The larger a mass, the greater its gravitational pull. This also applies to social media bandwagons. Gamergate, the months-long online consumer revolt, fomented by anti-feminist reactionaries and loosely held together by a Twitter hashtag, certainly wants to give the impression of being a planetoid, and as a result has drawn into its orbit a whole range of protagonists. Some have petty or personal grievances, others exaggerated concerns rooted in genuine issues. Some have just smelled money, or fear.

There’s an element of symbiosis in the relationship between those involved. The worst – disingenuous ideologues, agitators, power-drunk vigilantes – are able to use the diversity of participants as a fig leaf for their agenda, while those with smaller axes to grind get to harness the energy and aggression of the extremists while simultaneously disavowing them. Marching under the incredibly vague banner of “journalistic ethics” allows bona fide neo-nazis to hold hands with ticked-off customers and claim common cause.

One thing they really do have in common is a desire for positive press coverage. When I wrote a blog post last week examining the permutations of zealotry within Gamergate and the way the movement misunderstands and perverts the language of reason, it was dismissed as one of a number of “biased” articles that only told one side of the story.



But even leaving aside the fact that Gamergate’s “argument” is an irreconcilable mess of trembly fingered accusations, vendettas and uncertain nods to complex problems, the fact remains that there is only one “side” to be discussed, and that is Gamergate itself. As much as it would like to nominate as its opponent a power-axis of leftist games critics, mainstream journalists, developers, activists and academics, this axis doesn’t exist.

Nor do Gamergate’s critics mass beneath any banner, or rally together to punish individual targets the way Gamergate does. The misdemeanours alluded to are many and various because this “other side” is simply people from all walks of life, gamers and non-gamers alike, reacting (or not reacting, as the case may be) to Gamergate.



Similarly, the numerous real issues that Gamergate has touched on are too ranging and discrete to be addressed satisfactorily all at once. They include the relationship between the specialist press and PR, how games should be evaluated, their effect on human behaviour, the role of the critic and more besides.

These are (and have been) matters for continuous examination within and without the gaming press – but they cannot be resolved by the crude lists of demands that occasionally emerge from within the Gamergate camp.

All that is left to sensibly discuss is Gamergate itself. Gamergate, with its hit-lists of politically undesirable journalists. Gamergate, with its notion of itself as “a beachhead for a push against ‘social justice warrior’ meddling in other media”. Gamergate, with its use of military-style hyperbole in planning its operations, its sad insistence that the anger and abuse it attracts somehow weighs against the anger and abuse it facilitates.

What about neutrality, then, or compassionate attempts to engage? Neither approach works. Negotiation has been tried and found to be treated as another form of provocation, while silence is regarded as hostility – “How dare they ignore us!”

Far more importantly, to affect neutrality is to do profound, immeasurable disservice to the victims of Gamergate. This revolt needs to be understood in the context of years of attacks on women in gaming, under various guises.

To cede to Gamergate’s manufactured counter-narrative, which foregrounds the fractious consumer-creator relationship, is to ignore its place in this wider trend, to airbrush out the periodic mobbing of individual women by both trolls and malcontents. This past weekend, the developer Brianna Wu was forced out of her home by death threats, the third case in two months after developer Zoe Quinn and cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian.

Gamergate proponents deny culpability even as some of them try to imply these women brought it on themselves; most are genuinely frustrated by these incidences, but largely because they know it hurts their image.

It’s incredibly telling that, when The Escapist tried to run a “balanced” piece acknowledging pro and anti-Gamergate reactions from male developers, it had to go to Gamergate itself for the pros, and those interviewees lost no time in revealing themselves to be gaming’s Rush Limbaughs and Richard Littlejohns, eager to provide and flesh out a mythology that rationalises hatred towards the feminist/progressive element in games. The female developers interviewed uniformly opted to remain anonymous.

We can acknowledge that not everyone on the bandwagon is a men’s rights activist. But what Gamergaters have in common with MRAs is a desperately selfish desire to sideline the problem of both passive and aggressive sexism in the gaming industry, for which they and we have to accept a measure of responsibility; they want to have a debate where they get to play maligned heroes and innocent victims.

That’s the real reason why they want to spin this as an apolitical consumer movement, rather than a swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment. And there is no neutral stance to take on that – we are either with them or against them.