Five Positive Things about GamerGate
It’s been called worse than ISIS and Ebola and everyone involved is either a Nazi, socialist, communist, fascist, or Hitler himself, source depending. I am talking about #gamergate, that dreaded hashtag you should avoid under all circumstances, unless you want a mob of people in your Twitter yard demanding you justify your milk shake.
What began with an angry ex-boyfriend’s blog post uploaded on August 16th is now a consumer boycott and culture war that pits games journalists and developers against a mob of gamers with low reading comprehension scores. One side is fighting sexism and for a more inclusive gaming community, the other, allegedly, corruption in video game journalism and “abusive” journalists who call them mean names. Every day there is a new perceived slight, a new controversy, a new target to attack, a new advertiser to email to rescind their ad campaign. It’s been an exhausting couple of months.
Unsurprisingly, the mainstream coverage of GamerGate has focused on the negatives, like the harassment that drove women like Zoe Quinn, Anita Saarkesian, and Brianna Wu from their homes, the threats to shoot up a University, various hacks and DDoS attacks attributed to both sides, the banning of inflammatory comments and the loss of advertising revenue. GamerGaters call this focus on the negative “bias” but they have a point: a phenomenon that has been raging for so long must have something positive in it, right? GamerGate can’t really be a sign that our civilization is doomed as Cracked theorized, it can’t all be toxic.
Well, good news! I found some positive things about GamerGate.
First, GamerGaters and exiled 4channers now on 8chan are advocating for civility and denouncing harassment.
It is true the birth of GamerGate is one of harassment, but since then, many in GamerGate have strongly denounced this type of behavior and insisted their movement has nothing to do with harassment. These are strange words considering much of GamerGate comes from 4chan, that image sharing board started in 2006 whose nickname is “the cesspool of the Internet.”
4chan has normal non-cesspool sections too, but it is their taboo and grotesque content on their anything goes /b/ board, along with their users planned “raids” (harassment, pranks and trolling campaigns) that has earned 4chan its bad-boy reputation. Some of these raids are benign, like Pool’s Closed. Others, like #cutforbieber and the beginnings of GamerGate, are not.
It is a twist then, that I can confidently report for more than a month now people using 4chan (and now 8chan since they were banned on 4chan) to talk about GamerGate have actively advocated politeness and denounced death threats and insults. Act nice, be civil, they say. Be kind, be calm, and reasonable. “Stay aware of your tone and don’t dog pile,” tweeted one. GamerGaters are also policing each other’s behavior on Twitter and reddit. Have the online denizens of these trollish lands been tamed? It certainly seems that way.
The change in GamerGate behavior follows the hope that their opponents will make themselves look bad by being the ones to spew hateful speech, not them. Just the other night Anita Sarkeesian tweeted something using the hashtag, and quite a few told each other to stay away from her, “avoid” her, “leave it alone” By not harassing her, they are hoping to disprove her claims of harassment.
This anti-harassment stance hasn't really stopped the harassment, but perhaps if this keeps up, Zoe Quinn, the first target of GamerGate, won’t have to start her support network helping others who've been the victims of online hate campaigns.
In a phone interview, Quinn explained the organization would help those attacked collect evidence, file police reports “as well as offer proper support for these people and give them real tools” to deal with the harassment.
“This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, there’s been four that I know of this year and last year…so I doubt this will be the last one, but I wish it was,” added Quinn. One can only hope.
Second, the Vivian James art work.
In a time of such anger and harassment, some have chosen to channel their energy into less destructive or pointless behavior: that of making art. In this case, it is the creation of the Vivian James character. She is the GamerGate movement’s red-headed mascot and the daughter of /v/ (4chan’s video game board), calling them “daddy.” She is depicted in a variety of ways, mostly non-sexual, usually playing video games.
Here she is with a sword and shield, and again, but in a different art style. In many depictions, Vivian James is sticking up her middle finger. The shading, blue lighting and intense expression on her face in this one clearly portrays “enthusiastic” gamer. My two personal favorites include Miss James in a giant video game mech and her playing a PC game with 4 monitors.
Third, interest in journalism (thought to be dying!), ethics, and PR has increased dramatically among younger generations.
Journalism, that profession that gathers data and intelligence and repackages and explains it to an audience, began in the 1600’s. Despite the industry’s old age, what the job entails has eluded the technologically savvy young people of GamerGate, as has the concept of public relations. For example, GamerGaters were confused (and outraged!) to learn that PR reps, journalists and developers talk to each other outside of work either electronically or in real life at events and conferences.
Sometimes, different members of the industry donate to each other’s crowd-funding projects or become romantically involved with each other. The revelation of industry types hanging out together and supporting each other was so shocking to GamerGaters, they dealt with it by obsessing over and sharing countless e-materials in the form of infographics, charts, screenshots, and emails from listservs as evidence of corruption (little to none of it is). Some GamerGaters were very upset with Anita Saarkesian for having a well-connected PR rep too.
“PR is basically public relations, so if you’re selling something you probably want a PR agent to talk to the media about it, [because] the PR person has the time, and the connections, and knowledge of the industry” to help you get press for your product, explained Ed Zitron, author of the witty PR book This is How You Pitch and founder and CEO of EZPR. PR reps having connections with various people in a chosen industry is not unethical, and in fact, required if you want to succeed in the business.
“This is not something that is seedy or hidden, this is a well known process that’s been going on since, well, P.T. Barnum, the father of public relations back in 1891,” added Zitron, who started his career in London as a video game journalist. During his time covering video games, he knew of one PR rep that was sleeping with a writer, and “guess what, it affected nothing.”
He continued: “Not to be too disgusting, but just because someone puts their pee-pee in someone’s hoo-haw does not mean they have mind control over them.”
Full disclosure: Zitron has pitched me his various clients countless times over the years and I have never accepted a single one of them. Despite this, we have somehow managed to become Twitter friends.
With all this focus on ethics in journalism, the practice of video game companies using video game journalism as an extension of their PR arm should be coming to an end. (Yay, another positive!) Publications like IGN, Gamespot and Game Informer are known publications that can be bought, reported ReCode. While GamerGaters themselves don’t seem to be interested in these types of ethical breaches, various “anti-GamerGaters,” writers, journalists and video game designers are. Like game designer David Hill, who on his Google+ wrote:
Right now, publishers are buying reviews. Right now, publishers are giving large amounts of money and other perks to journalists in order to skew the public perception and influence, both positively and negatively, game sales. Right now, Metacritic is being used to determine whether or not designers get to keep their jobs. Right now, AAA executives are cutting women and LGBT characters out of games in development, because of ‘the core demographic.’ These are huge problems. These are problems we want to talk about. These are problems we want to fix.
Fourth, indie games have become powerful.
Indies are typically seen as DIY underdogs, a place for minorities and those with limited funds to create games that don’t currently exist. But now, these cheap or free games have grown so powerful they threaten the entire gaming industry. Proof of this claim? GamerGaters actions. GamerGate is focused entirely on indies, and the cliquishness that exists in the indie video game scene, as opposed to what happens around blockbuster game companies.
Efforts to redirect the Eye of Sauron that is GamerGate towards an AAA game are derided, dismissed. Meanwhile, practically every single person and thing about the indie scene and their press coverage has been combed over in search of corruption by GamerGaters, with their findings shared in the aforementioned e-materials. What goes on in the indie scene, and how these indie games are covered, is of more interest to GamerGaters than the brand new blockbuster video game Shadows of Mordor. AAA video game companies take note, the indies are coming for you.
Last but not least, everyone is now a feminist.
The Webster’s definition of a feminism is, “the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities.” You’d be hard-pressed to find a single GamerGater that didn’t believe in equality. In fact, it’s their main talking point. GamerGate is essentially a pissing contest over who is the better feminist. Feminists like Anita Saarkesian, Zoe Quin, and Jenni Goodchild are targeted for being “bad” feminists, ie: they’re doing feminism wrong. Christina Hoff Sommers is regaled as doing feminism right among GamerGate circles, while Adria Richards is not.
A bad feminist is categorized as such if he or she is perceived to hate all men, can’t withstand attacks on their work or character, is seen as too radical and aggressive or even, lazy. GamerGaters call these feminists doing it wrong “SJWs,” short for “Social Justice Warrior.” SJWs are the activist equivalent of the fake geek girl: GamerGaters think SJWs don’t really believe in their rhetoric, they’re just doing it for the internet points. Here is a relatively tame depiction of an “SJW.”
Every GamerGater will tell you they support women, and diversity, and will go to great lengths to prove it (like create #NotYourShield, which uses minority figures in GamerGate as shields against criticism). They actively supported the self-proclaimed feminist game development group The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) after Zoe Quinn allegedly tried to shut them down. GamerGaters desire to be better feminists than Quinn drove them to fully fund TFYC’s indiegogo project, raising them more than 70 thousand dollars.
GamerGaters created their own feminist ideal in the fictitious Vivian James, a template other feminists can aspire to. GamerGaters also made some feminist videos about women in video games. In recent weeks, they’ve even taken to discussing the merits of second-wave feminism versus third-wave feminism. Someone who is not a feminist, or interested in feminism, would spend months debating the merits and proper forms of feminism, or proclaim to know what a proper feminist is like. Just saying. Maybe now that everyone is a feminist, the US will elect a woman as President soon!
