This thing called GamerGate is starting
to turn from a flash in the pan to a sustained conflagration. I
didn't pay much attention to it at the start and have been waiting
for it to go away, but that just isn't happening. Since the debate
about social issues around gaming and geek culture is something that
I keep coming back to on this blog, I guess we've reached the point
where it makes sense for me to make some sort of comment on the
existence of this controversial movement.
The exact nature of the GamerGate
movement is something that is being furiously debated on many corners
of the internet. To some writers, it is a grass roots movement to
overturn a long-term culture of dishonesty and unaccountability
amongst game journalists. To others, it is a brutal male campaign to
drive female writers out of the games journalism industry. Despite
the vast volume of material, it didn't take me long to figure out the
basic truth.
GamerGate is a hashtag.
To align their actions with the
GamerGate movement, all a person has to do is to attach the statement
that they support GamerGate to them. In the same way that not
everything credited to Anonymous is the work of people who
collaborate with each other, not everything done in the name of
GamerGate is the work of a united band of people. Since applying the
symbolic title to yourself doesn't require a third party's approval,
different people who support GamerGate have entirely different ideas
about what it is they are supporting. GamerGate stands for 'fighting
against corruption in the gaming press', but the definition of
corruption is somewhat varied. To some people, it means bribery and
undisclosed conflicts of interests. To others, it means the growing
(though actually still very small) presence of feminist and social
justice related discourse in the gaming press. To a slightly
confusing third group, it means both.
There is strong evidence that some
women who have spoken out against GamerGate have been driven from
their homes by detailed threats to rape and kill their entire
families. This is a more important issue than anything else
surrounding GamerGate and deserves to be focused on to the exclusion
of the original point. If a politician is kidnapped by terrorists who
intend to behead him, it simply isn't the time to continue publicly
debating whether he should be fired for cheating on his expenses. Yet
the debate still rumbles on about whether these kind of outrages are
any kind of reflection of the main GamerGate movement and what it
should mean for the future. Is GamerGate an attack on women that is
being shielded by crowds who accept its cover story, or is the
criminal element a rogue offshoot emboldened by what it falsely
believes is a wave of popular support? If a symbol is disgraced by
some of its bearers, should it be discarded to isolate them or
reclaimed by public displays of the true meaning?
The second question is actually really
interesting on a philosophical level and I'm sure that powerful
arguments can be made in both directions. However, the answer in a
given case will typically be related to the original purpose of the
movement and the likely results of its future actions. It's one thing
to claim that the church should continue to exist in spite of the
inquisition and the crusades. It's another thing to claim that the Ku
Klux Klan should continue to exist now that it (probably) doesn't
murder people any more.
Although some of the articles
supporting GamerGate have done more to drive me toward hostility than
anything else has, I haven't yet bothered to dig down to the roots of
the the first moments of this event and try to figure out what was
going on in the heads of those involved. What I have seen, however,
is that many people now genuinely believe that the main body of
GamerGate is a force for good. Although I suppose any incidence of
dishonest behaviour is worth a little head shaking and tut tutting,
the only logical conclusion I can come to is that many people believe
that 'corruption in game journalism' is a threatening source of harm
for gamers.
To me, that's a bit weird.
The main reason that I stayed ignorant
of GamerGate for so long is that the bits and pieces I encountered
whilst reading other things didn't actually interest me very much. I
was vaguely aware that some sort of activism was going on in response
to possible revelations of hidden agendas among game journalists, but
that never sounded like something I needed to care about. Despite the
fact that I consume a large amount of game journalism and buy games
whenever I have the money, I didn't feel like such an issue was
actually a threat to me.
On reflection, this may be due to the
specific nature of myself as an individual. As a trained historian,
I've read a remarkable number of documents with undisclosed biases.
Taking a critical eye to what I read and sifting out the agendas of
the writer is just something that I naturally do all of the time. If
gamers are genuinely afraid that corruption is going to result in
them being taken for a ride, it suggests that they don't know how to
read the articles they are consuming properly in the first place. If
you truly are worried about being suckered by dishonest games
journalism, allow me to explain how you stop that from happening to
you.
One of the most basic skills that all
history students need to learn is the ability to distinguish between
fact and opinion. Obtaining factual knowledge of the past is a key
part of the discipline and documents from the period in question
provide a wealth of information. However, such records are nearly
always filled with the opinions and interpretations of the person who
felt motivated to write them in the first place. It is vital to be
able to weed those out and examine the facts yourself independently,
potentially coming to very different conclusions.
A fact is a concrete, objective truth.
An opinion is a conclusion or a value judgement, which is usually
presented as a logical progression from the facts stated. In gaming
journalism, opinions are things like '10/10', 'game of the year',
'this game sucks' and 'sexist and objectifying'. Facts are things
like 'over 200 quests with multiple possible outcomes', 'I
encountered 5 game-crashing glitches in the first hour of play' and
'there are only two female characters in the whole game and both of
them are strippers'.
The trick, therefore, is to divide the
accounts of a game's actual features and content from the level of
enthusiasm that a particular critic is displaying for the game. If a
writer declares something to be 'the best game of the year' and goes
on to describe a game-play experience that you would find completely
uninteresting, the thing that you should take away from this is that
you have no interest in the game. I can entirely accept that not
everyone is going to enjoy Gone Home as much as I did, but I'm
bewildered by the number of user reviews that savage it for being a
'walking simulator'. The reason I'm bewildered is that the game's
publicity was fairly open about there being no combat or puzzles,
which suggested to me that I was going to be walking to the exclusion
of shooting and jumping.
No games journalist is going to
deliberately present untrue facts about a game that has been
released. There is simply no possibility of getting away with it.
However much it might help the game's profile, Ubisoft would be
unable to bribe anyone to announce that 'actually you CAN play a
female character in Assassin's Creed Unity'. Such a claim would be
thoroughly disproved for free by others almost as soon as it was made
and the journalist would potentially lose their entire career.
Of course, lies can be told about games
that are still forthcoming – purely because the developers
themselves are the only source of information on the subject. In this
case, journalists might well end up repeating those lies to you
because they have no means of detecting them either. If you think
that such advance coverage is the result of the developers actively
soliciting it, you'd be absolutely right. In the real world, people
don't create a product and then wait for the press to beat down their
door. Promoting your product is how you sell it and much of what
journalists report has been actively brought to their attention. If
you want developers to stand or fall on their products rather than
their skill at generating publicity, the best thing you can do is not
pay top prices to pre-own products that don't exist yet.
If you want to avoid falling prey to
deliberate propaganda for a particular game, look out for articles
which consist almost exclusively of opinions. A piece that tells you
a title 'is set to blow gamers away', 'redefines the genre' and 'is
the must-buy game of the year' without actually saying anything
detailed about the features and content is not worth your time. Such
writing doesn't have to mean that the author has been bought – but
if you can separate the facts from the opinions, it doesn't really
matter why the writer is being so enthusiastic. You'll reserve
judgement and form your own opinion when you have more information.
Of course, not all authors are balanced
about the facts they include. Many emphasise facts that support their
conclusions and neglect facts that don't. This means that if you are
going to base your purchases on the reviews you read, it is best to
read several reviews (both positive and negative) before you come to
a conclusion.
You'll notice that the value judgement
of whether a game is 'good' or not is an opinion. This means that the
final score a reviewer assigns to a game is always just an opinion.
Viewing these scores as objective consumer information therefore
slightly misunderstands what they mean. For reasons that Moviebob
explains here, the very notion that critics exist simply to provide
consumer advice is not true. Critics are perfectly entitled to
examine the value of a piece to themselves in terms of their own
broader perspectives and tastes.
Don't ask a critic 'will I like this
game?' They aren't psychic and they've never met you. Ask them 'did
you like this game?', 'do you think that the creative elements have
value?' and 'what does it do?' Be aware that a game's score is based
on answers to these questions. A critic who sells their opinion on
the first two points is being dishonest with you, but it's still up
to you how much you embrace their views as your own.
For some gamers, the habit of regarding
their own tastes as an objective measure of value is quite acute.
Many gamers seem to feel that developers are duty-bound to produce
games that cater to what gamers (already know that they) want – and
it is certainly a useful business strategy. Unfortunately, some
define the term 'gamer' as 'a gamer like me', regarding significantly
different recreational consumers of games as intruders rather than as
a part of the community.
Gamers of this type tend to see critics
as existing purely to provide them with consumer advice. More
specifically, they expect the review score to be an objective
assessment of how closely it panders to their own tastes. They expect
this regardless of what the reviewer's own tastes are, since the
critic exists to serve gamers and the only true gamers are like
themselves. Reviewing games according to differing sets of values
provides a varied range of differently reasoned review scores and
validates diversity within the gaming community. A vocal minority of
gamers get violently upset every single time this happens,
questioning the integrity of the dissenting critics and their right
to exist within the game journalism sphere.
Whatever your stance on GamerGate,
don't be one of those guys.
Otherwise, just read critically and
you'll be fine. Sometimes journalists will publicise the existence of
a game without telling you exactly how much they like the creator.
Sometimes they'll express a wish for a game to succeed without fully
explaining the reasons behind their desires – or will explain them
in terms of what the game's reception means for wider socio-political
issues. Neither of these things will result in you being conned out
of money, as long as you take the time to detach yourself enough to
form your own conclusions instead of just absorbing theirs.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
