Untimely Meditations
On GamerGate
By Gurney Halleck
Bad-Ass-In-Chief of HistoryofGamerGate.com
Social Justice Warrior Poet
@mudcrabmerchant
Bad-Ass-In-Chief of HistoryofGamerGate.com
Social Justice Warrior Poet
@mudcrabmerchant
"If Goethe was right to assert that when we cultivate our virtues we at the same time cultivate our faults, [then] a hypertrophied virtue... can ruin a nation just as effectively as a hypertrophied vice." -Freidrich Nietzsche
The events of this last week have done much to shake my hope in GamerGate, but not erode it. As gamers, we saw our in house brawl spill over into the main stream. While there were some who endeavored to allow GamerGate members to have a say, the majority of articles and videos were little more than elaborate hit pieces, many not even providing any kind of counter point at all. A case of confirmation bias carried out to its logical extreme.
I could feel the disillusionment in the air. It was palpable. I however, managed to take some heart from this. Gamergate is no stranger to a concentrated series of hit pieces, of one sided articles, of people saying we hate women. We have been through this all before, and all it proves is that their big media brothers and sisters have no more tricks then the gaming journalists did. They paraded Briana Wu on I don't even know how many news programs to hear her experiences in the industry, and her thoughts on the "literal war on women" that was taking place. On a side note, I can only assume she meant to say a figurative war on women. People who use those words interchangeably are waging a figurative war on the meaning of the word literal.
A quick note, however, to the women in gaming who have been threatened. I am sad this happened to you. No one should have to go through that. The tweets, for instance, Brianna Wu received, were so horrid I have decided not to link to them here. They were truly deplorable, and they had nothing to do with GamerGate. No one from GamerGate has claimed responsibility, the tweets themselves at no point mention GamerGate at all, and the ONLY person who has attributed them to GamerGate is Wu herself. So for all women affected who believe GamerGate had something to do with it, it didn't. To be clear: no one who participates in GamerGate likes, or respects, whoever made those threats. If we found out a member of our group has betrayed, so deeply, everything we have been working for, we would in no way count them among our own. I hope the authorities bring whoever is responsible to justice soon.
While I do resent feeling the need to even say that threatening someone is bad, I wanted to take the chance to extend an olive branch. And that is really the purpose of this piece. To set a few things straight and to start a dialogue of how best to move forward. First off, I would like to address the allegations that gamers are afraid that women will take away their videogames. No one is afraid of that, it sounds every bit as idiotic to us as it does to you. Games are a multi billion dollar a year industry, no one is thinking that because people are making indie games that AAA games will no longer be made.
I could feel the disillusionment in the air. It was palpable. I however, managed to take some heart from this. Gamergate is no stranger to a concentrated series of hit pieces, of one sided articles, of people saying we hate women. We have been through this all before, and all it proves is that their big media brothers and sisters have no more tricks then the gaming journalists did. They paraded Briana Wu on I don't even know how many news programs to hear her experiences in the industry, and her thoughts on the "literal war on women" that was taking place. On a side note, I can only assume she meant to say a figurative war on women. People who use those words interchangeably are waging a figurative war on the meaning of the word literal.
A quick note, however, to the women in gaming who have been threatened. I am sad this happened to you. No one should have to go through that. The tweets, for instance, Brianna Wu received, were so horrid I have decided not to link to them here. They were truly deplorable, and they had nothing to do with GamerGate. No one from GamerGate has claimed responsibility, the tweets themselves at no point mention GamerGate at all, and the ONLY person who has attributed them to GamerGate is Wu herself. So for all women affected who believe GamerGate had something to do with it, it didn't. To be clear: no one who participates in GamerGate likes, or respects, whoever made those threats. If we found out a member of our group has betrayed, so deeply, everything we have been working for, we would in no way count them among our own. I hope the authorities bring whoever is responsible to justice soon.
While I do resent feeling the need to even say that threatening someone is bad, I wanted to take the chance to extend an olive branch. And that is really the purpose of this piece. To set a few things straight and to start a dialogue of how best to move forward. First off, I would like to address the allegations that gamers are afraid that women will take away their videogames. No one is afraid of that, it sounds every bit as idiotic to us as it does to you. Games are a multi billion dollar a year industry, no one is thinking that because people are making indie games that AAA games will no longer be made.
Another common talking point is that games like Grand Theft Auto will still get made, that there will always be male centric games. There is little doubt of that as they are consistently some of the best selling titles every time one is released. So I am not afraid of them not making GTA. What I am afraid of is an industry where manufactured outrage is peddled so consistently that it will start to affect the art that is created. For your consideration:
Even games like Tomb Raider and Bayonetta, where the protagonists are fully fleshed out and independent female characters, came under attack. A major criticism of the industry is that as games have gotten more expensive to make, game makers have become more and more risk adverse. I do not want an industry where any game with a female protagonist is over criticized and scrutinized, particularly if it is even more so than one not having a female in it. If you have a female protagonist, any bad thing that can happen to her can lead to your game being put on display as a showcase of misogyny, which directly affects the likelihood of that game being successful, or even being made in the first place
- When Tomb Raider was announced, there was a scene in the trailer where a bound Lara Croft was being held by a man who grabbed her in a way that implied she was not safe from sexual assault. This caused an enormous stir which hung over the title until release, when it is shown that this was about the extreme circumstances in which the heroine is forced to take another human's life.
- Dragon's Crown was largely regarded as one of the best in the beat 'em up genre of games to come along in a while. The mechanics in particular met widespread acclaim. The game though was the center of much controversy based entirely on the character design of two of the three main characters who were female. Their ridiculously out of proportion bodies were described as being "created by a 14 year old" by Kotaku's Jason Schrier. The Polygon review gave it a 6.5, also known as a horrible score in the games industry, citing the art style of large breasted women as being a primary reason for the low score.
- Divinity: Original Sin makers Larian Studios came under fire for the poster art of their game being released featuring a man and woman in a suit of armor, though the woman had an exposed midriff. They were pressured to change the art for their game, switching the armor for both to a full body set.
- Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes, hinting at the sexual assault of a female spy character, came under much scrutiny for her treatment. There was also uproar over the sexualization of another character in the upcoming MGS game.
- When the multi-player of Assassin's Creed Unity was revealed at last years E3, it was attacked for having 4 person co-op where all the characters were males. Under the outrage, it turned out that was because no matter which character you were, you would still be playing as the main character of the game, the exact same way that company's previous game had handled multi-player.
- And most recently, Bayonetta 2 was penalized in some of its reviews for the perceived over sexualization of the character. Bayonetta is an almost universally loved female character who is strong and independent, saves men from danger, and her sexuality is intricately woven into her character, not tacked on as an after thought.
Even games like Tomb Raider and Bayonetta, where the protagonists are fully fleshed out and independent female characters, came under attack. A major criticism of the industry is that as games have gotten more expensive to make, game makers have become more and more risk adverse. I do not want an industry where any game with a female protagonist is over criticized and scrutinized, particularly if it is even more so than one not having a female in it. If you have a female protagonist, any bad thing that can happen to her can lead to your game being put on display as a showcase of misogyny, which directly affects the likelihood of that game being successful, or even being made in the first place
This is not to say legitimate criticism does not have a place in games. Another common misconception seems to be that feminist critique is not welcome in gaming. I will not argue here for or against its relevance, that is not my fight. I will say, however, if there are any feminists out there, GamerGate is a large audience that is telling you they are willing to talk about a lot of the same issues you care about. More importantly, GamerGate is a group whose primary interaction with feminism is people trying to blow issues out of proportion and throw around terms like misogyny so freely it begins to lose all its meaning. These interactions have made most gamers ambivalent towards it.
The issue GamerGate is attempting to address is that the majority of games publications take an unbalanced view of the industry, injecting their political beliefs into stories they then report on as fact. It's like if Fox, MSNBC and CNN were all ultra right (or left) wing and that was the only news you were able to get. All of the discussions coming from outside seem to stroll past this point though. A common sentiment I have heard coming from the media in the last week is that GamerGate's well has been poisoned and we should all move on from the hashtag. That because of this poison, it doesn't matter what we say we are about, the hashtag is anti-woman and anyone who uses it is guilty by association. I could go in to the numerous logical fallacies this line of reasoning causes, but I instead shall now quote Cain, a vocal member of the GamerGate community, who explains this better than I ever could:
The issue GamerGate is attempting to address is that the majority of games publications take an unbalanced view of the industry, injecting their political beliefs into stories they then report on as fact. It's like if Fox, MSNBC and CNN were all ultra right (or left) wing and that was the only news you were able to get. All of the discussions coming from outside seem to stroll past this point though. A common sentiment I have heard coming from the media in the last week is that GamerGate's well has been poisoned and we should all move on from the hashtag. That because of this poison, it doesn't matter what we say we are about, the hashtag is anti-woman and anyone who uses it is guilty by association. I could go in to the numerous logical fallacies this line of reasoning causes, but I instead shall now quote Cain, a vocal member of the GamerGate community, who explains this better than I ever could:
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"We have some problematic points when people say that GamerGate must be pure. No movement in the history of movements, and as a social worker I know movements, is pure. After all, if we consider the Civil Rights movement, they had the Black Panthers and the future New Black Panthers Party. If you consider Women's Rights movement, you have radical feminism and you had extremist feminism. We're talking about people who decided to "burn bras" and demand the patriarchy must be dismantled, that men be killed to do so."
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We could not possibly say that the Civil Rights Movement or the Women's Rights movement is bad because of the extremist elements that attached themselves, because we know the good those movements have produced.
In short GamerGate has not been poisoned. It is comprised of a lot of different people with different view points. The thing that binds us all together is that we all believe there should be professional distance and a strive for objectivity in journalism. We have seen those we entrusted do a poor job when it comes to living up to these standards. We seek objectivity in coverage. We do not think that reviews cannot be subjective, by definition they are. We do however demand that reviews are more than a politically infused condemnation of a game. If the content of a game is such that you cannot review it according to the principles of journalistic objectivity, then you should not be reviewing it. If you cannot cover a story without meeting journalistic objectivity, you should not cover it. Gamergate believes that journalistic ethics are important and we want nothing to do with journalists or publications who do not agree on those points. We want transparency, we want to trust our news sources, and we want to make sure that a small and vocal minority of the gaming press will not try to smear their readers because we are demanding this. Phrased another way, it is not our well that has been poisoned.
In short GamerGate has not been poisoned. It is comprised of a lot of different people with different view points. The thing that binds us all together is that we all believe there should be professional distance and a strive for objectivity in journalism. We have seen those we entrusted do a poor job when it comes to living up to these standards. We seek objectivity in coverage. We do not think that reviews cannot be subjective, by definition they are. We do however demand that reviews are more than a politically infused condemnation of a game. If the content of a game is such that you cannot review it according to the principles of journalistic objectivity, then you should not be reviewing it. If you cannot cover a story without meeting journalistic objectivity, you should not cover it. Gamergate believes that journalistic ethics are important and we want nothing to do with journalists or publications who do not agree on those points. We want transparency, we want to trust our news sources, and we want to make sure that a small and vocal minority of the gaming press will not try to smear their readers because we are demanding this. Phrased another way, it is not our well that has been poisoned.
Thank you for your time and your thoughts.
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