Sorry, have you not been on the internet since The Force Awakens came out? Star Wars fans (well, “fans”) have been screaming bloody murder about the franchise being “ruined” by SJWs and Kathleen Kennedy. They bullied Kelly Marie Tran off of Twitter. They submitted a petition in Aurebesh to strike The Last Jedi from canon. People who enjoyed The Last Jedi are frequently told to kill themselves. Chuck Wendig has several stalkers and trollies who harass him constantly because of the tie-in novels he wrote. There is a lot of fucked up shit happening in the Star Wars fandom right now.
Gamergate was exploited by right-wing people like Adam Baldwin (who coined it) and Christina Sommers. They took a relatively small hate mob aimed largely at Zoë Quinn (whipped up by her piece of shit boyfriend after she dumped him) and pointed it square at the eternal targets of right-wing ideology: feminism and diversity, growing its base by reframing it in more “neutral” terms, like “it’s about ethics in game journalism” (never mind the multitude of actual ethical issues in the gaming journalism niche like the paid reviews and industry-dictated access to pre-release copies of games based on fealty… there are WOMEN INVOLVED). Outlets like Kotaku and Polygon that had spoken positively about people like Anita Sarkeesian (or even just mentioned similar opinions about the state of gaming) were targeted because of their stances on diversity and inclusiveness, underscored by an idiotic demand that games journalism be “objective” (in much the same way conservatives cast aspersions against mainstream journalism for being “biased”). It’s not the same playbook because it was ported from Gamergate to the 2016 election, it’s the same playbook because conservatives (and later even more right-wing movements like neo-Nazis) applied an old standard to a new source of bubbling resentment.
They’ve repeated this playbook in comic books (remember the outrage over female Thor, or the black girl who became Iron Man?), movies (see Star Wars above, though the seeds of this in mainstream coverage go back to at least Idris Elba being cast as Heimdall), TV shows (to pull a seemingly impossible but actually real example from left field: there are neo-Nazi and alt-right bronies in the MLP fandom. They have a mascot. She’s a white pony with blonde hair named Aryanne. I am not joking.), and literature (the Sad Puppies trying to brigade the Hugo awards nomination and votingprocess, led by noted misogynist Vox Day).
In every instance, these have been spaces that were formerly perceived to be the sole provenance of (young) straight cis white men, in which marginalized communities have finally begun to make their voices heard. These communities are frequently outgrowths of nerd or pop culture, and I think it’s because of the deep emotional attachments people have with these products that the backlash has been as intense as it is. Those attachments are actively encouraged by the corporations that produce those products, because it’s profitable, and they can run so deep that they become part of a person’s identity. That can turn toxic fast. Anyone critiquing video games, or comic books, or movies—or making changes to those things—is not just someone doing something different or trying to spark a dialogue, they’re committing an attack on the identity of the people who enjoy those things.
Again, none of this is unique to games, and not all of it is even related to politics. A lot of it is just shitty people being given an opportunity to be shitty without any fear of repercussions. If gaming seems to be disproportionately represented in the shit-slingers, consider that gaming as a community largely grew up at the same time as the internet (and was in the same demographic as those with prodigious internet access and free time to use it), so much of its fan base is also internet-savvy, and there’s a massive cross-over between male-heavy tech culture and male-heavy gaming culture (and in both cases, women were actively excluded from being marketed to or supported once those things became remotely profitable or desirable).
The alt-right is just one outgrowth of the toxicity poisoning that hanging out in the depths of the internet engenders. The sorts of places where being edgy makes you cool, where liking things is bad (see also: “cringe culture”), and where causing offense and even trauma is a way to show how “above it all” you are. Mods are asleep, post child porn. Trick people into looking at goatse or 2girls1cup or lemon party. It’s all just “lulz”, I’m only joking, stop being so sensitive. Gaming, as a medium that grew up largely in the age of the internet, is particularly thick with these shitty wannabe edgelord idiots, but it’s not the video games that are the cause. It’s ultimately a result of the toxic definition of masculinity permeating our entire culture that drives boys and men to bury their feelings and their empathy, combined with how easy it is to “other” people when you can’t see them face-to-face, and that’s a practice that’s as old as time itself.
