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Gamergate's routine accusation is that people, nowadays, coerce video-game makers into representing and validating their own personal politics. People sympathetic to Gamergate's professed cause, who consider themselves part of the gaming industry's free thinkers, invulnerable to political or personal influence, surely wouldn't follow so nakedly a self-interested leader. Patently, the man is in this for himself.But as illustrated by the "FreeMilo" and "JeSuisMilo" hashtags, which have appeared on Twitter following his ban, Gamergate has been nicely manipulated into gratifying the self-image, the personal perspective, of Milo Yiannopoulos. Gamergate argues politics ought to be kept away from popular culture. But here, in an act so rankly ignoble it demolishes the group's credibility, Gamergate and its sympathizers appropriate the language and memory of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks, an atrocity that could not have been more political.If it were true to its ideas, the rejection of politics, the reduction of personality in video games, Gamergate, as a collective, would not exist. It would recognize that gathering and uniting is an act of politics. It wouldn't band behind an individual, and certainly not one so unabashedly self-obsessed. A legitimate Gamergate would have no name.Article continues after the video belowAnti-censorship and freedom of speech are two magnificent causes that Gamergate has used to smuggle through customs its squalid, base politics. It conflates people voicing their concerns with political dissent. It fails to separate governmental suppression of expression from the much less influential act of media critique. It's all censorship to them.Gamergate sees no future in video games.
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A person truly fascinated by video games will welcome difference and change—they will recognize these things as fundamental to both video games' long-term critical and commercial survival. As the true patriot is engaged with his entire, modern, contemporary society, rather than an idealized historical version of it, the true gamer is heartened by variety and possibility—video games' potential and breadth, rather than a status quo. It is unfortunate that people who claim to be interested in video games would purposefully limit what of video games they may imbibe.Related, on Motherboard: What Happens in an Internet Second
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