"Journalists are Over!"
Gamergate is Dead, But is it Winning?
On August 28, 2014, an article published in Gamasutra straight up claimed outright that “Gamers are over.”
To the average person, this seemed like a strange thing to say. But before anyone could fully digest it, there came another, citing “The death of Identity.” Then another claiming it was “An Awful Week to Care About Games.” And yet another declaring the “End of Gamers.”
This event would come to be known as, “Gamers Are Dead.”
We’re kinda used to it to be honest.
Just like that, what started as a single drop of rain soon became a torrent. On that first day alone, we saw even more:
- Why Are Gamers So Angry — Sexism/Misogyny/Horrible Time to Call Oneself a Gamer — Gaming Leaving "Gamers" Behind — A Guide to Ending "Gamers" — Put the Hate on Hold
And over the following few days:
- The SJW Effect — The Death of Gamers and Women Who Killed Them — Guy's Drama Killing Gaming Identity — Threatened by Equality no Longer Welcome — We Need More (like) Quinn — Game Developers Association Condemn Harassment — Why Does "Gamer" feel important — Monday Papers and Anita and Demise of Gamers
“I just wanna play Halo.”
Not even half of a week in and Gamers had become public enemy number one…to the gaming industry?
Naturally, this triggered many an autistic-curiosity, and soon our old friend The Streisand Effect came into play.
You see, the catalyst of that mass-journo butt hurt was some dirty laundry between an amateur (so-called) game designer named Zoey Quinn, and her ex, a dude named Joji. Gigli? Jabroni?
Ah, Eron Gjoni.
Anyway, he released a document accusing Quinn of abuse, cheating, and most importantly, sleeping with game journos for reviews. It turned out that some trolls were “harassing” her for it on Twitter. It also turned out that she did in fact have a close relationship with journos. It also-also turned out that they had a super secret contact list through which they conspired and colluded.
Shit was more incestuous than an Alabaman family reunion.
Fate was decided on August 27, 2014 (the day before Gamers died), when Adam Baldwin shared a video from Internet Aristocrat (now known as Mister Metakour).
That’s right, Jayne from Firefly launched #Gamergate.
This garnered enough attention for an apparent, orchestrated, “all hands on deck” response from the journos. Yet, in their effort to call it out, they took a very small-scale problem and just gave it the biggest megaphone they possibly could.
The rest is history.
Now, if you were to ask any of these journos, game developers, etc. what Gamergate was, they’d all say in rehearsed-unison that it was a “Harassment Campaign.” Hell, just look at how the Wikipedia page covers it:
“So, you’re saying the medias are using their platform to disseminate their politics and collude for personal gain? Nah, you’re just a bigot, the medias said so.”
While that harassment proved to be very lucrative for the…er…victims, and many Left Wing medias are still giddily comparing any conservative issues they can with it, as far as most of the public is concerned, Gamergate is long dead. Ask the likes of Sargon of Akkad or Chris Raygun, for example — some of its biggest proponents who built careers off of it — and they’ll shrug it off. That shit isn’t even in their rearview anymore.
And I’d agree.
Gamergate is dead.
…
But I’m gonna Weekend at Bernie’s the shit out it.
To be fair, Gamergate was a lot of things — some of it legitimately bad, and that deserves its own article. But what I took from it, aside from the obvious concern of ethics overall, was an attempt, as James Lindsay put it, to stand up to grievance social justice and halt the influx of radical, woke politics (SJWs) corrupting entertainment and medias.
It called out Anita Sarkeesian, for example, for exploiting threats for profit and injecting Intersectional Feminism into the industry, or the studios for shoehorning that shit into their games. But it didn’t stop there — it went much further than just gaming, spawning alternatives in different industries, such as Comicsgate, and even branching out into wokism at University.
In fact, I think it’s fair to draw a direct line between Gamergate and the exposure of the Evergreen incident.
“All white people get out! If you don’t, you’re a racist!”
At the end of the day, these were all part of the same anti-woke movement.
Sadly, wokism has since grown so societally pervasive it’s even being taught in primary schools. There’s an active push out of Davos for it. Hell, the media titan Disney made it status quo, not only in their regular productions, but even shows directly targeting young children.
At this point, it’s an odd occurrence when this shit isn’t perverting our escapism.
Considering that, you’d think Gamergate lost, and the medias are still trying to convince us that this is a good thing.
But are we buying it?
Let’s talk about film…
“I don’t understand comedy or law, but I can twerk!”
“We’re all victims. Reparations now pweeeeease.”
“One show to ruin them all…”
Oof! The disparity in those scores is painful. And this is after Rotten Tomatoes put in efforts to control such things.
Behind those scores are a plethora of journos who all seem to have a similar taste.
But more importantly, there’s an audience that’s calling them out on their bullshit.
Of course, they’ll all cry that these are “review bombed,” which is hilarious because that argument can just as easily go both ways (we’re supposed to believe the inconvenient ratings are fake, but definitely not the one’s that confirm their bias). Also, that’s rich coming from major institutions that demonstrate an eagerness to control narratives and shape the framing of issues, but who’s keeping track?
More to the point, it’s just easily debunked.
“Ellie may be a 3, but the show gets a 9.”
Last of Us 2 was very divisive, leading to an anticipated backlash from at least some of the disenfranchised fans. Meanwhile, the show has no shortage of “representation,” and there is a lot of debate over its infamous third episode which heavily featured a homosexual relationship, yet all those bigots just seem to be showing up in droves and…giving it a damn good rating.
Funny that.
And House of the Dragon was being billed as feminist drab, only to have turned out well written, acted, and produced. Imagine a world where the scores accurately reflect the quality!
And why aren’t they review bombing this:
“Who order a Kung Pao White Supremacy?”
That shit should be the antithesis of this “toxic fandom” that everyone’s raving about.
All I’ve heard was praise. How about you?
But hey, at least we kinda have some common ground…
“…That’s when I gave her two in jinkies, one in the stinkie!”
And it’s not just a disconnect, it’s in the very writing itself, hardly concealed. Remember when Ian Walker reviewed the PS5 for Kotaku?
Man, that ending really slaps.
“I’m sorry I’m white. I’m sorry I’m male. I’m sorry I bought a PS5 from a scalper…”
Granted, he did write 3k words about the system before derailing into a political rant (a point he went clearly out of his way to highlight), but even here we see how comfortable these people have become.
But that’s not even the full extent of it.
I already covered the hypocrisy behind the whole Hogwarts Legacy boycott, so give that a read if you missed it, but in a recent podcast with The Nooticer, we touched on an article in Wired that put its bias on full display.
“Derr…mid and 1 are the same…”
Incidentally, the author of that piece has an illustrious career of…not video games.
It’s probably for the best anyway, I’ll bet my last dollar they’re one of those “journalists” who needs a “journalist difficulty mode.”
And remember all those “Gamers Are Dead” articles at the top? Those weren’t just gaming outlets, it was shit like Newsweek, The Financial Post, Ars Technica, and The Daily Beast. Anita Sarkeesian was on Colbert in just a couple months. Shortly after that, there was a hilariously terrible Law and Order episode on the subject. The point is, it went mainstream because the “journo pros” connections weren’t limited by industry.
Now I could easily talk about how journalism is dead across the political spectrum, how the government and journalists collude with social media to control discourse, or how wokism may be an international conspiracy to destabilize The West, but I’m saving all that for a separate, long form series.
Instead, I’ll just get to the point, which is twofold.
First, make no mistake, these people aren’t gamers.
No, worse than that, they’re not journalists.
They’re activists and shills, rollin’ like thunder under the covers with an elitist club — they know better than you; they are saving the world from you; and if you don’t get on the right side of history, well, you’re a bigot.
But second, I think they’re losing.
And Hogwarts may just be the hill they die on.
In a recent video, The Act Man did an excellent job calling out the hypocrisy of the woke mob. They don’t want to support trans people, they just want to attack others with some faux sense of righteousness. Instead of linking charities, they linked spoilers. Instead of supporting streams that would have raised money for their cause, they derailed them simply because playing the game would somehow do more harm than a fundraiser would do good.
They’re literally hurting the very cause they espouse!
All of this is reminiscent of a recent tweet of mine that pointed out the fact that these people don’t want to end bullying, they want to be the bullies:
And the public is seeing it for what it is.
And they’re rejecting it.
Maybe not a whole lot yet, but I’ll take it.
The fact that Hogwarts Legacy was even made is a step forward, but then it went on to break records, becoming the #1 single player streamed game on Twitch, and holding that spot in sales at least across Steam and PSN. It’s widely hailed as a revelation in gaming. Hell, even IGN, one of the most notoriously captured medias, acted as a voice of reason when they reviewed the game, stating:
“As critics, our job is to answer the question of whether or not we find Hogwarts Legacy to be fun to play and why; whether it’s ethical to play is a separate but still very important question.”
The irony is, that, literally that, is all journos had to do to satisfy most of Gamergate from the start.
Separate the politics from the game and review it ethically. Was that too much to ask then? Is it now?
The fact is, what Gamergate sought to expose is now on the minds of every normie, and it’s having an impact. Disney is losing money hand over fist, medias are cutting staff, non-woke content is thriving while the alternative dies — the market is speaking and it’s saying no.
So while Gamergate may be stiff and decayed, and it may have the death-reek of an unbathed octogenarian, it may also be giggling in its grave.
Maybe the “SJWs” overplayed their hand.
Maybe the pendulum is just starting to swing back towards sane.
But even if not, the most beautiful part of it all is we no longer need to rely on these mainstream medias. With the advent of Substack, Rumble, and other third party sites, there’s never been a better time for independent creators that do bring actual quality and ethical coverage to the scene. And more and more, people are turning to them.
So while most legacy and mainstream medias have been (and hell, maybe will continue to be for some foreseeable future) corrupted, even to their death, don’t hesitate to throw your friendly neighborhood indie creator some love.
It goes a long way.
Oh, and do yourself a favor. Buy this game: