GG didn't quite happen in a vacuum, as some might say.
Some have argued that it was the "straw that broke the camels back" not to mention the unprecedented levels of censorship everywhere that made everyone who didn't really give a fuck in the first place go... "huh?" as well as it occurring in the indie games scene, the scene that was (apparently) supposed to be fairly immune to such cronyism.
Maybe some context is in order. Corruption pieces about the Games Media have always repeatedly come up in the past. Jeff Gerstman being fired for his bad review, and Dan Hsu speaking about pay for coverage. In /v/ threads devoted to this sort of corruption coverage were called "RAGE Threads"
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Then later on Jennifer Hepler, a writer for Bioware gives an interview, stating that she hated videogames, and wanted a "storybook mode" where players could skip gameplay all together, which caused a bit of salt from /v/ and the like. This was soon after Dragon Age 2 and Mass Effect 3 was released, and many players were quite disappointed with the final products.
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Meanwhile, in the news, Bioware is getting tangled up in all sorts of stuff. Being caught with one of its own staff members submitting reviews for its own game, videogame sites suddenly report on Gamers being branded as homophobic in Mass Effect 3, despite the same type of thing existing in the previous games and there was nary a peep.
Around this time, a post appears on various boards on 4chan to a registered name "Anita Sarkeesian" encouraging to donate to her KS. Most people just tell her to fuck off and die. But one month later, an apparent "harassment campaign" that several gaming sites cover, brings her KS to the forefront and she is funded $150,000 over her goal.
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After the funding OC begins appearing the Anita "Happy Merchant", the Rule 34, the beat up game on newgrounds etc etc, the games media latch on to this and Anita becomes famous enough to get picked up by mainstream news outlets. She gets speaking offers, interviews, all that stuff. Most gamers are quite annoyed because of the cherrypicking she does in her videos, as well as starting with her conclusion and working backwards from there.
In the meantime, you begin to see more and more articles start appearing like the ones below, decrying sexualization, accusing developers of sexism. Websites being to appear, devoted to critiquing videogames and similar hobbies under a feminist/social justice lens.
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Soon after, another media corruption piece appears, this time in Eurogamer. The writer details the level of cronyism in the industry, and backs up his words by showing that a current videogame reviewer is also contracted to the publisher of the games as PR. She decides to threaten legal action, and Eurogamer fires the writer and amends the article. Despite the writer also having videos and articles on suggesting what she accused of, to be successful in the games industry.
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It was less than a year until The Quinnspiracy would happen, and the rate of videogame articles being antagonistic towards its standard demographic was increasing. I imagine for your average 12-24 yr old autistic videogame board poster, things seemed to be getting more ridiculous, more enraging. It would just take another nudge to push them over the edge.
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