This is the first of a
pair of blog posts; the second, a slightly more temperate take on similar
content, will follow shortly.
The following is
solely the opinion of Vaulisel and is not intended to reflect the opinions of
No Excuses or VtW Productions as a whole.
The corruption of video games journalism is by no means a
new topic; anyone who watches the industry and the outlets that report on it
has seen time and again that even major press outlets handle their professional
ethics in a spectacularly slipshod manner. The revelation that this lack of
regard for ethical standards extended just as thoroughly if not more so into
their dealings with the indie development community was less of a surprise and
more of a grim confirmation of something I had come to logically suspect. But
it was the synchronised barrage of attacks on the “gamer” identity that
galvanised me to plant my standard in the ground on #GamerGate’s side.
Most who observe the flow of news articles out of the major video games news sites had already noticed the trends in their thinking, and the decline of quality review in favour of pontificating about social justice politics(Mr. A. Groen’s laughably poor review of King of Fighters XIII comes to mind[1]). I’ve lost count of the number of times I would be doing research for my podcast and complain to my co-host, “Fern, where’s all the games news? They’re all talking gender politics again.” In light of the furore over Ms. Quinn’s personal indiscretions being exposed, and the tangled web of journalistic conflicts of interest they were woven into attracting attention, I had expected the likes of Polygon and Kotaku to adapt a combative stance just like they did in response to Ms. Sarkeesian’s detractors. Instead, to my astonishment, a phalanx of websites marched their rhetoric in perfect lockstep right through “Carthago delenda est” and into “Vae victis; here’s your diktat, listen and obey, all the non-misogynists are doing it,” all neatly wrapped up in a nice “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” style package, with a sprinkling of petty name-calling, all using Ms. Quinn being harassed by the lunatic fringe elements of the electronic wilds as an excuse. Gamers, they proclaimed, were dead. A putrescent and decaying vestige of a bygone era, struck down by popular demand.
I was, to put it bluntly, revolted. These self-appointed
moral guardians only have jobs, only collect their paycheques because WE, the
gamers, deigned to appraise their opinion on video games and graciously take
them under advisement when making purchase decisions. And now, they have the
arrogance, the gall to turn around and proclaim, no, you uncultured, backward
plebians have demonstrated that you aren’t responsible enough to decide what
video games to purchase and enjoy, so we will instruct you upon which products
are appropriately “pro-social” and “inclusive” for you to play to become real members of society.
Fun? Fun is a “neurological trick”[2], a spurious objective.
Enjoyment? Never mind what you enjoy,
what about “inclusivity”[2]? That’s far
more important. Choice? Your choices are all wrong. You gamers are, after all,
all cis-het-white-male-basement-dwelling virgins, ignorant of your privilege,
and therefore it falls to the mighty video games press edifice to correct your
failings as an individual, you racist, misogynist scum.
Alright, so I might be exaggerating the strength of the
invective (although to a troublingly mild degree), but it stands that those we
entrusted to inform us have decided their role is to profile our loose demographic
en masse and condemn us in accordance
with the stereotype they have manufactured, referring to us as “…obtuse
shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers”[3]
and other such vile things. This they see as a mandatory step to ushering in
their brave new world of “…“edifying”, “healing”, “pro-social”, or even
“enlightening””[2] experiences. To ensure they dominated the podium utterly,
this was followed by deliberate strangulation of all discussion that might lead
to criticism across as many sites on the internet as they could reach, making
sure their narrative had time to take root undisturbed.
And take root it did. With their opposition driven to the
periphery in the handful of places still permitting discussion, the message that
any criticism of the new regime is a form of harassment and that any critic is
by default a disgusting misogynist gained massive traction with casual
observers. #GamerGate since its very inception has as a result been fighting an
uphill battle against an entrenched opponent occupying fortified ground. The
“truth” had been established in the minds of onlookers in accordance with the
new regime’s fabricated narrative: #GamerGate was a campaign of harassment
against females involved in videogames perpetrated by a disgruntled
old-boys-club of misogynist nerds. No discussion was to be entered into because
proponents of the #GamerGate movement were designated incapable of rational
discourse. Any criticism they might level at the media was invalid because the
media they criticised said so. The censorship of discussion continued to
propagate throughout the converts to the new regime, until only a handful of
major bastions of free speech remained.
This is, without a doubt, one of the most brazen and transparent
attempts to engineer the forcible injection of an ideology into a demographic
and industry that I have beheld in any context. The only bright spot is that it
is also one of the clumsiest and most ill-advised. The true meal-tickets for
these self-important ideologues are reader click-throughs and the companies
producing mainstream, mass-market AAA games. But their zeal for promoting their
agenda has driven them to publicise their deep disdain for the common gamer,
disregard the existence of games enthusiasts who don’t fit their stereotype,
and generally spit in the face of the people who might otherwise be giving them
their click-throughs. It has led them to denigrate the AAA mainstream titles
produced by publishers that are the source of their big stories, exclusives,
and their shameful procession of industry perks, travel, meals, freebies and
other miscellaneous tchotchkes.
Based on the trends in sentiment amongst the content
producers of these major sites, it seems reasonable to suppose that engineering
a change in reader sentiment in favour of their ideological agenda may have
been a long-term goal for these publications long before anyone had heard of
Ms. Quinn or what she gets up to on her own time. Part of the clumsiness of
this campaign is likely due to them going off half-cocked in a scrambling
attempt to deflect the laser-focused scrutiny suddenly directed at their habitual
apathy toward basic standards of journalistic ethics. This aim, at least, has
failed spectacularly.
The accomplishments of the Gamers Are Dead campaign are
mixed. They did in fact manage to establish their racist, sexist, slanderous
narrative that only cis-het white males are gamers, and that those individuals
are without exception, vile people. They did manage to convince a large number
of onlookers that #GamerGate is a targeted campaign of harassment and misogyny
aimed at women in the video games industry. But in exchange they poked the
sleeping tiger, already fed up with their needling, one too many times. Their
revenue streams are now at risk, with some sites showing plunging popularity[4][5]
and advertisers are pulling out[6][7]. Their careers are now at risk, their
bitter vituperations prompting people to put them under a microscope and dredge
the skeletons out of their closets. There’s no telling how much damage they may
have done to the public opinion of gamers in general, who were finally
beginning to crawl into the light as an acceptable hobby and marketable
demographic.
Alexa rankings for Rock Paper Shotgun
But above all the trust many gamers had for them has been shredded into pieces by the sacrificial knife of their anti-consumer ideologies. Business is booming for the prominent YouTube games critics and enthusiasts like PewDiePie and TotalBiscuit. The Fifth Estate got ideas above their station and believed it could dictate terms to an audience who frankly do not need them anymore. It remains to be seen what will be standing at the end of all this, but many of these self-important agenda-pushers may find that declaring their audience to be dead may have simply been hammering another nail into their own professional coffins. Regardless, I have no problem denouncing the authors of these articles and the editors that approved them as completely unsuitable for their presumed job of keeping gamers updated and informed about the industry, so long as they view us as repugnant obstacles to their supposedly progressive agenda.
I could write at length on the nepotism, collusion, cronyism
and occasionally outright racketeering that certain elements of the video games
press have recently been alleged to be embroiled in. However, there are much
sharper minds than mine who have poured large amounts of time, and occasionally
even money into investigating such matters, and while I would be duly pleased
for every last concealed professional indiscretion perpetrated by these
elements to be dragged into the light of day that their audiences might
scrutinise them and hold their perpetrators to account, I do not have high
hopes for such a thing. For the time being, I will satisfy myself by helping to
distribute the information we have to allow people to draw what conclusions
they may, that the wheels of consumer justice might turn and, if necessary,
exile from the industry those who do not deserve a place in it. A collection of
resources, blog posts, articles and discussions from a surprisingly diverse
range of viewpoints may be found in the #GamerGate megathread[8] hosted at The
Escapist, one of the few major sites which, while they might not agree with the
views held by #GamerGate supporters, believed in the value of free speech, and
are experiencing a surge in traffic in response[9].
Alexa rankings for The Escapist
Gamers have been and will remain a culture which, while
often fractious, unruly and prone to bickering, care little for petty
differences in gender, creed, race and suchlike; in the end we hold in common
our abiding love of video games; the experiences of playing, the memories they
give us, the connections we form with others through them, and the things we
learn about the world and ourselves through them. We are a culture raised to
learn from our setbacks and seize victory; our resolve has been forged in the
fires of conflict defending our passion from a long succession of critics and
detractors. The events surrounding #GamerGate are just the newest challenge to
overcome. Once in a while we might falter for a round, but we’ve never lost a
match yet.
![[6]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BxIPIw5CcAMkwUp.png){kind=link}
Oh, come on Vaul, tell us what you REALLY think ;)
ReplyDeleteI can almost feel the emotion that this subject has brought up in you through this post. I think that all of us "Gamers" are thoroughly disgusted by the way all of these various, so called, news sites came together to denounce all of us. The more I read about the back and forth of it, the more angry it makes me. Whenever I try to find a post or article about the other side of #GamerGate, I am again disappointed due to the continued attack on our culture. They just keep making it worse. Preach on brother.