NBI Talkback – GamerGate

Slightly belated, but…

How did GamerGate affect you?

It actually didn’t affect me per se. I was a passive observer and it wasn’t discussed that much where I spent time on the Internet. I generally don’t read “hard-hitting” game journalism sites like RPS, Kotaku, and whatever others there are, and I definitely don’t venture into their comment sections. I think I only unfollowed one person on Twitter because of their relentless talk about GamerGate.

I did learn some things from GamerGate and its fallout though.

GamerGate demonstrated that there is a rather large conservative population among gamers that I had never seen before. Prior to GamerGate, I viewed gamers as apolitical, or maybe Libertarian-leaning, so that was an eye-opener. But it seemed that the ideals of the average GamerGate supporter correlated very strongly with the ideals of the average political conservative (in America, at least). Political conservatives tend to despise “the liberal media” so it was probably a natural fit for them to despise “the gaming media.”

It’s also been interesting (by which I mean depressing) to see that the “unrest” (if you will) that turned into GamerGate also bled over into other industries like genre fiction. If you’ve followed any of the controversy around the Hugo award nominations this year you’ll find it very familiar: It seems like many of the same conservatives that are GamerGate supporters are also trying to overturn the Hugo establishment. I guess the surprising thing to me is how much of an overlap there is between game audiences and fiction audiences, though I suppose if you think about it, it shouldn’t be that surprising.

I feel like it’s human nature to divide ourselves up into “us and them” sides. Perhaps as gamers we are even more susceptible to it: Most of our games force us to pick one of two factions or teams to play on. But if you take a step back and look at GamerGate (and the Hugos) objectively, the issues are complex and opinions can span a wide variety of gray-shades. (For myself, I can find both merit and fault in both sides, which is true of most things in life.) Sadly, many people just pick a side and run with it, because that’s the path of least resistance.