If you’ve been paying attention to video gaming over the past few weeks, you’ll have found it hard to avoid the Gamergate debate.

The Gamergate movement, which claims to be campaigning for ethical standards in game journalism, is seeking to force retailers, advertisers, publishers and the gaming press to accede to its somewhat ill-defined wishes through a series of boycotts during one the year’s most significant sales seasons.

Can they do it? Well, they’re already claiming they’ve convinced Intel to pull its advertising from the game website Gamasutra, which published an article Gamergaters disliked, in an organised campaign of mass emailing they call Operation Disrespectful Nod.

Intel says their decision to pull advertising from Gamasutra had nothing to do with Gamergate. If that’s the case, Intel’s timing was poor; it’s too easy to draw a line of cause and effect between the Gamergate eruption, the launch of Disrespectful Nod, which specifically targeted Gamasutra’s advertisers, and Intel’s announcement.

Intel’s statement on October 4 includes the following disclaimer: “We recognise that our action inadvertently created a perception that we are somehow taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community. That was not our intent, and that is not the case. When it comes to our support of equality and women, we want to be very clear: Intel believes men and women should be treated the same.”

Intel needed to add that because Gamergate, whatever its origins, has become a touchstone in an increasingly vitriolic fight between pro-feminists and anti-feminists within the gaming community.

Insults

The fight has been bubbling for many years, and it goes beyond gaming to geek culture in general. The pro-feminist movement calls the other “trolls” and “misogynists”; in return it receives the insults “white knights” and “social justice warriors”. Increasingly, in a modern twist on Godwin’s Law, each side is comparing the other to Daesh (ISIS).

At its worst, a number of feminists who speak out have been subjected to doxxing (having personal details published online against their will), harassment and threats.

Gamergate broke the surface when an ex-boyfriend of indie developer Zoe Quinn claimed she’d cheated on him with five men, including other developers and a game journalist, Nathan Grayson. The accusation was that she’d spelt around to get her game, Depression Quest, coverage. (Grayson did give the game a shout-out in an article, but has never reviewed it.)

In response, Quinn’s been doxxed, threatened, forced to move house, had her naked photos posted online — in short, subjected to the worst kind of online bullying.

The pro/anti argument even affects in-game play, with the liberal end of the culture calling on games companies to better police their servers against the use of misogynistic, homophobic and racist slurs by players. Most games firms do have policies — in fact, at Games14 in September, Microsoft’s regional Xbox lead Arman Sanger, who opened his speech with a call-out to diversity in gaming, told me, “You don’t want to do diversity that converts into tokenism. Gamers are a discerning community; they know when it’s not real. I think diversity is a reflection of the community rather than an imposition upon them.

“The onus upon us is to ensure that Xbox live works in a fashion where there are no jerks and cheats over there and everybody can come and enjoy and play at their own level...

“Beyond that when it comes to game IP development, that becomes a bit more of a complex subject because there are a lot of creative juices that flow over there, and I think that the guys who get involved and engage with that have to think about whether that particular narrative fits into what they’re trying to deliver.”

But while Microsoft can police its own servers, it can’t, and shouldn’t, police the general gaming population — though Sangar did say it wants to act as a role model.

Ethics

Perhaps that’s why Gamergate has listed the official Xbox Magazine as one of its targets, alongside such socially liberal sites as Kotaku, Rock Paper Shotgun and Gamasutra.

What then of the issue of ethics in game journalism? In the current climate, it’s pretty much impossible to have that debate, and it is a debate that should take place. There are issues about how citizen journalism operates on YouTube channels, about how much games journalists, PR departments and marketing departments are in each others’ pockets.

That debate is not being had, not even by Gamergate. So far, its big success (if we disbelieve Intel) is getting advertising pulled from Gamasutra. That wasn’t due to unethical journalism, but due to an opinion piece by Leigh Alexander (a woman) saying that gaming culture had become so mainstream it was effectively dead — an opinion Gamergate disliked.

Strike one for the self-proclaimed ethics campaigners.