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(Almost) Everything You Know About GamerGate is Wrong

Dunki

Member
This is probably the best description of the events around Gamergate that you can get. And It is really worth reading

Five years ago, a hashtag was born that blew up the internet — or, some will say, the world as we know it. It was sparked by one man’s blogpost about his messy breakup with his ex-partner, which grew into a flame war over video game criticism and then into a massive culture-war conflagration. It has been blamed for everything from the normalization of internet hate to the Donald Trump presidency. Or, as the title of the New York Times’ recent anniversary op-ed package proclaimed, “GamerGate Is Everything.” (Apparently, GamerGate is also forever: right on the heels of the anniversary, the controversy stirred back to life when the subject of the infamous blogpost, feminist video game developer Zoe Quinn, made a #MeToo accusation against another former boyfriend and he committed suicide a few days later.)

My own retrospective view, having reported on the GamerGate saga from early on, can be summed up as: “(almost) everything you’ve heard about GamerGate is wrong.”
 

AgentP

Thinks mods influence posters politics. Promoted to QAnon Editor.
No doubt, I know almost nothing. Every attempt I have at wrapping my head around it is never successful. Something about people on the Internet, hashtags, Millennials, first world problems, etc.
 
A good read. I particularly like that it touches on the fact that GamerGate was not an organized movement with a centralized authority, but instead just a gathering of people who all had their own reasons for coming along for the ride. The fact that era and their ilk still drag out the GamerGate boogeyman and treat it like some homogenous group of literal nazis whenever they get criticised is laughable.
 

Pejo

Member
Great read, and it's rare that you see the many different facets of GG. Also I consider myself a bit of a meme connoisseur, but I had never seen that walrus meme edit. Got a good laugh out of it.
 
I was never a part of GamerGate because I didn't care for the internet drama. I saw it coming from a mile away. Prior to the big blowup "journalists" had already been making very bizarre moves to prop up Anita Sarkeesian and to silence dissent. There was a mini-controversy where she disabled comments on her YouTube channel, and journalists took her side instead of the audience's side. Very weird standpoint, and it was a precursor to the overt anti-audience attitude of these modern "journalists" (inside and outside of the gaming industry). Everyone already knew journalists were on the dole in some way (lol Call of Duty and MGS4 and Dorito Pope and Kane & Lynch and all those other obvious conflicts of interest between journos and these companies). It was only a question of how corrupt the gaming journalists were.

Websites (Kotaku and RPS are the two I remember most vividly) clogged with completely pointless "social issues" (read: intersectional ideology) pieces about representation, or about "rape" over multiplayer videogames, or other spurious concerns. I remember even back then people joking about Mario saving the princess or Pac-Man starring in a game would be considered "sexist". I didn't care about Zoe's relationship with journalists and indie devs. I didn't care about her ex coming out and spilling all this drama.

The single piece to really clue me in that something had gone wonky was when 4chan started to crack down on GamerGate conversation. I mean... what? Any denizen of the internet should've been shocked and confused by that, yet journalists returned the favor by continuing to label 4Chan as "alt right" and "GG infested". (as an aside, 4chan was yet another example of how these ideologues never, ever forgive even when you cave and give in to their demands).

Then the "gamers are dead" articles popped up. Then websites and forums (GAF included) started to say things like "we don't want you as our audience", making blatant moves to push people out of gaming to make room for... well, they'd already explained who they wanted to make room for. As we've watched over the past 5 years, it was never about "making room", it was never even about "normalizing" or "providing a platform for" alternative viewpoints. It was a hostile takeover. It was a replacement of old audiences with new ones, and it was an attempt to condition gamers as to what they should support. Seemed like in a few short years the collective of gamers forgot that they were already distrusting journos for their ties to big gaming publishers. Distrust magically turned into "trust" (by "trust" I mean "toe the ideological line or get cancelled").

Very cult-like. The fact that this topic is still talked about in hushed tones or ignored should be puzzling. The internet provides access to hardcore porn of all kinds, the cringiest cringe of fan-art, hateful rants against any topic, yet somehow a conversation about journalists in gaming being corrupted is off limits.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
Great article, although I feel that more emphasis should have been placed on the highly partisan politicization of games journalism in the years leading up to Gamergate, and the subsequent doubling down on this, leading to ludicrous excesses like the expulsion and stigmatization of Colin Moriarty.
 

trikster40

Member
That was a really good article which really helped explain a lot about the movement. I never really got into it or even understood wtf was going on, but the recent issues with ZQ (I dare not even type the name for fear of harassment suit) made me more curious.

I miss when the biggest controversy in gaming was blood in Mortal Kombat. Those were simpler times.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Good article but I do feel that dissatisfaction with the gaming press as a whole had started to appear prior to the events in the article. One thing, in particular, that felt like a bit of a powder keg moment was the press reaction to the Mass Effect 3 backlash by gamers. The game got overwhelmingly positive reviews across the board (only Giantbomb seemed less than impressed IIRC) none of which seemed to hint at the controversial nature of the ending, so people went in expecting a masterpiece and came out looking askance at the gaming press as to how they managed to wholesale not say a goddamn thing about it (personally I thought ME3 had a lot more wrong with that, but that's beside the point). Instead of engaging in a bit of navel-gazing as to how and why they were so out of sync with the audience the press went on the offensive and the 'entitled gamer' narrative came out. Suddenly it seemed perfectly acceptable to attack the audience, which seemed like a bizarre idea, that never went away.
 
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DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I never really read up on GamerGate and didn't even know it existed while it was going on, and after that I tried not to read up on it because I didn't trust any news sites to portray it impartially or accurately. Everyone made it seem like it was hell on earth, now from reading more it seems like it was a totally mischaracterized thing that did have its bad moments, but is basically being used as yet another thing by people to demonize straight white males, as a means to exact power and control.
 

Katsura

Member
Eh, decent article and i remember her covering gg quite early on. I do feel she missed at least one important event - the gamejournopro leak that proved how these 'journalists' colluded with each other and game developers, joking about their lack of ethics. Then there is whole alt-right Milo thing. Admittedly, i lost interest in gg by the time the whole Ralph thing went down so i'm not sure if Milo was incriminated but i find it odd that a jewish gay man who is married to a black man would be alt-right. There is no question he used gg, as did Breitbart but they were just about the only large media site that would listen

Also, how can you write so long an article without including some Milo savageness on Twitter?
serveimage
 

data_jack

Member
The article seemed well thought out and well-researched. I don’t think she paid lip service to one group’s (pro or anti GG) antics over the other which is good for journalistic integrity. I can’t believe that Yiannopoulos character tried to use the hashtag as his personal army and Breitbart’s alt-right pipeline; truly one for the digital psychology textbooks. It’s interesting to think on how the landscape has changed since then, as the author also mentioned. What sort of voices continue to decry the actions of GG’ers and vice versa these days? Is this something that will be just a footnote on the internet’s history of adult babies crying over everything, or has this truly changed the way people will interact with each other in the digital realm (now) 5 years, 10 years down the road? Can civil discourse recover regardless of the medium’s membership? Are we all doomed to be keyboard warriors over _x_ amount of time on open forums? It boggles the mind.

P.S. I’m really enjoying Shantae 1/2 Genie Hero rn. The OST is stellar.
 
"Today, the dead horse of GamerGate is beaten mainly by its foes — usually as a way to discredit criticism of the social justice left "

Every time blue puke haired twitter journo goes “ Yah that’s definitely GG” about something or other my brain cells die :messenger_pensive:
 

Shmunter

Member
The climate seems to be ripe for a re-envisaging of a movement against the alt-left cancel culture. Things are getting out of hand with barbaric conduct and an out of control media bias supporting the decline of what it means to be a civil society.

Gamergate 2.0. This time it should be set up with an official Constitution to make its mission, conduct & code of ethics very clear. It needs to be specific to those that are on board and those that are outside of the movement Incase they try to co-opt it for unethical means. It cannot resort to the mob mentality it is trying to curb.

I would hope there are prominent persons out there that have a finger on the pulse on all this.
 
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dont know too much about it tbh. i will leave that to you.

Fine. I barely understand the meme or gamergate myself, to be honest, but it's basically just a mad libs, right? How hard can it be? Someone who knows more about it all is welcome to jump in and do it better if they like.

Gamergate just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about gaming culture (I'm an expert), but neckbeards and not causing a conflict of interest by having sexual relations with a person who is reviewing your game are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in gaming journalism where you can become successful by being an asshole. If you screw someone over in gamergate, you bring shame to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that shame is doxxing people.

What this means is the gaming public, after hearing about this, is not going to want ethics in game journalism, nor will they oppose censorship in games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but gamergate has alienated an entire market of people who talk on social media a lot but don't actually buy anything with this move.

Gamergate, publicly apologize and cancel white people or you can kiss bikini armour goodbye.
 

petran79

Banned
The saddest thing is that now they even appropriated games and their developers like with nitw recently. Their games can only be enjoyed by anti-gg and lbgt and their players will be targeted and persecuted due to the recent controversy by alt-right and Trump supporters. I could not believe what I was reading on the game's reddit. As if they kick out not only right wing extremists but also players who simply want to enjoy "sjw" games without any interest in politics
 

Saruhashi

Banned
Eh, decent article and i remember her covering gg quite early on. I do feel she missed at least one important event - the gamejournopro leak that proved how these 'journalists' colluded with each other and game developers, joking about their lack of ethics. Then there is whole alt-right Milo thing. Admittedly, i lost interest in gg by the time the whole Ralph thing went down so i'm not sure if Milo was incriminated but i find it odd that a jewish gay man who is married to a black man would be alt-right. There is no question he used gg, as did Breitbart but they were just about the only large media site that would listen

Also, how can you write so long an article without including some Milo savageness on Twitter?
serveimage

To be honest for guys like Milo Y the whole incident was probably too perfect an opportunity to miss out on.

You have a lot of people on the outside looking in. Journalists and bloggers and Youtubers etc with small audiences and no real way to "break out" and get their message to a wider audience.

Then you've got this situation where the mainstream media are caught lying, making shit up and, worst of all, colluding.
It's so easy from that point to show people "see, these outlets can't be trusted".
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and so you have people armed with the truth going to their usual websites and forums and saying "actually I think this right here is the the truth" and they find themselves banned or shouted down or abused and suddenly it's your "red pill moment" as they say.

Once you've seen the "Gamers are Dead" articles, and understood the whole story behind it, you can't really go back.

Yes, any and all abuse directed at ZQ, and anyone else for that matter, was out of order. However, there was NEVER any need to lie or to double down on lies or to collude to keep a particular narrative running.

They should have just owned up and said "yeah there is a scandal on the indie scene, people are being harassed and mobs are being formed, it all has to stop but also we have to own up to our bad practices and do better in the future, now can we all calm the fuck down".

That would have been the end of it.

Though I suspect something like this was probably brewing for some time anyway.
 

zenspider

Member
Looking forward to reading this. I've always had to read between the lines of the polarized pieces, and failed to really understand what all happened and how.

Eh, decent article and i remember her covering gg quite early on. I do feel she missed at least one important event - the gamejournopro leak that proved how these 'journalists' colluded with each other and game developers, joking about their lack of ethics. Then there is whole alt-right Milo thing. Admittedly, i lost interest in gg by the time the whole Ralph thing went down so i'm not sure if Milo was incriminated but i find it odd that a jewish gay man who is married to a black man would be alt-right. There is no question he used gg, as did Breitbart but they were just about the only large media site that would listen

Also, how can you write so long an article without including some Milo savageness on Twitter?
serveimage

The gamejournopro / Gamers Are Dead collusion should be the smoking gun - but, like it's big brother JournoList, it doesn't stick.
 

Saruhashi

Banned
Good article but I do feel that dissatisfaction with the gaming press as a whole had started to appear prior to the events in the article. One thing, in particular, that felt like a bit of a powder keg moment was the press reaction to the Mass Effect 3 backlash by gamers. The game got overwhelmingly positive reviews across the board (only Giantbomb seemed less than impressed IIRC) none of which seemed to hint at the controversial nature of the ending, so people went in expecting a masterpiece and came out looking askance at the gaming press as to how they managed to wholesale not say a goddamn thing about it (personally I thought ME3 had a lot more wrong with that, but that's beside the point). Instead of engaging in a bit of navel-gazing as to how and why they were so out of sync with the audience the press went on the offensive and the 'entitled gamer' narrative came out. Suddenly it seemed perfectly acceptable to attack the audience, which seemed like a bizarre idea, that never went away.

Yeah, that Mass Effect 3 drama was a big big deal.

At the time I thought "meh". I enjoyed ME3 and it's ending just fine. I hadn't been hyped about the game though and, as was common for me back then, I didn't know very much about the "promises" made by the developers. Cool looking game. I played it. I enjoyed it.

So actually I was of the view that the "Gamers" WERE being entitled assholes. Shut the hell up and just enjoy the game. Jeez.

Then you realize that the people who are most mad are the ones who bought into the promises of different endings and meaningful in-game choices leading to the greatest ending you've ever seen in a game. As you say, those people so the amazing review scores and thought "here we go". Then when they felt betrayed and lied to the very people involved in engineering that disappointment just turned round and smeared them as "entitled".

Once you've noticed that it can be difficult to "undo" the realizations that follow.

They just keep doing it though. In fact, it seems to be escalating all the time. Don't like Star Wars now? Alt-right Russian Bot.
Haha, the new Wonder Woman will piss off sexists so if you don't like it then what are you?
"Rey is a Mary Sue" BANNED!

It's like it became an entertainment industry staple.

Gone are the days of trailers and hype that says "hey you guys check out the amazing thing we made, oh shit you are going to love it, it's all the kinds of stuff you like, coming soon, all over your face!"

Now it's a complete shift to things like "the new movie is coming up and we've done some stuff you probably won't like but that's OK cos if you don't like it you will shut the fuck up or we will just make sure everyone thinks you are a bigot". New movies seem to be defined by who they are pissing off and who is outraged by the newest reveal. If you don't like the new movie that's just trying to be a force for good in the world then you must be some kind of evil cunt.

Next stage seems to be that if something comes out that people seem to like, such as the Chappelle special on Netflix, and they haven't managed to ban it or cancel it then that's OK because now they just imply that not only are you an asshole for not liking their things you are an irredeemable shitheel for liking other things.

Even when something blindsided them, like Alita Battle Angel, they will just have some retrospective "the alt-right loves Alita Battle Angel" articles and that's that.

The Joker movie isn't in cinemas until October and they've already started to poison the well against anyone who would dare look forward to seeing it.

What a bunch of cunts.
 

Pejo

Member
GG's main problem was the same issue that happens to groups like Antifa, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, etc. No formal organisation. Where the worst of your cause will feed ammo the the opponents just by being idiots, and then getting your whole movement labeled as one thing or another. You need some sort of hierarchy or at the very least a mouthpiece to prevent your cause from getting twisted or mislabeled as something it is not. The article touches on this, and it's what allowed the shitbags who were the death threat makers or harassers to undermine the actual concerns about integrity in the journo business. This made it super easy for everyone to shout down the entire thing since nobody was "officially" able to say "This is not the opinion of the movement, it's just that one shitbag's opinion"
 

Katsura

Member
GG's main problem was the same issue that happens to groups like Antifa, BLM, Occupy Wall Street, etc. No formal organisation. Where the worst of your cause will feed ammo the the opponents just by being idiots, and then getting your whole movement labeled as one thing or another. You need some sort of hierarchy or at the very least a mouthpiece to prevent your cause from getting twisted or mislabeled as something it is not. The article touches on this, and it's what allowed the shitbags who were the death threat makers or harassers to undermine the actual concerns about integrity in the journo business. This made it super easy for everyone to shout down the entire thing since nobody was "officially" able to say "This is not the opinion of the movement, it's just that one shitbag's opinion"
Then add all the false flag threats. Brianna Wu, for instance, was caught red handed in posting faking threats. He just forgot to log out of his dev account on Steam when he posted them
09d.jpg_large

The reason they could shout it down was that 99% of media was in on it. They didn't care about the evidence. They simply ignored it and went full steam ahead with their smear campaign. GG could have done everything people suggested and it wouldn't have mattered to the general public. They'd still be told constantly how it was a harassment campaign by misogynist gamers
 

lock2k

Banned
I remember when I was a lurker on old GAF I always read posts like:

"Oh, on top of that, he is a GATOR" like a person was some kind of Gestapo-employee or some shit. They had this "let's denounce those fuckers" attitude.

Also, they loved to be mean to "junior posters".
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
It's pretty difficult to explain to people who weren't there the entire time. I was a heavy commenter on Kotaku and this all started way back in 2011-2012. So I truly saw the entire genesis of this battle from the front lines. Anita only even came on the scene years after it was fashionable, capitalizing at a good time for her. Then the Zoe thing blew it up and created alternative gaming media outlets and outlets to discuss alternative gender politics. Most of that stuff didn't exist prior to GG.

At the end of this battle, most people now know that feminism is a complete disaster, along with lots of aspects of social science college education (definitely not all, just the shitty ones). They lost the battle of ideas pretty spectacularly, and all they have left now is the brute force method. So they had to create an enemy deserving of brute force, and created the haunting fiction of GG being a hate movement so they could launch their attacks. It's the same dehumanization you see against any enemy really.

In an open discussion, SJWs lose every time. Now even their brute force methods are starting to lose effectiveness, because they have been seen as hypocrites and liars so often, and because they have to keep expanding who fits into the "dehumanize and destroy" category - including more and more normies along the way.

None of us joined GG. We were just average commenters who disagreed and saw it early. Once you disagree enough you will get thrown into the pile of deplorables along with us as well. I'm a minority, liberal politically, work in a career overwhelmingly dominated by women, but I'm supposedly an alt-right nazi, misogynist, white supremacist or something. Banned from virtually every site I ever commented at (including here, repeatedly) except Destructoid which was the only place that didn't ban me.

Once you get thrown in with the deplorables and you know you aren't actually a deplorable, then you realize the lie and it's worth investigating what actually happened. Of course some shitposters take things too far, but that happens on every side, and they don't define what was going on for a lot of people.
 
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All I know is that us nerds were very happy and peaceful before these new-age journalists, feminists and SJW dickheads entered the geek-culture and ever since then it's been a mess in every media, from comics to movies and videogames. These people are like a lobster plague, which only purpose for being in the industry is to feed off it until it becomes a barren land and then they will move on to their next target.

They seriously need to get the fuck out of our hobbies.
 
Good article but I do feel that dissatisfaction with the gaming press as a whole had started to appear prior to the events in the article. One thing, in particular, that felt like a bit of a powder keg moment was the press reaction to the Mass Effect 3 backlash by gamers. The game got overwhelmingly positive reviews across the board (only Giantbomb seemed less than impressed IIRC) none of which seemed to hint at the controversial nature of the ending, so people went in expecting a masterpiece and came out looking askance at the gaming press as to how they managed to wholesale not say a goddamn thing about it (personally I thought ME3 had a lot more wrong with that, but that's beside the point). Instead of engaging in a bit of navel-gazing as to how and why they were so out of sync with the audience the press went on the offensive and the 'entitled gamer' narrative came out. Suddenly it seemed perfectly acceptable to attack the audience, which seemed like a bizarre idea, that never went away.

Yeah, I looked back at some of my old accounts at gaming websites and 2012 with the Mass Effect 3 debacle seems to be a point where the divergence between the game's media and gamers became apparent. And also were suspicions about an unhealthy relationship between gaming journalism and developers/publishers became a very real subject. Not necessarily as a direct quid pro quo, though there were some that believed that as well, but as being in a unhealthy relationship that distanced them from their actual consumer, the gamers. It also followed a period where more and more journalists would view themselves as social activists, treating their platform as a soap box, but never to respond. It lead to a really critical backlash towards reviewers and journalists, and an antagonistic relationship almost seemed to form

The interesting part would be to go further back and to see the development before that, as I'm sure there are happenings before Mass Effect 3 as well, that lead to it.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
No doubt, I know almost nothing. Every attempt I have at wrapping my head around it is never successful. Something about people on the Internet, hashtags, Millennials, first world problems, etc.

I've tried like 5 times to understand GamerGate, but never succeed. It takes over an hour of reading before I realize that it's too confusing and stupid to try to understand.

And let me guess, this article is a 30 minute read to huh?
 
I've tried like 5 times to understand GamerGate, but never succeed. It takes over an hour of reading before I realize that it's too confusing and stupid to try to understand.

And let me guess, this article is a 30 minute read to huh?
I’m in the same boat. But it certainly was a good read if you find the time.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Yeah, I looked back at some of my old accounts at gaming websites and 2012 with the Mass Effect 3 debacle seems to be a point where the divergence between the game's media and gamers became apparent. And also were suspicions about an unhealthy relationship between gaming journalism and developers/publishers became a very real subject. Not necessarily as a direct quid pro quo, though there were some that believed that as well, but as being in a unhealthy relationship that distanced them from their actual consumer, the gamers. It also followed a period where more and more journalists would view themselves as social activists, treating their platform as a soap box, but never to respond. It lead to a really critical backlash towards reviewers and journalists, and an antagonistic relationship almost seemed to form

The interesting part would be to go further back and to see the development before that, as I'm sure there are happenings before Mass Effect 3 as well, that lead to it.


I listen to a lot of podcasts (Sports, VideoGames, Movies, Music, and so many other subjects) and when they read the criticisms that people have of their show or stories that they have incorrect information on, it always turns into a "bash the listeners" segment. I don't think this is just about the divide between gamers and the gaming media. This has more to do with how we engage with and on social media.

A lot of these people are reading the worst 20% of all the comments they get and then they lump the other 80% in as if we all think alike.
 
I listen to a lot of podcasts (Sports, VideoGames, Movies, Music, and so many other subjects) and when they read the criticisms that people have of their show or stories that they have incorrect information on, it always turns into a "bash the listeners" segment. I don't think this is just about the divide between gamers and the gaming media. This has more to do with how we engage with and on social media.

A lot of these people are reading the worst 20% of all the comments they get and then they lump the other 80% in as if we all think alike.

Yeah, though to be fair, they have to deal with unreasonable parts of their audience as well. Internet allowed people to speak unfunnelled, impulsively and with impunity. A lot of the gaming audience can be as unreasonable and authoritarian in facing criticism as gaming journalists can be. And the fact that the interaction between games media and their audience generally favored controversy as means of earning clicks.
Like now and then sites like Kotaku and Polygon put out some well researched and interesting articles, that are a joy to read and give you perspective on history and the game, but likely they don't have the pull factor to get enough attention. Probably a lot of work to minimal benefit. I believe Jason Schreier has mentioned this once as well, how journalism doesn't tend to pay out, though I imagine that a lot of his investigative journalism has at least somewhat paid out in terms of clicks.
That's at least my theory on how the current relationship between games media and their audience developed.

I guess a lot of it is just human nature facing a very inhuman thing like the internet. We care more about the bad, than the good. We care more about affirming ourselves, than trying to understand the other. Globalization through the internet has shortened the distance to speak, but not the distance between hearts, not the distance to listen.
 

Kadayi

Banned
The interesting part would be to go further back and to see the development before that, as I'm sure there are happenings before Mass Effect 3 as well, that lead to it.

There was definitely more, but that was one period that stood out. I can't remember the exact chicken and egg nature of it all (whether it was before or after the ME3 debacle) but I do remember one particularly trite article at Eurogamer bemoaning gamers for having the outright temerity to set up the Steam group "A call for communication" because HL2:EP3 had gone AWOL with some vague assertion that despite said players having played Parts 1 & 2 of a promised Trilogy, they were in no way entitled to a conclusion because they hadn't paid for it (because whose buying the 3rd part of a series right? Save the people who bought parts 1 & 2?). The kind of bone-headed logic only someone who gets all their game gratis on a Steam press account could come up with tbh. I'm not sure though what was more sad, the article or the various cheerleaders in the comments agreeing with it.. :messenger_dizzy:
 
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Zog

Banned
Some of us have been saying all along that it was about integrity in journalism. Calls of misogyny have unbelievable power though.
 
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