This is a READER COMMENTARY, submitted by Kyle W. 

The first thing that came to my mind when thinking about the second episode of Radio Nero, was one of his guest’s comment that there had ‘always’ been tension between Games Journalists and Gamers. By dint of 37 years as a Gamer, I have to say, with respect, that that is utterly untrue. I would love for it to be possible to get in touch with the people behind such magazines as Electronic Games and Next Generation.

There was never a hint of such tension in those eras (the 80’s & 90’s) as far as I could tell. They were professional publications, professionally put together (given the limitations of the time), their general quality of writing makes even the best online site today look almost amateurish by comparison, yet they still managed to have a ‘By Fans, for Fans’ feel to them. Both magazines were the kind that you would read years later simply because they were entertaining  nd thoughtful. They remained relevant years after initial publication. Which, I would think, is one of the goals any journalist would want to strive for. Next Generation magazine in particular, really showed the intellectual potential of the medium. Issues that were just nascent 20 years ago, were still talked about intelligently and without any obvious political agenda.

Milo also had Erik Kain of Forbes on, who had some excellent things to say, but was puzzled by the behavior of many of the Games Journalists thus far. However, after that he had both Sargon of Akkad, the Youtube commentator and Roguestar, the Games Developer.  No offense to Milo, but I think it would have been better to have those two on before Kain, because the depth of information they share, Sargon the Academic Ideology behind this and oguestar the economic structural angle, clarify the rationale behind the group that I call ‘The Gaming Morality Force. It shows the Radical Postmodernist\Relativist\Cultural Marxism that drives their actions, and the curiously obtuse economic structures that they seem so unwilling to share. That’s why they do so many things that appear so puzzling. Most people simply aren’t used to dealing with those who put their Ideology out in public like an Attack Dog, using an Ideology that considers Rationality itself a ‘Weapon of the Patriarchy’ and so instead, puts emotions as a primary arbiter of truth. Thus you end up with such antirational statements as this-

“There is no such thing as misandry, just like there is no such thing as racism against white people.'” -Leigh Alexander

As to their Ideological stance on Gamergate, let me show a quote from someone intimately involved with Anita Sarkeesian-

“September 8, 2014

This is a culture war. The right side is winning, at great cost. At great personal costs to people like Anita Sarkeesian, Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn and even Jennifer Lawrence, and countless others who are on the frontlines of creating new worlds for women, for girls, for everyone who believes that stories matter and there are too many still untold. We are winning. We are winning because we are more resourceful, more compassionate, more culturally aware. We’re winning because we know what it’s like to fight through adversity, through shame and pain and constant reminders of our own worthlessness, and come up punching. We know we’re winning because the terrified rage of a million mouthbreathing manchild misogynists is thick as nerve gas in the air right now.

Us Social Justice Warriors – this is me, stealing that word in order to use it against my enemies- are winning the culture war by tearing up the rulebook, and there’s nothing the sad, mad little boys who hate women and queers and people of colour can do about it. Nothing, at least, that doesn’t sabotage their strategy, because they can win their game from day to day, but they’re losing the war. They can punish me for writing this, and I’m sure they will, but that will only prove my point. I’m not afraid anymore.

Every time they make an example of one of us, ten more stand up in outrage to hold her up or take her place.

We are stronger, smarter and more numerous than anyone imagined, and we are not to be fucked with.

Excerpt from WHY WE’RE WINNING: SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS AND THE NEW CULTURE WAR by Laurie Penny (via femfreq)”

http://floerian.tumblr.com/page/2

Around September 8th, I can say without a doubt (because I was there in the trenches), most people in Gamergate were still trying to *understand* what the heck was going on, much less deciding if they were going declare it a ‘war’. But those in the Gaming Morality Force and their allies in the Green Tea Party (Allies of the GMF, derived from the Chinese term  “Green Tea Bitch”, essentially ‘Nice on the Outside, Mean on the Inside.) , clearly did. Because they had been planning it for some time. I would suggest becoming  familiar with Samantha Allen’s “An Open Letter to Games Media” published in early 2013, (https://archive.today/Lc5Dd) also from the show, Sargon read some quotes from papers published years earlier than that. The Zoe Quinn scandal was clearly an accident, but what many games journalists and their friends in Academia had planned was essentially what they wanted to happen regardless. They had just hoped to spring it as a surprise on Gamers and were (almost literally) ‘caught with their pants down.’ The result- #Gamergate.

Sargon’s quotes were quite good, though I think there are some perhaps even better from that DiGRA conference. There are two that I think are very telling about how underhandedly they had
decided to go about this-

“So yeah. Over on The Twitters we (as in yours truly, +Ian Miles Cheong, +Brendan Keogh, +Rowan Kaiser, +Mattie Brice and +Annie Dennisdóttir Wright) started discussing our various attempts to undermine the heteronormative hegemony. And now we continue it where we don’t have wordcaps.”

Open discussion is always welcome. Yet despite their public statements, comments such as this are clearly contradictory to them. However, it certainly comports with the actions they’ve taken since.

“Adrienne: Why do we see such tension between academics and game designers?  less of an issue with indies, but there are always some people in industry that have similar questions until industrial logic takes over later and how can we better intervene in industrial logics to disturb that process.  How can academics bridge the gap to the industry audience to help them do
different work?  How can we disrupt the capitalist norms that facilitate this?”

http://pastebin.com/LAmZNVKn

I know many people, while acknowledging that this agenda was planned and is being executed as we speak, dismiss the effectiveness simply because, ‘The Market will sort itself out.’ I personally spoke with Chris Mancil, an Exec at EA who essentially said this very thing. That if they make their Propaganda-Driven games (Like Depression Quest), most people won’t like them and they can’t compete with say, Call of Duty.

What they don’t take into consideration though, is that if the GMF controlled all major gaming journalist platforms, they could ‘shame to death’ anything that doesn’t meet with their Ideological agenda. They wouldn’t even have to do it all at once. Over a period of years they could slowly use pressure to make games more and more ideologically correct until they meet whatever Goal of Purity they had in mind. Since the change would be relatively gradual, younger gamers would grow up with the incremental changes until they didn’t *know*any better. Cue Victory Music.

It took the SJW’s in other areas years to accomplish their goal of infiltration, Academia is a perfect case. Internet Aristocrat shows just one of the examples of this kind of, ‘engineering’ (what else does one call it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_2MUenYJ6o&list=UUWB0dvorHvkQlgfGGJR2yxQ

Why would this be done any differently in the realm of Videogames? I think they may have panicked in the wake of the Zoe Quinn scandal, hence the complete radio silence and then the Thunderous Announcement that, ‘Gamers are Dead.’ Even being taken by surprise, however, doesn’t mean they still couldn’t overwhelm Gamergate by brute force and then proceed to the next step: using social disapproval to fashion games that are little more than propaganda.

Kyle W.