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Comment by skotobaza | Hacker News Reader

> SKG people are mostly immature and tend to overreact

How so? What's immature about the desire to keep games functional?

I suppose the charitable interpretation is that those who would invest considerable time campaigning for this are deeply into gaming, which is an activity typically associated with younger people.

There’s also the fact that through events like Gamergate, the term “gamer” has become highly charged and is not something most adults would want to be associated with.

That's an interesting point of view. For me, people who advocate for preservation are usually older because they remember the times when you could just buy games and they would keep working forever. While younger people were born into the world where online games is the norm so they don't expect everything to last long.

I’m sure the preservation folks will tend to be older, but they’re still going to end up grouped with all other gamers.

It’s a deeply unfortunate association. The “gamer” identity is toxic to the point where “gamer word” means “racial slur”.

I think with younger generations the perception shifted quite a bit. Gaming has become so normal that people with "radical" views and behavior are now in minority. Also the other aspects affected this - livestreaming is a good example where you need to be on your best behavior to not get banned or canceled.

Are you sure? Ask yourself, how are women treated when they join the voice chat?

More or less sure, but not 100% of course. Women are treated a bit better in my experience compared to say 10 or 15 years ago. Unfortunately, I haven't played many competitive games in the last couple of years, but before that rather than being insulted there were two outcomes: women were either treated normally (well as normal as it can get during heated rounds) or they were being hit on (I witnessed it a couple of times myself). The popularity of streaming also helped a bit since a lot of streamers are women.

Gamergate has nothing to do with the SKG initiative.

It’s a bad look to have to explicitly deny things like this.

You brought it up, what do you mean? If one were to bring up allegations of you associating with unpopular movements, would you not clear your name? Having checked your post history, I have to genuinely ask if you're a troll account.

I didn’t suggest that the two were directly related.

You made the association. You literally brought them up yourself.

I simply pointed out that gaming and especially gamers have some pretty extreme negative connotations, which is true.

I could dump you links to research detailing the connections between the online gaming community and right wing extremism, but I’m pretty sure you know what I’m talking about.

“Gamer” is basically synonymous for “neo-nazi incel”, and GSK refers to itself as a “global coalition of gamers”. That’s a pretty bad look!

Have you ever touched grass? You could also argue that posting in an online message board is linked with right wing extremism because there are right wing extremists posting stuff online.

Ask women how it goes if they pop into voice chat in a multiplayer game. Ask an AAVE speaker how people react to them while gaming.

Are you really going to tell me that the average gamer is just as bad as the average internet user?

It’s kind of hilarious to be having this conversation with “ептсука”, certainly a fitting name for someone who would defend gamers as nice people.

Gamers are more than just people playing DOTA and Counter Strike and COD and Destiny.

I don’t doubt it, but those are the loudest, most deeply invested voices.

This inherently affects how outsiders will view gamers, which is why GSK branding themselves as such is a mistake.

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