what was gamergate like?

[psychic_dream]

I wasn’t deeply involved in gaming culture at the time, so I don’t know all the details, but from what I gather, this is where the modern gaming shitshow started, setting the tone for everything that followed.

I tried finding reliable, non 'fact checked' sources but found little. Most say it began in 2014, but didn’t Anita Sarkeesian start her evangelizing journey much earlier?
There was also an interview with Neil Cuckmann around the same time, where he talked extensively about 'deconstructing' gaming, labeling it ist and phobic.

A lot of pro-Gamergate supporters grew bitter when the devs behind their favorites sided with Zoe Quinn and her circle, then doubled down on anti Gamergate rhetoric—antagonizing the male audience, pushing idpol, adding progressive narratives, and prioritizing the hiring of women and minorities.

Do you think we’re finally seeing the fruits of their labor? With massive layoffs, mediocre AAA games flopping, and companies scaling back on DEI stuff?

[Vergil]

You can never understand what we went through you son of a *****

[ArcaneLurker]

It was a like a sucker punch out of nowhere, and then one realisation begets another, as you start to apply pattern recognition to the people coming out of nowhere to claim you are a Nazi for believing or saying things that were normal, not even ten years prior.

Anita Sarkesian was a big part of it but there was quite a few of the same subversives trying to change the industry.


This is from 2013, but it was in a reaction to & a parody of one of her Kickstarter videos.

[rusty_shackleford]

I was in the r9k thread that zoe's boyfriend posted. Near immediately we couldn't discuss it anywhere but r9k and pol because nobody wanted to moderate those boards.

I was the guy who figured out the employer's name that she ****** if you go dig the thread up. He didn't redact the name all the way and I figured out the font and then figured out which glyphs matched the bottom pixels left or something.

Anyways, yea, 4chan cracked down on that **** immediately.

[A Chinese opium den]

It was kino...

[Oyster Sauce]

[Oyster Sauce]

I ignored it entirely because of the humiliating Vivian James cringe and #notyourshield BIPOC+ worship

[Irenaeus]

It was all about ethics in video games journalism.

[rusty_shackleford]

I was in the r9k thread that zoe's boyfriend posted. Near immediately we couldn't discuss it anywhere but r9k and pol because nobody wanted to moderate those boards.

I was the guy who figured out the employer's name that she ****** if you go dig the thread up. He didn't redact the name all the way and I figured out the font and then figured out which glyphs matched the bottom pixels left or something.

Anyways, yea, 4chan cracked down on that **** immediately.

Ah yea thought I posted this before

That's the real history, my source is I was in the thread.

https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/13036599/#q13046524
https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/13044135/#13046641
https://desuarchive.org/r9k/thread/13044135/#q13046951
that's me, I was the one matching the text up to figure out the blurred out names in the thread

[Irenaeus]

I was in the r9k thread that zoe's boyfriend posted. Near immediately we couldn't discuss it anywhere but r9k and pol because nobody wanted to moderate those boards.

I was the guy who figured out the employer's name that she ****** if you go dig the thread up. He didn't redact the name all the way and I figured out the font and then figured out which glyphs matched the bottom pixels left or something.

Anyways, yea, 4chan cracked down on that **** immediately.

Look at Encyclopedia Brown here...

[rusty_shackleford]

You can never understand what we went through you son of a *****

Is he dead yet or still in some quasi cancer schrodingers chud state

[Roguey]

A bunch of clout-chasers having arguments that amounted to little more than annoying a few journalists in an already-dying industry.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I couldn't be bothered to follow the actual journalist drama/facts going on. The JRPG and MMO circles I hung out in didn't put much stock into "gaming journalists" like IGN or PCgamer or the Escapist anymore (gaming journalists turned hostile towards JRPGs in the mid to late 2000s, and the MMO reviewers weren't playing MMOs with friends and were only rating them as singleplayer experiences), and I was relying more and more on word of mouth.

What I remember was the impact it had on online discussion. It was the start of radicalization of the MMO Champion forum, and also to a lesser extent Gamefaqs and the Steam forums though I did not use those as much. Just offhandedly referencing the incredibility of the western games journalists or pointing out the woke would get you a lot of notifications from people quoting you and saying that you are wrong or imagining monsters to hate. It was around this time IIRC that I started first seeing threads get closed and people getting banned for wrongthink, but it wasn't in full swing yet until 2016 when the secular great satan Trump was elected. When that happened, a switch must have flipped and the mods started very ruthlessly cracking down on people who spoke up against their narrative and lots of people were getting banned left and right, and the userbase started to diminish and become more and more of an echochamber.

I remember an English instructor in college put on an Anita Sarkesien youtube video or something, it might have been about the bechdel test, I don't remember. That made me raise an eyebrow but otherwise he didn't do anything else that tipped me off, overall seemed like an okay guy. It was two other instructors who irked me more. I remember my American civics teacher seemed to have some gripe of issue with "and now Snowden is a hero" or something, I didn't get what his deal was. My other English instructor was an old woman who clearly had it out for me even during the class and failed my two homework assignments and didn't specify exactly what she wanted, so I pulled out and refunded and wound up taking it with a different instructor (might have been the first guy, I don't remember).

[rusty_shackleford]

A bunch of clout-chasers having arguments that amounted to little more than annoying a few journalists in an already-dying industry.

Zoe ******* guys for reviews is directly responsible for USA putting tariffs on the entire world btw

[Vergil]

You can never understand what we went through you son of a *****

Is he dead yet or still in some quasi cancer schrodingers chud state

He's on his third final goodbye before inevitably coming back iirc

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

You can never understand what we went through you son of a *****

Is he dead yet or still in some quasi cancer schrodingers chud state

Not yet. Still alive and kicking.

[rusty_shackleford]

**** I wish I was that good at grifting

[asf]

it was cringe

[DrSneed]

It was super gay and cringe. Kinda like Vergil.

[rusty_shackleford]

If you want to see what it's like go check kotaku in action on reddit.

They're convinced we're a sjw psyop btw

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

**** I wish I was that good at grifting

Just lose all self respect and principles repeating the same 5 anti woke talking points in 10 minute video, with all that you to can be a grifter pro.

[Cipher]

The biggest wake up call came in August when all the journos went in lockstep with the "Gamers are dead" articles, claiming gamers didn't have to and shouldn't have to be catered to as the primary audience for the gaming industry.

Sarkeesian was a woke feminist but even people that supposedly where not woke or feminists claim she "had some valid points" which is basically the same as we are seeing now with folks like Critical Grifter "what is woke?" video or defending the Fallout show. I particularly remember that ****** the "Amazing Atheist" specifically saying word for word that she had some valid points but the way she came out with her message was wrong and he was allegedly 100% against SJW propaganda and had a large platform at the time on Youtube, but not even him dared to denounce Sarkeesian fully.

The journos overplayed their hand. They went too hard and it came off as too obvious, even normies noticed and that opened the floodgates for a lot of grifters to clout chase by parroting the talking points and making fun of the "SJWs" which was the term for woke libtards at that point, but most of the people on the gamergate side considered themselves "LiBeRtArIaNs" or straight up liberals because they didn't want to associate with the religious conservatives that wanted to ban GTA in the past.

I don't think a single one of them ended up actually anywhere and they all eventually disappeared, except Sargon of Akkad which gained a LOT of prominence due to it and he was keen to monetize it for all it was worth. His Lotus Eaters stuff does talk about race so at least they are one order of magnitude less "******" than most but they don't really talk about *******, ****** or women being in power as something wrong, as far as I know honestly I admit I don't really follow their content that much and have only watched a few clips on topics that sounded interesting, like the legions of muslims culturally enriching Japan.

I don't really think it ended up amounting to anything relevant. The people that knew about the feminist/SJW/woketard agenda trying to overtake every medium of entertainment to peddle their propaganda wasn't surprised and the normies quickly forgot all about it in order to not go against the popular thing, which was being a democrat/libertarian/enlightened centrist and being ALL about equality.

Feminists/woketards kept trying to go hard and now there has been somewhat of a pendulum swing, but as everyone can tell its always in hushed whispers. Openly, everyone accepts the woke ******** as true and righteous. And just like before GG, most public figures are openly woketards or at best enlightened centrists. Even the Republicans have a host of RINOs among their ranks.

[Humbaba]

In the moment is was the biggest shitstorm the internet had ever seen and we all got righteously upset at some lefty bimbo sucking **** for review scores. This quickly spiralled out of control thanks to dumbasses like roostard and then we had the birth and massive influx of idpolfags on both sides of the spectrum. The internet has been ruined ever since. Last I heard the allegations made by Hoey's ex were fake but really I don't care.

[sheet]

A grand scheme view:

It wasn't so much the "games journalist sleeps with game developer" part that was the issue to most people; no one took "games journalism" seriously at the time anyway. It would have blown over in a week if it wasn't for...

The important event was the broad, simultaneous, coordinated overreaction from every face of journalism and internet (reddit, 4chan, news media, politicians) cracking down on it that got classical liberals to get in an uproar over it. Basically, it was the leftist/Commie powerplay to purge classical liberal ideals of free speech, fair journalistic reporting, merit-based company management, noncollusion tactics, fair competition, etc.

There was very little "right wing" influence at the time, but when ordinary people were told to shut up, yield to idpol driven narratives, fall in line, hate whitey, or else you're a "muh Nazi", and also seeing all these feckless libertarians and centrists, like ******* Chris Ray Gun was a figure at the time, doing nothing to effectively fight back...
that's when all their progressive ideas that people generally took as alright and normal (don't be racist, live and let live) were becoming visibly weaponized against them, so they found outlets to serve their interests. That's when they found Trump.

And as everyone knows from their playbook by now, you can't let "gamers" have anything, so they double downed on their narratives, and it was effective for a while, but now finally the money is drying up.

[DrSneed]

The funniest moment for me was when /v/irgins funded some lesbian's charity that funded women developers to prove they weren't chuds.
Erm second wave feminists are heckin based! They aren't like our modern feminists who hate men!

[Unhelpful Contrarian]

The biggest wake up call came in August when all the journos went in lockstep with the "Gamers are dead" articles, claiming gamers didn't have to and shouldn't have to be catered to as the primary audience for the gaming industry.

Sarkeesian was a woke feminist but even people that supposedly where not woke or feminists claim she "had some valid points" which is basically the same as we are seeing now with folks like Critical Grifter "what is woke?" video or defending the Fallout show. I particularly remember that ****** the "Amazing Atheist" specifically saying word for word that she had some valid points but the way she came out with her message was wrong and he was allegedly 100% against SJW propaganda and had a large platform at the time on Youtube, but not even him dared to denounce Sarkeesian fully.

The journos overplayed their hand. They went too hard and it came off as too obvious, even normies noticed and that opened the floodgates for a lot of grifters to clout chase by parroting the talking points and making fun of the "SJWs" which was the term for woke libtards at that point, but most of the people on the gamergate side considered themselves "LiBeRtArIaNs" or straight up liberals because they didn't want to associate with the religious conservatives that wanted to ban GTA in the past.

I don't think a single one of them ended up actually anywhere and they all eventually disappeared, except Sargon of Akkad which gained a LOT of prominence due to it and he was keen to monetize it for all it was worth. His Lotus Eaters stuff does talk about race so at least they are one order of magnitude less "******" than most but they don't really talk about *******, ****** or women being in power as something wrong, as far as I know honestly I admit I don't really follow their content that much and have only watched a few clips on topics that sounded interesting, like the legions of muslims culturally enriching Japan.

I don't really think it ended up amounting to anything relevant. The people that knew about the feminist/SJW/woketard agenda trying to overtake every medium of entertainment to peddle their propaganda wasn't surprised and the normies quickly forgot all about it in order to not go against the popular thing, which was being a democrat/libertarian/enlightened centrist and being ALL about equality.

Feminists/woketards kept trying to go hard and now there has been somewhat of a pendulum swing, but as everyone can tell its always in hushed whispers. Openly, everyone accepts the woke ******** as true and righteous. And just like before GG, most public figures are openly woketards or at best enlightened centrists. Even the Republicans have a host of RINOs among their ranks.

In the end progressives won. Video games have been completely infiltrated from the top down and nothing short of complete collapse of the industry has a chance of it being remotely salvageable and even that not likely.

[Oyster Sauce]

They're convinced we're a sjw psyop btw

We are btw

[rusty_shackleford]

The biggest wake up call came in August when all the journos went in lockstep with the "Gamers are dead" articles, claiming gamers didn't have to and shouldn't have to be catered to as the primary audience for the gaming industry.

Sarkeesian was a woke feminist but even people that supposedly where not woke or feminists claim she "had some valid points" which is basically the same as we are seeing now with folks like Critical Grifter "what is woke?" video or defending the Fallout show. I particularly remember that ****** the "Amazing Atheist" specifically saying word for word that she had some valid points but the way she came out with her message was wrong and he was allegedly 100% against SJW propaganda and had a large platform at the time on Youtube, but not even him dared to denounce Sarkeesian fully.

The journos overplayed their hand. They went too hard and it came off as too obvious, even normies noticed and that opened the floodgates for a lot of grifters to clout chase by parroting the talking points and making fun of the "SJWs" which was the term for woke libtards at that point, but most of the people on the gamergate side considered themselves "LiBeRtArIaNs" or straight up liberals because they didn't want to associate with the religious conservatives that wanted to ban GTA in the past.

I don't think a single one of them ended up actually anywhere and they all eventually disappeared, except Sargon of Akkad which gained a LOT of prominence due to it and he was keen to monetize it for all it was worth. His Lotus Eaters stuff does talk about race so at least they are one order of magnitude less "******" than most but they don't really talk about *******, ****** or women being in power as something wrong, as far as I know honestly I admit I don't really follow their content that much and have only watched a few clips on topics that sounded interesting, like the legions of muslims culturally enriching Japan.

I don't really think it ended up amounting to anything relevant. The people that knew about the feminist/SJW/woketard agenda trying to overtake every medium of entertainment to peddle their propaganda wasn't surprised and the normies quickly forgot all about it in order to not go against the popular thing, which was being a democrat/libertarian/enlightened centrist and being ALL about equality.

Feminists/woketards kept trying to go hard and now there has been somewhat of a pendulum swing, but as everyone can tell its always in hushed whispers. Openly, everyone accepts the woke ******** as true and righteous. And just like before GG, most public figures are openly woketards or at best enlightened centrists. Even the Republicans have a host of RINOs among their ranks.

In the end progressives won. Video games have been completely infiltrated from the top down and nothing short of complete collapse of the industry has a chance of it being remotely salvageable and even that not likely.

Industry is in complete freefall propped up by ******** subsidies like slop pass

[Jordy]

If you want to see what it's like go check kotaku in action on reddit.

They're convinced we're a sjw psyop btw

We're not?

[ArcaneLurker]

My general impression is that it was a sudden concerted effort by people who hated gaming, to influence gaming, and bring it more inline with the way other media was rapidly going (probably to socially engineer the next generation tbh), and a large chunk of gamers simply saying "**** you." It's not like much actually really happened, but obviously there was a large group of wealthy people that were seething about it and stirring up as much politicised media attention against them as possible.

I don't think the lefty bimbo is really that integral, but journos are rightfully hated.

The biggest wake up call came in August when all the journos went in lockstep with the "Gamers are dead" articles, claiming gamers didn't have to and shouldn't have to be catered to as the primary audience for the gaming industry.

Sarkeesian was a woke feminist but even people that supposedly where not woke or feminists claim she "had some valid points" which is basically the same as we are seeing now with folks like Critical Grifter "what is woke?" video or defending the Fallout show. I particularly remember that ****** the "Amazing Atheist" specifically saying word for word that she had some valid points but the way she came out with her message was wrong and he was allegedly 100% against SJW propaganda and had a large platform at the time on Youtube, but not even him dared to denounce Sarkeesian fully.

The journos overplayed their hand. They went too hard and it came off as too obvious, even normies noticed and that opened the floodgates for a lot of grifters to clout chase by parroting the talking points and making fun of the "SJWs" which was the term for woke libtards at that point, but most of the people on the gamergate side considered themselves "LiBeRtArIaNs" or straight up liberals because they didn't want to associate with the religious conservatives that wanted to ban GTA in the past.

I don't think a single one of them ended up actually anywhere and they all eventually disappeared, except Sargon of Akkad which gained a LOT of prominence due to it and he was keen to monetize it for all it was worth. His Lotus Eaters stuff does talk about race so at least they are one order of magnitude less "******" than most but they don't really talk about *******, ****** or women being in power as something wrong, as far as I know honestly I admit I don't really follow their content that much and have only watched a few clips on topics that sounded interesting, like the legions of muslims culturally enriching Japan.

I don't really think it ended up amounting to anything relevant. The people that knew about the feminist/SJW/woketard agenda trying to overtake every medium of entertainment to peddle their propaganda wasn't surprised and the normies quickly forgot all about it in order to not go against the popular thing, which was being a democrat/libertarian/enlightened centrist and being ALL about equality.

Feminists/woketards kept trying to go hard and now there has been somewhat of a pendulum swing, but as everyone can tell its always in hushed whispers. Openly, everyone accepts the woke ******** as true and righteous. And just like before GG, most public figures are openly woketards or at best enlightened centrists. Even the Republicans have a host of RINOs among their ranks.

In the end progressives won. Video games have been completely infiltrated from the top down and nothing short of complete collapse of the industry has a chance of it being remotely salvageable and even that not likely.

Well, they won because the people with money already supported their cause and were the ones funding the preliminary political subversion that lead to SJWs/ woke in the first place.