#GamerGate Is About Perceived Grievances, Which Is Why It Will Never Die

As you may know if you follow me on Twitter, I am not overly enthusiastic about the fight that has come to be known as GamerGate. If you're still wondering what GamerGate is, here is a long, neutral post on it and here is the post of a supporter of the movement. Yes, it's now a movement and it's getting ready to enter its second month.

My own definition of the contretemps is short and insulting:

This movement is about grievance.

Gamers (that is, the people who actually play the games) are grieved because game critics (that is, people who write about games for a living) and some online game discussion community administrators, do not like the same games that they do. These game writers and administrators think (or are accused of thinking, anyway) that mainstream games and gamers suffer from misogyny or racism or one of the many other -isms that dominate our modern grievance culture. There are also allegations of nepotism or corruption and generally a lot of bad behavior all around.

The bottom line is this, however: gamers think that these game critics and community administrators are bad people who are trying to stop them from having fun. And these game critics think gamers are bad people who support misogyny or racism or whatever.

Absolutely nothing either side says or does is going to change this.

Sonny Bunch compared this to the problems with film critics and mainstream films:

Critical groupthink is sometimes an issue, certainly, though more so for documentaries than narrative features.*** And I think it’s fair to say that film writers will often band together in an effort to help smaller fare find an audience. I’m not convinced that writers giving oxygen to a film they enjoy that can’t afford a $30 million advertising campaign is necessarily a horrible thing, but some level of coordination—via listservs, via Twitter, via blog posts—is undeniable. More troubling, at least to me, is the undeniable contempt these writers often have for mainstream audiences.

But Sonny did not take the next necessary step: film critics haven't ended the mainstream film. Nor will game critics end mainstream games with hot chicks and violence.

What does it matter that hoity–toity film critics who probably raise their pinky fingers when they drink pointlessly expensive wine from fancy stemless wine glasses didn't like Transformers 4? Answer: not a damn thing. And nobody really cares about that either. In fact, all of us are well-trained to say things like: "well, critics hated it, but that was to be expected. Probably means it's awesome." And then we go on about our lives without launching hashtag campaigns.

(Maybe Sonny didn't draw this obvious conclusion because he is, in fact, a film critic, something that we should hold against him, but that's beyond the scope of this post.)

Gaming is, and should be, no different. Yes, game critics demonstrate a special blend of paranoia, bile, and political correctness that should turn all right-thinking people away with a dismissive comment about their lack of sexual prowess. And . . . so what? Turn away. Don't read their websites. The joy for gamers is in playing the games, not in media criticism. Which is good news for game makers, who are probably still thinking: what in the holy hell is this ruckus?

No one can possibly claim to be having a problem finding games with gorgeous people and places, loud noises, violence, and stuff just blowing up everywhere. In one of the games I am currently enjoying, for example, the female characters have enormous titties and the guys look like mortal sin. At no point in selecting this game, however, did I spare a single thought for what game critics would think of my game choices. It just didn't cross my mind. Nor should it have.

Sonny concludes by getting the whole GamerGate phenomena hopelessly wrong:

The question, then, is a simple one: Is there a vast, hidden audience—a silent majority, if you will—ready to patronize an entertainment-media conglomerate that isn’t terribly interested in informing you what the politically correct views on the subject matter are and instead focuses on sporting events, video games, and mainstream movies and TV shows? Is #GamerGate a howl of rage from a cohort slowly dying off—the last gasp of the white, male, heterosexual establishment? Or is it a signal that the market could bear an alternative?

The majority is not hidden, nor is it silent. It is buying games all the time and enjoying them. As everyone keeps pointing out, this is a billion dollar industry and it didn't get that way by putting out crappy games that nobody wants. So the suggestion that game critics are turning the industry into a politically correct shadow of its former self simply baffles me. This is a freakin' golden age of gaming.

What the majority is not doing, however, is spending a great deal of time and effort yelling at game critics. Because that's stupid. Media criticism has its place. We certainly do enough of it here in service of entertaining and informing ourselves. But you've never seen us change a liberal reporter's mind, right? Nor have you seen us change a liberal outlet into a conservative one. That doesn't, generally speaking, happen.

Nor will GamerGate change game critics' minds. All that GamerGate has done was take the suspicion that these two groups of people dislike each other and made it a certainty. There is absolutely nothing wrong with them not liking each other. That's not the foundation for a meaningful movement, however. That's the basis for never-ending vitriol and grievance.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 07:17 PM

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