I try to be even-handed about these things, but I'm not sure how anyone can be on the side of #GamerGate and still be in the right.
It's a hate campaign against a female developer, bringing something from her personal life and involving it in her career.
They wanted to ruin her career. There's no positive side to this BS.
That would surely explain the criticism towards gaming journalists (who are mostly white males). Or Phil Fish, who has received similar criticism to Quinn regarding doxxing of their information and possible corruption.
The blog post about Quinn sparked discussion, but that in itself wasn't the catalyst for #GamerGate. It was the widespread, indiscriminate deletion of discussions regarding the possible implications of corruption, followed by numerous articles from gaming sites proclaiming the end of "gamers" (which they made into a straight white male strawman) that served as the impetus for #GamerGate (and #NotYourShield).
I've been paying attention to the controversy and the hashtags as they unfolded, out of interest both as a gamer and regarding my views on equality and feminism. The idea that the origin or focus of the movement was ever misogynistic attacks on Quinn simply doesn't match what I've seen from the average supporter of the movement.
Apparently a small chunk of this has involved Anita Sarkeesian and supposedly fake death threats. Does anyone know anything about that aspect?
In response to tweets where Sarkeesian attacked the San Francisco Police Department for their handling of her reports of death threats, someone contacted the SFPD and received a response from an officer saying that they had no record of Sarkeesian making a police report during the time that she had claimed to have done so. Last I had heard of it, Milo Yiannopolous, a pro-#GamerGate Breitbart writer, had contacted the SFPD and heard that they knew that the FBI were involved with her case, though it didn't necessarily mean that she did or didn't report the death threats to the SFPD. I haven't paid much attention to this particular topic past when I first heard of it nor have I seen much discussion of it, so I can't say if more information has emerged.
A friend of mine suggested this "scandal" is constructed of three unreasonably conflated issues:
1. Quinn
2. Actual possible "corruption"(seems a bit strong to me, if possibly still accurate)
3. Hating on feminists for critiquing video game culture. (Sarkeesian fits in here, whatever your opinion of her)
The first two aren't entirely unrelated. Part of the initial controversy was that one of the people involved with Quinn was a gaming journalist, and some believed that her connection had led to her unfairly receiving favourable press. This was before my interest in the controversy and movement peaked, so I'm not knowledgeable on the arguments for and against this belief.
As for the third, I don't know if there was a specific point where that became a major factor, but there's been cases in the past where people have criticized "feminist" slants in gaming journalism—for example, several Kotaku articles and the Polygon review regarding the game
Dragon's Crown. I imagine it's just another in a list of grievances towards gaming journalism, valid or otherwise, that are being aired as part of #GamerGate.
