Veteran game designer Troy Leavitt has been posting up videos about various topics that are deemed too “taboo” in the world of game development to discuss openly and honestly. A lot of developers have avoided speaking about certain topics such as #GamerGate unless they adopt the media’s view of condemning it and calling it a “harassment campaign”, such as Tim Schafer or Rami Ismail.

Well, Leavitt’s take on the topic of #GamerGate is a lot more in-line with what core gamers think about it, saying it’s more of a consumer revolt against the religion of identity politics.

In a new 20 minute video he recently posted up on his YouTube channel, Leavitt breaks down how he saw #GamerGate unfold and what his thoughts were about the concerns raised through the hashtgag concerning the media, as well as the media’s response to the hashtag. You can check out the video below.

Leavitt explains that he uses “religion” as a way to explain the dogma that propagates what most people consider to be the inner circle of Social Justice Warriors. He says…

“My explanation for what happened here is that GamerGate was a consumer led revolt against the religion of identity politics. “I think the word religion is the right word here because there’s a central dogma in identity politics. And that [dogma] is that you’re defined not by your behavior, not by your character, but rather by your demographic identifiers.”

He explains that in the realm of identity politics, pushed hard and heavy through the media from politics to entertainment, is based on oppression points. The religion sees to it that the more qualifiers for being oppressed that you have (e.., gay, black, trans) the more oppressed you are. The more common your demographic traits, the more likely that you’re an oppressor.

Video game journalists have been using these ridiculous scale for the past several years to demonize games and gamers: if the main character is a straight, white male they say it’s not being progressive enough. They adopt sex-negative philosophies like those espoused by Anita Sarkeesian, so the more sex positive a female character is (such as Bayonetta) the more offensive the game is, resulting in sites like Polygon lowering the overall review score of the game due to perceived “sexism”.

According to Leavitt, the ethical violations were more of a minor anomaly in the grand scheme of things, and he mostly skips over the ethics aspect as a byproduct of the larger culture war involving identity politics.

Leavitt explains that he originally included some discussions about the ethics elements of #GamerGate but then removed it, mentioning in a comment…

“From my perspective, the ethics part is valid, but it seems to be subsumed within the larger context of resisting the ideology those key press members were advancing.”

The culture war aspects of #GamerGate are far more political in nature, and doesn’t really have an end-goal in sight as opposed to the ethics front, which simply wanted enforced FTC standards and updated ethics policies put into place at large and small media outlets alike.

Some people feel as if the press situation can be fixed by either removing the corrupt journalists or enforcing ethical standards for them to abide by. They also feel as if many aspects of corruption in games media can be absolved if the journalists actually report on the issues instead of trying to push for ideological standards within the community and the games themselves.

On the other side of the coin, those who are involved in #GamerGate solely to combat SJWs feel as if the SJWs need to be attacked relentless with non-stop vigor. They feel as if fixing the ethical standards in journalism isn’t enough and that the root of SJWs needs to be stomped out.

Of course, stomping out SJWs requires bringing their misdeeds to the forefront of public awareness. However, you need ethical press to make people aware or large enough public figures to push the issues to the forefront of public consciousness, but right now major social media networks and major media outlets all adopt SJW ideology. As evident with the banning of Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopolous from Twitter, the fight is taking place in a realm controlled by the opposition.

Nevertheless, it’s at least good to see a developer step up and explain the situation reasonably and calmly. The conversation on the YouTube page is very informative and diverse, with different people offering their take on the situation as well. It’s the complete opposite of the Feminist Frequency videos and the articles surrounding them, where if you didn’t agree with what was said, you weren’t allowed to say anything at all.

(Main image courtesy of Kukuruyo)