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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

#GamerGate

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Hello everyone. My name is Vincent Carbone, and I’ve somehow managed to score a job writing a weekly arts column in this fine paper you’re reading right now.

This isn’t going to be an ordinary arts column. See, I’m not going to review any shows or movies, and I’m not going to blather on about what a particular work “means” or “is trying to tell us.”  To me, entertainment isn’t just a bunch of shows and games and comics to be analyzed. Entertainment media is an active participant in contemporary culture. It helps shape who we are, and who we are shapes it. That’s what I want to look at with this column. I want to look at the entertainment media we create and consume, and see what lessons we can learn from it.

To give you an extremely topical example: You wanna hear something crazy?

Video game fans are arguing on the Internet.

I know, right? When has that ever happened before?

Seriously though, the last month or so has been a pretty busy time for the online gaming world. Thousands of video game enthusiasts have found themselves wrapped up in a heated political debate. The collective name that the Internet seems to have adopted for this little cluster-bleep is “#GamerGate.”

So here’s how it all played out:

Not long ago, a female game developer (allegedly) slept with several games journalists to get good publicity for her game’s release. When she was (allegedly) caught doing this, the internet started investigating and found several more examples of such conflicts of interest in games journalism. Outraged, gamers demanded that games journalists practice more professionalism in their reporting.

In response to this, the games journalists insisted that the only reason gamers were angry was because the conflict centered on a female developer. Instead of responding to the accusations, they accused the gaming community of widespread misogyny, and published several articles (one of which was written by the game developer who started this whole mess) declaring “gamers” to be a sexist, bigoted group.

I’d really rather not sit here and spew my own opinions on the matter. Check out #GamerGate when you have a second, and do some reading. I trust you all are intelligent enough to form your own opinions.

I want to talk about the way these people are arguing. Now, I’ve been using the Internet for a while. I was there when YouTube added its new copyright claim system. I watched a young Anita Sarkeesian rise in popularity. I have seen 4chan and Tumblr go to battle countless times.

What I’m trying to say is, when it comes to stupid Internet fights, I’m practically an online war correspondent. But I’m seeing something very interesting with this case. Games journalism may be dying off. Some gamers are swearing off particular journalism websites, and the journalists aren’t doing anything to change that. Instead, the journalists are just insulting the gamers even more, and dismissing all those who disagree with their views as bigots and misogynists, all while hoping that this whole thing blows over. But it’s not blowing over, and if the journalists aren’t careful, they could wind up going the way of Nintendo Power (it went out of business -- that’s the way of Nintendo Power).

What can we learn from all this? Well I think the moral here (the one I desperately hope the games journalists learn before it’s too late) is that you can’t just dismiss your opponents.  This is the danger of disregarding opposing opinions. No matter how “sexist” or “bigoted” you feel they are, discussion is always the best option. You can’t ignore a problem until it goes away. Especially if the problem is thousands of your angry customers.