Game Journalism is Broken and #GamerGate Isn't to Blame

I started writing about all of this #GamerGate shit yesterday because I got all fired up about it. I get passionate about things that are happening. This is hardly even something that you can write about right now because the narrative seems to shift every day. I think that someone turned up the smoking gun, though.

Take a look.

When I started writing yesterday, my scorn was equally pointed towards everyone. Zoe Quinn, the game media and gamers themselves. That was unfair. While I may feel at odds and even alienated from the "core" gaming audience a lot of the time, nothing compares to this. Game journalists aren't reporting on the news; they're actively trying to shape it.

Who's to say what's true now? Who can be trusted?

A game journalist mailing list discussing what to be covered. How many things that should've been bigger outcries have been buried over the years? How many things that should've been nothing have become something?

So, now we have #GamerGate. Let's be clear; no one deserves to be incessantly harassed. But I don't believe that sexism or misogyny is the root cause, here. We know that Zoe Quinn had some form of relationship that went beyond friendly with one or more journalists. The issue isn't that gamers hate her for being a woman, the issue is that they hate the situation. I'd like to think that the same reaction would happen if a female writer had close ties to a male developer, but I sort of doubt it.

Before I continue much further, I sort of want to take this argument out of the equation. This doesn't stem from a gamer-specific behavior of sexism. This is a failing of society as a whole. We should be just as mad at the men in this scenario, but for the most part I don't think people are. People have focused on Zoe Quinn, and she has been just as much of a shitty person in this situation as the writers she was allegedly involved with have been.

I don't think I really have anything to continue on, though.

The real issue here is that we've all been systematically lied to.

I'm sort of crushed by this and I think all of us should be. Gamers aren't always looked upon favorably, and the people that we look to for news on our hobby don't feel any better about us. All the scorn bubbling up here isn't a hatred towards women, it's a hatred towards being looked down upon that finally reached its breaking point.