GAMERGATE SYNOPSIS: THREE CENTRAL TENETS - PART ONE
There's three central issues brought up by Gamergate. In today's article, I hope to bring up one of these. enjoy.
ONE: DiGRA and Ideological Forcing
DiGRA is a research group that's slowly been mutated over the course of a decade into a heavily ideological think-tank and is the ultimate source for the "Gamer is Dead" article barrage. DiGRA itself, now that it's exposed, is, like Zoe Quinn, practically a footnote in all this - its presence is noted, we all recognized it, but the bigger issue isn't about that. If a group like DiGRA - obstenibly an independent group that was dedicated to games research - is able to force narrative to this degree with articles about how
certain foods are Misogynist, then we need to analyze here. If something this silly could slip past, then we risk other ideological issues forcing their snouts into gaming and journalism where they don't belong.
Imagine, if you will, what would have happened if instead of a group trying to force gender issues and the like, we had someone trying to institutionalize racism or espouse one religion over all others. They'd have been shut down
ages ago. It's only because of an air of legitimacy that they managed to hold on for this long, and that won't avail them forever.
What this issue has forced us all to realize is that we have to be acutely aware of people who have every intent to drag this ideological content into places it's not necessarily needed, and that's true of both sides of this issue. Games can be more than just things you play - a game can force home important issues like the damage done by PTSD, a need to fight corruption (oh, the irony), or even a need to seek unity and common humanity amongst people of different nationalities or cultures. If a game wants to bring these up, that's a game's choice. All of the above issues I brought up come from modern games -
SpecOps: The Line,
Beyond Good and Evil, and
Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan - respectively.
There are good points to discuss from the likes of a DiGRA - say, for example, how games are marketed, with Elizabeth from
Bioshock Infinite not being on the box despite obstenibly being more central to the plot than Booker actually is, or how
Assassin's Creed: Unity can't have female characters because UbiSoft is
fucking stupid. These are discussions that need to happen, and indeed, will, no matter how many people on
both sides try to drag them into a ditch to make them not happen and how many people lose control of their feels.
What gaming does
not need are the likes of assholes screaming
every remotely attractive female character shows entrenched misogyny in the industry when fucking
Ride to Hell:
Retribution, a game that pretty much
is about as misogynist as one can get, somehow got published and gets completely ignored by the individuals screaming loudest about how a goddess portrayed as topless and with huge breasts in her native mythology is overly sexualized in a game that happens to feature her as a character. Balance is important, and so is nuance.
We should all take note that whilst it's easy to look at many SJWs as the like of say,
Vade, the simple fact of the matter is that many of these are just people - woefully misinformed people who are choosing to ignore the fact that
the other side has just as many loud obnoxious assholes with just as many
honestly legitimate points to make. And yes, they have legitimate points to make - at times, games are just games. Sometimes, a bird you fling at a pig really
is a bird you fling at a pig and not say, a metaphor for communism or whatever.
DiGRA itself needs to be analyzed further, and I'm certain the likes of Sargon of Akkad will bring much more to light about this organization before this affair comes to a close. I'm entirely sure he'll uncover more about how central this is to the whole of gamergate, and in doing so, probably open a whole new chapter of this analysis. If we take home anything from DiGRA on this one, though, it's the need for diligence and analysis of everything we read, and why it's important that now, more than ever, we teach ourselves and those in our care to be capable of critical thought and analysis.
And on that thought, my Kiwis, I leave you.
