Abundance vs. Scarcity – GamerGaters Worldview Perspective

The worldview of GamerGaters mimics, in many ways, that of conservative Republicans. People with a conservative understanding of the world see everything as being limited. Jobs, natural resources, money, women, etc. This worldview leads Republicans toward advocating policies that allow for hoarding, because they desire to hold onto and gain power, because if you don’t take it – you’ll lose it to someone else who will take it.

The reality, of course, is that it is possible to exist in a society where most people have enough to comfortably survive and advance and wealthy people aren’t threatened and are able to prosper as well.

In the game industry, this is particularly relevant. At no other time in gaming history has it been so easy and cheap to make games. Anyone can make any game they like, and if it is executed well (regardless of content) there is probably a market for it.

This makes the complaints about feminists ruining games so utterly ridiculous. Creating a wider diversity of games with different content can do nothing to harm people who enjoy their male-pandering games full of all of the tropes about male power, female objectification, etc. There’s a market for those games, and those games will be made.

This deep fear illustrated by GamerGaters comes from a feeling of having power and trying desperately to hold on to it. Sadly, their only power is that of a consumer, and as marketers and advanced statisticians/economists understand where the biggest gains in making money in a diverse market will come from… they are squandering their power away by behaving so poorly.

If a key demographic of your game drives away all of your other consumers, that is a liability. As a sad and pathetic movement, GamerGaters are making themselves scarce.