When I first heard noise about DeepFreeze.it I was actually optimistic. Despite the largely negative storm that GamerGate has pulled in its wake a few of their points are worth consideration. AAA game developers and publishers have an immense amount of control over access to information (something GamerGate bizarrely ignores). There is very little hard reporting in the industry. Their charges of cliquishness in the indie reporting world aren’t entirely invalid, even if they largely ignore the reasons for that cliquishness. Perhaps this was a step towards an official organization and legitimacy, a move away from a No True Scotsman mob, which would be a step towards controlling harassment in a systematic way.

If you want to get the best idea of what DeepFeeze.it is all about the best place to start is the “Advanced Guidelines” page. It was obviously written hastily, but it lays out the confusion, childishness and naivety that appears to cripple the moderates of GamerGate. Bonegolem, who is purposely remaining as anonymous as possible, even in interviews, is earnest. He’s committed to objective presentation and supports people making their own decisions about the information presented.

GamerGate purports to focus on ethical issues. He states that not all issues raised on the site are ethical in nature. GamerGate claims to value objectivism and then focuses on largely subjective issues. He critiques one of his own entries wonderfully, saying, “Even for DeepFreeze’s most disputed emblems, like Arthur Gies’s review of Bayonetta 2, you can disagree with the evaluation that the review is intentionally sensationalist, but no one can deny the review existed and it generated controversy,” and yet, “exists and generated controversy” isn’t worthy of note unless you don’t agree with the controversial opinion.

Everything on the site is connected to tangible evidence (How seriously one wants to take shopped together forum exchanges and twitter logs is up to the viewer). I have yet to find a claim that isn’t backed up. This is far from an objective review of the facts though. Statements are strongly characterized to agree with GamerGate’s point of view. The Arthur Gies entry is an easy target, but hardly unique, and rather than remove the entry, or word it so that it reflects a more objective tone they try to argue that their interpretation is correct. This sets the bar pretty low for an official entry. (One of the commenters on that link absolutely nails it, by the way, but he seems to make little impact.)

I’ll demonstrate the difference: “McDonald’s pays many full time employees a wage that puts them under the American poverty line.” is an objective statement. “McDonald’s unfairly exploits workers.” is not an objective statement.

In any case, this is a bit long, so I’ll give you the bloody nuts up front. If you’re interested in the actual problems faced by the gaming press I highly recommend this article at VICE.

What’s the Quick and Dirty?

If GamerGate wants to be an ethical review board they have a long way to go. GamerGate is a radical political movement, and like many radical political movements they have trouble separating ethics from their political beliefs. DeepFreeze is a messy list of grievances thrown up from the mob, but it’s less messy than digging through forums and messageboards. It might gain GG some converts, but it’s probably not going to convince anybody that they are the true voice of the majority, and is unlikely to get them any gains amongst the journalists they want to control.

There are some good things about DeepFreeze, for GamerGate and for the public at large. It does highlight some of their attempts to curb harassment, which I was unaware of and was happy to learn about. It’s difficult to gauge the effectiveness of such efforts, but it’s clear that some people in the movement are dedicated to dealing with the flood of ideological hate flowing in their name. DeepFreeze doesn’t manage to keep GG from looking like a mob to anybody even passingly familiar with recent history, but does manage to make them look less like a hate-mob.

In fact some of their image control is compelling. I think there’s plenty of evidence here to prove that their characterization as “right-wing” is lazy, Progressive invective. They are certainly reactionary, but I think they’re better characterized as largely anti-intellectual advocates of a Just World status-quo than generic right-wing oppressives/repressives.

It would be unfair to ignore the money they’ve raised for charities, but their often unctuous weaponizing of those donations as political grist leaves a bad taste in the mouth. On some level the spirit with which money is given to good causes shouldn’t matter, but it doesn’t do much for GG’s image as, at best, obnoxious.

By concentrating information DeepFreeze also makes it clear that GamerGate isn’t about nothing. It’s pretty clear that there is an issue of journalists sometimes being cavalier about their personal relationships and reporting within the gaming press. I personally think their focus is very poorly aimed and their view of stakes flat out wrong, but we’ll have more on that later.

GG is a radical political mob, steeped in anonymity, calling for complete transparency. The man in charge of DF remains anonymous. Most of the investigative work is not credited directly, and most evidence has been gathered by anonymous parties. DeepFreeze might soften their ideological message, but does little to shift the idea that they are entitled hyperconsumers who want a gaming press that caters specifically to them. They don’t want to think about the social values reflected in their games. They have largely essentialist ideas about gender and sex. They are still prone to conspiratorial thinking. They still refuse to form any real organization, which hampers their ability to control their message and focus their efforts.

It’s difficult to tell where GamerGate goes from here. They don’t seem to have the resources to do any serious ethical investigations. It’ll be awhile before another GJP list leaks. Another jilted ex-boyfriend isn’t going to score them any points. They’ve pushed their influence about as far as it’s going to go. Right now it seems like they’re destined for the fate of MRA’s, plenty of bitching, the occasional outrage, but little impact outside of their own clique.

The First Huge Problem

DeepFreeze doesn’t seem to embody any of the ideals GamerGate claims it strives for. It isn’t objective. It isn’t transparent and it largely pays little attention to its own ethics. There is no actual ethics statement on the site that I can find (a thing GamerGate pushed hard for). The only site admin, Bonegolem, is anonymous. That’s not a good start for increasing transparency. GamerGaters ARE subject to harassment they don’t deserve. However, if they want to heap scrutiny on others and have it recognized they are going to have to take personal responsibility for their message. One of the SPJ’s ethical statements is that information should be attributed to people as much as possible.

The KotakuInAction reddit has a well defined ethics statement that also references the SPJ code, so we can assume that that’s the code being applied here, but it’s not a good start if DeepFreeze is meant to be significant for people outside of GamerGate. The individual badges are reasonably well defined, however, and could act as something approaching a set of ethics.

This is complicated by the fact that many infractions are, by Bonegolem’s admission, not ethical in nature. The site does very little to prioritize complaints, it only categorizes them. Everything from, “Some people might find this suspicious” to “outright contempt for ethics” is listed. It’s an information dump. Easier to navigate and more curated than forums and boards, but still not doing much to convince that GG’s dislike should be taken as anything more serious than a partisan opinion.

So, as a list of reasons that people who support GamerGate might dislike, mistrust or disagree with certain journalists or outlets it’s fine, but as a well defined ethical statement it’s a failure. It seems very much that GG wants to be taken seriously by the press that it critiques. It wants its voice to mean something outside of their own hallowed halls, but they are consistently unable actually to be objective or ethical.

Reviews

The issue of reviews comes up quite a bit across this site, and it’s a serious problem. The nonsense phrase “objective review” is in frequent use on KiA. Sometimes people are targeted simply for publishing reviews that were “lower than average” for reasons that GG disagrees with. Discussing ideas that GG doesn’t feel “belong” in a review can earn you an entry for “clickbaiting”. Being too far outside the Metacritic score for ideological reasons is also seen as “clickbaiting” and punished with an entry. The ethics statement from KiA likewise focuses almost three quarters of its length on reviews.

Games are entertainment. Reviews are subjective. I could start a blog that rated video games by how they enhanced the flavor of my favorite snack food. You might be able to say that those reviews have poor utility, but it’s not really something to gripe about in any “official” way. And what if people did, for some reason, find those reviews helpful? Finding a good reviewer has always been a personal journey for me. I have to find someone who thinks the same about games as I do. GamerGate seems to believe that a good review will aim for the median of public opinion, and feels that so strongly that they are willing to punish people who deviate. That’s an A&R report, not a review.

At every level GG seems obsessed with the ethics and objective content of the lowest stake, most subjective output of the gaming press. Being convinced to purchase bad entertainment has absolutely no collateral costs, dangers or harm. A bad video game won’t destroy your system, injure your children or curdle your milk. You won’t catch a disease from bad user interface and buggy face rendering won’t give you heavy metals poisoning. At worst you are out some money. That’s where the consequences end.

Here’s where GG scores some points on technicality, but their gains remain petty. Should editors be dictating the content or tone of reviews? No (but should the audience?). Should reviewers submit reviews without having seriously played a game? No. Should high profile studios and publishers buy good reviews? No. These are all worth documenting, with good proof, not presumptions of intent. But I must reiterate that the stakes here are very low. We are not talking about a product that presents any danger to you. We are talking about a product whose value is 100% subjective. The reviewer’s opinion is likewise 100% subjective. A game I’d buy day one for $60 might not be worth $10 to you and vice versa. The only danger is spending money on something you thought you’d enjoy but didn’t.

Entertainment money comes from disposable income. That’s money not necessary for survival items like food, shelter and transport. This isn’t to say that entertainment isn’t important or serious, but to say that dissatisfaction with it is frustrating rather than impactful in most cases.

Any single review, especially for AAA games, is also a drop in a vast sea of user and critical opinion. Aggregate sites pool reactions from all over the internet. Players give their opinions on innumerable forums. The chatter can be so loud and incoherent that one wishes for a voice to trust, to give us the objective worth of a game. I get it, but that huge variety of opinion, professional and not, means that the impact of any particular review is tiny for anyone willing to do even the most cursory investigation, and GG has certainly proven itself adept at research.

Focusing on entirely subjective content that affects nothing but the audience’s leisure time and money is exactly why GG has the reputation for being a voice for hyperconsumers intent on bending an entire industry to their tastes. Reviews they target are reviews that gave low scores for reasons that GG finds objectionable, or high scores to games that they feel were “bad”. They are policing the inclusion of certain ideas in game reviews, even though those ideas are valuable to many consumers. GG wants to take the place of editors manipulating reviews for money and censor reviews according to their completely subjective ideas about “relevance.”

Again, if you agree with GG then this is all well and good. If you don’t, there’s no reason to take them seriously. If GG wants to list all the reviewers who talk about politics and ideology in their reviews that’s fine, but it’s not really an enforceable position.

The “Quick and Dirty” Section

Well, this is certainly quick and dirty, and seems to frame the priorities of GamerGaters in an extremely petty light. They have very little understanding of stakes. They open with minor infractions (if one can even call them that) and then move to two more impactful stories. The first impression is that GG puts issues with reviews over, or on equal terms with, stories that have drastically affected people’s careers and personal lives. Perhaps they meant to ramp up the severity, but there’s little indication in the language that that’s the case. I’m left with the negative impression that either GG views all sins equal in the eyes of God (them) or that their priority is more on getting reliable information on how to spend their money than on the token issues of people dragged through the public scrutiny routine.

First there’s a highlighted quote from an anonymous reviewer saying that his editor directed him to write a bad review in order to gain some outrage clicks. That’s a problem, and it shouldn’t happen. A reviewer’s opinion should be his own, but as I pointed out earlier, there’s basically nothing at stake here. It is technically an infraction, but unless one is slavishly devoted to that particular reviewer it’s easily corrected for. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the economy of ad driven revenue. I don’t like it, and neither do journalists, but GG is not putting forward constructive ways to actually change the situation. And no, hounding sites and reviewers for reviews you disagree with does not count as constructive.

Next is an item where a journalist fell for a joke (which happens to mainstream news sources as well) and then was an asshole about recanting. The issue is basically personal. A journalist was an asshole about something he shouldn’t have been an asshole about. He made a mistake, eventually made it right, and probably got chewed out pretty well by his editor and other journalists. There’s no mention of him threatening violence or stalking detractors. He simply stuck to what he thought was a good story longer than he should have.

Here we also see that dismissal of disagreement is seen as a major sin rather than a mistake. “He didn’t listen to us,” is the focus.

Next we have the case of Brad Wardell, which seems mighty incongruous. We go from minor, if irritating, issues to a case of sexual harassment, hostile work environment and battery. If this were a stand alone blurb it would be fine, but it’s lumped in with almost embarrassingly inconsequential entries.

This is, in fact, a serious issue, and widely discussed in mainstream media circles as well. When and how should the media report on accusations of violence or sexual abuse? Kotaku fucked up some basic facts in reporting the case. They painted Brad Wardell as filing a predatory countersuit against a woman claiming sexual assault when the sexual assault claim was actually the counter claim during a labor dispute. The woman eventually apologized. This caused other outlets to push a narrative that was unnecessarily damning to Wardell’s reputation. It took longer than it should have for them to apologize. There is a definite question about the ability of the gaming press at large to handle things like sexually charged legal scandals. Many of them are not educated in journalism, and few of them can claim any expertise in reporting on sensitive legal proceedings.

It sucks that Wardell will have to deal with that for forever. However, he was sued. Legal proceedings against a public figure are broadly characterized as newsworthy. The shitty way we have to deal with claims of sexual harassment and rape, often substituting public shaming for exacting legal responsibility, are thorny and complex, fraught with politics and emotion. Since this is a “Quick and Dirty” section I won’t fault GG for not addressing those issues, but apologies and clarifications were eventually issued, so there’s really not much left to do without addressing those issues.

Max Temkin’s rape accusations come next, and these are complicated by the fact that no legal case was filed and the media were not directly contacted. That means that there are no real facts in the case and no real investigation was done by anybody. I don’t mean that to speak to the truth or falsehood of the claims, but to the lack of our ability to evaluate them. Again, emotions ran high and most players apologized. However you might personally feel about these issues, or feel about these issues conceptually, it seems clear here that the impulse to criticize overrode the consideration of the gravity of the accusations. Stephen Totilo said as much, even going so far as to say he’d changed the way they treat similar stories. Patricia Hernandez rewrote her article. GamerGate is harping on something which has already been corrected for.

Certainly historical context is important to establish that these things weren’t created out of a vacuum by GamerGate, but making mistakes, apologizing and taking real steps to not make those mistakes again is sort of the best you can hope for. The consequential issues pointed out by DeepFreeze have been corrected, and in fact demonstrated that the industry is capable of self-regulation. What’s left are the ideological issues that GamerGate tries to keep in the background.

List of Journalists

Approaching the list of journalists is bogged down by the fact that everyone on the GameJournoPros list receives an entry. You can find an explanation for this on the “Advanced Guidelines” page.

My initial thought was to break down some numbers on the list. One of the accusations leveled at GG is that they are misogynists, unfairly targeting women. In breaking things down there isn’t enough evidence in the numbers for an untrained blogger like myself to come to an objective conclusion. I also couldn’t find any numbers on the gender breakdown of the gaming press as a whole to control for. Since almost everyone listed was a member of GameJournoPros, could I accept that ratio as representative of the gender breakdown of the industry as a whole? Since that list seems to skew liberal would there be more women than in the larger industry? Would men be less likely to share the list with female colleagues? More? There’s no way to tell.

For some basic comparison, at time of writing, this is what the numbers look like.

Overall

Men: 147

Women: 28

Total: 175

More than 1 entry (a single entry generally denotes simply being on the GameJournoPros list)

Men: 22 (~15% of men)

Women: 7 (25% of women)

Total: 29 (~17% of total)

Mean number of entries (excluding those with only one entry)

Men: ~3.5

Women: ~5.9

I’m not even going to interpret these numbers. Please, don’t interpret them yourself. As I’m writing this I’m considering removing them. There is no way to determine how representative these numbers are of the industry, or even GamerGate. One of their ideological hobby horses is certainly anti-feminism, but I am not qualified to comment on how these numbers relate to the expression of that idea.

So, is all of this a bunch of garbage? Far too much of it is. There are some actual bad actors, assholes and sloppy reporters who needed a little tap on the shoulder. Most of those have already been corrected, because people with power in the press generally do care about ethics. Again, many of the complaints are ideological, not strictly, or even loosely, ethical.

I found some of the list informational and enlightening. Again though, any issues that seem significant have mostly been changed, addressed or apologized for. Most everything else is minutiae, a natural outgrowth of journalism within a fairly small industry or ideological. It’s difficult to see GamerGate, as projected through the DeepFreeze lens, as much more than a list of grudges and an attempt to create a gaming press that agrees with it, rather than one that acts ethically.

The Poisoned Well

One of the most frustrating things about GamerGate is that it continues to dip its bucket in the festering holes that are The Zoe Post (a huge source of harassment, slut-shaming and one of the main reason GamerGate has the image that it does) and “Gamers Are Dead” conspiracy (No, I don’t give a fuck that that phrase was never used.). I’ve read all three of Nathan’s articles, and there’s just nothing there. Depression Quest was already being talked about in multiple outlets when it made it onto Steam Greenlight. It was a newsworthy game at the time, and “positive coverage” amounts to being mentioned along with two other games at the top of the list. The two other articles might demonstrate a certain laziness when it comes to finding sources, but certainly not any kind of blatant career boosting.

If GamerGate is about journalistic ethics, and these are the types of things they are going to call conspiracies, collusion and cronyism, well, they frankly must be about something else. That the injured ramblings of an ex-boyfriend and the tawdry details of a sex scandal continue to be fist shaking proof that the journalistic world is corrupt demonstrates that nobody in GG is able to keep the message on ethics, and that ethics isn’t really the issue at the center of the movement. Hell, Eron Gjoni’s friend’s claim that Quinn dismissed her PTSD and depression would be a much bigger scandal, but GG doesn’t really care about mental health either. Their continued return to this post, and support of Gjoni, is a dedication to exactly the kind of tabloid mentality they purport to hate. They’re obsessed with the flash and sex and not the real stakes.

Their focus on the set of articles they refer to under the banner of “Gamers Are Dead” reveals a profound inability to view correlated events as anything but a conspiracy and a dedication to their wounded feelings over larger concepts. Articles questioning the homogenous view that AAA gaming studios seem to have of their audience and the puritanical way that elements who fit that image have defended which are “real games” have been written for years. Batches of similarly themed articles, often followed by similarly themed rebuttals are part of the entertainment news cycle and require no coordination. Most of the articles support their thesis with the exact diversity that GamerGate claims they tried to erase. It’s indicative of the borderline conspiracy theorist mentality that prevails within GamerGate. All friendly contact is collusion, all attempts at privacy are conspiracy.

Wrap Up

GamerGate’s push for real, publicly displayed ethics policies and better disclosure of personal relationships was needed. No journalist should be highlighting a game by their roommate without disclosure (and maybe not even then). The continued, constant surveillance by GG is in danger of becoming a witch hunt where journalists are constantly defending perfectly normal journalistic relationships from organized outrage though.

The major issues that GamerGate has pointed out have largely been apologized for and corrected within the press. Most of them happened before GG existed. Apologies only go so far, but Stephen Totilo especially has proven that he is willing to take steps to make sure mistakes aren’t repeated. Certainly public outcry is part of that system, but again, organizing it the way GG has has created an atmosphere where it’s difficult to be a games journalist at all.

GG has constantly been upset that they are mischaracterized by the gaming and mainstream press. DeepFreeze goes a long way to give future journalists a place to quickly gain an idea of what GamerGate is about. It might work to knock the “hate” off their hate-mob tag. What it’s not going to do is allow them to claim words like “objective”, “censorship” and “ethics” for themselves. It’s not going to justify their anger to a larger audience that doesn’t share their radical politics.

{Edit: A reference to GG calling for Schrier’s firing was removed.}