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I ask assuming you are someone who feels that you belong to the movement, and that you are acting in good faith to reform ethical guidelines within the games sphere.

I ask this honestly, because GamerGate is about a whole lot more than ethics in games journalism. And most of that whole lot more is not very good.

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The opinion piece that proved so controversial was written by Gamasutra’s editor-at-large, Leigh Alexander. It took aim principally at contemporary “games culture,” in particular the “angry young men” Ms. Alexander lambastes as “wailing hyper-consumers” and “childish internet-arguers,” and it provoked loud indignation from those who felt they had been unfairly vilified. Offended readers soon mobilized and, by contacting Gamasutra’s advertisers, effectively retaliated.

But Ms. Alexander’s op-ed represents only one skirmish in a many-fronted war—a war that has been dubbed “GamerGate,” under which hashtag the debate now rages perpetually on Twitter. A war that has the computer industry generally, and the video game business in particular, trying to find its way through a clash of the sexes, as a cultural sector that had once been so heavily male dominated becomes as mainstream as Hollywood movies.

Ms. Alexander wrote her piece in response, she says, to the way gamers had recently ganged up online against indie video game developer Zoe Quinn. Ms. Quinn — a celebrated creator of alternative types of games, such as one about living with depression — came under scrutiny recently when an ex-boyfriend published a blog post accusing her of maintaining romantic relationships with a number of prominent members of the gaming industry, including, most controversially, a writer for the game website Kotaku — a massive presence in games media, owned by new media darling Gawker — who allegedly promoted Ms. Quinn’s work (although the claims were pretty effectively refuted by Kotaku‘s editor-in-chief who demonstrated that the writer had scarcely covered Ms. Quinn’s work at all).