Aram Zucker-Scharff

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Co-opting the language and posture of grievance is how members of a privileged class express their belief that the way they live shouldn’t have to change, that their opponents are hypocrites and perhaps even the real oppressors. This is how you get St. Louisans sincerely explaining that Ferguson protestors are the real racists, and how you end up with an organized group of precisely the same video game enthusiasts to whom an entire industry is catering honestly believing that they’re an oppressed minority. From this kind of ideological fortification, you can stage absolutely whatever campaigns you deem necessary. […]

The demands for journalistic integrity coming from Gamergate have nothing at all to do with the systemic corruption of the gaming media. They’ve centered instead on journalists purportedly pursuing social-justice agendas and on ridiculous claims that the press sees gamers as vectors of social contagion. Some of the complaints, like the idea that outlets ought to reconsider their editorial positions if enough readers disagree with them, even stand in direct opposition to traditional journalistic ethics.

All of this makes sense, though, if you think about Gamergate as a mutant variant of the traditional American grievance movement, a rearguard action marching under the banner of high-minded media critique.

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– The future of the culture wars is here and it is GamerGate.

“

Co-opting the language and posture of grievance is how members of a privileged class express their belief that the way they live shouldn’t have to change, that their opponents are hypocrites and perhaps even the real oppressors. This is how you get St. Louisans sincerely explaining that Ferguson protestors are the real racists, and how you end up with an organized group of precisely the same video game enthusiasts to whom an entire industry is catering honestly believing that they’re an oppressed minority. From this kind of ideological fortification, you can stage absolutely whatever campaigns you deem necessary. […]

The demands for journalistic integrity coming from Gamergate have nothing at all to do with the systemic corruption of the gaming media. They’ve centered instead on journalists purportedly pursuing social-justice agendas and on ridiculous claims that the press sees gamers as vectors of social contagion. Some of the complaints, like the idea that outlets ought to reconsider their editorial positions if enough readers disagree with them, even stand in direct opposition to traditional journalistic ethics.

All of this makes sense, though, if you think about Gamergate as a mutant variant of the traditional American grievance movement, a rearguard action marching under the banner of high-minded media critique.

”

– The future of the culture wars is here and it is GamerGate.

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“From outside, people have the same prognosis for videogames that they have about, say, the Sudan.

This state of affairs ought to chasten us. It ought to revise our understanding of the scope of the work before us.

For example: if you want to fight for diversity in games, then absolutely you should fight to broaden representation among players, creators, and characters.

But there’s another kind of diversity: the diversity of our interests and our dispositions, of the company we keep and the influences that inspire us, the people and the groups and the industries and the materials that we contact. It has to do with having dealings enough with the world such that it is no longer possible to be seen as a parochial backwater not even worth opposing let alone supporting.

We have become too comfortable here in games.”

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– Why Anything But Games Matters.

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Of course there are two sides to the situation. (As Fred Zeleny pointed out, there are probably more like five.) And I’ve read Ralph Koster’s AMA (which gives key insight into the average GamerGater’s perspective). But one of those sides is sending death and rape threats to women in game dev, and that is flatly unacceptable.

To be clear: I don’t think every person calling themselves part of GamerGate is evil. I think a lot of you probably do care about games journalism, and while I think you’re misguided, that doesn’t mean you’re all monsters.

But as long as you use the term “I’m part of GamerGate” to mean “I want better ethics in video game journalism”, then you are choosing to stand under the same umbrella as the people who use the term “I’m part of GamerGate” to mean “I will harass female game devs into quitting the industry”.

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– The “good name” of GamerGate.