If I remember correctly, the gamergate controversy was about a female indie developer dating a male indie game journalist. I can imagine why that would make people search for conflicts of interests.
That journalist briefly mentioned her work once (before she started dating that abusive boyfriend), so conflict of interest argument never made any sense, because... you know, he never actually wrote a review of any of her games.
It then spiralled even more out of control, targetting even more female developers for even more bullshit reasons. Brianna Wu was the target because she mocked Gamergate. Felicia Day was doxxed just for saying she was scared to even mock Gamergate (knowing what happened to Wu). Anita Sarkeesian for daring to kickstart a YouTube series about how women are represented in video games.
In other words, Gamergate was about absolutely nothing but misogyny.
My take is/was similar to David Pakman's: there's evidence of non ethical behavior in the videogame journalism and how the topic was handled, but so what? it's not really one of the greatest issues that plague mankind at this moment. With that in mind, I bear no doubt that the whole thing was astroturfed to culture war topic by right talking heads. But this is in my opinion mishandled on the left, as I dare to say most of the people following the event were not really involved in politics, and were fed a narrative by the misogynists and anti-sjw types.
I could very likely be wrong and have been misled about the core issue of Gamergate. Thanks for the kind correction!
What actually happened is pretty well-documented: a woman developer made a short game about dealing with depression to which various people then responded with rape and death threats; her ex-boyfriend lied about her sleeping with a gaming journalist in exchange for good reviews (the only things said journalist ever wrote about her work was before they met); and thousands of people then jumped on that as a justification for further harassment, doxxing, and wild conspiracy theories that persist to this day.
With that said, I'm not saying it was justified. Gamers are biased against women, yes. Gamers overreact and harass people who don't deserve it, yes. But they don't just harass any woman who publishes games, there are thousands of women who do that and nobody cares. It requires a spark, just like a twitter mob, and they become relentless attacking the target. And of course, if you accuse them of misogyny here they start attacking you, since they didn't attack her due to misogyny, similarly how when a twitter mob attacks a man with little evidence they don't do it due to misandry, they just attack someone they think did something wrong.
> instead of attacking her for cheating the game review system.
Again, he never reviewed any of her games, so unless your argument is that no game journalist should ever date any game developer under any circumstances, what system was she cheating exactly?
For example, lets say a twitter mob attacks a man for something he didn't do. Is that misandry? No, they did it thinking he actually did it.
Why does it matter so much to you whether or not 60%, or 59% of the people engaging in the harassment were sexist?
It is still bad, regardless if we get the literal exact percentage correctly of precisely how sexist each individual was.
Once again -- men got mad because a woman dared to release a game that didn't cater to their expectations or desires. That's Gamergate in a nutshell.