re: #6 KiTA

Gamergate itself is about ethics in journalism. Video game journalism has been bad for a very, very long time — not just pay for play, but nepotism, blacklisting, you name it. Everyone has suspected this for a very very long time. Last August a particularly bad gaming website, Kotaku, decided to let one of it’s writers, Nathan Greyson, do a PR Blitz about his girlfriend’s projects. (It’s important to note that they made no disclosure about Mr. Greyson’s personal relationship with the subject of his writing, this would become a distressingly common problem going forward.)

PR Blitz is NOT what I’d call that. Yes, he didn’t mention his relationship, because he didn’t have one with her yet. And really, when will Gamergaters threaten TotalBiscuit with rape and murder for plugging Shadow of Mordor under contract? Oh…he’s a gater, so its OK for him.

When his girlfriend’s ex boyfriend came forward with evidence of this and other ethical and behavior problems, instead of doing the ethical thing and asking him to step down or even having a mea culpa moment for the conflict of interest and lack of transparency, they circled the wagons. About 15-20 websites all posted the same basic article in the same week, claiming that “Gamers are Dead.” Then it was discovered that those websites were all part of a mailing list that was intentionally fixing review scores, violating NDAs, and blacklisting stories, games, and developers.

Ah, yes, the infamous “Gamers are Dead” articles…posted on large commercial websites devoted to…informing gamers about games and gaming.

And yes, Gamers are Dead…at least the image of gamers as losers living in their retired parent’s basement because they can’t handle living in civilized society. Of course, some Gamergaters brought that image screaming back…good job Gamergate. Also, game press is a kind of tightly knit thing, when one posts a thing that gets attention, everyone else talks about it.

So when she started intentionally raising a ruckus on Twitter about all this, the echo chamber exploded and a bunch of single issue wonk faux feminists (The “Social Justice Warriors”) came out of the woodwork trying to make it about a nonexistent problem with sexism in the gaming industry.

As it happens, I happen to know a few of those so-called “single-issue faux feminists”…no, you’re entirely wrong about everything from “the echo chamber exploded” onward. I’ve been there for some of that, I’ve seen moderators in some of the bigger gamergate forums tell people that are trying to PREVENT doxxing, they get banhammered. And lets not even go into Gamergate’s choices of who needs an education in ethics…or how they should be educated.

As I know about the later events, that makes me question your account of the earlier events.

The gaming journalists, who were being caught red handed with all kinds of ethics violations thanks to that mailing list being discovered, decided to push a narrative to cover their own arses.

That’s why when people talk about Gamergate you see two entirely different realities — its a form of politics. This article by a political historian explains it far better than I can:

Yes, there are two different realities. Again, TotalBiscuit took a contract to promote Shadows of Mordor, without disclosing it, and he fulfilled his contract. Nathan Grayson asked his FUTURE GF about a different game, and mentioned that she had made a game, so that way people would know that the person he was talking to wasn’t a janitor.

One of those is the worst thing ever to Gamergate, the other is…not even mentioned by them.

There’s the actual GamerGaters, who are consumers who are royally pissed off about ethics violations in the gaming media, and there are the other side (“Anti-GG” or GamerGhazi) who see GamerGate as a bunch of entitled straight white men who are just so pissed off that women are invading their hobby.

I would be a gamergater if I had seen them attempt to do anything to do with ethics in gaming media…except as an accidental result of trying to attack SJWs. Which…I’ve never seen a good definition for “SJW”, except for “disagrees with Gamergate”.