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What #GamerGate Is Actually About

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This article is more than 9 years old.

"Don't mess with Mister In-Between."

~Johnny Mercer

I think #GamerGate's smartest critics understand it best.

Someone like Damien Schubert, for instance, whose blog has had the best, most level-headed, and on-point criticism of #GamerGate I've read, seems to understand the hashtag-movement perhaps even better than many of its participants.

(You can read Schubert's blog here.)

Other critics seem to miss the mark. Their articles on #GamerGate are intended only to inflame pro-GG folk. As game developer David Jaffe snarked on Twitter: "You think people who write about GG negatively WANT GG to go away?!?! You are lining their pockets, folks."

Take, for instance, this Polygon piece by Emily Gera. She's arguing that #GamerGate is anti-criticism, essentially, and that in many ways it's an attempt to scourge in-depth criticism from game journalism. I would agree with her up to a point: I've often argued with #GamerGate supporters about this. I believe everything from conservative family values to whatever-wave feminism has a place in criticism---whether that's video games, film, or any other medium. More on this later.

In her article, Gera notes that there was a backlash to Polygon's Dragon's Crown review. Indeed, there was a lot of squabbling between the press, who generally called the game sexist and misogynistic, and gamers who didn't see a problem with it and its oddly proportioned characters (including muscled men and busty women.)

I didn't think it was necessarily sexist, though I can still see how it could turn some gamers off. But by and large this was a conversation between journalists on the one hand and gamers on the other. Not between alternating viewpoints within the gaming press itself.

Note this divide. It's important.

Read More - An Interview with the Creator of Dragon's Crown

Anyways, Gera argues that the #GamerGate movement is inherently anti-criticism, and I think she has a point. I don't agree with the whole "keep your agenda out of your review" line of thinking---partly because I like to pick apart people's agenda-driven reviews in my own writing. And because I'd be a hypocrite if I said my own reviews aren't littered with my own personal beliefs, opinions, observations, and the like.

Reviews are subjective and a critic is supposed to bring their own take. Polygon is generally left-leaning. Breitbart's review of Dragon Age: Inquisition is extraordinarily rightwing. I have my own personal axes to grind, my pet peeves, my politics, all of which inform my criticism---a criticism, I might add, which I write both for the consumer and for myself. A critic must be selfish or their criticism wouldn't be honest.

As consumers of media, as readers, we're required to do a bit of legwork and find the critics we agree (or disagree) with. I like reading both, personally, as I tend to enjoy a certain level of balance in all things. I would abhor a world where all game reviews were "objective" and discussed only the basics of gameplay and mechanics. Even worse: A world of unremarkable agreement. Beware, dear readers, confirmation bias. If someone is telling you everything you want to hear, they're probably lying.

After playing The Last of Us, I want to hear about peoples' impressions on the story, on Joel's actions, on fundamental questions of value. Not just how melee combat felt. Not just how graphics look. I can see that with my own eyes. If that also means reading about why Bayonetta is sexist, or why the lesbian scenes in Dragon Age are off-putting, then so be it. I'll just do the impossible and, I dunno, disagree, make up my own mind, that sort of Herculean stuff.

In any case, these days we can turn to all sorts of sources for our information and reviews. As Gera notes, "in a digital era where everyone is potentially a critic, criticism is anything but dead."

Read More - Bayonetta 2 First Impressions and Review Round-Up

Games have evolved and so must criticism.

But recall that divide I mentioned earlier? An animosity lurks between the press and its readership that really is unique to video games---and this is crucial to our story, dear reader.

Gera is crafting a fairly reasonable critique of #GamerGate here, and its misguided take on game criticism. But then, because this is #GamerGate we're talking about, because this is what game writers do when discussing gamers apparently, she veers off into flamewar land, needlessly provoking a huge segment of the gaming demographic.

"Pure gaming is a state in which the target audience, mostly straight males, play with hands filled with controllers and brains filled with very little." That, dear readers, is Gera's definition of "pure gaming" in its natural state. Nasty, brutish, and short---and populated solely by those terrible, brainless, straight males. Without Polygon all they (we?) would do is sit around brainlessly playing games, without a thought in their (our?) heads. What a gross, offensive assumption aimed to at once flame #GamerGate back from its emberlike slumber and send signals to like-minded people.

"Thus is GamerGate the grim reaper," she writes, "here to kill criticism and return games to their past; where all sorts of rather off-putting content is consumed without comment. It's a mob aimed not just at killing critical thought, but which is mad crazy with the idea that critical thought is happening somewhere, about something."

Gera concludes that this is "evidence of an opposition to authoritative voices in media." Which assumes, naturally, that she and the rest of us blogging about video games are "authoritative voices" in the first place, though she does nothing whatsoever to back that assumption up. Rather we are simply told that without the current crop of critics, video games would exist in a sort of Dark Ages.

Read More - Sony's Boring PS4 Is Winning the Console War Despite More Exciting Competition

So What Is #GamerGate Actually About?

Is it a "consumer movement" as I once suggested? Not really, though there are consumer advocates associated with it, and consumer concerns are a part of its raison d'etre.

Is it a "hate group" as the vast majority of the gaming and mainstream press has claimed? Not really, though there are hateful people associated with it, including some people I certainly wouldn't want to be affiliated with (a big part of the movement's problem.)

#GamerGate isn't actually about ethics in game journalism, either.

Nor is it about women in the video game industry, or about harassing them out of it (anyone paying attention will notice many women are actually fan favorites of a lot of #GamerGate supporters.)

It's not about Social Justice Warriors or a new conservatism in video games.

Mostly it's about a toxic relationship that's formed between the video game press and gamers themselves, one that's been bubbling and brewing for years, not months.

This dynamic, this hostile relationship, exists outside of #GamerGate as well. I think a lot of gamers who want nothing to do with the hashtag---understandably, considering the bad press it's gotten over harassment---are still upset with the gaming press (as are some members of the press and many developers and PR people.) Critics of #GamerGate are often critical of game journalists, too.

I say all of this because, as with the Dragon's Crown example above, you simply can't understand #GamerGate without understanding the long history of bad blood that preceded it.

Anyone who says #GamerGate started because of Zoe Quinn or Leigh Alexander's "gamers are dead" article is a person speaking without any knowledge of history. Those were kindling added to a fire, not sparks.

It's very easy for outsiders to simply hear that gamers are sexist and nod along in agreement. After all, those games are so violent and the women are always so scantily clad in the commercials. And besides aren't all gamers just teenage boys?

Right.

Maybe it's time for...

A History Lesson!

I wrote about DmC and its PS4/Xbox One release earlier today, and in so doing pulled up an old article I'd written about the controversy surrounding that game.

In that piece, I respond to game writer Ben Parfitt of MCV who complains that gamers hurt sales of DmC out of spite.

Game writers upset with "entitled gamers" over their outrage following the ending of Mass Effect 3 often made a suggestion: Vote with your wallet. (A suggestion that doesn't always apply that well to video games in the first place.)

Then, a year later when DmC sells poorly, they turn around and call fans spiteful for not buying a game that they clearly didn't want to play. It's so obtuse and smug. Is it any wonder gamers start to view the press as adversaries rather than advocates?

Indeed, Parfitt himself described fan backlash to Mass Effect 3 as an "avalanche of self-entitlement" because obviously consumers have no right to complain about their products, and really no right to even choose not to buy them. If you're a gamer, your gaming press likely views you as either A) misogynistic; B) entitled; or C) spiteful. Or D) All of the above!

Not all in the gaming press feel this way, of course, and some gamers do fit the bill, but we're driving at an issue that's largely about perception. So bear with me. We're getting closer.

Read More - Why 'Buyer Beware' Is a Terrible Excuse for Bad Video Games

I, Shill

To be fair, I deal with annoying accusations made by upset gamers all the time. My comment box and Twitter stream is regularly disrupted by angry gamers who dislike what I've said about some game, or think I'm a "liberal nutjob" or a Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo shill. One day I'm supporting harassment of women and the next I'm a white knight SJW. Or I'm both! Because that gets me the pageviews apparently! (#GamerGate has been fairly dismal as far as cost-benefit analysis goes. I would be better off hyping game trailers. But I digress.)

This stuff can be exhausting after awhile. But I also have the presence of mind to realize it's a minority of voices making stupid accusations, making threats, fanning the flamewars---it's a vocal and persistent minority, not representative of gamers as a whole, just like the horrible stuff you read on local news sites isn't representative of the town those people supposedly live in. Just like the internet, in general, doesn't accurately reflect the world we live in, for better or worse.

In any case, from Mass Effect 3 and DmC we can move on to observe DoritoGate, which Kotaku editor-in-chief Stephen Totillo wrote about at the time quite eloquently, offering some excellent insights into why gamers and the press are so at odds.

And I think there's more to the story, too. Gamers are routinely described as sexist, even if like in the rest of our culture sexism is at once structural, rooted in complex cultural factors, and not necessarily an issue with the majority of people. But gamers are uniquely sexist, we are told, and we are often told this by game writers. Because they are adversaries, not advocates.

Or so it would seem.

Read More – Are Fans to Blame for Lower-Than-Expected ‘DmC’ Sales?

Double-edged sword.

Sometimes game writers should be adversaries. As critics and thinkers we should challenge our readers.

I don't think there's anything about being a gamer or a reader that ought to shield you from criticism, and I have many times written pieces intended to criticize and challenge my own readers, including articles like this one which are intentionally deceptive. Or articles like this one which challenge our definition of what constitutes "clickbait" (a word almost as overused as "misogynist.")

#GamerGate supporters (and anyone else for that matter) who argue that reviews should be objective or "unbiased" need to have that assumption challenged. Reviews should be free of undue influence from their creators, not free of the personal opinions of the critics themeslves.

How is all of this related?

Of course, this concern, that game critics are "in the pocket" of the industry they cover or "in bed" with developers (both figuratively and literally) is at the heart of the "ethics in game journalism" crusade that sparked this iteration of the thing that is now called #GamerGate.

But if that's the heart of #GamerGate, then why are so many of its supporters obsessed with Anita Sarkeesian and feminism and SJWs?

I would say that the the intertwining of the two is a reflection of the relationship that's formed between gamers and press.

The same journalists who are perceived as being too close to developers, corrupted by relationships and ad dollars, are also the ones telling gamers they're sexist and the games they play are harmful to women. The adversarial nature of reader and writer is compacted between the hammer that is "ethics in game journalism" and the anvil that is "SJWism." The same writers populating the nefarious GameJournoPros list (I don't actually think it's nefarious, but again we have a perception problem here) are the ones saying Bayonetta exists only for the "male gaze."

Pretty soon the lines between the two start to blur.

The Impossible Conversation

The problem with #GamerGate is that it's almost made matters worse. The division is more stark but the path forward remains utterly murky. Some video game critics who I personally disagree with on a lot of issues have risen in prominence, and others who I admire have been alienated by #GamerGate supporters. Instead of tackling the bigger issues, we've been playing identity politics. The whole "with us or against us" mindset has badly muddied the waters. And the entire thing has turned into a bunch of running jokes and memes. Sea lions are in, Doritos and Mountain Dew are out.

What's the alternative? How do we bridge the divide between press and gamer? How do we stop feeding into the culture of outrage that permeates both sides of this debate?

And believe me, outrage is very central to all of this. On one side, game critics and feminists find constant sources of outrage in video games and in gamers themselves. On the other, gamers find constant sources of outrage in the things published at places like Polygon or the personalities who dominate the upper echelons of game journalism. Outrage is hip. It's a currency unto itself. And like greed or lust or pride, it's so easy to get the bug.

In truth, I don't have a solution. I don't know how to restore balance to the Force. We needn't divorce games from politics or search out "unbiased" reviews. But simply answering social justice-driven games coverage with equally (or more) outrageous rightwing stuff is hardly a solution.

Perhaps the trick is better dialogue. I find the gaming press pretty devoid of healthy call and response. In political blogging you have guys like Andrew Sullivan who blog about all the various opinions and disagreements across the blogosphere. You have bloggers responding to other bloggers and journalists, much in the way Cathy Young calls out Vox founder Ezra Klein on her blog, or Talking Points Memo calls out Breitbart here. It's like tennis sometimes, a constant volley of ideas and disagreements. It can still be crap. It can still be dishonest or propaganda or whatever, but there's some type of conversation taking place.

In the video game space? Crickets.

Read More - 6 Reasons to Buy A Wii U Instead of A PS4 or Xbox One

When I write a critical piece about something in Kotaku or Polygon, I don't expect to ever read a published response. At best, I'll get a brief exchange on Twitter. There is no forum of disagreement, no Andrew Sullivan of video games.

Some writers, like Kotaku's Jason Schreier, have been great about engaging in ideas on Twitter, especially over issues directly relating to his publication (which, for instance, I covered here.)

Jim Sterling has discussed my work in his videos, both critically and in agreement. And these have been, in all honesty, some of my video game writing highlights. I love talking about games. I like the discussion quite a lot more than I like just sitting here in my ivory tower (or my closet, as it were, since my office is in my closet.)

And, of course, my regularly scheduled debates with Forbes' Paul Tassi are marvelous fun. But none of this is common enough. Most of the conversation over games in the gaming press occurs in forums like NeoGaf, or on Twitter, or in secret, nefarious gaming journalism mailing lists.

Feminism has a strong toehold in video game criticism as well, and the feminist blogosphere has been pretty bad about engaging in dialogue with its critics---often for good reason, given the nature of some of its most vocal dissenters---but often to the detriment of any reasonable, healthy discussion.

So someone like Anita Sarkeesian is met with tons of vitriol from gamers and YouTubers, but there's almost no healthy discussion of her work, let alone criticism of her criticism, in the gaming press itself. And that's a pretty huge problem, in my humblest of opinions, given the implications of her criticism.

And like #GamerGate, so much of the actual dialogue we see between writers/readers/gamers/industry takes place on Twitter. And Twitter is a bad place to foster healthy disagreement and dialogue.

Meanwhile, #GamerGate has made discussing issues more difficult than ever. Not just because there's a perception that harassment of women might take place, but because anyone who wants to discuss any of these issues risks getting mobbed on by people either accusing them of being pro or anti #GamerGate. Or some variation on that theme, in any case. I've been called out by anti-GG folk as a supporter of harassment and a terrible person in general and I've been called out by pro-GG people as basically the same sort of villain.

But that's just looking at the negative. I've also met some great people, been exposed to the writing and creative works of bloggers and YouTubers and others I'd never heard of before, and have participated in a serious and important discussion about this industry. When I look at it that way, it doesn't seem so bad.

Maybe we just need to accentuate the positive, people. Eliminate the negative.

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