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Yeah, yeah, another attack on #GamerGate. Surprised?

You know, every time I think I’m done talking about GG and done having to defend them, articles like this pop up that are just so insane in their composition that I just can’t avoid talking about it. I mean, I shouldn’t have to defend GG, really I shouldn’t. As all the information can be obtained about the movement from this link here: (https://gamingreinvented.com/beginners-guide-gamergate/). So I truly hope that there will be a day when none of this will be necessary, and I can just leave it alone. Today is not that day though, so what’s the problem this time?

Well…Kate Edwards (Executive Director at International Game Developers Association) made a post on Facebook just recently, and in this post, she’s glad for the reaction to Trump’s “Muslim Ban”. However, Edwards was concerned as to why people weren’t as supportive when people (particularly women) were under attack with “constant, and vicious harassment and attack for months/years on end” during GamerGate. She said that it was probably due to the fact that “the industry learned a lesson from its previous apathy”.

I’m not going to go into a long-winded explanation about why the idea that #GamerGate spent “months/years” harassing anybody is a ridiculous claim, and I have no interest in talking about Trump’s “Muslim ban” as this is a video game website, and we don’t need to get too political here (sometimes it´s hard to avoid though).

The comments are no more kind to gamers than Edwards. Many talked about how the consumer revolt was a beta test for authoritarianism and a warning for the supposed rise of new Nazism. As I covered in a previous article, there are no connections between GamerGate and any political movement. (I was incorrect in my article about GamerGate and the Alt-Right, but not because there is a connection, but because I was wrong about the Alt-Right being just a meme. At the time, it was new, and I legitimately thought it was a meme. I apologize for being wrong).

Any ways, so who else would show up to the post? Well, it was no one other than Zoé Quinn herself (a person who´s more or less seen as a “professional victim” by a lot of people nowadays). As one can expect from situations like the “ShuffleGate” fiasco, she had to make the situation about herself. She started off by saying that she had said “[GamerGate] were actual Nazis for years” and following it with, “Good thing I literally wrote the book on it”.

What was even worse was the number of other people, game designers and all, who were attacking the movement through misconceptions that even the simplest Google search could prove wrong. William Volk (a long-time Video Game industry veteran), posted claiming that the Alt-Right used GamerGate as a recruiting tool, and Lindsay Grace, board member at Global Game Jam and Professor at American University Game Lab, said that even the law supports the worst of people. Ernest W. Adams, a game design consultant and former Lead Game Designer at EA, asked why his male colleagues didn’t participate in the discussion against GamerGate and was upset when he got ignored.

It hurts to think that they think so little of their audience. So it’s very unfortunate that the people who supposedly represent us, as gamers, could think that we would be such awful people, and if they believe that gamers (in particularly GamerGate) are such bad people, then why would they continue to be in the industry?

The entire post gives such insight into how game makers think about the community. So there is quite a lot to see and so much said. That´s also why I couldn’t possibly cover it all in one go (you will find the link further down the page). Nevertheless, I shared my thoughts on the post, and we can only hope that these “industry” folks would spend even a modicum of time finding out what GamerGate means to those who are in the community. This goes back to what I spoke of before about how there is so little communication between the community and those who supposedly represent us. It’s clear that they want no discussion with us, and I hope they can step forward and prove me wrong…Because this is the last thing I want to be right on.

And with that said, what´s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!

Credit:

Just Lyle

Robin Ek – Editor

Sources and resources:

Beginners guide #GamerGate

Kate Edwards on Facebook



***Disclaimer***

This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers’ (nor The Gaming Ground’s) opinions.

***Disclosure***

I have nothing against the people in the comments nor the original poster of the Facebook post in question. I am a supporter of GamerGate. I do not have a political bias, Right or Left, and I think myself to be fairly Libertarian.



Justin Easler

Senior editor

The Gaming Ground

Twitter: @masterjayshay

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Tags: #GamerGate, Gamer, Gamers, Gaming, Western developers