I honestly believe that the GamerGate “movement”/”group”/hashtag had some good points about ethics in games journalism. I think a lot of good, intelligent people were involved and wanted to make a positive impact. However the obscene amount of abuse and threats coming from some of the people that use the hashtag, and the fact that most of the “discussion” (read shouting matches) has taken place on Twitter has poisoned the GamerGate identity beyond repair.
First I do not condone the actions of anyone on whatever “side” that make threats, verbally abuse, or allow others to do these things. It is sickening that people think that by threatening people out of their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to free speech that they can somehow make a point of any kind. Conversation only happens when there are two opposing viewpoints. This is why I play the devil’s advocate so much, so that the conversation does not become an echo chamber.
The Second point I made is about Twitter’s nature poisoning the discussion. I agree with TotalBiscuit when it comes to twitter in that no real discussion in 140 characters or less. But because Twitter was one of the only places that was not banning people for bringing the topic up it was flocked to and became one giant shouting match. As an experiment I checked how many characters were in this post. I would have to use at least 13 tweets to post this on twitter.
My position on the whole thing is this: We need transparency from our journalists, Creativity from the developers, Understanding from the Gamers, and we need the people on Twitter to shut up and let a real discussion happen because right now they are hurting everyone and helping no one.
Now I am going to go back to developing my games and latter tonight I am going to try and play some games with my friends. #GamerAndProud