As happy as I am with the Canadian victory and the overall politics of the new Prime Minister, I vehemently disagree with this representation of videogames as being misogynistic, just as I disagree with the representation of videogames as being murder simulators.
This is pretty much what I have been fearing, that the mainstream interpretation of videogames will now turn to "videogames promote violence and rape against women". Bad elements of bad games and tropes should not represent the entirety of a creative industry the way that quote does, especially after the last few years where some of my favorite, most well written videogame lead characters were women, so I'm not sure why people seem happy about it. That more women should be welcomed into the gaming industry is a great thing that I support, as is better writing and representation of women in games and dealing with a much larger, overall issues with how men and women interact online and in society, but this generalized notion of "video games misogyny" is not the way to start that conversation, just like stating "videogames are murder simulators" isn't a way to start a conversation on the limits of violence in games or its possible psychological impact on (young) children.
GamerGate on the other hand is something that never should have gotten the continues stream of bait that it got, nor the following stream of attention that has seemingly lasted for months now, and besides reporting genuine threats and harassment to the police that "movement" (of a relatively small group of twitter and chan trolls) should have been ignored and left to die. Honestly the only way I'm even away of their existence after the first month of its appearance is when people post 25 page threads full of screenshots of / rants about what they do and say, basically spreading their actions across the web, only so that the same people can repeat the same reasons why its despicable and sad and horrible, engage with the same troll accounts over and over, and go on until a mod closes the thread only for the whole things to repeat itself a month later.
If you ask me, people should stop talking about GamerGate as if they are important, or as if they represent any kind of group but themselves, and start having this conversation about women in the videogames industry, the treatment of women on the internet (but also extrapolating that to "people" on the internet and how a lack of consequences for actions can lead to extreme behavior), writing and storytelling in videogames and actually exchange ideas, rather than just rant and rave about the evils of GamerGate, engage the troll accounts all the time, etc. Those points were made clear months ago.
I don't know, I hope I don't get any hate for having this opinion, but I just wish we were having productive discussions on topics that matter, not GamerGate, a movement that lives to bait and troll people for attention. "The internet" has been having the same discussion about it on a loop for months now and it's time to move beyond and find solutions.
tldr: GamerGate never mattered, still doesn't matter, and instead of giving them attention we should have those conversations that everyone always say need to take place.
