Erik Kain of Forbes Magazine says that on the topic of GamerGate, I understand it among the best. Which is high praise, as he’s been fairly plugged into the controversy from the outset, and is actually reasonably sympathetic to some of the undertones of the cause, where as I am mostly a caustic chronicler and critic of the subject. I’ve slowed down my writing on it quite a bit as the cause has started to flatline and I’ve discovered that I could be using that free time to instead do more productive activities such as watching paint dry, but anyone who wants to know what he’s talking about may want to look for articles with the GamerGate tag.

That being said, I do disagree with him a tad. He describes GamerGate as the natural evolution of animosity between the games press and their readership. To wit:

Mostly it’s about a toxic relationship that’s formed between the video game press and gamers themselves, one that’s been bubbling and brewing for years, not months. This dynamic, this hostile relationship, exists outside of #GamerGate as well. I think a lot of gamers who want nothing to do with the hashtag—understandably, considering the bad press it’s gotten over harassment—are still upset with the gaming press (as are some members of the press and many developers and PR people.)

But I think that’s not entirely fair to the dynamics of what’s going on. What we have is not really indicative of the games press as a whole. Most of the games press writes a fair amount of the lukewarm pap that recycles publisher buzzwords and shoves them back down our throats. For the most part, no one gives them a second glance. Its a subset of games writers, those whom we will call artistic and cultural critics, who seem to provoke such a strong reaction. And on the flip side, we have a subset of game fans who seem to take any one writing on any given site as proof that that whole site, or even further, the whole games media, has been corrupted by feminists/progressives/SJWs/whatever.

As an example, IGN, Gamespot, Polygon and Kotaku all wrote dozens, if not hundreds of articles on every possible angle of Shadows of Mordor when it came out. One of those was the very silly ‘kiss vs kill’ article about the tutorial. That article was an attempt to actually look at the craftsmanship of the game in a new light, in a way that might actually grow the craft. It was not a very good attempt, and I don’t think it succeeded – which is no big deal. But in this case, you were led to think this was the norm – that most games writing was actually analysis like this.

This is not at all the case, of course. Most of the articles talked about the sick graphics, the incredible killer combos, the brutal death scenes, where to find all the easter eggs and paid lip service to the pretty-cool-but-really-unnecessary Nemesis system. Just like all the old magazines did when they were printed on tree pulp. These articles represent 95% of games media coverage, talking directly to gamers in their own language, and they rarely raise an eyebrow. That tiny 5% though, the people who decide to try to write about games with unusual perspectives are the ones who cause outrage.

That 95% that doesn’t is also, frankly, not particularly useful to me as a craftsman. Let’s face it, at this stage in my career, I’ve just about seen every possible description of awesome combos, sick graphics, etc humanly possible. The artistic and cultural critics who rile up GG also tend to make me think the most.

When I think about the game reviews and writing I’d like to see more of, it’s in general stuff that is more analytical. I really like Extra Credits’ take on the subject of game reviews. Watch it from about 2 minutes in – key thought:

“There’s no critique, only review.”

Film in general does a much better job of using criticism to elevate the art AS WELL AS telling the peasants whether they should shell out their hard earned cash. This is kind of the opposite of what I’ve seen the momentum of GG pushing towards. I keep seeing people pushing for ‘purely objective’ reviews, which leaves all commentary at the door and grades the game’s quality purely. This is a review scheme that is more suited to a car or a dishwasher than a piece of art. This is pretty clear when someone actually tries to WRITE a purely objective review, such as those who did so ironically for this joke website, or those who did so apparently seriously for newly forged MRA/GG leaning site Reaxxion.

(Ironically, GG-fav Milo’s hilariously… Breitbartian … review for Dragon Age is a non-objective cultural criticism piece – the sorts of writing GG claims to hate — only this one comes from the other side of the usual culture divide ).

So what we have is a small cadre of cultural and artistic critics who write quite unlike the status quo, and a subset of gamers who give a shit what they say. It’s hard to say how unique a problem this is to the games industry. There are many film critics who have focused on progressing film as a medium artistically and culturally. Most of them have total disdain for Michael Bay-type mass market pap, and to the people who buy tickets for them. But there isn’t a whole lot of people going around arguing that the Pauline Kaels and Roger Eberts of the world are going to somehow destroy the medium. And I’m assuming that Michael Bay is still cashing some pretty big checks.

In the real world, most people stick to media sources that they, you know, actually like. If you don’t like film critique, you’ll probably never care who Pauline Kael is. However, games has a culture where the criticism is cross-pollinated by outrage. People who are far outside of Polygon and Kotaku’s normal readerbase are directed to go there because OMFG BURN THE HERETIC! And the sites have learned that having some disparate opinions and unique worldviews on games people are passionate about are effectively clickbait. People like Erik make the mistake of thinking that, no, all gamers think alike, and therefore all gamer writers are talking down to them. Despite the fact that numerous sites, including IGN & Gamespot (the market leaders) keep giving us triple helpings of exactly the ‘old’ style of journalism we’ve grown accustomed to.

Meanwhile, Polygon and Kotaku ACTUAL readership just keeps climbing, because it turns out there is quite a sizable market of people who WANT to talk about the artistic growth and cultural impact of the medium, and think that Polygon is doing just fine. We live in a world where everybody games, and that means that there are a lot of different opinions and levels of passion on the discussion of them as well.