While it has occasionally backfired, characterising Gamergate as a hate group, conflating it with trolls, and calling what it does harassment has helped support a censorship agenda even at the governmental level. While the social conservative position of Social Justice Warriors has been pushed back, law and government lag behind, and changes are still filtering through. Governments have long had censorship and control agendas about the Internet, and the harassment narrative has provided them and the activists with a mutually beneficial excuse to pursue it.
Anti-Gamergate's characterisation of Gamergaters as haters, misogynists and harassers has cost multiple people their careers and made many companies fearful – even though those that have stood with Gamergate have reaped some benefits. There is now a de-facto blacklist against Gamergate's sympathisers, and sometimes absurd lengths have been gone to to try and defuse even potential upset from Social Justice Warriors. Even to the point of black, female Nazis appearing in WWII games[197].
Censorship efforts may have gotten pushback, but they're ongoing. Japanese games, in particular, are being targeted, with localisation increasingly being a cover for removing or editing down elements in games – sexiness especially. This has become the site of a new battle, but it seems that Social Justice Warriors have inserted themselves into localisation teams in a manner not dissimilar to how they ended up taking over the games media. Some Japanese companies remain defiant, but others – most notably Nintendo – are bowing to the unrepresentative pressure to compromise their vision.
Gamergate might be over, but it was only one battle in an ongoing culture war, and that remains to be resolved.
Charity & Fund-Raising
Part of Gamergate's legacy was its charity work. Depending on your point of view this could have been cynical exploitation, deflection, public relations, 'for the lulz', 'weaponised giving' or a sincere and genuine act of protest and defiance to confound stereotypes.
Amongst other charities, Gamergate donated money to:
32 different charities via JustGive
Action Against Hunger USA
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
Child's Play (notable in that before Gamergate, protests against Bioware also donated to Child's Play, or tried to)
Extra Life
Many individual fundraisers for medical care or family hardship.
PACER Centre National Bullying Prevention
The Fine Young Capitalists (aiding women into game development).
United States Fund for UNICEF
WWF – adopting a sea lion (as a response to the 'sealioning' cartoon)
Whatever you think the reason for this charitable giving was, Gamergate did a lot of good and a lot more good, for a lot less money, than groups like Feminist Frequency. Gamergate's charitable giving was driven by trying to confound the image of Gamers – much like Child's Play was. It reacted to 'Bring Back Bullying' not only by condemning the person who posted it but by taking real, tangible action against bullying. It responded to people such as myself being driven to the edge of suicide by taking real, concrete action for suicide prevention. It reacted to the doxxing, DDOSing and attempted sabotage of TFYC by funding and promoting them – a group that, if they were against women in gaming, they should have been against.
Giving to charity was a means of raising Gamergate's profile, chasing media coverage (though it never emerged), confounding people's image of gamers and Gamergate, and showing up the opposition by taking real, practical action that they did not. The opposition tried to dismiss Gamergate's charitable giving as 'weaponised charity' and even tried to tell charities not to take the money, or to confound those charitable efforts by campaigns against the money raising platforms themselves. A weird way to go about things when you're the 'good guys'.
Besides charities, Gamergate helped raise money for a lot of people, crowd funders and alternative news sites. The giving was also a way of showing support to sites that would do things as Gamergate wanted (ethically and enthusiastically) and games studies and indies that weren't pretension factories. Just like the charities, this was a way of doing something practical and showing up the opposition for being pseuds.
Charitable giving seems to have fallen away a little as Gamergate has faded and it's not something that has – yet – caught on with other movements. What does remain is a version of the Streisand effect, where attempts to censor and control games results in mass pre-ordering or purchase, just to extend the middle finger to the cultural 'critics'.
Reform
There has been reform, and there has been a shift in games reporting. That is expanding outward into mainstream media as similar problems are found and discussed there. There has been a loss of traffic from the dishonest sites and an increase in the traffic for independent and new sites. The shift to Youtube reviews, Let's Plays and video news seems to have accelerated, and advertising revenue and traffic for previously unethical sites seems to have gone down. Many of those sites also seem to have quietly let go of abusive columnists (or they have 'resigned'). The Escapist, in particular, seemed to go through a crisis of conscience and extensive reform, not exactly sympathetic to Gamergate per se, but taking their concerns to heart.
FCC rules changes are perhaps the most far-reaching and important shift stemming from Gamergate agitation, affecting native advertising – something that negatively affects all Internet users. The rest of the reform is fragile, relying – as it does – on the goodwill and persistence of the sites themselves to enforce their own rules, but it's a start and gamers themselves are enforcing it.
Cultural Shift
While people erroneously blame Gamergate – weirdly – for all sorts of things (leading Gamergate to invent the 'Gamergate Time Machine' to explain how they did things before they existed), they simultaneously claim Gamergate to be an irrelevant slap-fight. It can't be both.
Some of the strange things that Gamergate gets blamed for include the ascent of Trump and the rise of the 'Alt-Right'. This is a reach worthy of Mr Fantastic, given Gamergate's, broadly speaking, left wing and small 'l' libertarian ideals. It has, however, I think contributed to a cultural shift and backlash of which all of these things are an aspect. Other areas of this cultural shift have, however, also included the emergence of a new centre, a backlash against hostility to the sceptical community and a backswing against Social Justice Warriors and excessive political correctness.
To some, this can appear to be a shift to the right, and some of it is that, but for many, it is a reassertion of liberal and libertarian values. The 'left' appears to have gone insane, violating principles that liberals hold dear – such as free expression – and creating fellow-travellers between the sane left and the right, where they at least agree on things like free expression. Left and reasonable right can agree on that in the – misattributed – Voltairian sense, and this is only reinforced when liberals and leftists are spuriously accused of being Nazis simply for defending the rights of others.
This seems to be part of the problem surrounding intersectionality. Because Social Justice Warriors demand orthodoxy and adherence to a broad soup of issues, they seem to think that this must be true of those who oppose them. Brad Glasgow's research on Gamergate suggests otherwise. While Gamergate might have agreed with Milo Yiannopoulos on free speech issues, it doesn't seem to have resulted in masses of Gamergate people reading Breitbart (while Milo was working there) or much of a shift in their political views.
I think what we're seeing instead is people of a broad set of views and political positions uniting against the censorship and puritanical demands, the campus stupidity and authoritarian repression coming from the Regressive Left. To them, their enemies might seem to be a singular body, but it isn't true. They have successfully united liberals, leftists, conservatives, the politically apathetic, fans, artists, writers and others against them – at least in part. We saw a similar correction after the 90s previous excess of PC culture, and we seem to be entering a similar period of coun
ter-attack now.
Personally the shift to the right worries me, but it's a symptom of the excesses of those who claim to be on the left. With talks being shut down, rioting over speeches, absurd philosophy and pseudoscience, moderate intellectuals such as Sam Harris being attacked... with all this, it's little wonder that people are sidling away. Whatever their political alignment. Gamergate is certainly a part of that shift, but hardly to blame for it as a whole.
Gamedropping
'Gamedropping' is the name Gamergate gave to the phenomenon of naming Gamergate in an entirely unrelated article about a completely unrelated issue. To start with this was probably an act of click baiting and demonisation. Dropping Gamergate's name into something would be almost certain to garner its attention and those of its enemies and to turn such an article into another battleground. Battling camps meant lots of clicks and lots of comments, and that meant good exposure for articles.
Over time, however, the people Gamedropping into their articles seem to have bought into their own narrative of Gamergate being a misogynistic hate movement. They continue to mention it in the context of the Alt-Right, and it has become almost standard practice to mention it in the same breath of Richard Spencer or Trump. It is also consistently mentioned whenever someone – especially a woman – is trolled online.
The perverse truth of this legacy is that, more than anything, it keeps the husk of Gamergate stumbling on. Every lie, every misrepresentation, every accusation directed at Gamergate perpetuates the outrage and annoyance. It also continually demonstrates – to those in the know – the very problems with the media that Gamergate has repeatedly talked about. Outlets that researched Gamergate before talking about it would find the very different story that is presented in this book. They would discover the FBI and WAM reports and would realise that the narrative is incorrect. That nobody does this basic research before perpetuating the 'hate group' story is telling of either the laziness or bias of the media, perhaps both.
Rewriting History
After Gamergate, we appear to be watching Orwell's concept of the 'memory hole' playing out in real time[198]. This is a legacy of Gamergate and a testament to the power of their opposition, which should be concerning to everyone. Unlike '1984' however, this is happening through an organic consensus of activists and media groups. There's no need for a conspiracy per se, just wilful ignorance of the facts, promulgation of propaganda and those who've 'done bad' acting in their self-interest and having disproportionate influence.
It has shown a vulnerability in the Internet, which was always assumed to be relatively immune to this sort of effect as it has so many different channels and methods of communication. It was previously assumed that false information would be drowned out or competed with by other sources, but that simply hasn't been how things have worked out.
The sheer volume of information available online appears to have driven people to use a relatively small handful of sites and search engines. Google's algorithm is opaque but is distorted in favour of particular sources and popular and large outlets. Initially, it was at least somewhat ranked by the amount of traffic and links – something that, again, favours and continues to favour larger sites.
The real information about Gamergate is out there, but it's scattered across social media posts that are vanishing into the past, archives that may not be run forever, independent Wikis, blog posts, Youtube channels and other ephemera. The biased, activist and media information, however, has greater financial backing, visibility and longevity. It also has greater credibility – even if it's not credible in this case. Unfortunately for Gamergate, many of its members had to be anonymous for the sake of their jobs and families. The few outlets that reported accurately on Gamergate don't have a good record for accuracy in other cases either. Sites like Breitbart – for example – are not considered credible sources or citations, yet that was virtually the only news site, to tell the truth about Gamergate. The problems compound themselves and make each other worse. Political bias only worsens this effect.
Whether you agree with Gamergate or not, whether you believe what I have presented in this book or not, this should be cause for concern. If a dominant narrative can attain such absolute hegemony across the Internet and if people – through lack of time or effort – simply believe what they're told, we should worry. It doesn't matter what political ideology or social outlook ends up controlling the narrative, the lack of oppositional points of view stifles debate and the capacity for and practice of critical thought. This isn't even something that needs to be enforced by the government, it has happened all by itself, but it could be manipulated, controlled and abused.
Legacy
Gamergate might be 'over' (the ride never ends), but it has had many legacy effects, good and bad. The 'spirit' of Gamergate, the real Gamergate, lives on. The battles it started continue and broaden in what is being called a 'culture war'. For many Gamergate was the first point that people stood up and said 'no more'. Many groups and social movements, good or bad – depending on your point of view – took Gamergate as a cue to fight back. This was also true in fandoms and subcultures that had been censored and attacked by Social Justice Warriors. Just as The Zoe Post was the spark that led to Gamergate, so – perhaps – Gamergate was the spark that resulted in the emergence of a larger cultural resistance movement.
Other Battles
Gamergate certainly seems to have inspired resistance to Social Justice Warriors in other arenas, Social Justice Warriors who had – themselves – seemed to have been activated by the inroads they had otherwise made into gaming. People were sick of being hectored, judged and hated for liking media that other people deemed 'problematic', despite not having a racist or misogynistic bone in their body.
One of the most immediate successors to Gamergate has been a battle over the demonization and censorship of Japanese games, most especially via the excuse of 'localisation'. While Japanese games do need some localisation to make jokes and language make sense in the West, many people enjoy learning about and immersing themselves in Japanese culture via the medium of the games.
The Japanese tend to be a little more open – in games – to adult and 'weird' seeming content. This is something that Western Social Justice Warriors are not so keen on, and which many outlets - seeking a 'family friendly' image - are cautious of. Localisation teams do appear to be disproportionately 'infested' with Social Justice Warriors, and they use this influence to not only to make drastic changes to games but to apply pressure to Japanese companies to censor their material. The language barrier tends to prevent western protests to this from reaching the ears of Japanese companies, meaning they get a one-sided opinion.
To this end, Operation Torrential Downpour developed out of Operation Rainfall[199][200]. Rainfall was a fan campaign to encourage Japanese companies to release their games in the west and to help promote them when they did. Downpour was a protest against the localisation/censorship specifically of 'Fire Emblem Fates', but this has since grown into a more general protest against censorship via localisation in other Japanese games. Most recently the censorship has been happening at the level of the Japanese companies themselves – through disinformation and pressure – meaning that even importing games is no longer a way to guarantee you get what the creators intended.
Attempts to force Social Justice Warrior attitudes into Heavy Metal were never going to get anywhere, but people gave it a try – more than once. Since it was never going to get anywhere 'Metalgate' was unnecessary, but it happened anyway[204]. People consistently accused of Satanism and who write songs about serial killers were never going to be a pushover or easy to shame.
Then again, when you look at the tabletop role-playing community, you find a lot of parallels with the Social Justice Warrior attacks on computer gaming – even many of the same bad actors. The tabletop Indie scene is a hotbed of the same kinds of politics and judgement as the Indie scene in computer games, and I've been on the receiving end myself – often.
Even so, there has been resistance there too, the emergence of 'edgier' material in reaction, the counter-politicisation of aspects of the tabletop scene – most especially the Old School Renaissance (harking back to the early days of role-playing). Division and polarisation may not be a good thing overall, but at least there is still a choice.
Gamergate also helped to revitalise the 'Sad Puppies'[206] movement in science fiction and fantasy writing. Starting out as a protest against the politicisation of the Hugo Awards and the control of the award by a cabal of overtly left wing (and more importantly pretentious) writers. As with Gamergate the protesters were mischaracterized and misrepresented, despite arguing for – if anything – greater diversity (of ideas) and rewarding writers of all kinds. That has since progressed, perhaps in part down to Gamergate – into an attempt to create new and alternative outlets and awards, rather than to bother trying to fight back directly. This seems to have been reasonably successful, especially with the emergence of a 'pulp revival' that seems to be gaining ground. Sad Puppies is a precursor to Gamergate (emerging in 2013) but the two share enemies and games and genre literature cross over a great deal.
Inside Gamergate Page 17