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I want to say in advance that I am happy for everyone here who exited this pipeline, especially if you were just a kid. But I gotta say - it is creepy to me how many people there are who think so little of women that the gamer gate arguments could convince them at all. As a little kid I thought that someday men and women would all realize that we're in this together and we'd learn to respect each other as human beings. I was so wrong.
I was attracted by it in the beginning because they were talking about things I was interested in: somebody who had personal relationships with game journalists was given good reviews for their shitty game, certain sanctioned video game sites appeared to be forming anti-competition cartels to eliminate up-and-comers, publishers were clearly trying to capture/recuperate the consumer reporting industry with review embargoes and sponsored reviews, etc. To me, the big looming questions were stuff like "can journalism ethically report on the industry they sell ad space to?" and "was it an isolated instance that Jeff Gerstmann got fired from Gamespot over his review of Kane & Lynch, or was it a symptom of a widespread culture of bought-and-paid-for review scores?".
And then I checked out what other people were worried about, and it was brain-meltingly stupid. And I don't just mean the eternal dogpiling on Zoe Quinn long after it had become apparent that she was a relatively minor player in amuch larger game. They became obsessed with nobodies like Anita Sarkisian and other agitprop "internet personalities" on both sides, all of whom seemed exclusively concerned with clout chasing. It became a massive glut of creepy stalking, neofascism, and eventually flopped around till it landed on Red Pill shit.
It all accomplished nothing except poisoning the phrase "ethics in gaming journalism", when industry and special-interest capture of journalism is a threat in all sectors, not even just entertainment. And that's not even mentioning the anti-competitive practices in the industry itself—imagine if a film rewiewer got blackballed from every major publication in their entire industry because they gave an Avengers movie 2 stars. Now bringing that up associates you with neo-nazis. Thanks gamergaters, thanks for the mulitple times I've been accused of being alt-right for saying Kotaku sucks.
These fascists do that with everything. They take a real social issue people are upset about and then use it as a pretty container to fill with their bullshit. I was around then and I don't even remember the original controversy just the weird backlash against women as gamers.
Bro. The gamergate argument was that the corruption and nepotism in games media was and still is out of control. Just because it started with one shitty Indie "game" dev sleeping around for good press doesn't mean that was the entire focus.
I wrote "arguments" instead of "argument" because it was pretty clear to those of us outside the drama that for a lot of people it was about hating on women who had the audacity to make shitty indie games like any other shitty indie developer. There was a point hidden in there somewhere about unfair practices in the game industry in general, but I'm skeptical that most people really remember it for that today.
So true. And yet... I'm also not surprised.