.1460934/

This is literally meaningless when you can go straight to the politics board here and just scroll down the page. Nearly everything is leaning right. Also when people lose their shit at some dumb non-canon ending to MK11, and very thread about TLOU2 turns into a shitshow of lesbian jokes and SJW conspiracy, you're hardly dealing with left leaning people.

Now are you going to provide evidence that GG was taken over by alt-right? You have yet to do so.

Literally in the article in the OP. Again, how many pro GG famous Youtubers can you name who aren't right wing out of the ones who were actually active during GG?

Meanwhile, continued work by various folks like PSA Sitch, Brad Glasglow, and Sophia Narwitz (to name just a few) further shit on your concept that GG was "taken over" by the alt-right

PSA Sitch, really? You actually ever seen this guy's YT? All he does is defend the right and attack the left. He is not a good example of a right wing commentator jumping on GG. Not familiar with the other 2, pretty sure they aren't considered big players during when GG went down.

(which is not to mention the Federal Bureau of Investigation also failed to find any connection between GG and alt-right/harassment of minorities and women)

This isn't quite true. the FBI wasn't even looking for connections to the alt-right firstly. Secondly, they interviewed people who confessed to sending harassment, they just didn't charge anyone. So they, by sheer definition, did find connections to harassment.

 

[Deleted member 762073]

I thought gamer gate was about that waman crying about sexism?

It was a mess. It was private matter that went online, it was a war against fake journalism, real right wing people that insulted that woman, troll that pretended to be right wing, left wing peolple taking the bait and making everything about sexist and alt right in gaming, people discussing that is not the point labeled as fascists, even more trolling got invololved both right winger and left winger.

It still makes me laugh sometimes, internet at its finest

 

[strange headache]

Last week, the New York Times published a collection of articles commemorating the infamous gaming event that took the world by storm in 2014.

Here's the NYT article in question: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/15/opinion/what-is-gamergate.html

You'd think that after 5 years, the NYT would finally manage to represent the situation in a nuanced manner, but seemingly they are incapable of jumping over their own shadow. Instead what we get is a highly reductive substrate of the worst hot-takes about GG that I've seen in a long time.

The Zoe Post was the straw that broke the camel's back, not the initial incident to a women harassment campaign. The NYT article forgets to mention that Kotaku was never really respected among gamer circles for its clickbait journalism and shoddy business practices. Kotaku was always considered a bit of a joke, even among the highly respected gaming journalists (such as RPS) who are now all buddy-buddy with them. They practically invented clickbait reporting in video-games journalism, coupled with highly connected cronyism that would basically end your career as games developer if you weren't part of their ingroup.

Many gamers were fed up with that sort of journalism, and the Zoe Post followed by the "gamers are dead" articles was merely another questionable incident among dozens which led to gamers voicing their concerns.

The post, which exhaustively documented the last weeks of his breakup with the video game designer Zoë Quinn, was annotated and punctuated with screenshots of their private digital correspondence — emails, Facebook messages and texts detailing fights and rehashing sexual histories. It was a manic, all-caps rant made to go viral.

When Eron Gjoni wrote the Zoe Post he did so out of desperation, having ended his abusive relationship with Quinn. Now I don't condone washing your dirty laundry in public, but Gjoni certainly did not deserve to be stigmatized by the press for doing so. What irks me is that none of these journalists actually cared verifying the claims made by Gjoni, which painted a very negative picture of Quinn herself. Instead they promptly decided to side with Zoe and just label him a revengeful ex-boyfriend out for blood.

Imagine the press doing that about a female #metoo victim, or Projared's ex-wife who did exactly the same. Nobody even bothered to take a look at Gjoni's accusations, which were backed up by his private conversations with Quinn. Years later we now know that Quinn herself was a known internet troll on the somethingawful forums where she was a member of helldump and is nothing more than an outrage monger who cannot let go of GG because that internet-controversy represents all of her 5 minutes of internet fame. Her numerous crowdfunding campaigns ended up going nowhere and her abusive self-serving behavior towards others is well documented. What does she have to show, apart from a shoddily made HTML pseudo-game that represents depression in a seriously reductive and hamfisted manner and a couple of Suicide Girls nude pics?

She was later forced to drop her case against Gjoni basically legally gagging him to prevent him from talking about this after he sued her back. Zoe Quinn is not a good person, yet the press offers her a platform while vilifying Gjoni, whose progressive political leanings are far from being alt-right.

Today, five years later, the elements of Gamergate are frighteningly familiar: hundreds of thousands of hashtag-swarming tweets; armies of fake Twitter accounts; hoaxes and disinformation percolating in murky chat rooms and message boards before spreading to a confused mainstream media; advertiser boycotts; crowdfunding campaigns; racist, sexist and misogynist memes; YouTube shock jocks; D-list celebrities hand-wringing about political correctness on Twitter; Milo Yiannopoulos, Steve Bannon and Breitbart; Candace Owens.

Yeah well, what do you expect if you refuse to report on the issue in a one-sided manner while lending the critics no voice whatsoever?

I don't like Milo, Bannon and Breitbart, but that doesn't imply that I cannot take Gjoni's or GG's claims seriously. The only reason why Milo et al. even had the chance to latch on to GG was because of the black & white reporting by the press. Of course Kotaku and their social media cronies are going to dismiss all criticism that is levied against them, they were after all at the epicenter of the controversy. Your vilification and prejudiced representation of gamers as misogynist hateful neckbeard basement dwellers and your dogmatic refusal to even take their gripes seriously led them straight into Breitbart's arms.

And for what? For defending a sh*tty helldump poster, the con-artist from Feminist Frequency and the crazy person who made Revolution 60?

Speaking of which...

But of course you would give Brianna Wu her time of day. I'm sure since her crappy mobile game that got glowing reviews by Kotaku (whodathuinkit) but nobody else and her failed career as a politician (MOON ROCKS ARE GONNA DESTROY US ALL) she is happy to latch back onto her long since faded fame as GG's favourite e-victim.

The final word, of course, is written by Sarah Jeong, NYT's very own racist writer:

I'll just leave this this here:

Look, I've rambled on long enough about this insanity, and I'm tired of GG. Just go read our healthy discussion on this topic which was linked above by Helios or read one of the more nuanced takes by Erik Kain or David Auerbach. Years later, we now know who is really leading the social media outrage machine, it's not GG, but their militant opposition such as ResetEra.

Dear NYT, how about cleaning your own house first or better yet, covering those numerous harassment campaigns against developers lead by the social justice hate mob instead of beating this dead horse?

 

[Helios]

This is literally meaningless when you can go straight to the politics board here and just scroll down the page. Nearly everything is leaning right. Also when people lose their shit at some dumb non-canon ending to MK11, and very thread about TLOU2 turns into a shitshow of lesbian jokes and SJW conspiracy, you're hardly dealing with left leaning people.

Why do people have the impression that if you want to criticize anything left-wing related you HAVE to be right-wing or alt-right (which you seem to be using quite interchangeably whenever it fits)? At most, I would say that the right-wing part of the forum is a bit more vocal but to say they are the absolute majority, especially when you keep getting proven wrong, is laughable.

 

[Geki-D]

Why do people have the impression that if you want to criticize anything left-wing related you HAVE to be right-wing or alt-right?

When it's constant left attacking and right defending, that sort of speaks for itself.

(which you seem to be using quite interchangeably whenever it fits)

Just to be clear, gay bashing and ethno politics aren't right wing positions, they're alt-right positions. Sorry bud but plenty of people on here have serious issues with gay people, trans people and none white people. Yeah, they're alt-right.

especially when you keep getting proven wrong

lol Where? You tacitly agreed that right-wing is more vocal. So you're arguing that there are more left wing people but they all just sit silent whilst the right leaning people post? Yeah, talk about laughable points. Also this is all just pointless because my original point was never that all of GAF was right wing but that there was a raise after GG and the people who bemoan the SJW conspiracy are brainwashed by the GG backing right wing Youtubers. Be that 5%, 50% or 100% of GAF, I never said. This "But most aren't right wing" is a massive red herring.

 

[Saruhashi]

After all this time I still struggle to tie down exactly what "Gamergate" is supposed to be in the eyes of those who are against it.
Maybe this is entirely by design.

If it was a bunch of dudes angry about women in videogames then why the hell did they wait until 2014 to get angry?
Then, once angry, why did they focus on 2 developers who never made a notable game between them (ZQ and BW) and a Youtube critic who wasn't really involved in development at all (AS)?

You've had women involved in game development for a long while before 2014. Especially as the industry exploded through the PS1, PS2 and PS3 eras and games were made by larger and larger teams.

There there's the question of who actually is involved with "Gamergate" even the Youtube names that get thrown around maybe made a couple of videos on the subject but it's not like you had people dedicating their lives to being a part of this group.

Even the supposed Gamergate subreddit, KotakuInAction is pretty tame in reality. Like you'd go over there expecting to read some real juicy and shocking stuff and it's just a bunch of folk talking about SJW stuff but it could hardly be described as hateful.

It's weird to see a "hate group" that has no leaders, no members, not goals and no real world impact. Like if you had seen a bunch of Gamergate stormtroopers invading E3 and beating the shit out of people then you could say "ok this is a hate group" sort of in the same vein as Eastern European football hooligans. Even if they had some real violent rhetoric or something then fine but that stuff seems to largely not exist and when it does it isn't really linked to some kind of organization.

I mean, there really are "hate groups" out there in the world and they really do have crazy members with crazy ideas and sometimes this manifests as real world violence but "Gamergate" doesn't seem to be anything much like that.

Even after these articles I still feel like I am asking "OK so Gamergate is what, exactly?"

 

[-Arcadia-]

The unnatural attention games like Depression Quest and Gone Home got for their progressive message, and for fitting the mould journalists envisioned for the medium, was a clear sign of the great push happening way before GG. Sarkeesian's first video was released in 2013, a year before GG kicked off. We all know how that was handled by the media: Anyone who disagreed with her was deemed a sexist harasser. No publication was interested in picking apart her arguments, instead stating her criticism was important, and agreeing with it every step of the way. The Dragon's Crown controversy, where a journalist criticized the game's artstyle for being sexist and pandering to pedophiles, had already happened a year before GG was a thing. There's probably numerous other examples.

This push was already happening, and IMO was a factor in the forming of GG.

Good point. I still assert that it was a consumer movement amongst all kinds of ideologies, and not politically dominated, as you also insinuated, but their weird hamfisted politics, in their infancy, did play a role.

So much has happened since then, sometimes it's hard to keep the timeline straight.

 

[Saruhashi]

The article in the OP makes a case for this. How many of the more famous GG supporters can you name that aren't right wing?

How many famous GG supporters can you name, and in what sense where they "supporting" GG?

Cos someone who says "I think journalists are bullshitting and I support the people who want some kind of reform in videogame journalism" is really very different from someone who says "everyone should go out and harass the following list of people, if you see them then beat them up".

I'm just feeling like I am missing the "connection" here. Or the puzzle piece that will make it fall into place.

People will say "well Youtuber X made a video about this and he has 250,000 subscribers and his audience went after the person he talked about".
That kind of just puts people in a spot where they can't talk about stuff that's going on then.

"Oh no mate, your audience is too big so you can't give an opinion on this news". It doesn't make any sense at all.

It just seems like GG is just this nebulous thing that can be adjusted to fit whatever story is being told. Shit, it even seems to go right up to "Gamergate got Trump elected".

On one hand its just a bunch of dumb basement dwelling trolls but on the other hand it's an unstoppable blueprint for taking over the political landscape.
Surely, it can't be both?

 

[Helios]

When it's constant left attacking and right defending, that sort of speaks for itself.

Nope. it just highlights that you don't understand how political compasses or more importantly human beings in itself works. Just because you're a leftist doesn't mean that you have to agree with every left-wing point.

lol Where? You tacitly agreed that right-wing is more vocal. So you're arguing that there are more left wing people but they all just sit silent whilst the right leaning people post? Yeah, talk about laughable points.

Nope. It wasn't a "tacitly agreed" it was a "I should probably throw him a bone since all his talking points are null and have been disproven constantly". You literally have nothing but keep derailing the thread anyway.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Even GAF had conversations about Kotaku leveraging their "political leanings" a full year before Gamergate:

Let's talk about Kotaku

Call Schreier if old Saw this article on my Twitter feed linked by the beautiful Patrick from GiantBomb; it seems to be written by a N4G user named dedicatedtogamers - I don't know who is behind this, but I think that person did an excellent job of summing up my current feelings about Kotaku...

www.neogaf.com

Fascinating peek into history. I do not drudge it up to poke fun at anyone who participated in that thread, just to show how far the narrative has come since then.

 

[Geki-D]

Nope. it just highlights that you don't understand how political compasses or more importantly human beings in itself works. Just because you're a leftist doesn't mean that you have to agree with every left-wing point.

Nope. It wasn't a "tacitly agreed" it was a "I should probably throw him a bone since all his talking points are null and have been disproven constantly". You literally have nothing but keep derailing the thread anyway.

Nothing to respond to, nothing of value said. Keep on truckin' buddy. Dat instant regret on admitting the right is more vocal on GAF, doe.

Also I never derailed the thread. I commented on something written in the article, relating directly to GG. However you decided to bring this down the "But GAF isn't all right wing!" path which does indeed have nothing to do with what I said or the topic at hand.

How many famous GG supporters can you name, and in what sense where they "supporting" GG?

Are you denying there were Youtubers who practically built their whole channels and reputations off of GG?

Cos someone who says "I think journalists are bullshitting and I support the people who want some kind of reform in videogame journalism" is really very different from someone who says "everyone should go out and harass the following list of people, if you see them then beat them up".

I'm just feeling like I am missing the "connection" here. Or the puzzle piece that will make it fall into place.

People will say "well Youtuber X made a video about this and he has 250,000 subscribers and his audience went after the person he talked about".
That kind of just puts people in a spot where they can't talk about stuff that's going on then.

"Oh no mate, your audience is too big so you can't give an opinion on this news". It doesn't make any sense at all.

What does any of this have to do with what I actually said? You realise I said "right wing" and not "encouraged harassment" or "these Youtubers were too big", right?

On one hand its just a bunch of dumb basement dwelling trolls but on the other hand it's an unstoppable blueprint for taking over the political landscape.
Surely, it can't be both?

...You quoted me yet I get the impression you didn't even read my post. I said it was hijacked so yes, it can actually be both. It was about unethical games journalism and right leaning commentators kowtowed to that all the while inserting their own political views and biases. So for example, the argument for representation of certain demographics in games (which literally has nothing to do with unethical games journalism) went from "I don't like these degenerates" to "These are SJW devs just pushing their politics". In the end the result is exactly the same; people complaining about certain demographics appearing in games and other forms of media. Right wing win.

 

[Saruhashi]

Are you denying there were Youtubers who practically built their whole channels and reputations off of GG?

Um, no.

I am asking you a question. Well, two questions.

How many famous GG supporters can you name, and in what sense where they "supporting" GG?

 

[-Arcadia-]

Trying to point out that GAF is right-wing dominant, due to a series of unrelated factors and a giant exodus, over five years later, is a pretty poor way to link the right wing to GamerGate.

Look at KotakuInAction's (official GG subreddit, basically) political leanings the next time they come up. An absolute ton of 'ORANGE MAN BAD' and 'BIRD NEST HAIR MAN GOOD'.

You can't judge politics and opinions on a binary method. It's more of a scale, with all kinds of identity.