Alexander Anderson
Alexander is a lifelong gamer who used to play video games competitively. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology which gives him a unique insight in the world of gaming. You can follow him on twitter
#Gamer, an anti-GamerGate documentary by Chris Haines, was canceled over the weekend due to a lack of financial support. The project wasn’t even close to reaching their goal, as they needed $47,667 more to reach their $50,000 target.
What is #Gamer?
#Gamer was pitched as a neutral documentary on GamerGate, cutting through all the lies and manipulation by presenting both anti-GamerGate and pro-GamerGate perspectives on what the movement was all about. However, #Gamer’s brief description on its Kickstarter page tell a different tale to those actually familiar with GamerGate. It doesn’t take long to realize that this film was going to be an anti-GamerGate propaganda piece dressing itself up as a fair and balanced analysis:
“#gamer is a full-length documentary film about online harassment, ethics, and moving the video game community forward after #GamerGate.”
#gamer is a documentary about video games and the people who create, play, and talk about them.
It’s about toxicity on the internet. It’s about feminism. It’s about Twitter. It’s about how we communicate with each other. It’s about death threats and using SWAT teams as puppets. It’s about censorship. It’s about #GamerGate. And yes, it’s about ethics in games journalism.
These are all issues that have existed long before they were associated with a hashtag.
There’s a lot of misinformation about #GamerGate on all sides. Part of what we hope to accomplish is to provide a clear understanding of the people and factions involved and the series of events that has so fiercely divided the games community and the internet at large.
But it is important to note that we aren’t just looking to document the history of #GamerGate. There are plenty of YouTube videos and viral images that attempt to do that already. We are much more interested in having the conversation about how to put this past us.
There’s more than two sides to every story and rarely only one right answer. It’s our hope that by highlighting the good with the bad, we can encourage our community to start treating each other like people again, resulting in a friendlier, more positive internet for everybody.
#Gamer assumed that GamerGate was dead when it is clearly not. It’s obvious to anyone who pays attention that GamerGate is alive, kicking and kicking ass. Haines also bought into the assumption that gaming communities are divided because of GamerGate, when they aren’t.
Furthermore, Haines was parroting one of anti-GamerGate’s biggest talking points: making the Internet a more positive place for everybody by fighting “harassment” and creating “safe spaces.” They want everyone to be governed by overly restrictive rules because they themselves are sent into frothing hysterics by stuff they read online. They want everyone to be on their absolute best behavior, as if we’re high schoolers trying to impress our girlfriends’ parents.
If people want to act the same way they do in real life, they wouldn’t be on the Internet to begin with. How fragile are SJWs that they get offended by almost everything?
Anti-GamerGate: The Movie
More evidence of #Gamer’s anti-GG bias can be seen in the documentary trailer, which has no GamerGate supporters. Professional victims Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn once again rear their ugly faces, repeating their predictable talking points. Ironically, Wu and Quinn still consider themselves “gamers” despite spending more time working on films and documentaries than on developing actual games. In fact, I don’t remember the last time they talked about video games without complaining about the “toxic” culture of gaming.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, #Gamer wasn’t planning to address any of the issues that GamerGate has banged on about. They instead focused on the false narrative established by SJWs that is already heavily reinforced by the mainstream media. In doing so, they missed an opportunity to focus on the root of the problem: corruption in gaming journalism.
#Gamer didn’t receive any funding because it doesn’t bring anything new to GamerGate. Anti-GamerGate already has the entire mainstream media backing up their narrative for free. GamerGate supporters aren’t going to shell money out for a documentary that insults them and lies about them.
Read More: How Did Jennie Bharaj’s BasedGamer.com Meet Its Funding Goal?
