Considering how long this has gone on for and the various levels of idiotic silliness that seem to go with it from both sides of the subject, you’d be forgiven for wondering why anyone would be touching the overly toxic issue that is Gamergate at all. In fact you may as well douse yourself in petrol and set yourself on fire to inflict less pain upon yourself than go into this murky mess.

But that’s what we’re going to do here in a fairly lengthy post.

This affair originally began with some individuals doing naughty where there may have been a conflict of interest and therefore raising issues of ethics. Of course this happened over in the US, which of course means everyone would be arming themselves with muskets and starting the civil war all over again.

Various outlets in the UK dissected the subject over and over again, the Guardian leading the feminist charge in many cases, with stories of how women are harassed in the gaming industry overall, with seemingly if you were to embrace the narrative fully, you would think that everyone is out to grope and kill every woman who didn’t want to get back into the kitchen to make pie.

All police should be like this.

So what better way to throw even more fuel onto the fire which refuses to die than with an episode of a cop show where everyone gets raped at some point? Sound terrible? Then let’s go and enjoy “Intimidation Game”, which is an episode of the lovable crime drama that is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, broadcast over in the land of the free on February 11th 2015.

Remember during the paradoxical rant / love letter to cop shows written earlier this year, where the show was described as a lovely time with the stereotypical “special” detectives and whoever else turned up when they were bored investigating and prosecuting pretty much anyone who only committed sexually based offences?

Well despite this adventure into the badly written side of the cop show genre, the episode of SVU in a way served via the realm of “entertainment”, shows us how utterly ridiculous the whole thing is, and perhaps also further demonstrated that we seem to as a species lack a functioning sense of logic and reason when it comes to talking about issues of importance. And also the audience of the show are shown up to be people in their 50s who just got over the wonders of the telephone with the fancy screen of moving pictures.

Hooray for stereotypes!

The whole episode centers around the main themes of issues which have taken place in the real Gamergate saga, while of course inflicting as many bad puns and stereotypes onto you as humanly possible that you are chronically depressed by the time the credits roll.

We start out at a game convention where Ice T, whose face has melted it appears, loses to an 11 year old at a game from the 1990s while throwing out as many acronyms as humanly possible to confuse not only his co-workers (maybe friends?) but himself too. Cut to a toilet scene where a woman is in distress after being attacked and she uttered the awful dialogue somehow without laughing that the men “leveled up”.

Brace yourself, it’s going to get worse.

Guys don’t like women in gaming and aren’t ready to give them that power, so naturally we then progress to levels 2 and 3 of the misery. (Hell if they can get away with this bad puns, we can too!). We also have the cop lady who doesn’t understand anything that’s going on without huge amounts of explanation from the supporting cast who don’t know themselves what they are talking about, and then of course asks the question of what their kids will do in this world etc etc.

OMG! They’re totally doing that stuff that happened!

Naturally to protect the real people who this is based on, the writers had to do something, even if it was thinly veiled. The various women who have gotten involved in all this get fused into the one character, Raina Punjabi, which just to make it even worse, as an Indian woman, it’s now a race hate crime too when the horrible events are played out.

How much more can you take?

Well there are various examples of events which did take place, including “SWATTED”, where people call the police to send SWAT teams to people’s homes, personal details leaked online, the usual death threats that everyone receives on the internet and somehow everyone can hack big screens to taunt the NYPD with “Game on.”

Would rather play a game than watch any more…..

It”s a game to them and then the question is, what is the next level? There’s even a brief moment where we have a first person shooter perspective from one of the naughty people who tells a cop to prepare to be slaughtered and also utters game over.

Ok, enough, it’s clearly a complete pile of crap which will get aired again and again to fill the schedule over the next few decades on the Universal Channel that Sky pumps out. But what about the subject matter itself?

The Zoe Quinn issue, is really where GamerGate started.

After the release of a game called Depression Quest which also was released on Steam rather in a strange twist the same time everyone learned of Robin Williams’ suicide, an ex boyfriend took to blogging about her various activities with men and thus raising the questions of ethics in the first place in gaming.

You can guess how f**ked up the whole thing got in no time at all and looking at the face of it, both sides really didn’t help themselves and basically it’s gone too far for any reason to set back in and calm everyone down.

Anita Sarkeesian is a creator of a series of YouTube Videos, Feminist Frequency which explored women in various male dominated media, and really caught the attention of everyone when her kickstarter campaign, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games succeeded with $158,922 being given.

For the record, I was one of those backers who gave money to the project, as I wanted to see what information would be discussed. But regretfully, most of the content and indeed Anita turns out to come off as nothing short of bats**t crazy but hey those are the breaks, chalk it up as a loss and move onto the exploding kittens card game kickstarter instead….

Or so you would think.

Will this be as good as Batman Vs Superman in Video Games?

This however, is the internet, and as a result of these polarising videos, she has been on the receiving end of threats, a game being made of people being able to break face and countless other issues with public appearances being cancelled due to threats.

She also has never really explained why her content which everyone put money into, has been very very slow to materialise, and also never entered into a debate with anyone who has challenged her on the conclusions she draws. There is also serious weight behind the point she went looking for problems which may not actually have been there in the first place. That now infamous video of Anita herself stating “I’m not a fan of video games” really doesn’t help matters either, with or without context.

Chuck in a couple of threats and casual reveals of personal details of one Brianna Wu who shared a mocking picture of the Gamergate issue, who then various people also went further in reacting badly to everything that was going on, each time looking more and more crazy and then you’re starting to see an overriding pattern emerge.

Both sides of this argument have seldom actually shown themselves to be beacons of light in the murky darkness of sexism, misogyny and even being able to rationally debate issues which can have an impact on society, even in small ways. It doesn’t even make for good TV. But what’s worse is that this just highlights the minority who clearly are bored and look to disrupt and suck the joy out of what is basically, a hobby.

A lot of this whole cluster-f**k of a mess will have also tainted the word Feminist, given the players involved and their agendas going perhaps over the top of what the real ideal actually should be about, just being equal to all anyway.

To those stuck and embroiled in this mess, I only say this; Video games are meant to be fun, for you to enjoy as a player, to share with others and talk about like you would any other media. You all can huff and puff and blow your houses down over this all you want, go ahead, knock yourselves out. Be the defenders of truth and justice, fighting to all mankind, to make a better whatever.

I will, and I suspect many others will too, just go and play video games instead.