Gamergate Never Died. It Merely Changed Face

The beast that ever-morphs but remains still a constant.

From left to right: YongYea, Cleanprincegaming, and the Quartering.

It is very hard to argue against Gamergate’s impact on modern online discourse. Not necessarily due to games’ increasing popularity and them somehow permeating a greater space of online discussion than they did before, but simply because there’s a great overlap between fringe ideas, and the outside appeal a movement like Gamergate has. If the unpopular thing for a politician to do in the Bush era was to be anti-war, Gamergaters see themselves upholding a similar standard of contrarianism within the social spectrum of gaming-related issues, and specifically, their disapproval of the way gaming journalism has been moving towards a much-more subjective read of video games tainted by left-wing bias.

But of course, the history of gaming journalism, wasn’t really that apolitical, or devoid of subjectivity in the past. From 80s, well through the early 2000s, gaming journalism looked quite similar to what its current form is. The framing that vilifies gaming journalists, and stacks itself atop a very negative view of those who seek diversity in the gaming industry and analyze video games from a progressive perspective is the sole born of a concerted effort to silence the voices of whom Gamergate disagrees with, and part of that effort as of late, consisted…