Gamergate and the Peculiar State of Geek Masculinity in the Gaming Space

Gamergate is a social movement that was based on protecting the identity of videogame players, or “gamers” and fighting against perceived progressive shifts in the gaming industry, specifically in journalism. Gaming is traditionally seen as a “male space” in the wider world. While anyone can be a gamer, within the gaming community, the concept of masculinity runs deeply in the discourse, both in and outside of the games. In 2016, this came to a head with Gamergate, which started online and quickly grew into a global phenomenon. The rise of Gamergate speaks to the deeper, often hidden, roots of the gaming community. It is part and parcel of more general trends tied to reinforcing patriarchy and toxic masculinity.

The rise of Gamergate speaks to the deeper, often hidden, roots of the gaming community. It is part and parcel of more general trends tied to reinforcing patriarchy and toxic masculinity.

Gamergate, through social media, exposed issues with “geek masculinity” and identity politics and became a potent object of discussion. Studying it helps to reveal how games fit into right-wing supremacist tendencies and how the gaming community can be weaponized by and for far-right movements and political change they hope to inaugurate. Here, I begin to piece together the puzzle of how and why so many male gamers unwittingly believed in the Gamergate pathology, which continues to permeate the community even now. This is a brief introduction, and its rise should be further analyzed to understand how current-day radicalization occurs within male spaces.

The Birth of Gamergate: Harassment, Doxing, and “Ethics”

The Gamergate frenzy has been well-documented. It started as a harassment campaign against a video game developer, Zoe Quinn, who was accused by their ex-boyfriend of sleeping with journalists in exchange for giving their games favorable reviews. The targeting of Quinn is a case study in itself. They were an up-and-coming female video game developer at the time (they later would come out as non-binary) and, in 2013, they made a game called “Depression Quest.” This game was free and received well, but became a target for 4chan users. It subverted the violent norms that many gamers are both accustomed to and prefer, while also articulating a female experience of depression. This combination was especially aggravating to male geeks and self-proclaimed “adult virgins,” because many of them blame women for their lack of sexual experiences. Additionally, the game represented something so different from the accepted norm of what a game can or should be to many of these gamers. The way that the game centered on mental health was anathema to many gamers who encountered it, as they could not accept games that did not fit their worldview. The reaction to this game and subsequent harassment of Quinn is widely accepted as the event that started Gamergate. The way the gaming community, and especially those within the Gamergate movement, saw what was supposed to be a video game of a kind typically accepted, and how it can be related to their harassment of people like Quinn, is illustrated by this case.

Zoe Quinn’s harassment was a semi-coordinated campaign that harnessed levels of hate that had not been seen before, especially in the smaller gaming culture of that time. They were constantly doxed and threatened with violence, including by an online group trying to convince Quinn to commit suicide. Other female figures associated with gaming were also targeted. Another game developer, Brianna Wu, was doxed after making a joke about Gamergate. The actor Felicia Day was doxed and threatened after writing about her sense of estrangement from the gaming community due to the fear that Gamergate started. What made doxing such a “useful” and common tool for Gamergate groups was that it did not require a strictly coordinated hate campaign to be used. Publicizing information about someone’s house can be given without giving any kind of specific order (or message). Those posting the information can likely rationalize that viewers will come to their conclusions on what to do with it, but this allows the doxers to maintain plausible deniability.

However, the most infamous example was possibly Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist who made videos about women’s representation in video games. She was a target of both harassment and criticism for these. Bloggers and YouTubers insulted her and even explicitly justified the online abuse of her; Phil Mason, also known as “thunderf00t,” argued that such behavior is “part of the public marketplace of ideas.” It should be noted that, for many of the prominent figures of Gamergate, there was a profit-motive behind all this, in addition to ideological commitments—Mason alone, previously only a modestly successful blogger, became a proprietor of a Patreon making between $2000 and $7000 per month.

Any argument that would enable the movement to persist and be palatable to outsiders was on the table. They cloaked much of their harassment within arguments about “ethics in games journalism,” accusing gaming companies and journalists of colluding to give favorable reviews and coverage to their games. For example, the aforementioned accusation of Zoe Quinn sleeping with journalists for favorable reviews. According to these ideologues, Gamergate was a movement against corruption in the gaming industry. However, the real goal was to protest the perceived push for feminism in gaming, against the wishes of “real gamers.” This ostensible motivation, alongside the “marketplace of ideas” defense used in the harassment of Anita Sarkeesian, gave the impression that the harassment was a kind of “intellectual dialogue.” This had the effect of framing those who called out the harassment as hysterical and disingenuous.

Algorithms, “Geek Masculinity,” and Who Qualifies as a “Gamer”?

Gamergate brought together a rather unnatural group of people. It was not unified—many individuals acted of their own accord, some colluded with others, but never with the whole group. Some proponents of Gamergate did not even know why it began in the first place. Motivations for aligning with the movement varied from person to person. However, the movement became incredibly popular due to its prominence in geek and nerd spaces on the internet. Algorithms and social media platforms foster all kinds of communities, which can lead to patterns and cultures being expanded. Social media sites like Reddit will always prioritize showing content with the most engagement—likes or views, for example—even if it is offensive or toxic. The gaming communities within Reddit, such as r/Games, r/gaming, or r/PCMasterRace, foster geek cultures and ideas, which participants of Gamergate utilized to fuel their movement.

Thus, posts supporting Gamergate became very popular in these communities, and algorithms struggled to suppress prominent posts with hateful messaging. If the algorithm sees a new post gaining popularity quickly, it will promote it further, causing a snowball effect. Censorship is a genuine concern raised by many on the internet, and social media more specifically. Thus, social media companies are faced with a tough choice whenever they are asked, by whomever, to participate in censorship wars, whether by censoring or by allowing certain content to be posted. They often try to remain as “impartial” or “neutral” as possible, not touching anything deemed “political,” like Gamergate. This was certainly the case on Reddit; however, it is arguably also true of Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook—all mainstream platforms that are popular with people who play games as a hobby. The problem with this approach is that remaining neutral means simply refusing to act, and this inaction both directly emboldens further toxicity and radicalization, and creates a “circular” problem whereby “those who do not see themselves or their views reflected in the subreddits populating /r/all,” for instance, “might choose to not participate,” thus indirectly making the hateful posts more visible and potent by driving out those who would otherwise make posts that compete with the hateful messages in the algorithm.

Despite their portrayal in popular media, geeks and gamers do often have a type of masculinity about them tied to themes concerning individualism, competitiveness and aggression, technical competence, and innovation.

Gamergate benefited from how social media platforms work, but the deeper root causes of Gamergate lie in geek and gaming cultures themselves and the new political economy they came to benefit from. Despite their portrayal in popular media, geeks and gamers do often have a type of masculinity about them tied to themes concerning individualism, competitiveness and aggression, technical competence, and innovation. In our contemporary age of technological advancement, the gold rush of profits to be found in the high-tech service sector transformed the image of experts and leaders according to this “geek masculinity.” Today, the image of the Silicon Valley CEO or engineer often overlaps with that of the geek, forming a new image of the, very often white, “Tech Bro.” Thus, many of these men feel like they have an “ownership” of technology and games that have historically been designed by and marketed for a white, straight male consumer.

Additionally, masculine spaces often provide opportunities for individuals to show “solidarity” for the in-group, whether by parroting ideas agreed upon by the group or acting in ways that support the dominant geek masculinity. This leads to a concerted effort to define and ostracize the “out group” or the Other. A major desire of this community is to keep the things that they consider “theirs” away from the Other. The effect of games getting more popular and mainstream is that more and different kinds of people begin to identify with the label “gamer.” They then begin entering spaces that the men we have been discussing believe exist for them alone. People of a different gender, race, or ethnicity are thus perceived as outsiders, frauds, or “normies” who are not true, real gamers like the in-group. Gamergate reflects this impulse and ideology. The desire to fight against “ethics in games journalism,” “Social Justice Warriors,” or just “feminism” was, and still is, a dog whistle, at best, to harshly criticize minorities—racial, sexual, or otherwise. This happens whether they are simply gamers, developers of games, or even characters within the games; if they do not meet the qualifications and stereotypes ordered by this hegemonic geek masculinity that geek masculinity, they must be condemned and harassed.

The received archetype of “gamer” increasingly clashes with realities concerning the demographics of video game consumption and participation. Due to this, groups that are not straight, cis, white, and/or male are labeled as “outsiders” regardless of experience in, or dedication to, the community. Even as games become more popular and more diverse types of people become gamers, large cohorts within gaming spaces try to ostracize and segregate members of these “outside” communities. There is an effort to make gaming an industry only for the “true gamer.” When one interrogates and learns who that gamer is, it becomes clear what Gamergate was about. It is a movement designed to isolate rather than include.

The Price of Apoliticism

Unabated radicalization and toxicity in the gaming community neither occurs only due to a lack of moderation from social media, nor only from its combination with longstanding, reactionary tendencies within gaming communities. Game companies themselves have a role to play (or not play, given that inaction on their part is the primary issue). Given the frequent backlash they face regarding issues related to moderating misogyny or harassment, companies often claim they are apolitical. This claim, at face value, is true and seen as a lauded defense, given that many people do not want companies to get directly involved in politics. However, there is a consequence to be paid for social media platforms and gaming companies being “apolitical”: their silence allows extremist groups to openly normalize and indoctrinate players into their beliefs, as well as target minority groups within the community without punishment.

There is a consequence to be paid for social media platforms and gaming companies being “apolitical”: their silence allows extremist groups to openly normalize and indoctrinate players into their beliefs, as well as target minority groups within the community without punishment.

These consequences can move offline, into the real world: the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was entirely organized on Discord. The forums of both Discord and the Valve Corporation’s digital game store, Steam, are rampant with extremist activity and rhetoric. The latter is a lesser-known site and has received less attention from academics, but it is incredibly popular and important for the gaming community, primarily those engaged in personal computer (PC) gaming. Steam’s platform allows any game sold on their website to host an online forum, if the creators allow it, which opens the door to many of the behaviors and problems we have been discussing above.

The first thing to note concerning gaming companies themselves is that certain games they design, such as those that allow players to commit acts of violence or uncritically lead an authoritarian state, lead to extremist rhetoric being spread more naturally and easily. Paradox Games’ Hearts of Iron IV (2024) allows players to play as the Nazis, take part in historic campaigns against the Allied Powers, and defeat them. It takes an open-minded approach to this historical portrayal. You can play as any actor within the historical conflict, such as the US, the UK, the USSR, etc. The Nazis are just one of the many optional campaigns to choose at the start of a playthrough. While it does make attempts to accurately portray some of the horrific events and military strategies of the war, it notably leaves something out: the Holocaust.

Additionally, the game is designed in a way that incentivizes players to act similarly to how a chosen state acted during the war. Picking the Nazis leads to the player building a relationship with the army, and while this does give the player an interesting portrayal of what motivated the army to go to war, it also gives the player either unintended or hidden messaging that the Nazis were able to make an efficient society, with Hitler as a leader who, “gets things done”. As a result, when one visits Steam forums (as well as other affiliated communities on other platforms such as Discord or Reddit), they are met with visible Alt-right views and pro-Nazi propaganda about the Second World War, which is projected onto many of the users. Even if the game’s portrayal of the war is at best “neutral,” it is the community engagement of gaming that allows the Alt-right to radicalize unsuspecting gamers. Paradox Games’ hands-off approach to history is a flawed one, because it can end up showing controversial figures or groups in more of a positive light, making it prime ground for far-right movements to push their talking points.

The practical impact of doing nothing is condoning something else, even if one does not intend to. Being “hands off” or apolitical is very much political, as it condones whatever extreme ideas run wild on these forums. This is not to say that gaming companies should be charged with engineering only faithful representations of life and history. They are not historical experts; they are game developers. However, they have a responsibility not to actively give players the wrong idea and to attempt to represent historical events as accurately as possible. Game companies like Paradox Games are usually concerned that their games will become “political,” and thereby that they will forfeit prospective audiences. And indeed, gamers often indicate that political messaging in games is forced or unwelcome. But the fact of the matter is that games, especially games like Hearts of Iron IV, are incredibly political. Thus, while gamers claim to hate politics of any kind in games, in reality they very often turn a blind eye to particular political messages, implicit or more overt.

The Political Nature of Games

To return to Gamergate, the issue at hand, we can say that much of the outcry from its supporters in the initial era, and arguably still today, concerns exactly this fear of “politics” entering games. Games have a unique trait not shared by other forms of media: there is a high degree of immersion, wherein the participant can directly affect what goes on in the fictional world. This kind of immersion is a selling point, a genuine appeal to many consumers that has only gotten stronger through technological innovation. Games, in this way, can introduce many to new experiences and ideas, but can also affirm deep-seated biases. Moreover, there is no guarantee about what character these new experiences and ideas will take: these can just as likely be progressive as reactionary. Looking at some of the most popular games, like World of Warcraft (2004), Resident Evil (1996), Grand Theft Auto III (2001), and various game series linked to the World Wars, such as Call of Duty or Battlefield, we see narratives, mechanics, and representations that reflect racial and structural inequalities, with some of them even having extremist worldviews themselves.

The Call of Duty series is a potent example of this, weaving antisemitism and islamophobia into many of the campaigns undertaken by the heroes of the gameplay. It also promulgates narratives that hint at white male supremacy. It must also be acknowledged that Call of Duty has, in many ways, been deeply entangled with the American military and intelligence community, and that the game’s campaigns (based on real historical events in the Second World War, the Cold War, and the Middle East) therefore, and unsurprisingly, are unequivocally supportive of the United States’ own wars abroad, which has the effect of justifying American foreign policy narratives and imperialism. This soft push of masculinist supremacy should not be surprising, as the game developer industry is primarily white and male-dominated, making biases much harder to identify. Even if developers try to criticize right-wing ideology, it can fall short because only certain perspectives are allowed, as was the case with Far Cry 5.

In Far Cry 5, the player is tasked with fighting and capturing a group of rogue Christian leaders who have taken over parts of the rural United States. The narrative’s messaging is very heavy, in that it is both a harsh criticism of the right-wing ideology that the game’s villains constantly preach, and of the United States more broadly, its culture, its electoral politics, etc. Despite this, it misses the mark: the game portrays its villains as ineffective and inept but avoids declaring that their ideology is actually wrong, allowing a player with right-wing views to maintain them without self-reflection. After all, they are not bad because of their racist or misogynist views, but because they are shooting at you, and are unorganized terrorists that you are ordered to shoot.

When it comes to these issues, it is incredibly hard for minority developers, such as black people, women, or LGBTQ+ people, to offer other perspectives when they are usually ostracized, uncredited, or even harassed by others. This is especially true when these minority developers have risen to prominence in the industry, as made clear by the cases of Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian that we began with above. Additionally, some gamers criticize or judge certain games for their genre of choice or for how they are constructed, for not being “real games.” Some have even criticized or passed on games that are seen as “too feminine,” for instance, such as Candy Crush or Animal Crossing, to entire genres like fashion games. All of this, then, reveals the political nature and political pressures of games and the industry and consumers who support them, all of which is both part of our broader culture and a niche subculture within it.

Player Control and Fantasy Maintenance

When gamers cannot, or do not, alter the games they play through modding, they are forced to interact with games as they are, and this interaction can be a complex one wherein right-wing gamers’ fantasies and ideologies clash with, or are forced to accommodate, games that explicitly or implicitly challenge the white hegemonic masculinity that these gamers bring to their play. Most games are at least susceptible to co-optation and can come to promote right-wing ideologies, as the example of Far Cry 5 above demonstrates. However, sometimes a game’s integral design and structure can make that co-optation a more challenging feat than one would expect. In 2018, Rockstar Studios released a game called Red Dead Redemption II (hereafter Red Dead 2). Within this game, the player controls Arthur Morgan, a member of a gang led by the charismatic leader, Dutch van der Linde. The gang is a band of ragtag outlaws of different ethnicities, ages, and genders who are on the run from the law and are trying to survive in a fictional American Southwest landscape circa 1899. As Arthur, the player must do whatever they can to support the gang and its financial fortunes. As the gunslinging outlaw they are, they can rob, steal, and kill for money. The caveat being that this behavior risks getting the character the gamer is playing in trouble with the law, with all the consequences that this entails for the game’s playthrough.

Unlike its predecessor, and other games portraying the American frontier, Red Dead 2 is incredibly committed to historical realism as well as portraying progressive politics. The game could be considered a contemporary progressive’s interpretation of the Progressive Era (roughly 1890-1920), a view which one of the creators has confirmed. It portrays different ethnicities, like African Americans, Mexicans, and Native Americans, as well as women, showing the struggles and injustices that they face in that setting. The gang itself features an African American and a Mexican, along with a half-Black, half-indigenous character, and the multiple women who are important to the plot and are treated as equals in the gang. 

The depictions of this era are not necessarily meant to be literal; instead, the intention is to capture a particular moment of American history, where ideas of progressivism spread near the end of, and as reaction to, the “Gilded Age”—an era that is depicted through the van der Linde gang’s infiltration of and intermingling with incredibly wealthy social elites (the kind of elites who were, of course, characteristic of that age). All this is to say that Red Dead 2’s depictions of its era are unlike the typical “Western,” which tends to uncritically portray similar settings and epochs as dominated by white males. Not only are a diversity of characters shown; they are actually treated with the same degree of humanity and respect as the white male characters, a task games like Call of Duty fail to live up to.

Red Dead 2 also manages to update the politics of the Progressive Era for its contemporary American audience, depicting issues of racial and gender inequality, immigration, and poverty (among others) that audiences can easily point to as issues that still exist today. Using the “Western” to more seriously analyze aspects of American culture and ideas was nothing new by the time Red Dead 2 was released, but it nonetheless marked an important moment within the larger movement of creators who were critically appraising the American Western’s hero narrative and its significance in American media and culture. This narrative is incredibly comforting to audiences, especially for white men, and was what the gaming community, subconsciously or not, was expecting Red Dead 2 to be prior to its release. Upon its release, however, it was clear that the game’s politics seemed to grapple with the priors of the more conservative audience that played it.

Criticisms of Red Dead 2’s incorporation of progressive ideas were common. The backlash the game received in some circles was also tied to expectations related to the company that created it, Rockstar Games. In its games, Rockstar puts an emphasis on the freedom of control. Games like Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) were lauded for being a sort of “sandbox” game, where the player’s actions dictated the world around them in direct and immediate ways. These games also came with their own stories, side stories, dubbed missions (which Red Dead 2 also has), and established characters. All that said, the main enjoyment to be found in these games lies in the ability to go around and create one’s fun, so to speak. This element is certainly present in Red Dead 2, as well.  

In the game, the player can do anything as Arthur Morgan, from helping out random passersby to slaughtering entire towns for any or no reason. However, the narrative of the game is something else, and makes specific points that challenge what right-wing players see as “realistic.” The game’s “missions,” or campaigns, force the player to interact with diverse groups of people and alert one to their struggles. For example, at one point, the player is tasked with protecting an African American doctor who is to be lynched; at another, they are tasked with protecting and transporting a group of suffragettes to a speaking event. This latter example was the subject of some of the most fierce backlash from gamers, as evidenced by a now-infamous YouTube video wherein a player controlling Arthur forces him to beat a suffragette, hogtie them, feed them to an alligator, leave them on the tracks of an oncoming train, and other violent acts. The video received thousands of views. This is not a part of any mission or story event; the player in question went out of his way to do this. While there are systems in this game that punish the player for committing violence, it still lets them do it. The YouTube video in question fed into a lot of outrage, and many comments on it used it as a jumping-off point to complain about how much they hate women in real life. Others mockingly criticized the fact that, despite being able to mass murder people, Arthur Morgan never stoops to the level of being racist or sexist—another way of lambasting the game’s politics.

Some right-wing gamers came to suggest that Red Dead 2 was anti-white and anti-men, but even without going this far, it was clear that the game was a shock to many in this part of the gaming community. For these players, games are not just products—they are supposed to be vehicles for affirming the right-wing values of the gamer consuming them. As seen previously with other popular mainstream games, a soft selling point is that these gamers get to exhibit “masculine” traits via the avatars and systems of the game, which can help affirm these gamers’ masculinity and ideas about the world at large.

The Struggle Continues

Combining and taking advantage of the structural characteristics of social media platforms and their algorithms, the history and contours of geek masculinity, and the politics of games as an industry and medium, Gamergate represented a deeply-rooted tendency that has never been, and still struggles to be, properly addressed in the gaming community. As a way of concluding, we should stress that video games are not inherently right-wing in any sense. They are also not inherently progressive or anything else. Like movies and books, video games are a medium that can reflect creators, their biases, and their target audiences. There is just as much potential for progressive games as regressive ones, and games, for the majority of players, are primarily judged by their overall quality and not by their political content.

We must not, then, sacrifice the identity of “gamer” or conflate it with right-wing ideology, even those strains of right-wing ideology more specific to the gaming community. That said, we must also acknowledge that a movement like Gamergate was able to emerge for a reason. Even now, years after Gamergate fizzled out, there is often a concerted effort to identify games that are “woke” and to promote games that do imbibe the tenets of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) “agenda.” Those pushing these efforts use words like “DEI” and “woke” to describe games or companies they do not like or that seem to promote ideas that are anathema to their ideology; still, these labels and accusations have gained purchase within the wider gaming community, even amongst members who are not as ideologically zealous as many of Gamergate’s participants were and are.

We must not, then, sacrifice the identity of “gamer” or conflate it with right-wing ideology, even those strains of right-wing ideology more specific to the gaming community. That said, we must also acknowledge that a movement like Gamergate was able to emerge for a reason.

What this means is that, while Gamergate did indeed die off, the root causes of why Gamergate happened never truly went away, and we must soberly confront that fact and those root causes. In a sense, the grievances at the heart of Gamergate are due to be exacerbated: capitalism’s guiding logics mean that the gaming industry will continue to seek out new markets, new audiences, from whom it can draw profits. This means, by extension, that a more diverse array of players and voices will ultimately enter the gaming community. Subscribers to the ideology of Gamergatism, if you will, must therefore contend with the fact that other types of “gamers” do exist, always have, and always will. Gamergate, as a potent social phenomenon, now ceases to exist, but the victims of its abuse live on. Anita Sarkeesian still does feminist work, and Zoe Quinn is still alive and active in the community today. Their works and lives arguably help the gaming industry recognize that having more diverse voices makes for better narratives and games, in spite of Gamergate’s best attempts to silence them. Their work, while not perfect, should be recognized for its impact. Despite the harassment, threats, and general attacks they faced at the hands of the online right wing, they survived it and persevered, and, in the process, helped make change for the better. Proponents of liberty and equality must continue to be just as visible, active, and alive within and without the gaming community.

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Michael Bilica is an MA student at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. He is currently studying International Affairs with a focus on Asian foreign affairs, particularly Japanese foreign affairs. He has a passion for video games and wants to raise further awareness of their impact on culture, politics, and art through the lens of international affairs.