If Ethics is Your Concern, GamerGate is Not Your Banner

I won’t mince words. If your movement is associated with some of the worst misogynistic attacks of 2014, you may not want to align with it.

If you’re uncomfortable with evidence that the seed of GamerGate was a series of coordinated attacks against Zoe Quinn, you may not belong.

If you balk at the continued campaign of harassment against women within the games industry and their supporters, I’d recommend swan diving off this ship.

You can’t make a landfill smell springtime fresh. The fruit of this tree is bitter with paranoid gatekeepers and violence.

This is my appeal to supporters of GamerGate whose ardent goal is journalistic integrity. This is my appeal to supporters of GamerGate who cringe at industry nepotism. This is for GamerGate supporters who want to see the medium grow with better games.

I cannot overemphasize this: critique is necessary for any form of art or entertainment to thrive and evolve. Every shift in art and entertainment have themselves been critiques of previous art. Games are due for social and thematic criticism. And the result will be better games.

I’ve been iffy about GamerGate since it appeared, because I couldn’t pin down its purpose. Closer examination does not paint a sunny picture. If you’re a gamer who thinks everyone should be able to enjoy games and work within the industry to make them even better, GamerGate does not represent you.

Not with the active efforts to silence Anita Sarkeesian, who bowed out of speaking at USU because of the terror threat planned if she attended.

Not with similar efforts against developer Brianna Wu that led her to leave home with her family and prompted police investigation.

And make no mistake this is only a microcosm of the grief women continue to experience online, because we want to insulate gaming from ideological criticism and “outsiders.” No matter how much you disagree with someone’s work (and frankly, I think Anita’s is valid), nothing justifies disrupting their life.

This is critical to understand: the climate of your movement will be judged by the conduct of your worst supporters. Unfailingly judged. So in response to the HuffPost Live interview with Jennie Bharaj, Jemma Morgan, and Georgina Young: misogyny keeps cropping up in GamerGate rhetoric because your worst supporters and associates have been demonstrably misogynistic.

I can’t help but feel GamerGate has been irrevocably tainted since the beginning. It’s not enough to point to the doxxing and coordinated attacks and say “they don’t represent what this is really about.”

I keep GamerGate at bay with a ten foot pole, not because I believe journalistic integrity and industry ethics aren’t important issues, but because I don’t want to be associated even tangentially with people who go out of their way to ruin or threaten others’ lives and livelihood. Ever.

I ask you to abandon the GamerGate banner and till fresh soil. My honest projection is that this will do more to harm gaming and the growth of the industry than journalistic collusion ever would. Potentially brilliant people, and those already among us, will call the land inhospitable. We’ll lose out on the talent and passion of people who love games as much as any of us.

I’ll continue calling myself a gamer, because that most accurately describes what I’ve been doing for 22 years. If you’re angry that GamerGate has become recognized as a hate group, turn your attention to the people claiming to represent you while they issue death and rape threats. Pay attention to the people flying your banner while hacking accounts and spreading grief.

Consider this: if you’re a GamerGate supporter, I’d wager you’ve been spending more time trying to reaffirm the altruism of your cause than actually moving it forward. And possibly even more so after the media shitstorm rumbled in.

Humor me. What does this disparate time between defending your allegiance and supporting your cause tell you?

You don’t want you movement associated with misogyny? Disassociate from the openly misogynistic cretins flying your flag. I won’t support your mission for integrity and ethics under GamerGate.

Instead of wasting all of that effort trying to convince me that my eyes and critical mind are playing tricks on me, build something better than what GamerGate has become. I only see worse mutations ahead.