What is it about the GG fiasco that just brings the worst out of a number of people? Even if they're making threats and victimhood, you have the self-righteousness, normally fairly rational people squabbling like crazy and a whole mess blown-out of proportion.
I'm not part of the GamerGate movement, but I am a gamer. I'm writing this as a person on the outside looking, in; but also as a person who had had to spend years "reading" people to figure out how they tick. I'm not a mind-reader, but at the same time, I think I can make some educated guesses.
In regards to a lot of the most vehemently aggressive "anti-GGs" - a lot of them seem to come off from well-to-do, upper class families. McIntosh's father for example apparently owns his own island. A lot of them have lived a very comfortable life and have taken it upon themselves to educate the world how to be better off. I assume a lot of them fell into this role as believing they are here to do good deeds and educate the dumb masses. However, their egos and their own pride have gotten the best of them and here we are.
Or, on the other hand, some of them are just purely in it for the money. Plain and simple.
In the case of game journalism, they fact is this: gaming had very rapidly expanded over just the last twenty years or so. Back before the Playstation, video games were very much a niche market, and as such the journalists who covered games were either directly advertising for certain companies (Nintendo Power), or at the very least had become very chummy with game studios. However, as games expanded, the foundation that the games industry was built on didn't grow all that much, especially in the case of the journalism. Now, we have game journalists that have grown increasingly tired/burnt out on the industry, but this is their thing. They're essentially the aging radio DJ archetype- they're good for sounding slick, but don't really have much else behind them except their voice.
Then all of a sudden, their world comes crashing in when the now expanded industry and the followers of said industry come knocking at their door. It's no longer good to be just slick. But this is their career - they got nothing else. They have built this whole self-image of them as some "speaker of the people" and they can't bear to let it go and admit their wacky jokes are annoying, and they have grown soft in the middle. When I listen to most of the game journalist bitch about GamerGate, I just hear cranky, aging folks who are in denial that the world has expanded outside of their old clubhouse and it's time to put up or shut up.
Gamers are an entirely different breed and I can try to analyze them too, but I've ranted enough on this for now. I'm sure it'll come back up later...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/stop-gamergate-hate-mob-pleads-4534231
Stop the GamerGate 'hate mob', pleads developer Zoe Quinn
Big companies must speak out against #GamerGate and support those being harmed by it, says video game developer Zoe Quinn
How nice for the girl who drove the TFYC Kickstarter into the ground to suddenly be so compassionate about the little people... or rather, try to big the big ol companies smash the little people.
