My Thoughts – #GamerGate
December 2, 2014 By: AaronWhen this whole thing went down I considered myself pretty neutral on the subject. I saw both sides being ridiculous with the comments they were making. On the anti side I could see the point of wanting games to be more inclusive in their audience and for the industry to be more open to women. With more women in the industry comes more games that women may want to play, that’s a win win right there.
On the GG side, from day one I heard a lot about eithics in game journalism. Journalists getting favors from companies to promote a game. Corrupt crowd funding campaigns and vindictive lying and bullying that goes on behind the scenes if you don’t fall in line and keep your mouth shut.
I’ve seen people like Brianna and Anita label an entire subculture with one brush. We have been labeled misogynists, ‘beardnecks’ and ‘basement dwellers’ by these people. The more I watched them and other anti-gg people like Randi the more I came to realize that they were the bullies. They want people to fall in line with their way of thinking. If you don’t like what they like, then to them you’re subhuman gutterstrash.
The more I seen of the GG supporters and how they stood by developers and gamers (regardless of sex, disability, color) the more I supported them and realized my morals align with theirs.
I grew up with video games. Atari, NES, SNES, Sega, started playing MMOs in 1997 with Ultima Online. When I first started playing MMOs there wasn’t any discrimination in the games I played. The people I played with didn’t care if you were male/female, what color you were or your orientation. I’ve played with people from other countries with different beliefs with out any conflict. That’s not to say that the community is not with out its flaws. Stereotypes exist for a reason. There are assholes in every community. You have your 12 year old kids that want to threaten people, those ‘beadnecks’ do exist and thankfully they are a minority. You have Trolls that just want to stoke the fire, and borrowing from The Dark Knight, you have people that just want to watch the world burn.
You come across these people no matter where you go. They exist on both the pro and anti side. They exist everywhere, not just in video game culture, I’ve meet these types of people while in the Marine Corps. They were customers while I was a waiter at restaurants. They could be your neighbor and some of them could be your sister/brother.
Yes, I am pro #GamerGate, the majority of the voices are inclusive and welcoming of others. We don’t discriminate, We build the games we want to play and Play the games we like. We don’t let people tell us what we can and can not play, we don’t let people tell us how to play. Video games is our speech, and speech is free the last time I checked.
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