#GamerGate. This single hashtag has managed to tear apart a group of people and reveal all that is wrong with gaming as a whole.

I loved video games. I grew up playing the Super Nintendo, the Nintendo 64, the Playstation 2, the Wii and the Xbox 360. I even started to collect games I had missed out on as a kid.

And yet this movement has managed to polarize me and drive me away from something I once had a passion for. And so I have to say, #GamerGate will kill any chance games have of being considered art.

For those of you who have remained blissfully ignorant of the civil war that has exploded inside of video game culture, I will give you the quick rundown. #GamerGate started as an uproar decrying corruption in the games media, after a spurned lover revealed that Zoe Quinn, the developer of a game called “Depression Quest,” had intimate relationships with several professional game journalists.

The conversation hardly revolved around corruption as many on the Internet began to harass Quinn, calling her things like “whore,” and “slut,” threatening her and her family with rape and murder, and even leaking her home address and other personal information in a process known as doxing, to the point where she no longer felt safe in her home, and subsequently moved.

Similar practices have fallen on those who have been seen by #GamerGate as a threat to the games industry. One such person is feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian. You see, Sarkeesian had decided to launch a project on her blog “Feminist Frequency,” entitled “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” in which she examined the subtle and not so subtle examples of sexism in video games.

This launched a tirade of attacks very similar to those sent to Quinn, including similar doxing attacks. Most recently, a man who acknowledged himself as a member of #GamerGate, sent a threat that if Sarkeesian didn’t cancel her speech at Utah State University, that he would use the different automatic weapons and pipe bombs to kill as many people at the event as possible. Sarkeesian requested that additional metal detectors be placed at the entrances to the event, but the Utah State Police refused to comply due to Utah’s concealed carry laws, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Simply put, #GamerGate is an assault on feminism and differing ideals in video games. Despite the threats focusing on women, and those who defend women, many members of #GamerGate insist they are fighting corruption. But of those people, I ask, where were the death threats when Microsoft paid the Youtube channel Machinima for positive coverage of their new console, the Xbox One, when the contract stipulated that, despite the blatant disregard for Federal Trade Commission regulations, the agreement not be disclosed to the viewer?

Where were the rape threats when the public relations company Plaid Social refused to release review code to reviewers who didn’t sign an agreement to withhold negative comments about the game “Shadow of Mordor?” They didn’t exist, because #GamerGate isn’t about corruption in the game industry, and games media, it is about driving out feminists, and so called “social justice warriors,” from gaming.

And this is why #GamerGate will be the end of video games as a legitimate art form. Without people like Sarkeesian critiquing the social and cultural implications of games, they can never be seen as art. And without people like Quinn creating games like “Depression Quest,” that push the limits of games as art, we will never see their true potential fulfilled. #GamerGate is single-handedly driving out the innovators and artists that the gaming industry needs so desperately if it will ever reach its full potential.

And yet, I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the industry that I have grown up with and have always thought deserved recognition as a legitimate art form, will be able to pull through this crisis, and become what I have always believed it to be.

But with every response that is directed me and people like me, calling us things like “an SJW faggot,” more and more of that hope inside me dies.

I wish that I could say I am optimistic about the impact that #GamerGate will have on the industry, but I cannot be.

So I make my final plea, to all of the reasonable people in #GamerGate: Can you really feel comfortable being a part of a movement that so clearly is filled with hate and rage? Can you really continue to back the psychopaths that threaten women with rape and murder? And to those who have always stood against #GamerGate, you must stand strong for the hobby that you love, or it will be killed by a bunch of sexist pigs. Not the most honorable way to go.

Alex Bertsch is the opinion editor of The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].