The #GamerGate saga continues with assassins, expulsions, and bomb threats
posted at 8:41 am on May 27, 2015 by C.T. Rex
I mentioned #GamerGate briefly in my last post, and no doubt some readers were thinking “wait, that’s still going on?” (For those of you saying “I still have no idea what that is”, check out this piece I wrote way back when to boil it down to the bare necessities.)
Yes #GamerGate continues on unabated, having evolved into a full blown Internet subculture fighting on the front lines of the culture war. Their latest effort to reestablish some sense of ethics in the media was launching deepfreeze.it, a site dedicated to keeping track of the conflicts of interest and various shenanigans of the gaming press.
Those shenanigans not only include outright ethics violations, but also attempts to force industry players to conform to certain ideologies, like the constant harping on Ubisoft for not including enough female characters in their Assassin’s Creed series of video games. Last year one of the biggest controversies in gaming was the revelation that Assassin’s Creed Unity would include multiplayer, but not a female character model. After claiming they cut the female character for budgetary reasons, Ubisoft was lambasted in the gaming press for their excuses.
But now Ubisoft has finally added a playable female character to share the lead role in Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, so everyone’s thrilled they’re making their games more diverse, right? Haha no, of course not. Here’s Edward Smith at the International Business Times asking “Is Ubisoft exploiting feminism for easy PR?”
The announcement this week that the new Assassin’s Creed, entitled Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, would feature a playable female as well as male protagonist smacks, to me, not of an industry that genuinely cares about women, but one that is prepared to use them for the sake of publicity.
The fact that “female characters will be playable” is a press release at all – that Ubisoft, the game’s developer, felt it pertinent to drip release that information – makes me feel as if women, especially in this case, have become a cynical kind of marketing tactic, deployed to whip up online chatter between GamerGate sexists, and make the rest of us normal people simply feel a bit warm and fuzzy.
Proving once again that appeasing the perpetually offended doesn’t work. That’s something Micheal Koretzky from the Society of Professional Journalists seems to be learning as well. He decided he would not be deterred by concerns about hacking and threats like his colleagues, and he has taken it upon himself to set up a debate between the two sides of #GamerGate in order to hash this all out once and for all. Unfortunately, like so many before him, he’s discovering that nobody opposing #GamerGate is the least bit interested in a discussion of any kind, despite the fact that he asked the #GamerGate folks to publicly denounce harassment (again) to drown out the hateful voices supposedly spooking the opposition.
In fact the opposition isn’t even interested in allowing gamers to get together for drinks in the real world. When Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and AEI’s Christina Hoff Sommers hosted a #GamerGate meetup at a bar in Washington D.C., the bar was bombarded with demands they not host the “hate group.” When that didn’t work, somebody called in a bomb threat. Our friend Allan Bourdius of Their Finest Hour was there, and you can read his account of the events here.
Not that it’s deterred #GamerGate in the slightest. They’ve planned meetups across the country in response, one of which will be held in LA near the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). That will be an especially interesting one to watch because not only is E3 one of the biggest video game-related events of the year, but as the Daily Caller reported, a pro-#GamerGate group already got kicked out of and banned from a convention for nebulous reasons. Then when they decided to meet fans in a public space nearby, the convention even called the cops on them. The group is now suing, because #GamerGate supporters just won’t back down.
The Right, and especially the GOP, could do well to learn from #GamerGate’s example, as they have spent almost 9 months now driving the far left absolutely crazy with their inability to be broken, bullied, or even budged.
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#StillDon’tGiveAnInfectedBoilOnARat’sAss
corona79 on May 27, 2015 at 8:42 AM
That’s funny.
rbj on May 27, 2015 at 8:44 AM
All forms of media are corrupt. Except the conservative bloggers of course.
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 8:45 AM
Psst, I bet some gamers are police officers, so you can start spouting rabid anti-gamer stupidness.
NotCoach on May 27, 2015 at 8:49 AM
And they will remain corrupt as long as they continue to pretend they are objective.
NotCoach on May 27, 2015 at 8:50 AM
Gamers don’t budge. They level up.
Also worth noting is the absolutely hilarious Law and Order episode about it.
mythicknight on May 27, 2015 at 8:53 AM
The more something is linked to the personal celebrity/notoriety of its creator, and the more widespread that celebrity/notoriety is, the more the liberal media and the Social Justice Warriors have the ability to shape the narrative.
The fact that only a limited number of people either know or care about #GamerGate is actually a point of strength in fighting the SJWs in and out of the gaming media. Those under attack remain faceless to the larger liberal media, while the game developers also are celebs at best within the gamer niche only.
So they can fight back against the authoritarian progressives without worrying about having the entire progressive media industrial complex come down on their heads, because most are more interested in focusing on rent-a-mob protests in Cleveland, Baltimore or wherever the next hot spot is. And at the same time, it allows the game-makers to see that catering to the SJW’s will cause sales to fall, since they can’t marshal all of the big media to make it seem as if they have far more support than they do.
jon1979 on May 27, 2015 at 8:54 AM
Exactly. Everything I write is opinion. Which is fine because I openly admit my conservative/libertarian biases.
Everyone writes opinion. The liars are the ones who won’t admit it.
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 8:56 AM
And I am a gamer with old roots. Started with the Atari 2600 in 1977, I stubbornly stick to the PC today, I’m not a “konsole kiddie”.
Speaking of games, anyone playing Witcher III?
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 8:57 AM
#GamerGate is basically about an invasion of gaming by radical lesbian feminists who are trying to emasculate video games just as they have managed to emasculate other parts of society, and hardcore gamers are having NONE OF IT.
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 8:58 AM
I still do not get what gamergate is about.
Can someone explain?
No, there is too much. Can you sum up…
Thanks Buttercup
mechkiller_k on May 27, 2015 at 8:59 AM
Atari 400…… 1984
Wrote my own Q-bert game…..
Electrongod on May 27, 2015 at 9:05 AM
FemiNazis invaded video gaming as developers, sought to emasculate games (eliminate female sexualization, etc), and colluded with media to give their shitty games undeserved high review scores among other things. Gamers, who are still predominately male, are having NONE of that.
That’s the simplest explanation I can come up with.
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 9:07 AM
I considered picking it up, but the graphics downgrade compared to what they had before kind of bummed me out. I thought better of CD Projekt than to pull a Watch Dogs.
I’ll still end up buying it, just waiting for a sale.
mythicknight on May 27, 2015 at 9:11 AM
Nerds still fighting the good fight, excellent.
Adjoran on May 27, 2015 at 9:13 AM
A seemingly endless conflict, incongruous agendas, claims of misogyny, activists lesbians, a complicit media…….
Are you talking about GamerGate or the GOP primaries?
Happy Nomad on May 27, 2015 at 9:15 AM
If there’s anything the Left despises and fears, it’s free and open debate.
WisCon on May 27, 2015 at 9:15 AM
Supported / clanned on one of the first quake servers on the east coast.
Thing is, imo, with “gamers” it is about the challenge and gamer-gate is another challenge. I think most of us gamers would agree there are several sub games within any game and social interaction is one of them, especially in MMO’s. This will not die and the gaming community will continue to see this as another opportunity to compete and win. Honestly I can’t think of to many cultures worse to aggravate than gamers, the culture is just to damn dedicated to the “win.”
Even if they lose 1 million times a gamer will return on the 1,000,001 and start over again.
Skwor on May 27, 2015 at 9:19 AM
So to make them happy. Create a game that combines Grand Theft Auto and Civilization.
The idea is to drive from store to store trying to find a way to be offended so you can sue the store owner out of business. You then need to raise money for court costs and build up a base of mindless followers. The more success you get the bigger the organization you can take on.
But be careful, you may have to deal with public opinion backlash, followers going off the reservation and defeats in the legal system.
The goal: To fundamental change culture.
mechkiller_k on May 27, 2015 at 9:24 AM
And some lone conservatives like myself (I’ll may as well stick up for myself, since most here like to drop fully bigoted statements about “all forms” of the media).
I’m one of those “forms” and I don’t toe the libjourn line at all.
Walter L. Newton on May 27, 2015 at 9:26 AM
Wow… blast from the past. I wrote a Vic-20 version around that time. I called it Vic-bert.
Walter L. Newton on May 27, 2015 at 9:28 AM
How about a game like your idea, (Grand Theft Auto as the base) except you drive around in a rainbow colored Miata with your butt-buddy looking for Christian bakeries and photographers to bake your cake and take your “wedding” photos?
But beware! Some of them are muslims who will BEHEAD you!
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 9:32 AM
Atari 2600, 1977
Commodore VIC-20, 1981
Commodore 64, 1983
Commodore 128, 1985
80286 PC-AT clone with MS-DOS 1990
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 9:34 AM
Oh I should add the gamer cultures is one of the MOST un-pc cultures you will ever run into, in fact irreverence is a highly valued trait in the gaming society.
Skwor on May 27, 2015 at 9:35 AM
Damn. I started off on the SNES and I feel old when I see these newfangled consoles.
You guys are grandpas.
mythicknight on May 27, 2015 at 9:40 AM
Well, I’m probably too old and too female to really understand your nerdy gamer culture, but I’m sure you’re all really good boys.
Congratulations on your successes against the Tyrranickel Wytches of Lesbos and their curse of Politica Rectitudo.
Dolce Far Niente on May 27, 2015 at 9:48 AM
Nice. I had all the Commodore variations.
But graphic gaming was not my thing. I taught myself how to write text adventures. I played those Infocom games and was impressed with how they parsed English, no one in my large users group in Dallas had any idea how to write games like that, so I did it myself.
You can still find one of the games for the 64 online. It’s a ROM image taken from the disk.
I wanted to revisit my old code, but I can’t backward engineer the ROM image. So I don’t have the original code anymore, just a ROM image and a 64 emulator on my PC.
Sometimes I play it just for “old times sake.”
Walter L. Newton on May 27, 2015 at 9:50 AM
Video gaming is an escape. Turn it into the real world and no one will buy them.
ConstantineXI on May 27, 2015 at 9:54 AM
This must be more of an issue for those who enjoy role playing games. I’m a twitch gamer (ie. play first person shooters) and I haven’t seen this feminazi invasion.
tommyboy on May 27, 2015 at 9:59 AM
Simply put, feminists discovered that gamers are a tenacious bunch and that geeks and nerds can fight back. My response: Make your own damn games. There’s plenty of software out there these days to do it with.
What’s more disturbing is the trend that Sarah Hoyt called out in the science fiction community to silence dissent against the current politically correct climate.
WestVirginiaRebel on May 27, 2015 at 10:08 AM
Gamergate is the result of a loosely-organized liberal project that’s been ongoing for some time to politicize gaming in the same way that Hollywood has been. Gaming, as an entertainment medium, appears on track to pass TV eventually, which means that in order to continue their indoctrination programs, liberals need to get games like Call of Duty off the shelves or at least counter them with “liberal” games.
The problem is early efforts to make “liberal” games have largely failed. Liberals are having trouble getting competent coders to make games people want to play, since many of the most hyper-political liberals are the products of various gender/ethnic studies programs.
The way the left has been trying to rectify this is through scaring existing developers into writing what liberals want in video games. The vehicle for this is the left-leaning gaming media and online Twitter mobs that are organized by internet leftists who are often referred to, mockingly, as “social justice warriors.”
That’s basically the background. The series of exact events that triggered the explosion of resentment against these people is too complex to chronicle in a comment without making a wall of text, but suffice it to say it’s been building for some time.
Doomberg on May 27, 2015 at 10:11 AM
The issue is they tried that with games like “Depression Quest” and “Gone Home” which were both failures and received a great deal of backlash from the gaming community due to the favorable treatment such mediocre games got from the press.
Since none of these SJWs can really code, they’re instead trying to make mainstream/AAA developers make the games liberals want by using negative press coverage and Twitter mobs to smear them as sexists if their games have any “problematic” elements.
Doomberg on May 27, 2015 at 10:20 AM
Another great piece by C.T. Rex. I’d be more than content if Mr. Rex became a regular here at Hot Gas, commenting on social/pop culture issues that have an underlying political motivation to them (because let’s be honest — everything is political to the left in this country).
The feminist left wants reshape culture so they can control it. Plain and simple. Gaming is just another avenue for the left to insert its tentacles just like they do with everything else — sports, film, TV, academia, science, the arts, and on and on…
Aizen on May 27, 2015 at 10:26 AM
I see that Hot Air, like the GOP, is now actively targeting millennials. Hopefully this post will break 50 comments, unlike most of yesterday’s material.
Joseph K on May 27, 2015 at 10:37 AM
Get with the gamergate program! It’s good to follow this story as a way to soften the constant disappointment rendered by the GOP. Let’s face it, the GOP caves whenever it gets a chance. Also, the GOP never fights backs against the foolish and bogus narratives put out by the far Left. Gamergaters are the complete opposite. Not only do they fight back, they go on the offensive with great success.
Gamergate is winning the culture war on their front while the GOP sustains constant losses and makes unforced errors. Read about gamergate from one of the “manosphere” subsidiary gaming blogs, Reaxxion.
AlFromBayShore on May 27, 2015 at 10:48 AM
It will be fascinating if the left’s Gramscian march through the culture will finally be halted by a bunch of game playing, sci-fi reading, comic book collecting nerds.
The Social Justice Bullies made strategic errors in trying to wage war on people who play networked war games for a hobby, thinking that they can defeat talented writers in a propaganda war, and trying to make comic-cons filled with female cosplayers in form fitting and cleavage exposing costumes into feminist safe places.
rokemronnie on May 27, 2015 at 10:49 AM
The worst thing those idiots could have done is to turn #GamerGate into a game for the gamers.
RSbrewer on May 27, 2015 at 10:55 AM
Read about this story myself. I’m sooo glad they’re suing. They had committed finances to the event and deserve a sufficient explanation for their expulsion. The silence of CalEx suggests they had no reason except they or the people reporting them didn’t like a group known to be highly critical of Feminists. Ie: political differences got them kicked out.
The incident with the Police outdoors was just petty. The Police called it a waste of their time. That should help their case a lot.
LancerDL on May 27, 2015 at 11:03 AM
Ethics in video game journalism… yeah that’ll be the day.
I’d care more if even the untainted reviews were informative, useful, or at least given by vaguely competent gamers.
I’ll stick with not being an early adopter of every new title and wait to find out from real people if a game is worth my time.
PXCharon on May 27, 2015 at 11:22 AM
That’s precisely the problem. It’s harder than ever to know which reviews are untainted, let alone if there are even any left.
gryphon202 on May 27, 2015 at 11:27 AM
The thing is, they did make their own games. Which were bad, and were badly received. So, in the signature action of the attack against gamers, a female “game developer” cozied up to a game reviewer (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), and he got his game reviewer friends to start over-rating games which were more PC, and under-rating better quality games which were less PC. Gamers bought the falsely high-rated games, and quickly learned that they were lied to about the quality of these more PC games. They weren’t happy.
Freelancer on May 27, 2015 at 11:38 AM
40+ hours in and loving it. Built a custom rig just to handle it… dual 980GTX’s and a new i7 2014-v3 chip to push it.
It’s honestly the most amazing game ever. The open world is bigger than the size of New York City.
Plus it has boobs and that makes feminists angry.
Defenestratus on May 27, 2015 at 11:49 AM
The left rails all day long about “Faux News”, but looks away when actual journalistic integrity is in question.
eforhan on May 27, 2015 at 12:29 PM
So an SJW is just another mob that drops crappy loot? Is there at least a badge?
malclave on May 27, 2015 at 12:42 PM
Succinct and accurate summation, though it appears that ‘loosely-organized’ doesn’t allow for the involvement of the Gates and McArthur foundations in planning and financing the effort. But as you say, tying it to common core and Connected Learning’s Mimi Ito would result in a ‘wall of text’.
wolfsDad on May 27, 2015 at 12:43 PM
Now *that* would be a heck of a game!
Well, they evidently tried. And the only way they could get good reviews was to lie, cheat and steal. Because their games sucked. Then they got all angry when someone pointed that out. (What Doomberg and Freelancer said)
No, the GOP is not losing. It is succeeding at retaining its hold on the political class. That’s the key. The GOP is only the opposition insofar as that opposition gets them votes to retain their seats. The GOP isn’t fighting at all, it’s putting on a show.
GWB on May 27, 2015 at 12:55 PM
Ubisoft’s mistake wasn’t in kowtowing. It was in kowtowing and not playing into the victim mentality. Look at Dontnod Entertainment’s Remember Me, which received (and still does in the article blasting Ubi) much praise for using a female protagonist.
Dontnod’s CEO just had to play-up the victimhood angle — Tell the media that the publishers didn’t want a female lead, but they got one anyway: http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4120694/remember-me-publishers-balked-at-female-lead-character
eforhan on May 27, 2015 at 1:02 PM
This statement proves that Edward Smith has never studied economics and is delusional. Most likely he’s the kind of person with an Apple sticker on the rear window of his VW Golf, which he loves despite the fact that he’s already on his second clutch (no, I take that back about the clutch. He’s obviously only drives automatics)
If women or men want people to care for them, they should look to family or friends. The market has no feelings nor should it. Industry cares for one thing: your money. If you don’t like an industry’s product, don’t buy it, Emo. There are plenty of women and men who will lose no sleep at all over the alleged injustice perpetuated by the robber barons at Ubisoft industries.
Vera71 on May 27, 2015 at 1:02 PM
What lots of them don’t realise is that gaming is where a lot of us go to get away from their crap. I don’t like Assassin ‘s Creed, but if they stand up to them I might just buy one by way of a thank you.
Esperanza on May 27, 2015 at 1:04 PM
Breitbart is here #gamergate
Zakn on May 27, 2015 at 2:05 PM
Conservative should be paying close attention to Gamergate. And not by simply reading the press. The Gamers have become the front line in the progressive culture war. For the first time the Progressive Radical Leftists are facing pushback. The gamers are winning. The gamers are winning hard. While they have absorbed a crap ton of bad press they are rapidly bankrupting major liberal mouthpieces.
See the gamers stopped worrying about the names the Liberal Press called them. They have been savaged as Misogynists. Terrorists. Virtual Rapists. Etc. but the press has so savaged nerds and gamers for decades. So the gamers stopped caring. What worse can you say about a group that you have already publicly branded “worse than ISIS” because they play video games? So instead of doing the expected cowering in the face of accusations of “ism”s, the gamers shrugged them off, spread their wings, and discovered their power as consumers. They stopped funneling money to people that insulted them to further their own agendas. They stopped paying journalists, web sites, producers that put ideology over the consumer. They figured out that they as gamers are one of the single most desirable advertising demographics in the ad industry. So they started letting their feelings be known to the advertisers. Politely. Rationally. As consumers of the products being advertised. Gamers are Gamers. They understand how to play the long game. They figured out that beyond venomous words there was nothing the liberal press could actually do to harm them. It’s just hot air. The Gamers are the end point consumers. So they began to starve the beast. They flexed their consumer muscles.
At this point the gaming press has pretty much surrendered. Almost all the major outlets have adopted the journalistic ethics and disclosure policies demanded by the gamers. The more venomous and problematic personalities are quietly being removed from places of power and importance, and are being left to use their megaphones for Patreon Panhandling to a rapidly decreasing audience. The game developers and publishers, long no fans of the crooked and childish gaming press are suddenly gaining the freedom to speak their minds and find alternate voices to show off their work.
Conservatives need to look at Gamergate, see what this pack of largely Libertarian gamers accomplished against the ever encroaching Oppresion pimps, and LEARN!
patches on May 27, 2015 at 7:37 PM
i hope hotair isnt gonna let this weirdo rex mens right activist twerp write more junk like this here at this fine site. gamergate was destroyed. thinking it won at anything is just pure delusion.
brushingmyhair on May 27, 2015 at 7:50 PM
I was waiting for it to finally get an Xbox One since it was the first 8th gen only game I felt was gonna be worth playing.
I just recently built a new PC with 16 GB, an i5, and an R9 270 OC. So I’m playing on PC with a 360 controller. Don’t think I could ever go back to a mouse and KB for gaming.
UnstChem on May 27, 2015 at 9:12 PM
The problem with Assassin’s Creed might be a little different. The game actually does appeal to women and girls. It and Portal are the only video games our teen girl likes to play–her friends are also pretty loyal to those two games. She was a little pissed when they promised, and then didn’t deliver a female character. It’s more a missed marketing opportunity towards a part of their fan base than a cave to p.c. crap. They certainly would have been better off if they hadn’t first promised a female character and then reneged.
HakerA on May 27, 2015 at 10:50 PM
Not just the Gamers, but Sci-Fi Fandom is pushing back against the Social Justice Bullies and their ilk. See the article about “Sad Puppies” in the penultimate National Review magazine. It seems that Certain People (OK, “alleged people”) wanted the Hugo Awards given to more PC works, to the exclusion of better but less “inclusive” stories, movies, etc.
The Sad Puppies’ “pushback” is winning. Getting fascist with a bunch of bright, imaginative, and highly individualistic people doesn’t work in Fandom, either. Heh, heh, heh…
ReggieA on May 27, 2015 at 11:29 PM
An outstanding paradigm for “rebels” — someone should write a book (it would appeal to all Sad Puppies…)
Keeping focused on the important elements of war.
Other groups are approaching the same saturation point. If the SJWs already don’t like you, nothing you do will appease them.
Knowing what your powers are is a core part of gaming.
Most of the targets of the SJW / Leftists have something to lose, or are individuals being picked off one at at time (thus intimidating the other victims). There are too many gamers in too many places, and most are anonymous.
AesopFan on May 28, 2015 at 12:38 AM