Cats in the Kitchen

Some-to-all of you might not know what’s going on up there. So, sit tight and I’ll tell you a scaaaaaary story. For the past couple months I’ve been enthralled by the trainwreck that is #GamerGate, a disorganized movement who claims to be in favor of “Ethics in Games Journalism“. Right from the start though, things were super sketchy, all of the articles they used as examples of “corruption” were pieces condemning the misogyny among game creators and players, and the initial target of the soon very scary virtual attacks was Zoe Quinn (That’s who Midnight’s dressed up as) based on some later-debunked leaps of logic and an angry blog by her ex-boyfriend.

The movement was named and popularized by Adam Baldwin, (Who played Jayne Cobb in Firefly. That’s who Alan is dressed up as) Who as of yet has not backed down his support of it despite the fact that it is currently the most loosely-defined and chaotic force on the internet. If you accuse GamerGate of being a mysogynist movement, you will be shouted at that “Actually it’s about Ethics in Games Journalism” and “GamerGate does not support Harassment” and “The SJWs Harass us too!”.

Even if you take away every shred of violence and hate from GamerGate, at its core is “Games journalism shouldn’t be about politics” which is not a far move from the “Games should just be fun” line we heard back when Braid came out and people were getting mad about Passage being called a game. One of the early call-to-action videos for the movement implied that of course Zoe Quinn resorted to bribery to get coverage for her game, because otherwise, who would play a game called “Depression Quest“? Completely dismissing the potential value of games as anything other than a toy meant for fun.

I haven’t written about this until now, because I have no direct involvement. Most of the people in my life don’t even know what a GamerGate is, and I haven’t questioned the status quo enough to be a target. But as I can’t agree with the Structure, Methods, Core Values or Base Assumptions of GamerGate, I feel like I should at least say that.

If you need more information, These Articles are really good. This video isn’t really about GG, but it’s certainly inspired by it. And this one is a very good explanation of everything wrong with the movement.

I apologize if this blog has alienated anyone. While I am against GG as a movement, it is only because I feel that being “for” it implies support for a lot of bad things. I have no beef with the people of GamerGate, and I hope that we can move forward from this into a future where destroying someone’s career or life isn’t even considered as a solution to anything.

Note that while I welcome discussion on my website, all comments are moderated, and I reserve the right to remove anything I deem hurtful, hateful or even unhelpful or unnecessarily wordy. Because it’s my Blog. This isn’t a restriction of your free speech because I am not the government. That is all.