I hopped around the video of one of the afternoon panels that was linked in the original forbes articles (I hate you forbes) and to me it was once again the discussion of "What exactly is Gamergate?".

See, this is the thing about #Gamergate at the end of the day, no one knows what it is. The people who think they are in it don’t know, the people outside don’t know, the people effected by it don’t know. Not a single soul anywhere can pinpoint what it truly was/is about because of that nature of what it was, chaos.

There was a reporter recently writing an article about both sides of the contreversy and posted questions to the main threads for each side on Reddit and took the top voted answers. When asked "What is Gamergate?" this was the answer chosen:

Gamergate is a movement dedicated to fighting for ethics in (gaming) journalism and against censorship and the politicization of (gaming) media and games. It arose after several corruption scandals in the gaming media, attacks on the gamer identity and attempts by the gaming media and "cultural critics" to force a political ideology down the throats of gamers.

When asked in the GamerGhazi thread (which is the thread where people oppose Gamergate congregate) he was banned. They practice the whole "We have the mic and not going to give it back" brand of activism and feel like there is no discussion to be had about it because it’s a hate group. That’s the story and they are sticking to it!

"It arose after several corruption scandals in the gaming media, attacks on the gamer identity and attempts by the gaming media and "cultural critics" to force a political ideology down the throats of gamers."

Which goes to show how successful the movement has been about lying about its origins.

What are their origins then?

4chan attacking a female indie dev at the behest of her ex-boyfriend.

That IS where it started, despite how much the movement tries to bury it.

Shaun McIlroy

It certainly didn’t start when Gamespot fired a high profile editor for not cowing to pressure over a review score.

Or when Sony tried to blackball Kotaku because Brian Crecente ran with a story.

It certainly doesnt have a focus on the bullshit that Konami is pulling with their employees – but one woman developer?

>Yeah she’s clearly Satan. Let’s show her.

If this was about ethics then they’d move on from picking on people with different opinions.

But they don’t because ¯\(ツ)/¯

And yet Jeff Gerstmann incident at Gamespot was brought up at Airplay, cited as one of the examples of things being fishy.

I’d suggest considering that all those things you mentioned contributed to the atmosphere of discontentment and distrust that eventually exploded into GamerGate.

Was the "Quinnspiracy" the spark to light the fuse? Certainly, although it would have never gotten widespread momentum if it hadn’t been followed up with a barrage of articles and leaks from secret mailing groups.

I’d also like to point out that just this week, a tumblr artist who drew the GamerGate mascot Vivian James got basically crucified for holding different opinions from other tumblr users, and people like Ian Miles Cheong being thrown to the wolves for apologizing for insulting people like TotalBiscuit in the past.

Let’s not pretend there’s no ugliness on either side of the spectrum, no matter where your own beliefs may fall. This is hardly a black and white matter.

To these people they get "crucified" when someone tells them their movement is founded on an imaginary premise and that they’ve been rooked into supporting a bunch of woman hating assholes. This is their idea of "harassment", being told about how wrong they are.

Meanwhile, they call Zoe Quinn’s personal phone at all hours of the day making jokes about 5 Guys hamburgers, post her home address, and make actual death threats. And then say THEY aren’t the ones doing it because no one has a signed, notarized affadivt with three witnesses that explicitly declares a direct affiliation with GamerGate, in triplicate, on video.

It’s a harassment movement, it’s just that their propaganda has tricked a bunch of people into agreeing with their cover story without actually knowing how it started.

It’s not about journalism, if you say it is you’re a liar or a rube.

As a fairly popular tumblr artist that has drawn Vivian James ( I really liked her design) and initially agreed with the idea of the movement I know that this is a black and white issue. There are valid complaints with video game journalism and practices. There are in fact many issues with journalists in all aspects. But note that the targets aren’t usually those that deserve it. That is the flaw that makes it black and white. There is no movement to clean up Fox. There was a slight uproar over Jeff Gerstmann’s thing ( Love Giant Bomb and have been supporting them for years). There was no movement though.

The catalyst was some angry exboyfriend inciting 4chan and trying to get them to be his army. Which usually doesn’t work! But this time it did. They felt like heroes and i’m sure some of them still do. When this whole thing started I drew Vivian because I was commissioned to by a friend who was so happy thinking that the worst place on the internet was doing something good for once. That they were the good guys. I mean even I was excited at the prospect of an antihero type of situation. It took me the better part of a month before I realized I was supporting bad people doing bad things instead of bad people doing good things.

They are entitled to their opinions and all, but why should they decide what can or cannot be censored and how political content creators can be?

Later this day, the police confirmed the bomb was just here to see the panel, claiming it’s all "about ethics in game journalism".

This is absolutely crazy! I truly believe that Gamersgate is the worst thing that has ever happened to the video game industry. It embarrassing and makes all people who play games look bad because of it. And the worst part is there is nothing we can really do about it.

I mean, I’ve never used gamersgate.com, but it can’t be that bad…

They do some good deals.

I bought some stuff from them on sale and never had any problems.

Seriously, though, they got several threats from people who thought they were associated with Gamergate because of the name. As much as I hate Gamergate personally, the stupidity is hardly limited to their side.

Is this just how things are now? These bomb-threatening idiots on either side deserve each other.

Both sides are annoying so vote Karma.

I voted for Kodos

The morning debate was actually fairly interesting. Both sides were professional to each other and they did agree on several positions. The afternoon debate with Milo was complete trash. They kept interrupting each other, going on long winded tirades and the whole thing didn’t go anywhere.

How many fake bomb threats need to be called in before people stop taking them seriously? Someone who really wants to bomb a place would be more likely to wait until after the bomb explodes before confessing.

We live in an age where people have all sorts of access to their own communities and people still can’t stand it when others are allowed to talk. These people can find much better things to do with their time.

Because "bomb threat, uh? Very funny, get lost" sounds like something you’d like to hear from your local emergency services.

Generally bombs are planted for psychological impact or to cause disruption or to frighten the population at large, instead of specifically to kill the people it blows up. Calling it in gives them more publicity (and makes the authorities look incompetent if they fail to stop it).

A lot of terrorist groups expect their bombs to be found and disarmed so they can keep their hands clean.

So how does this make these terrorists any better than them again?

Gamergate is still a thing?

All as bad as each other.

This is what happens when you try to make politics and social issues a central aspect of gaming and claim it’s a sign of video games "growing up": you get two radical warring factions that are both equally juvenile and self-centered, just like every other political/religious/social movement that feels the need to identify as a label. No one is going to end up "winning" or "losing", it’s just going to continue to be a fucking circus until they all tucker themselves out like the bratty children they are. I just want to play games.

James Elliott

I have to disagree, video games are going to "grow up" regardless of what you or I think, just like Movies and TV did. Gamers demand more representation because they are more diverse than ever before, it’s not something that can or will be stopped.

I think video games have grown up. It’s just maybe the "gamers" who haven’t.

From what I see when I turn on the TV or go to the movies, neither of them have "grown up". Some of the best entertainment out there is completely full of intentional non-PC topics. Just watch any episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Games don’t have to grow up, they are entertainment. They don’t need to support a cause or advance human civilization, because they are entertainment. Gaming as a medium has already grown up; it is easier than ever to create and distribute an indy game. There are some great games that do actually address social/mental issues well; they just aren’t going to outsell GTA. And that is fine.

I’ll argue with that. There isn’t art vs entertainment. There’s a scale of art vs entertainment. It’s the same difference than black & white and shades of grey.

Entertainment can be loaded with a message. It doesn’t have to be apparent, and it doesn’t have to be boring. For all its silliness and spectacular violence, GTA V still has subtext of global financial crisis. It can be a fun game and poke at the great success of modern capitalism.

James Elliott

I agree, just because some says "oh, it’s just entertainment" doesn’t make it so, entertainment has always and will always be more than that. If you don’t want to think, there’s more than enough of that sort of entertainment out there and it will always exist. The demand for something with more meaning will always have a (smaller) demand as well.

Interesting that you mention GTA, a franchise that practically oozes social and political satire, it’s not world-changing, but it’s proof that you can have your cake and eat it, as numerous other games do.

Talking about games as a whole is futile, no one is trying to make the whole medium grow up, thankfully it’s broad medium that supports many kinds of ideas and approaches, games don’t have to be grown up or change the world, but they don’t have to be mere entertainment either.

For me, that’s totally worth enduring some growing pains for.

Socially, it seems we get more and more progressive, or at least that has been the trend in America for a while now. More groups are accepted, more perspectives are heard and the crowd who says "Keep everything the same!" is eventually overshadowed and looked down upon as embarrassing and cantankerous.

I think that will most likely be the case here and those people will realize it’s not as bad as they think it is and eventually quiet down and play the booby games that are made for them alongside the better written games they hate. There’s a market for both sides.

Funny, that is exactly what happened in my opinion

Hey Owen, this:

"The movement, which deliberately has no central leadership, is a backlash to what its supporters perceive as unprofessional or agenda-driven behavior in the gaming specialty press."

Is bad, and completely sugar coats the ACTUAL origins of Gamergate (An ex-boyfriend of an indie dev got mad and an entire hatemob organized to harass her).

Gamergate isn’t a backlash to perceived unethical practices in games journalism. Claiming it is, is actively harmful. Stop.

Both sides have extremist raging assholes, as radicals tend to be.

Calling in a bomb threat is unbelievably stupid and doesn’t help your argument, and both sides have done it. Standing in front of a crowd of people and claiming having better written women in games is "forcefeeding political correctness down their throat" is stupid, but so is saying "Every attractive woman in video games is inherently sexist and should be fatter" is also stupid.

Everyone mostly just needs to calm the fuck down and vote with their dollars. If you like better written women in games, buy them, celebrate them, be happy. If you like booby games then buy those too. There’s room in the market for both, they just have different audiences. Why the hell are we embarrassing the entire gaming community over it?

"key figures of the GamerGate movement." Laughed at that.

Also, it’s still funny that they’re sticking to the journalism ethics thing when the entire Quinn thing ended up being a lie.

The group is nothing more than a hate movement.

Some guy on 8ch is claiming he did this on purpose in order to "prove" that Anita faked her own bomb threats/assassination threats to gain sympathy from the press.

I think this officially means the Gamergate snake is eating its own tail.

James Elliott

We’re closing the comments here on this article because there have been some incredibly nasty things said/justified here and we’re not having any of that in our community.

We never have, and we never will permit the abuse of others (on either side) in these comment sections on Polygon. If you cannot abide by the community guidelines your comment will be removed.

We’ve started a new thread for those who are interested in continuing this conversation in a way that doesn’t call other people ‘fart sniffers’ ‘biased’ or other inventive terms. You can find that thread here, and you’ll note that it is not in our Off-Topic forum so please keep that, and our community guidelines as you discuss today’s news.

I must say comments were actually so far off-topic you’d never know what the article was about by looking at them.