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Okay, having spent a lot of time in the comments of the GamerGate article, something hit me. Do any of you who have any particular games or gaming experiences that remind you of the situation with GamerGate?

For me, that would be the Legacy of Kain series. I bought LoK: Soul Reaver back in high school, on impulse. Of course, back then I had no idea the kind of convoluted storytelling and pure verbose voice-acting SEX that was to come (R.I.P. Tony Jay). Back then, though, I had no greater understanding of the LoK lore; I was vaguely aware of LoK: Blood Omen, but I had little interest in playing that one. After all, why would I want to play as the villain, Kain, particularly as I always went the paragon route with Raziel in SR1? I was Raziel, scourge of the vampires despoiling Nosgoth, and the one who would slay Kain.

And things suddenly changed when I finally got around to playing Soul Reaver 2 (on PS2; I got the PC version, but it never worked for me). Raziel’s pursuit of Kain through time suddenly grew more complicated. Vampires were revealed to be more than the decadent bloodthirsty monsters I was used to, Kain’s turning of the Sarafan and execution of Raziel were part of some larger, desperate gambit, and that other forces were at work conniving to compel Kain, Raziel, and the Pillars of Nosgoth along a path of damnation and ruin. It was a hard pill to swallow, particularly when I saw what the Sarafan priesthood was really like. And like Raziel, I burned with rage as he was misled and used at every turn. It made the final revelation at the end all the more heartbreaking. (LoK: Defiance was essentially more of the same with less in the epic dialogue department.)

More than anything, I found myself empathizing with Raziel as he sought answers to his own destiny and tried to carve a different path than those others had written for him. This came right after a time in my life when I found myself questioning a lot of my own long-held beliefs (and the media) for the first time. Like Raziel, I grew by questioning authority figures and finding my own answers. I had to learn to listen to people I might not otherwise be inclined to see the big picture and arrive at the truth. And the path to discovery was riddled with zealots and manipulators.

Gamergate, for me, has been much of the same. False narratives, extremists, corruption, cynical manipulation of others, listening to one's alleged enemies, searching for the truth, despair, and as with the ending of LoK: Defiance, hope. One scene in particular from SR2 stands out to me as applicable to GamerGate:

Anti-GG kind of reminds me of Team Plasma from Pokemon B/W. The mooks think it's for helping freeing Pokemon but the higher up dudes tricked them into doing it for their own selfish ulterior motives. N is pretty much an idealist who doesn't understand why the ideals that he wishes for everyone and the Pokemon wouldn't really work in the real world.

So yeah, essentially Anti-gg reminds me of people who are trying to do the right thing but don't understand the deeper motives of the people who are actually in question. And don't really understand why what they're doing is wrong, hypocritical or harmful to the people whom they supposedly represent. They're not really bad people but they become them by essentially following an empty cause in the naive hopes that things will become more justified and fair, and using this as a way to justify means that make them do bad things.

Kind of strange that Pokemon wrote this plot back in what? 2010?

Hauntingly prophetic.

Kind of strange that Pokemon wrote this plot back in what? 2010?

Not really, it's something that happens all the time in real life.

As for the question at hand, "does gamergate remind me of anything?" Hmm…

Nope. Can't think of anything.

I was speaking more in terms of games, actually.

Reminds me of fighting any marathon boss in Final Fantasy.
It never got particularly difficult, but JESUS HOW MUCH HP DO THOSE FUCKERS HAVE!?

This all reminds me of Infamous Second Son. We're Desmond

SJWs: Remnants of a generation of people who were necessary once but are unneeded as much in the current local environment, yet they attempt to make the entire world to conform to their views. They think they are giving liberty and freedom to the masses while doing the opposite. Consider themselves a cure for vile “evil” they think the world to be. They believe they are entitled to “fix” everything into what they believe is right, even if the world moved on a long time ago. Despite being the reason the world is as it is currently, they attempt to push their influence further. Othersiders give support because while their goals seem noble on the outside they have a hidden level of sinisterness. If Othersiders show any resistance they are deemed sub-human and eliminated. The only “pure” humans are those who are part of their group. They live in self-imposed isolation, in sealed chambers far from the “tainted” masses.

They wear sexy power armour and once tried to pump FEV into the atmosphere to kill off the entire “tainted” human population so they could restore the Earth.

Yep, they are the Enclave all right.

I keep thinking of BioShock 2.

Sofia Lamb is basically a cult leader who makes her followers follow her doctrines of what she considers "true paradise," holds a lot of hatred towards "Big Daddies" (even though her own daughter always saw one Big Daddy as a true father, and arguably a better parent than Lamb ever was), and commands "Big Sisters" to capture young girls to further her causes. Repurposing this to SJWs, Sophia Lamb is some "SJW leader" who wants all of her followers (like on Twitter or something) to follow what she considers "true feminism" (most often radical, third wave feminism) in order to "make the world safe for women" (not taking into consideration that her methods of doing so likely impose on the rights of others, and that some women may not agree with her), holds a hatred towards what she calls an "imposing figure of the patriarchy," and commands an army of fellow radical feminists to try and convert other women to her line of thinking.

I will admit MAYBE I'm stretching a bit, but I recently replayed both BioShock 1 and 2 and felt 2 seemed more fitting to what's going on.

I chortled more than the doc told me to chortle.

Addressing the person who noted that the B/W thing could be applied elsewhere… yeah, I agree. I think it was initially intended to mock PETA but that sort of behaviour occurs in lots of groups.

I think of the game children play where they playfight but then one hurts the other so they start moaning and shouting at each other.

Gamergate reminds me of Half-Life 3.

We're never seeing the end of it.

But Spider.

GG is a war .

Real talk here, GG distinctly reminds me of the major US political parties.

You've got two groups of people, each convinced that their group is a paragon of virtue destined to be vindicated by history, and that their opponents are Satan incarnate. Each has a specific set of goals they want fulfilled, and they blame any failures or setbacks on invisible conspiracies by their opponents to control the media. Most journalism is strongly biased towards one side or the other. Also, both groups enjoy accusing the members of the other group of sexual immorality.

In the end, neither group will ever get anywhere, because neither is wiling to compromise even one bit, and everyone not involved with the groups finds them incredibly irritating because of this.

…WTF am I looking at?

I'm not sure what the cause of this tribal, xenophobic mindset is, but I see it in a frighteningly large number of places. What start as minor disagreements become major feuds and then everyone hates everyone. What happened to talking out disagreements like rational adults? Why does it feel like children on the playground are more mature than grown adults at times?

I've had the sneaking suspicion that it's a product of the Internet in general. People are able to join forums or newsgroups or whatever with like-minded individuals and rarely have to accomodate alternate viewpoints if they don't care to. This becomes an ingrained, learned thing and after a while, it simply becomes expected for Bob to believe everyone he speaks with shares his viewpoints. When it turns out someone doesn't, his instincts kick into a simple "fight or flight" mode, perceiving a threat. (This is all conjecture with no source beyond my idle reflections.)

Another idea to me is that people are stressed, worn out, and simply don't have the energy to deal with things rationally. Because of something else in their life, jobs, financials issues, social woes, whatever, people find themselves tightly wound and these outbursts are a last-ditch effort to try and rectify an undesired situation. How to unstress? Unfortunately, that's a question with an answer different for each person, but generally it's "Enjoy the things you like until you're calm enough to handle the ones you don't."

She was also willing to sacrifice her own daughter "for the greater good."

But one element that differs from the current situation, I think, is Lamb's attempt to destroy the self. SJWs in general are far to narcissistic for that.

Another thing to consider is that numerous studies have shown trends of increasing narcissism and Cluster B Personality Disorders over the last few decades.

It remind me of purgatory

I mean, I guess it depends on the aspect of the debacle you're talking about. If it's twitter, then yeah. It's either depressingly or hilariously shallow and petty depending on your perspective. If its the campaign to take down Gawker Media, I think that's something wholly different.

OT:
Frankly, this event doesn't remind me of anything. I think it's troubling that so many people are associating gg with war and adventure narratives, especially ones set against fantastical backgrounds. The aggrandizement needs to stop. It's something both sides are guilty of in different ways: that picture someone posted of a lynching with captions mocking gamergate made me physically sick-- that's the anti-side aggrandizing themselves by using tragedy for shock value and viewing themselves as fighting against some great monolith of oppression. At the same time, the movement itself has had a worrying tendency to think of things in terms of stories like Warhammer 40K, which is equally worrying because stories like that are about uncompromising brutality and unsolvable hate. Basically, I think it's a sign of marked and problematic immaturity on both sides of this happening that there's such a strong tendency to talk about events in terms of much more important things and to equate themselves to much more important people and events.

it reminds me of skyrim civil war
Stormcloaks:pro gamergate
Empire:anti gamer gate
Thalmor:anita sarkesian and zoe quinn
me:paarthurnax