I had no idea what the hell Gamergate was until somebody mentioned it to me, and the whole thing seems to ridiculous, even by net flame war standards. Where stuff like this wouldn’t even be a ripple in the netspehere, it’s now become a huge thing, with major publications chiming in, and one site even calling the cretins behind it “a hate group.”
While we won’t rehash this whole mess verbatim, what it essentially boils down to is a number of female gamers have been targeted by ‘net trolls, and the trolling has included death threats, which has sent several of them on the run. It began when one game designer was targeted by a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, who claimed she was giving sexual favors to web editors in exchange for good reviews on their sites. Then the floodgates of hate opened, and “gamergate,” as it’s called, has been national news.
What we can’t understand is why the misogyny? Video games have been such a male dominated world for so long, wouldn’t a bunch of lonely, solitary guys love to have women to play games with? Women love geek stuff more than ever these days, and a Playboy centerfold even declared her love of gaming. Would that have happened back in the Atari days? Me think not.
There is quite a bit of misogyny and racism going on in the gaming community, but we should never let it color anyone’s perception of the gaming world, which for the most part has a lot of good peeps in it. Here’s hoping the gamergate cretins will soon go back under the rock they came from and let good gamers be.
