Res Ipsa wrote:Honor, I’m having trouble understanding your argument here, which bothers me. I’m not even sure if what, exactly I need to clarify. Maybe here: what do you mean by the types of activities in Gamergate? Let’s start with the narrow version confined to the gaming industry, and then expand then to those lumped into gamer gate in the more general context.
Within the gaming industry, the debate is hard to isolate as the subcultural nuances very easily and quickly overlap broader cultural concerns. But to answer the question recognizing that each ballooned beyond the subculture, the narrow issues include:
1) The techniques the corporate interests in gaming used to market and sell games. Perhaps more than most other multi-billion dollar industries, the marketing through non-traditional means such as player-produced reviews, insider blogs, and other industry-specific perceived non-paid endorsements are/were seen as a major part of how new games and hardware get marketed to potential consumers. An initial part of the flair-up occurred because the mistaken view that Zoe Quinn had cheated on her boyfriend to get a better review of her game tapped into building resentment of perceived Jones Soda aspects of this marketing structure. (Jones Soda famously paying popular kids to drink and promote their product as a guerilla marketing tactic.)
2) The behavior within the production and marketing industry generally towards women that is notorious for relying on sex to sell games, be it scantily clad women on game cover, in-game sexualized activities like hiring a prostitute or more abusive actions in sand-box games, or using attractive women who are part of a team to promote the games. A lot of friction exists here that bubbled up and over. This one is very difficult to view narrowly as it reflects similar problems through out marketing and many industries, especially where it's perceived to be marketing specifically to men. This also ties directly into point 3.
3) Industry-wide gender inequality issues where fewer women than men have been involved in most levels of game design, production, marketing and consumption. This ties into #2 where female participants that became well-known and recognized were promoted by companies but this tended to diminish their significant role on the creative/production teams where their skill and ability took a backseat to their marketing appeal to the target consumers. It undermined attempts to broaden nongender-centric promotion of the industry to new talent while fueling the belief that the role of attractive but promoted women were really another face underlying point #1. It fueled misogynists arguing that it was proof the women being promoted in the industry were really just part of the marketing scheme and not peers.
4) A meaningful segment of the gaming community (unfortunately, I would add) took this all to be part of a larger conspiracy by non-gaming interests to force identity politics onto gamers. This face took over and authored the hashtag, becoming both easy to condemn but completely detached from the actual issues in 1, 2 or 3. The hashtag-gamergaters promoted conspiracy claims of 2 and 3 as being part of a false flag operation, engaged in basically criminal behavior such as rape threats and invasion of privacy, and became a jumping off point for the narrow discussion to break wide.
The challenge is made more problematic in that 1,2, and 3 both predate the events of gamergate and continue to still be debated issues.
My argument, and underlying issue with the OP and Cam's responses, is they really engage only once one arrives at point 4 in the discussion. The question of what role OMM played in the debate assumes one of the positions in point 4 while not actually engaging the more common but real gender inequality issues that do deserve discussion and interest in promoting a breakdown of the barriers and treatment issues in the industry. Cam's posts are copy-and-paste examples of the things one would see from the 4chan-types who feed off of negative attention as proof SJW are irrational, emotional, and easily manipulated into shouting matches. Inserting Bannon and Breitbart, mirroring the hashtag crowd's claim of larger nefarious manipulation, becomes further escalation to where the conversation does not feel like it's taking place between adults but rather kids trying to present competing fantasies into their make-believe play that makes use of reality only as a framework on which to hang their preferred narrative.
ETA: Entering at point 4, where does one really begin the discussion? The rise of conservative talk show culture? I don't know. Thus my first comment in the thread.