GamerGate: Invasions of Gamer Culture

A few days ago I read this post by Alisha Karabinus about GamerGate. I highly recommend reading the entire post, but I was inspired by this part in particular:

I am sitting at my computer with too many tabs open. In one, a friend is telling me a story of a man he knew who lost his way, his only solace, when gaming conventions went too mainstream, when the only haven he knew turned into a reflection of the rest of his life: a place where a “freak” like him was no longer accepted, but instead subjected to the stares and whispers of “mean girls.” He talked about fake geek girls, my friend tells me, and for the first time, I understand, a little, where these accusations come from. I’m able to see the source of bitterness and anger.

My friend tells me he thinks this man is dead; he hasn’t heard from him in a long time, and at first I want to say, but you don’t know. I can’t say it, though. I can’t, because what did this man, the one my friend describes, have left? What would you do, if you felt there was no place for you at all? To what extremes would you be pushed? I suddenly overwhelmed with such a sense of horror and sadness that I have to look away.

Now, let me state from the outset: I am not a member of GamerGate; I think it's essentially a right-wing cultural backlash against the feminism, anti-racism, etc. which is increasingly gaining power and influence in "gamer" culture. I'm not going to defend this position here--probably I will in a later post. (If you have no idea what GamerGate is...well, consider yourself lucky, but if you'd like to take the plunge, this article I think provides a good introduction to the topic.) In this post, I'd like to use Karabinus's post as a jumping-off point to criticize a certain argument often made by anti-Gamergaters.

In an overall very good video (which I also highly recommend you watch), Dan Olson says (starting at 11:40; my own transcription):

The perception, the base assumption, is that these women [Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu], none of whom are technically journalists, represent the invasion into the cultural space, an invasion of gender, race, sexuality and class issues, politics and awareness. They couch this idea in conspiratorial tones, assembling lists of supposed collaborators and drawing out complex webs of accusations implying that these minorities are all outsiders looking to hijack games as a platform for political ends.

This is, of course, all utter nonsense. Women, queer folk, trans folk, racial, ethnic, religious, and political minorities have been playing games all along. They have been here all along. They did not, as 4chan summarized with this image, suddenly start playing games in 2007. Also, as we've already discussed, games are and were already political in nature, because all culture is unavoidably political. What they see as an invasion is little more than the players who have been present all along finding a voice in the market to discuss politics that were already there.

What Olson says in the first paragraph (well, in the part I chose to isolate in its own paragraph while transcribing) is, I think, accurate. The second paragraph, however, isn't--or rather, it's based on a misunderstanding of what precisely GamerGaters think is being invaded. Olson seems to be implying that the "cultural space" being invaded is simply that of video games in general, or the playing of video games itself. In that sense, then of course non-"white cis- and heterosexual men" have been playing games all along so they're not invading anything. But this, from what I can tell, is not what most GamerGaters are upset about.

(Disclaimer before I move on to my main argument: I'm going to make generalizations about GamerGaters in the remainder of this post. They are based chiefly on my own impressions and knowledge about the usual GamerGate hangouts--4chan etc. They're certainly not based on any scientific data, since, well, there isn't any. So this may very well be inaccurate, and if anyone has a better explanation I'd love to hear it, no sarcasm.)

To understand the motivations of GamerGate, the precise cultural space that's being invaded, we must understand the average GamerGater. The movement was born on 4chan's /v/ board (before the website banned discussion of it so it moved to 8chan), and so that makes a natural starting point for analysis. I've been casually reading 4chan for a while now, and after enough time the website culture, and the likely personality of its average user, becomes fairly clear.

The best way to proceed, I think, is to tell a story of a "fictional GamerGater." I'm not claiming every detail of this story is accurate for all or even most GamerGaters. My intention is merely to give a sort of idea for what motivations I take to be in play here. My hope is that anyone familiar with this issue, or with gaming culture in general, will find this story largely familiar.

Imagine a young, white, cis- and heterosexual man. For various reasons, he has always been sort of an outcast--perhaps he lacks social skills or has social anxiety, maybe he comes from a bad household. For whatever reason, though, he spent much of his childhood without a significant peer group to accept him, to make him feel welcome and wanted--until, that is, he discovered "gamer culture." Not video games themselves, mind you, but the largely internet-based culture surrounding them.

To be sure, he most likely discovered this culture because he enjoyed playing video games and wanted to discuss it with others who shared the same hobby. But eventually, the importance of this culture grew far beyond just that. Perhaps for the first time, he discovered a group of people whom he connected with--who liked him, made him feel valued, gave him a place where he felt at home. As such, when he identifies as a "gamer," he doesn't just mean "someone who plays games." He means something more like this.

Seriously, read that entire comic closely. That comic (and I don't mean to pick on VG Cats, it's just a good example) is from 2009, but the attitude behind it has only gotten stronger since. If you think of "gamer" as just meaning "plays games," if you think the comic is expressing pride merely in how they "memorize the ultra combos" and "wrote down pages of passwords," the comic is obviously ridiculous. On the other hand, if you think of "gamer" as meaning "belongs to gamer culture," if you think that it's expressing pride in belonging to that culture, in going through its rites of passage, then it starts to make a lot more sense.

"Gamer" is an identity not because people identify a whole lot with their entertainment products. I mean, they do, but people also identify a lot with books, and "reader" isn't an identity; at least, not nearly to the same extent "gamer" is. "Gamer" is an identity because people identify with the culture that grew up around that entertainment product, a culture that gave them acceptance, belonging, and a place to call home.

Now, enter Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu. They have been singled out for the most intense harassment not just because they're prominent women in gaming; they're not the only prominent women in gaming, after all. They've been singled out because they're among the most prominent women in gaming who criticize gamer culture. Let me explain what I mean, mainly focusing on Sarkeesian since I think she's the best example of this.

Sarkeesian makes videos discussing sexism in video games. Let me say that, as feminist criticism of media goes, her videos are very anodyne--that is, they're actually extremely light-handed, mostly sticking to the clearest cases of sexism and bigotry in games and being very polite and calm the entire time. So for a while, I didn't understand just why she gets all the hate she gets (and she's gotten a lot of hate for a long time). Now, though, I think I do, and it's largely thanks to this blog comment:

One of the things [Sarkeesian] says, is that you can criticize things, you can understand why they’re problematic and harmful and still enjoy them.

And just speaking for myself, although quite frankly this issue probably is a strict parallel in terms of personality type. No, just no.

If I thought games encouraged sexual/domestic violence or the oppression of women over and above baseline levels in society at large, I wouldn’t play them. I couldn’t play them. They would squick me the hell out. I’d feel guilt for enjoying that sort of thing. Games that are borderline in that, I don’t play (luckily I don’t believe there’s that many of them).

In other words, it's not that Sarkeesian is particularly extreme. It's that she criticizes the sexism in games at all (or at least claims that they're more sexist than "baseline levels in society at large"--though I'm not sure where this comes from since, in my experience, Sarkeesian never says games are more sexist than society at large). Because if games are sexist, that makes me a sexist for enjoying them. And sexism is bad, so if that was true I'd be a bad person.

By itself, this logic might appear strange. But let's broaden the scope of discussion. While Sarkeesian is only directly criticizing the games themselves, gamer culture is built around these games--that's why it's "gamer" culture, after all. One of the core assumptions of gamer culture is that while individual games may be bad, video games in general are good; they are things worth playing, discussing, being passionate about, etc. So when Sarkeesian criticizes video games for being sexist, I hear fairly soft-handed media critique. But gamers, or at least our hypothetical GamerGater, hears:

"That subculture you belong to, the one that gives you a sense of belonging, acceptance, and meaning? It is fundamentally wrong. It is sexist and hateful and oppresses women, and you oppress women by belonging to it. It needs to be changed from the ground up in order to become morally acceptable, and I'm going to do just that. Either join me or get out of the way."

And, contra Olson, that is very much an invasion into the cultural space of our hypothetical GamerGater.

Karabinus says:

I don’t want to destroy games. I want more games, better games.

But for our hypothetical GamerGater, it's not about the games. It's about the culture. And Karabinus, along with every other anti-GamerGater and "SJW" that GamerGaters hate, are trying to destroy--or at least fundamentally change--gamer culture.

Again, let me make this clear: I do not support GamerGate. Indeed, I think gamer culture is fundamentally sexist (and racist, homophobic, etc) and needs to be changed from the ground up to be morally acceptable. (The same, of course, is true for the wider culture.) But if this is going to happen, the opponents of GamerGate must understand the true nature of the battle being fought, and the true nature of the people on the other side of it.

At the end of her post, Karabinus says:

I want to remember that I am a gamer, too, and passionate about what I like and what I don’t. I want to talk about games with everyone and anyone, all the time, and all the ways we can make games even better, and how we can bring in those people who reject the label. I want to build a community again, but every piece I have is broken, and I don’t know how they can be fit together again, or even if they can. I don’t even know where to begin.

To be frank, I don't think there ever was, or is ever going to be, a single unitary gaming community. People have fundamentally opposed views as to what gaming culture should be. Or, to put it another way: it's not that the pieces broke; they were broken to begin with.

But this is nothing new. As Immanuel Kant wrote, "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."