Inside Gamergate

by James Desborough

  Quinnspiracy, on the other hand – a term coined, apparently, by a Youtuber 'Internet Aristocrat' (currently Mr Metokur), was something a little more. When you understand who Quinn's alleged lovers were, it becomes somewhat more apparent as to why this would upset and concern people.

  Guy 1: Brandon McMartin – A sound engineer at an indie games company, Polytron.

  Guy 2: Kyle Pulver – A lead developer at indie games company Retro Affect

  Guy 3: Nathan Grayson – A games journalist writing for Kotaku and previously Rock, Paper, Shotgun.

  Guy 4: Robin Arnott – Another sound engineer and indie games developer.

  Guy 5: Joshua Boggs – Co-founder of Quinn's employer, at the time, Loveshack (and allegedly married, just to add some spice to the tale).

  Only three of these are concrete. Two are speculative, based on examination of screenshots, but the most important one is Nathan Grayson, and that one is confirmed.

  This was tawdry, perhaps. A little squalid. There were plenty of things for people to make fun of and – maybe – a few destroyed relationships, not to mention the creation of some trust issues. Still, other than making fun of it, so what? These are the kinds of people you might expect someone to have an affair with, people moving in the same circles, work colleagues and so on. No big whoop, right?

  Except for Nathan Grayson. Grayson was a journalist. Grayson had covered Quinn glowingly in three articles without disclosing their relationship[67][68][69]. This was a clear-cut and obvious breach of journalistic ethics and far from the only lapse on Grayson's part[70].

  Now there was something with some meat on its bones. Now it wasn't just a sex scandal and 'cuckoldry' to be laughed at. Now it was a failure in journalistic integrity, an explanation as to why 'non-games' were getting so much publicity and an opportunity to strike back at the censors and 'critics'. It demonstrated that the 'holier than thou' Indies and their boosters were just as corrupt as the big companies and news outlets.

  Censorship

  Both the 'Five Guys' initial sex scandal and the resulting 'Quinnspiracy' that came after it were heavily censored, even by sites you wouldn't normally expect to be censor-happy. These included, but were not limited to:

  4Chan (V)

  Depression Quest Forum

  Escapist

  Kotaku's comments

  N4G

  NeoGAF

  Reddit (games, gaming)

  Youtube

  Vice's comments

  This raised hackles due to the anti-censorship nature of internet culture and the fact that, to many, it seemed to indicate collusion (this was later to be confirmed) and bias. Censorship and suppression of the first aspect – the sex scandal – might have been somewhat excusable, but as the media scandal unfolded, it became unreasonable.

  Without the censorship, things would likely have blown over. They would probably have been limited to the scandal and corruption as it directly related to Quinn and nothing more. As a result of the censorship, more energy and outrage was pumped into the system; more trust was broken with the 'mainstream' games media and more attention was paid to what was going on in the background.

  The censorship issue would go on to inflame and dog Gamergate. It created an enormous bias, with Gamergate being unable to defend itself in standard media spaces or even in the comments section of articles made to attack it. It contributed to a useless and biased Wikipedia article; a media two-minutes hate against Gamergate. It helped create a strawman of a group that – for all the shitposting and bad taste humour – had genuine and pressing concerns about media ethics and censorship. These concerns were not helped by that self-same media continuing to be unethical and engaging in censorship around Gamergate.

  The silencing tactics, apparently intended to prevent a witch hunt, all but created Gamergate and helped turn it into a general investigation and counter-outrage at 'social justice' and the games media. Gamergate's enemies are the ones who made it a 'thing' and who kept it going. They've even periodically brought it back to life.

  In the words of the meme, 'Congratulations. You played yourself'.

  Gamergate

  So far we – still – haven't gotten to Gamergate, but there is a chain of events here that lead up to it.

  The spark that ignites the fire that would become Gamergate is the 'Five Guys, Burgers and Fries' scandal.

  This, in turn, became the Quinnspiracy - with its attendant censorship and rising suspicion.

  This still wasn't Gamergate.

  Gamergate started after the Youtuber MundaneMatt was censored, Internet Aristocrat did a video about Quinn, and Hollywood star Adam Baldwin tweeted out that video[72] accompanied by the hashtag, #Gamergate on August the 27th. That video was, and is, a good place to see the collected irritation and concerns that were to emerge throughout Gamergate.

  This almost exactly coincided with the emergence of what have come to be called the 'Gamers are dead' articles. A rather suspicious series of articles from many, supposed, games sites denigrating their audience and proclaiming the 'end of the gamer identity'[73]. This was as suspicious to gamers as the coordinated censorship and, in time, was proven to originate in a secret journalist email list, Gamejournopros (more information on this later).

  This was a shocking, coordinated attack by games journalism, which was increasingly under scrutiny, against their ostensible audience. Little wonder they would seek to protect their skin, but it was blatant, open, ideological and disgusting.

  Outlets involved were:

  Ars Technica

  Buzzfeed

  Daily Beast

  Destructoid

  Financial Post

  Gamasutra (three times)

  GamesONnet

  Guardian

  Kotaku

  Polygon

  Rock, Paper, Shotgun

  VG247

  Vice

  The games community's concerns about corruption and ethics were brushed off and censored. Their concerns about censorship were, themselves, censored. The very outlets that should have been looking into these issues and addressing their audience's concerns turned on them. They bent the mainstream media into a false narrative of misogyny, sexism and harassment right from the get go.

  Gamers were even more outraged by this slander and marginalisation.

  This was, now, war.

  Chapter Five: Gamergate Itself

  Now we were into Gamergate, but Gamergate itself is a huge, sprawling mess and there aren't any good ways to break it down. A timeline would rapidly become an indecipherable mess and unravelling claims and counter-claims is – similarly – unlikely to be productive and likely to be terribly confusing to anyone not already aware of everything.

  Rather, I have decided to divide my explanations and examinations of Gamergate into looser areas. I have decided to explain and to examine those areas discretely (so much as is possible) and to try and explain how Gamergate tied into, influenced or was influenced by these issues.

  Necessarily this also involves me presenting my interpretations and positions on these issue. I am aware of my bias as a left-libertarian type of person, and now you are too.

  Culture & Politics

  There's no question that Gamergate has been swept up into the 'culture war' that has been going on in western nations, but most especially America. A shallow analysis might conclude this to be a left/right conflict or one between conservatives and progressives. That same analysis tends to consider Gamergate to be right wing and reactionary when nothing could be further from the truth.

  It is true that Gamergate is part of a more general exasperation with Social Justice Warriors and this same phenomenon of frustration and annoyance has fed the populist right. Gamergate, however, and much of the opposition to Social Justice Warriors, in general, comes from people who classify themselves as classical liberals or 'cultural libertarians'[74]. Someone like Bill Maher can hardly be described as right wing. He has a consistently anti-PC and pro-free-speech stance and has run afo
ul of the same sorts of people[75].

  It's not just the right-wing that takes a stand against the censorious attitudes and pseudo-science of the 'progressive' left wing. There's a lot of liberals, free speech advocates, sceptics and others on the more traditional left who are horrified by the threats the 'progressive' left presents to art, expression and dialogue. The right has latched onto this as their attitudes and beliefs are now less popular and less present in society. Even so, when genuine liberals are being called names for being willing to stand up for 'icky speech'[76] (political or otherwise), something has gone wrong.

  The Baldwin Tweet

  Adam Baldwin's tweet on Gamergate coined the hashtag and the final name for the movement. It also gave the campaign a huge amount of exposure from his quarter of a million followers. It brought it to the attention to a significant number of people – unfortunately in hindsight – on the right-hand side of the political spectrum. As a rare conservative figure in Hollywood, his voice carried a reasonable amount of weight and influence in those quarters.

  While he was good for getting the word out at a time when games and conventional media were engaged in the creation of a false narrative, his involvement ultimately helped those against Gamergate. It helped them to paint it as a right-wing movement. Thanks to him they were able to present it as part of a reactionary backlash against progressivism. In reality, it was more of a libertarian backlash against authoritarianism and corruption and an assertion of genuine liberal principles. Having been noticed by and treated credibly by the right, little wonder that only right wing media and celebrities (for the most part) would discuss it or take it seriously. In such polarised societies, this did as much harm as good.

  Anti-Censorship

  While the main thrust of Gamergate was corruption and ethical breaches in the media, this cannot be disentangled from the virulently anti-censorship bent of both Internet and Gaming culture – which cross over enormously. This factor is further entangled since many of the journalists involved and many of the stories they have spun, which first earned Gamers' scorn, are attempts to censor. They're social – and financial – efforts to mark down and force game creators to bow to the hyper-PC agendas that they are pushing.

  The excuse given for this behaviour is often that it is 'criticism', but in practice, it is an attempt to censor, control and shame publishers and creators into changing what they are producing. The difference between criticism and censorship might be expressed as the difference between “I don't like this,” and “This shouldn't exist.” The latter is the position of the 'cultural critics' like Antia Sarkeesian who try to mobilise social shaming and an engaged and vocal minority to force companies to change things. This attitude is then further expressed and pushed by large chunks of the gaming media – the betrayal of their audience which bothers so many of them.

  To gamers, this all reeks of previous attempts to censor and control games. The scaremongering and moral panics are familiar, only the content of the rhetoric has changed.

  A peculiarity of recent politics is that the left wing has become authoritarian and censorious, while the right-wing has embraced its more libertarian side. This has shifted things to the point where 'free expression' has become seen as a right-wing issue and even derided by the left as 'freeze peach'[77]. This seems to have happened as left-wing ideas (or pseudo-left ideas) have become ascendant and have gained power, while right wing viewpoints have lost power and authority. As right wing ideas have become marginalised, they have gained an appreciation for the value of free expression just as the left used to when its ideas were marginalised. Now that the pseudo-left are the ones with the power they seem willing to 'pull the ladder up behind them' and to deny others the rights they gained so much from.

  When we're talking about power here, we're not just talking about political power. Conservative forces are ascendant – at the time of writing – in both the US and UK. Social power, academic power, cultural power can all be just as strong, or stronger, in the current social paradigm. Social power determines 'acceptability', terms and rules that are self-enforcing while government power has to be enforced.

  It's also worth noting the seeming paradox here. Companies have held the whip over the games media for many years, through financial means, forcing them to write better reviews and to tow the line if they wanted early releases. In some ways, things have reversed to an extent, with some games' writers seeming to hold the whip over the companies. They're doing this via their social justice criticism, which terrifies companies and has them scrambling to be pleasing – most of the time. You'd think this might balance their power over each other somewhat, but instead, we seem to get the worst of both problems.

  Something Rotten in Games Media

  There has been something wrong, or rather many things wrong, in games media for some time, and it goes back a long way. Games media used to be either a hobby press or a house organ. Magazines, back when these kinds of things were in print, were either glorified catalogues for their parent company or 'enthusiast press', not dissimilar to any other niche interest hobby.

  Early games writers were drawn from the hobbyists who constructed computers, with no real agenda and a pragmatic view towards games. Did they work? Were the graphics good? Did they show something cool that the computer could do? Were they fun? That was pretty much the extent of their interest in it.

  Once gaming in and of itself became more of a thing, you began to see specialist games reviewers. These were – perhaps – a bit more discerning. These kinds of reviews began with breathless enthusiasm, turning to more cynical and humorous observations going into the 90s. This was also the period in which the companies established their press to talk up their products and act as spokesmen for them.

  Something else began to happen as we moved into the 2000s. By 2010 the games press as starting to fill up with ideology and snooty judgement. Gamers were having a hard time getting the 'objective game reviews' (meaning subjective but about the actual game rather than social issues) and were increasingly finding themselves alienated from their press. It was frustrating, especially once the media started to side with the censor-critics and this built a tremendous amount of resentment up towards the press and the people they were toadying up to.

  This was also the period – the 2000s - in which financial corruption began to creep in, seriously.

  Companies wielded their direct and indirect financial muscle to demand better reviews and to ensure cooperation by games media outlets. Failure to cooperate would mean the loss of early access and advertising revenue. Lost access meant fewer exclusives and a delay in news, fatal in the immediacy of the Internet.

  That was probably the first factor in the emerging problems with games media. The age of the Internet meant disruption to existing revenue models (magazine sales and advertising) and placed much more emphasis purely on the advertising side and the necessity for quick action. These rendered games sites highly vulnerable to manipulation by companies and also had a secondary effect. The need for clicks to feed advertising. This led to the increased importance of 'controversial' articles, and few things drew more clicks than making people angry. There was no better way to anger gamers than to judge them, tell them off and to attack the things they loved.

  This doesn't explain all of the rot though. I speculate that there is something else at work. Many of the newer games writers seem to be of a like type, frustrated journalism degree holders or those with 'wobbly' humanities degrees. They're looking for work, looking to apply what they learned and they seem to fall into games media via an interest in the Internet and new media. I suspect that there is a measure of frustration and annoyance. There's a desire to make a difference of some kind, to apply what they learned about critical theory and activism, and yet they find themselves faced with an indifferent, even hostile, audience.

  The audience just wants to know if the games are any good or not. They don't want to be lectured, felt guilty or to have the real world dragged into their fant
asy space.

  At the same times, you have issues around the games media regarding nepotism and corruption. 'Payola' has long been the case and sponsorship has been at the status of self-parody for years[78]. While this was derided and criticised, it became the accepted status quo. Everyone knew review scores were nonsense. Everyone knew that pay-for-reviews and other nastiness was taking place, and so everything was taken with a grain of salt. The corruption and nepotism that triggered Gamergate was at a whole new level of hypocrisy, however, especially coming from journalists who had previously decried the existing state of corruption. Here we had reporters sleeping with developers and PR people[79], financially supporting each other, sharing homes and otherwise being thoroughly entangled with each other.

  This was more personal, this was petty, and this was politicised. It was coming from hypocrites who had expended lots of time and effort decrying gamers and games and alienating themselves from their audience. People who had presumed to tell gamers they were better than them, were proven to be anything but. Hypocrisy is all but guaranteed to whip people up.

  Gamergate's Politics

  Almost since Gamergate's advent, it has been characterised as some right-wing, reactionary movement.

  This has never been true.

  Gamergate had people involved in it from all across the political spectrum, but it was primarily a left-libertarian grouping [80]. The basis for much of Gamergate's objections to 'social justice warriors' and what they were trying to do through the games media and the corruption that ensues, comes from that left-wing, small 'l' libertarian focus if anything.