So fellow gaming bloggers, you got what you wanted. Under the malicious and deceiving banners of “inclusion” and “equality” and the personal attacks comprised of accusing the few who disagreed with you as being “bigots”, “racists”, “sexist”, misogynist”, “homophobes” and all the rest, gaming is pretty much dead. Oh sure, lots of games are being sold and mindless hordes roam the streets searching for a yellow figure with which to do battle, but the culture of gaming is at an historic low point. And culture is what counts, it always has.

#GamerGate was the chance to challenge the narrative but you either threw it away or you believed the lies. The greatest lie of all was that #GamerGate was about ethics in journalism. It wasn’t about that at all. Real gamers have held gaming “journalists” in disdain for decades. Even the term itself, “ethics in journalism” is an oxymoron. But that false flag was the red herring to divert attention away from the true issue at hand – the corruption of games from within. I have been fighting that creeping malaise since 2010. But I was a lone voice in the wilderness of morons, and none so more than my fellow gaming bloggers. Determined to virtue signal their noble goodness to all concerned they agreed with any and all of the SJW demands, (from the absurdity of more women statues in WoW to the dismal efforts to ban the spitting emote), while castigating people like myself as being bigoted for resisting the great tide of social justice change sweeping over gaming. Either that or they ignored the event entirely, burying their heads in the sand in the hope that all the noise and nasty people would just go away and leave them alone to play their games.

Well, how are your games going now? The thing is, if you can’t be bothered defending what you have then you will inevitably be left holding something quite different. The genius of the original WoW was both in its long term planning and in the gaming vision of the developers. But social justice is devoid of either planning or vision. It is reactionary, casting out for the platitude of the moment, the latest fad with which to virtue signal, and the greater horde of gamers that will drop the game they are currently playing and rush mindlessly to the next steaming turd briefly masquerading as an ingot of gold.

And while you play your false ingot you have a desperate wanting in the back of your hind brain, hoping beyond hope that this will be a return to the good times when games were fun and communities were vibrant. But what you don’t understand is how difficult it will be to return to those times. Our games are a reflection of the attitudes and behaviors of the people that both make and play them, and the times they have a changed. Mind you, I am as surprised as anyone that we held out for as long as we could but eventually they were bound to come for the nerds. Once they had subverted popular music, and film, and television, and universities, and books of all genres, and comics, well, they couldn’t let us continue to operate in our own little corner of the internet. They only left us alone for so long because the internet was a place for nerds to hang out and nobody wanted to be labeled as a nerd. That was until 2006 and a little invention called Facebook plunged the internet into popular consciousness.

And what of all those bloggers who advocated so strongly for the new order? Who craved the acceptance of the masses due to their shame of being at heart an internet nerd? Why, you only have to look around you. They are gone, blown to the wind, their falseness plain for all to see. Their blogs are deleted, the IP address now exhorting you to purchase it for some low price, money back guarantee, blah blah blah. They were never true gamers, they were never a part of the gaming culture. They were our enemies from within.

And the bloggers left behind, the ones that just hoped that this would all go away? They plod along, vainly trying to recapture the former good times. But they have been infected by the bad ideas left rotting in a putrid mess by those that have departed the scene of their crimes. They know that things are not right but when challenged they will still mouth the empty phrases of “homophobe” or “misogynist” without understanding why they say these things or what they are supposed to represent. Gaming blogging is dead as much as the games of which they once spoke.

So is this the end? No – why should it be? We must rebuild from the ashes that are left. Seek out new games that are being done the right way, the old way, the way before we stopped believing the truth and began believing the lies of the progressives. It’s funny, but just about every fantasy story ever written concerns a land that has lost its touch with the old ways, believed the lies of some new interloper, and fallen on bad times. I would kind of call that ironic if it wasn’t so sad. So return to the old ways we must. All we need is a simple rule to follow at all times, and the rule is as such:

Nothing matters but the game. Any change made to a game must be to improve the gaming experience. The gaming experience is defined as the enjoyment attained from playing the game.

Anything or anyone who breaks this rule must be cast out and ostracized. So someone arguing for the inclusion of any subgroup in a game for social justice reasons immediately has broken this rule. The old argument against the spitting emote breaks this rule, for your feelings are immaterial to the playability of a game. True, your feelings being hurt might affect your own enjoyment of the game but that is immaterial in the face of the general gaming experience. Anyone with an ego demented enough to place their personal and insignificant feelings before the greater gaming good must be ruthlessly expelled.

Anonymity is key. #GamerGate’s great strength is that it had no leader. Various individuals sought to place themselves in such a high position but always for their own personal benefit. That too is an example of something being done at the expense of the general good of gaming. It pains me to write all of this for it demonstrates just how much we took for granted and just how much has been discarded. But all is not yet lost. I will continue the search. You are invited to come along.