[hippiehippo]

Is it me, or does it seem that there's an inflation of "death to the gamer" articles in the last couple of weeks?

"Gamers are over" - Gamasutra

"The death of the 'gamers'" - Ars Technica

"Death of an identity" - Kotaku

"killing the gamer identity" - Vice

and so on

[elarkin]

You aren't wrong. David Auerbach at Slate has written a small piece on it: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/09/gam...

[jacquesm]

This is like people that stopped smoking and are now telling others they suck because they still smoke.

[sosuke]

I feel like it has been for the past year, it is exhausting. I think there is a real term for it but at first I was in shock, and now I'm tired of hearing it, being lumped in the same category with folks doing some nasty evil stuff. I just want to play with my trains, shoot friends in CoD and explore wild fantasy worlds. I don't support the harassment or abuse of any person, I feel sorry for these people who are under attack. I don't have an answer on how to stop it, or improve the landscape. Is it even possible to stop some people from being vile? How do you say 'No, you can't think those things, you can't talk like that.' and have an impact on someone who feels completely secure and self-righteous from their position?

I don't want to feel guilt for being a man who likes video games.

[CocaKoala]

You shouldn't feel guilty for playing games, but if your sense of identity consists entirely of the fact that you play games, you should maybe address that. If you're identifying yourself as "A Gamer", then you're seriously telling me that you have no characteristics which are more defining to your sense of self, to your personality, to you as a human being, than the fact that you play video games? That's messed up, and people who do it are messed up.

It is, I believe, a growing recognition of that messed-up-edness that's leading to the rise of articles about the "death of the gamer", because normal human beings (like yourself) who may have previously said "oh, I like to play video games; I guess that makes me a gamer" are now saying "oh no actually these people are all horrible and I like to play games but I am not like them; please do not get confused!".

[jtbigwoo]

I heard an interview with Ed Begley, Jr. where they talked for twenty minutes about his eco-friendly lifestyle. His house has super-insulated windows, walls, and doors, recycles rainwater, generates power from solar cells and a wind turbine, and has a stationary bike that generates electricity for the kitchen. His yard is planted with drought-tolerant garden of California-native plants. He rides a hybrid-electric bike whenever he can.

Toward the end of the interview, the interviewer, seeming overwhelmed, asked, "Well that's great for you rich guys, but what about us ordinary folk?" (I'm paraphrasing both sides of the conversation here.) Begley said, "You think we started with solar panels in the 1970's? We didn't have any money. I started with rolls of insulation in my attic. Saved me thousands of dollars. Start with something small and inexpensive."

You don't have to be an activist, but if you don't like the way things are, pick one thing that can help. You're right that picking fights with strangers probably won't help. Maybe you have a friend who's a dick online. You and a couple friends can ask him to tone it down. Maybe decide to only offer helpful criticism to newbies for a week and reserving taunting for friends. Pick something small and make the world a little better.

[ikt]

I feel exactly the same way, I login, I play wow for sometimes 5 hours a week, maybe 15, I play, I challenge myself, I do my best, I try to be as non-toxic as I can and then I get out... but now I'm a misogynistic mass consumer with no soul and no culture who should feel bad.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

If you don't call those people out on their behavior, even if they ignore you, then you're legitimizing it.

[TeMPOraL]

No, you're not allowed to do that. You should feel guilty for your privilege of being a man.

I recently had an identical complain in another thread [0]. It turns out I'm apparently an evil hypocritical misogynist.

There's no escape for us, we're collateral damage.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8260719

[dragonwriter]

Give it a little while, and then we'll start getting "Death of the 'death of the "gamers"'" articles.

[vlunkr]

I've noticed this as well. What an oddly specific trend.

[MrDom]

It's not odd. #GamerGate is the gaming community speaking out against what they perceive as corruption in gaming and games journalism. Game journalists are firing back. Everything else is a sideshow intended to distract from that.

[vezzy-fnord]

It's a kneejerk response to the massive backlash that ensued out of the recent Zoe Quinn scandal and the debate on journalistic ethics in video game media that erupted as a result. It's actually been boiling for a long time, but Quinn was the last straw.

Censorship and silence didn't work, as the Streisand effect snowballed this into something far larger than it would have been otherwise. Now this is an attempt to divert attention away.

It's a curious thing, gaming journalism. It is perhaps the most puerile form of "journalism" there is. It would be insulting to even call it journalism, it's blogging, plain and simple. Video game media is also the only one I know of that insults its target demographic so frequently, in an attempt to look socially progressive.

[_delirium]

I find it suspicious that a scandal involving some blogger's personal sex life, and $10/mo Patreon sponsorships, is the source of the outrage. There is a lot of money floating around in game journalism, but "gamers" seem only outraged about small amounts of money going to women and anyone Redditors think is a "social justice warrior", seemingly especially when the people are fairly obscure and make nearly no money. How much sense does it make to target game-journalism corruption by starting with the people not getting a piece of the large corporate marketing budgets that are floating around?

It would be a more interesting exposé if people focused on actual corruption going on in the review/journalism scene. Things like EA's early-access review policies that unofficially hinge access to future titles on what scores a magazine gives. Or the large mount of money going to certain widely watched podcasts without disclosure. There was an exposé of that issue ~2 months ago (written by gaming journalists, no less) but barely anyone cared: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-16-blurred-lines-a... Or the kind of wining-and-dining, travel reimbursements, etc. that goes on around E3 and other trade shows.

I think it's mostly a culture war that is about game journalism pretty secondarily. Nobody cares about Ubisoft wining-and-dining a writer from The Escapist at E3, because that doesn't play into any preexisting culture war, and none of Ubisoft/Escapist/E3 are seen as "outsiders" to gaming culture.

[vezzy-fnord]

The recent GamerGate demonstrations do touch on all of these, actually. But it's not a centralized or particularly focused effort, at the end of the day. It's really the messy culmination of all the outrage over corruption in gaming journalism that people kept their mouths shut over, and all of it finally exploding. Multiple subcultures intersect in the whole ordeal.

Actually, the Quinn scandal was instrumental in people opening their eyes about one thing. Namely, that it's not only large corporate media behind this. Even independent media isn't safe or trustworthy, and both is corrupted, but in different ways. Independent media is more likely to foster nepotism, cronyism and lying by omission/censorship, whereas the big shots, having major access to publishers and trade shows, can obviously go further.

It has also caused a lot of people to re-analyze these people's intentions and revisit previous incidents, which in light of new information, no longer seem as clear cut. Just because one is an underdog (and that's quite relatively speaking, anyway) does not make them righteous.

Actually, many people already knew that there's lots of corruption going on at major writers. This is why so many gamers went to indie media, but then they realized that nothing is safe. The outrage is that ultimately, all of it is the same: passive clickbait supposed to milk attention. But now there's nepotism, too. It's the outrage from now knowing that there's no one who represents your side in the media, and that people who are only interested in gaming from a surface level are holding major positions.

Finally at the risk of setting a fire, it wasn't a simple matter of a "blogger's personal sex life". The implications were wider reaching into the aforementioned nepotism.