A part of me wonders what would have been unearthed had a similar inquiry been applied to the gaming media, but when certain games media sites (and we all know they are) went after one of the largest and most diverse groups of people ever, it was the people themselves who bit back, and they bit back hard.

What bothered me the most throughout all this is that we have never really heard much from the regular people who supported GamerGate, those who lead regular lives as gamers, work for a living, support a family etc. They saw something wrong with the media that was supposed to stick up for their own audience.

I chose to reach out to a few of these people because I really wanted to hear what they had to say on this issue. It still bothers me that media coverage on this has never been fair and has seemingly been trying to drive these people into the ground. One of those people is Hayley Conway, a long time gamer and writer who is currently studying for her master’s degree in writing. She happily gave me some of her time to talk about her involvement with GamerGate.

What were your feelings about the gaming media leading up to August 28, 2014?

I mostly ignored games media to be honest. I knew about the trends overall, but unless it was a game that I cared about, I stayed away. As far as printed material goes, I ended up getting a subscription to Game Informer because I shopped at GameStop. I read a few issues, but then I'd flip back to the back of the magazine and check out the review scores. Hardly anything was ever reviewed lower than a nine. I'd look for the games that DID have poor reviews, and there were so few. If everything gets a damn near perfect score, how do I know what's really true about the game? There are a lot of crappy games out there, but why isn't Game Informer informing me of them? I ended up using the Game Informer magazines for squashing cockroaches. That was really all it was good for. I suppose if I ever ran out of toilet paper, I could wipe my backside with it."

Hayley Conway is a gamer, and proud of it.

For online games media, I occasionally visited Kotaku. When the site started posting mostly cosplay instead of actual game reviews, I stopped going. I want to read about vidya, not cosplay or some of the clickbait-y crap they published. I even read a few Leigh Alexander things that I sort of agreed with at the time. But then, when Mass Effect 3 happened and we gamers couldn't find ANYONE in the games journo profession willing to side with the us (save for Forbes, which was surprising) and ask questions in order to hold BioWare/EA accountable, I stopped reading gaming 'journalism' altogether. Call me spoiled and entitled? Well, you don't get my clicks. Tell me I'm dead. How'd that work out for y'all?"

What first brought GamerGate to your attention?

My husband is a big time Twitter user. He mentioned to me a few times in August that some things were happening in the gaming industry. He told me about Anita Sarkeesian, who at the time I supported and even donated to her Tropes vs. Women KickStarter, and how she misconstrued the Hitman gameplay about killing the prostitutes. 'Hayley, she's a fraud,' he said to me one afternoon. I didn't want to believe that because I was quasi-feminist and I thought Anita would bring some things to light that had always bothered me about women in video games. I didn't want to believe Anita was dishonest. But she was, and I swallowed that bitter red pill."