I’ve had a lot of trouble over the past few weeks trying to make sense of the GamerGate movement. When it first began, I simply wanted to know why someone accused of pretty serious allegations could just blow them off like they were nothing. You don’t see this with men in the same position. Even among political scandals, those people are nailed to the wall pretty hard, and usually end up resigning in the process. I didn’t think she was guilty, but I also didn’t think she was innocent. The indie gaming scene has been weird for years, ever since it became super-popular and super-accessible for more people to get into. As time went on though, the movement soured. People who I began to follow because they were digging in to the stories and finding truth in claims, started falling back to defensive positions and counterattacking attackers. The goals became less about exposing ethical violations and misconduct and more about destroying the opposition. I had people telling me I hate women, hate minorities, hate gays, and support harassment, simply because I was using a hashtag. I wasn’t interested in that, nor did I support it. I was living in a stereotype. The irony was delicious.

My political views are no secret. I am a moderate. I favor conservative principles when it comes to financial matters, and I favor moderate-to-liberal views on social matters. I grew up in a conservative household and region of the country used to being labeled for America’s social woes by East and West Coast progressives and liberals who simply don’t like country living. So naturally I have a skepticism about a great deal many things, including the political and social movements behind GamerGate. I’ve always maintained that I am for women in the gaming industry, rather, women in every industry really. I do not condone harassment or threats against them, and that isn’t just because it’s the right thing to do, it’s because I am a person of strict values and integrity. I can say a lot of weird and dumb things, and make a crass joke or three, but I would never advocate harm towards someone, or ever carry out that sort of practice on anyone in real life. The reaction I get from people when I tell them that at age thirty-one and I have not drank, smoked, or did any drugs, is that of envy. I don’t understand it really, because all my life, I felt doing the right thing didn’t just mean doing it when someone was looking, it meant being a person of valid integrity to do it when no one was watching. I don’t need those things to be a good person. I don’t need negative social values in my life, so I am easily able to dismiss them because they aren’t me. GamerGate makes this difficult, because I am being told I have to answer for the bad values and integrity of other people. That isn’t my job. I am not your moral compass, nor your integrity police. This kind of fallacy really grinds my gears, because it is a complete cop-out on the other person’s part, being completely unwilling to actually engage me on a conversation and instead redirecting it into irrelevant ground. What that does is insult me as a person, and frankly, I really should just pull a Kuchera and block more people for it.

What really gets at me though, is the constant crass remarks of “BUT ITS ALL ABOUT ETHICS HURR HURR”. If you want to go with the literal definition of ethics, it’s been about ethics all along. Right versus wrong. Good versus evil. The people who are arguing for misogyny and sexism see this as a black and white issue, you either are with them or against them. That seems like an ethical conversation to me. I mean, they’re questioning my ethics with regards to how I treat women in video games. Is Anita Sarkeesian not discussing morality within video games, such as the roles female characters play within them, and how male gamers treat female characters in their games? Is TotalBiscuit not discussing the standards journalists within the industry should uphold with people like Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo? You may think that the focus on ethical journalism is some kind of cover-up for harassment tactics, but I would argue that harassment tactics are in fact a manufactured diversion from ethical social discourse. Be it sexism in games, journalistic integrity, or anything else in GamerGate, they’re all part of the larger social construct many want to discuss, but are being shut out by a number of forces mainly in it for themselves. I’ve spent a great deal of time reading, watching, and listening to a number of different people speak, from all angles of the discussion. I’ve agreed with many. Disagreed with others. Rather than pitch for Side A or Side B of this mix tape, I chose to observe, and comment on various pieces throughout. Some have led to positive discussion. Others simply led into circular reasoning. Finding neutral commentary and writers was difficult, because a lot of them had nothing interesting to say. Erik Kain, a writer for Forbes, was trying so hard not to end up shilling for either side, that he basically stumped any interview he gave. His writing was better focused, but I don’t think he realized it is possible to have an opinion or a principled stance on something without shilling for a side.

To be honest, I don’t really pay attention to games journalism. Once and awhile, I will read some reviews on a game, or crawl GiantBomb for some interesting news, but since I dislike “clickbait journalism” sites like Kotaku, and politically-charged sites like Polygon, I don’t really do games journalism. So really, from day one, I was not really the audience for “TheZoePost” scandal. But having been around for the rise of games journalism, Jack Thompson, GameSpot, DoritosGate, and many more issues in games journalism, I felt that real conversation, investigation, and reform, was needed. What games press responded with was “Gamers are Over” articles. Honestly? I was a bit slighted. I’ve been a gamer all my life, and while I wouldn’t say I cling to it like many, I never once felt like it was something worth rigorously defending from the inclusion of women, homosexuals, and transgenders. Games were always an all-inclusive medium to me, and while the games themselves may be a little slower to change, I felt there was broad enough niche interests to fit all players than we might’ve had a decade ago. If anything, I felt like it was worth defending all gamers from the notion that we’re all just basement-dwelling white men. What GamerGate did in this regard, was expose the unprofessional and incredibly rude underbelly of the games press. Sites like Gawker, Gameranx, and Polygon, showed their true colors of how they feel about their audience and consumers of the market, with editors and writers openly mocking people on Twitter and engaging in the kind of cyber-bullying others on their side were fighting to condemn, though they did not call them out on it. What games press did is basically alienate half of their user base, but more importantly, they told those people that they were not their intended audience, and that they didn’t care what happened to them. I have never seen anyone so flippantly disregarding of a consumer base ever. You don’t see big companies employ tactics like this, and if it were a Microsoft, Apple, Best Buy, or anyone else, those people would be fired immediately. The complete lack of professional ethics members of the gaming press has is the top, top, top reason I am still engaged in GamerGate. I could lose everything else and simply argue on this platform, because it disgusts me being an IT professional who prides himself on internal and external client satisfaction that I would never snub even the most problematic of clients.

When it comes to women in games, like I mentioned before, I have no problem with any of it. I welcome female input and development, because I feel the perspective is important to gaming. I’ve often spoke about Portal and Portal 2 being the kind of game I don’t think Anita realizes fits her ideal female damsel-in-distress scenario, where the damsel breaks free of her own will, all without using guns hand-to-hand violence. I completely support more games like this, and I believe it highlights the vast opportunity in gaming Anita seems to gloss over, which is why I have a problem with her narrative. Sure, tropes exist, and women are portrayed unfairly in games, but you’re not going to change that by shaming an entire consumer demographic into submission and further shaming male developers who engage in these markets. It makes you look regressive and oppressive, the exact opposite to the message of discarding oppression you’re championing. More female developers and more new ideas means the current niche market for alternative games will further expand into a dominating market, challenging the existing market, and possibly overtaking it. That’s how market forces work, and if the consumer base supports equality in games, as I think we do, we will respond positively and accordingly. I’m never really sure if that is Anita’s goal though. It seems to me, that she employs a brand of sex-negative feminism, and instead desires a world where male developers and gamers are driven from the market or marginalized, and made to feel the same pain women felt decades before, as the minority gamer. What I see in her is I see revenge. I guess in many ways I can understand why she would feel that way, but it’s not only her that feels this way, it’s many other female critics, developers, and scholars, who unlike sex-positive feminists or egalitarians, whom I identify with, who instead of seeking revenge, simply want everyone to co-habitat within the game space equally. Regardless, I have nothing personal against Anita Sarkeesian, I think she is an important voice, and a valid voice, but one that requires me to be skeptical of her words and analyze her work accordingly before offering an opinion.

We’ve all talked about how to end GamerGate, and awhile back I made some thoughts on Twitter. But I believe the bare minimum anymore is for everyone to acknowledge that in some shape or form, ethics is the central topic to everything, and that intelligent discussion of it will be the only path to positive discourse. I believe the first step is for games journalism, particularly the writers and sites that published “Gamers are Over” articles, to apologize for them, and offer amends towards creating proper discussion channels. Even if many articles were justified, or even with some truth, the ills of many others soured the narrative., much like harassment soured GamerGate’s legitimate call for discussion. At that point, when trust is regained, I believe you will see attacks and vitriol slowly start to dissipate. Journalists have the power to end this by being business professionals and reminding themselves they represent a brand, and themselves, in civil discourse. When outlets make positive change, people will stop going after their advertisers and friends and begin to trust them again. We’ve already seen signs in Kotaku and The Escapist. If you build it, they will come.

As for me? I still have many thoughts about many things, and about six or seven blog drafts swirling around about various topics. But at this point, I just want to move past the harassment and the hate, and actually talk about the topics that affect us as gamers. I know women in games is one of those topics, but I have yet to have a real conversation with someone on it without it coming back around to actions I am not engaged in. I can’t speak for those people, nor should I. Maybe some day I can have those discussions and learn something, but until then, I’ll just keep observing and making notes.