In cowboy cinema, the stereotype of the gritty cowboy (typically Clint Eastwood, and we all know how well he turned out) who rides into town to get their hands dirty and blast away the bad guys is a time-honored tradition. It’s also acknowledged as a fantasy, as a work of imagination. In first person shooters, the angry white man with a gun who murders everything to save the day is also a time honored tradition, dating back to Wolfenstein. However, it’s still treated with an air of artistic legitimacy, no matter how mindless it truly is.

November 18th, 2015 is the 1-year anniversary of the closure of Irrational Games, a development studio helmed by Ken Levine and a property of 2k Games. After the final DLC for Bioshock: Infinite (a retcon trying to make the ending less racist because a really bad metaphor involving menstrual blood) was released, Levine chose to leave Irrational and “move on” to a “new endeavor” - as 2K Games proceeded to lay off almost the entirety of the studio. It’s funny, looking back. Infinite was regarded as “true art” by being a generic shooter trapped in a veneer of a unique art style and the appropriation of the history of black oppression to make a half-hearted ideological “point,” if you could even call it that, about how “maybe the truth is in the middle” - the mating call of the white soft-L liberal who’s safe at home with the status quo.

That game was, of course, about an angry white man with a gun charging into town with a gun to fix everything, and of course, acting like it was some sort of philosophical genius bestowed upon us by the Glorious Intellectual Creative Powerhouse Ken Levine. Numerous GOTY awards followed from all sorts of organizations willing to overlook the hot new innovative racism of white appropriation of black oppression history for the sake of pseudo-intellectual foreplay.

2015, and the myth of the All-Knowing White Male Creative is still alive and well, although perhaps slowly starting to come under some fire. Last week Peter Molyneux finally caught some controversial heat after 15 years of peddling nonsense for profit, and feeling threatened, Ken Levine came riding in to his defense: decrying the press for not treating him or Molyneux with the proper unyielding worship he’s so typically used to. I think there’s actually a little bit of fear, the “game gods” of the golden era of PC gaming are finally becoming irrelevant, making way for new spaces of innovation in games, that hope that everyone, and I mean everyone, cares about what they have to say about the human existence.

Of course, Levine made some racket and rumble and also put out a long piece on Medium telling people to “literally stop at nothing” - that if they just bury their head and work hard, they’ll be as successful as him! Well, that is, unless you’re silly enough to work for him, because you’ll be laid off as soon as he gets bored and wants to move on to some other project. It is this toxic American narrative of “bootstraps” that demands undying labor and loyalty to a broken system, after this has been proven untrue time and time again. So many people, myself included, are busting their asses in America in the hopes that they some day might not have to freak out about money, but are told “just chase your dream! do what you love!!” as if that’s somehow possible by those lucky enough to pull six figures a year, if not more.

If you’re wondering why I’ve spent so long here establishing just how touch and harmful to the gaming industry at large Ken Levine really is, it’s because the other day it’s crossed a line that is beyond sympathy, that is actively destructive, that for anybody on the board of Levine’s employer, Take Two Interactive, I would seriously reconsider the supposed benefit of enabling this nonsensical cult of personality around the imagined genius of the faux-intellectual white man.

You see, Ken Levine has publicly stated his support for an online petition (l m f a o) on change.org (l m capital F a o) declaring outlets like Kotaku and Polygon at fault, essentially, for that cringeworthy Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode “inspired” by GamerGate. Forget that Law & Order has always been a laughworthy procedural, forget that a faux-political hatemob has made itself worthy of coverage in mainstream press outlets due to how pathetically vitirolic it is - it’s actually the fault of the evil, unethical games journalists that have been the supposed target of GamerGate since the start, for covering events that have affected nearly everyone in the medium’s culture. This petition demands that games journalists “show both sides” and “lead the way in healing the rift in videogames,” because their “yellow journalism” (Do you even know what this phrase means, Mark Kern, author of this pathetic joke of a petition?) is apparently responsible for disgusting nerds waging relentless harassment campaigns of hatred and vitriol, including everything from death and rape threats to sending SWAT teams after whoever pokes at their fragile egos under false pretenses.

How fucking pathetic and inept do you have to be to think that the victims of unyielding hatred just need to shut up and get over it? How goddamn incompetent do you have to be to sit there and honestly say that all the death and rape threats and unyielding waves of harassment will just end if everyone shuts up and pretends they aren’t happening? By giving GamerGate exactly what they want, how does that ensure a healthy creative environment for all, not just lofty white men elevated to a near-religious position they’ve failed to live up to?

Last weekend, I was at a Babycastles after-party for IndieCade East, and had the honor of double fisting beers with a handful of indie developers, and GamerGate was the sort of “oh, right. that thing” undercurrent that would pop up on a regular basis. Apparently GamerGate decided to flood the IndieCade hashtag with all sorts of nonsense to “disrupt” a bunch of artists getting together to discuss the medium, and that there’s apparently a super corrupt awards show that is highly unethical… even though there isn’t an IndieCade… awards show…

I came away super positive about a bunch of fresh, creative faces driving the medium of games forward, and the next day, the next goddamn day, Ken Levine has to come riding in like some pseudo-intellectual cowboy and decide he alone, after all the months that GamerGate has been going on accomplishing fucking nothing of value, is going to fix everything. We just all need to throw a smile on and be “positive,” and the false equation of a horde of doxxers, harassers, and all around awful people to an ever-growing group of people who are just fucking tired. Tired of recieving endless death and rape threats, tired of having to put up with this shit. Wish they could just be left in peace to make games and do rad shit and live their lives, but they have to worry about shit like GamerGate.

Let’s just cut to the heart of this: Ken Levine has actively contributed to making the culture in games a more hostile space for women.

By acting like GamerGate is entitled to a seat at the table, from those making endless threats to those pretending like they aren’t happening and making excuses for them, is to have the fucking balls to stand up and say that women in games should simply accept being under the threat of constant threats and harassment for simply fucking existing and opening their goddamn mouths.

Fuck that and fuck Levine and fuck Levine’s employer, Take Two Interactive, for acting like statements like Levine’s are somehow acceptable behavior. It’s the same tired horseshit at “finding a middle ground” that has been uttered time and time again by blowhards trying to make themselves relevant since GamerGate’s inception. To think that now, charging in and spewing that sort of horseshit is at all reasonable or acceptable is a vast display of raw ineptitude, and at this point is actively destructive for the sake of fellating one’s own ego.

For as long as GamerGate has ravaged on now since last how, just how goddamn out of touch do you have to be to act like this sort of self-centered pseudo-heroics is helping anyone this late in the fucking game?

“The press SHOULD report on unpleasant things. THAT IS THEIR JOB. But now the view of the world is that our industry is a cesspool.”

-Ken Levine, via Twitter (@IGLevine)

You know what gives games as a culture a bad reputation in the mainstream parts of society? It’s not the games press - and I say this as one of the more outspoken critics of outlets like Polygon and the Gawker Empire That Provides Nothing of Value to Society - they’re simply doing their job reporting on the events taking place within the culture of games.

What gives games a bad reputation is a gaggle of pathetically nonsensical assholes who have organized their conspiracy theory circlejerk party of misogyny into a “movement” that has been relentless in its death threats, rape threats, vile misogyny, doxxing, unyielding harassment, and all sorts of other pathetic nonsense, then having hugely influential men in the industry like Ken Levine act like they are still worthy of a seat at the table.

I’m just trying to figure out how publicly backing a petition that says the people that created a fictional woman to agree with them, and then beat off to fetish porn of said imaginary woman in between blasting threats and “trolling,” are worthy of listening to instead of the very actual woman having to, gee, I dunno, cancel appearances due to said death threats. Or have to give up their dream due to how hostile the scene is. How the fuck is that acceptable, Take Two Interactive, to have one of your most popular employees giving legitimacy to a movement that seeks to shut up and drive out half of your potential audience? I would love to know.

“The abusers win WHEN THEY GET ATTENTION and when they know their targets are scared. That’s what they want.”

-Ken Levine, via Twitter (@IGLevine)

You know how I know Ken Levine is completely out of touch and has zero dealings with actual women in the games industry? Because this same sad pathetic line of thinking has been trodded out time and time again because the fact of the matter is: it simply. is not. true. There have been countless women long before GamerGate’s inception who can assure you that this is not the case.

“I’m not talking about who started it. I’m looking for folks who want to end it.”

-Ken Levine, via Twitter (@IGLevine)

What the fuck does this even mean? How vague and completely out of touch do you have to be with the current situation to think vague, melodramatic platitudes are somehow the answer? Are you munching down on a cigar, twirling a revolver, making cool posers in the mirror as well when you spout these half-cocked one liners, Ken? Has all of this fame that game journalists have put you on a pedestal more too much pressure to handle, and now you’re turning on them because one of them said some mean things to OT Level 13 on the Past-His-Prime Game God hierarchy, Peter Molyneux, who has spent the past fifteen years peddling hot nonsense?

Or has the past several months of checking games news websites constantly being reminded of this constant nightmare bummed Levine out to such a degree that he’s decided to shoulder this burden himself and “end it” by being really authoritative on Twitter and now we’ve all gotta “be positive?” Because he said so?

It doesn’t really matter, actually. It is the sad realization that Ken Levine isn’t as holy and wise as the games industry pretends he is - he’s as fallible as any man trapped in a broken media culture that prioritizes the supposed intellectual supremacy of the angry white man with a chip on his shoulder.

Instead of having the moral backbone to actually shut up for once, and actually listen to the women dealing with this shit and how to best support them, Ken chose to come charging in like the fabled generic Doomguy that has haunted games from Wolfenstein 3d to Bioshock Infinite and making a damned fool of himself, worse yet, all he’s accomplished is contributing to making games an even more hostile place for women.

It’s a goddamn shame, almost sort of criminal, really - that yet again, as women are faced with an unyielding wave after wave of threats and harassment, a man has to roll in and make it about himself.



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