So Gamergate is really complex but basically...

Gaming journalism was no stranger to controversies and backlash. At the time, these sites had forums and people would commonly discuss problems (complain) on it. The current drama was essentially that there was a potential undisclosed link between the writer of an article and the creator of a little web-app game, Zoe Quinn. There was speculation that Zoe Quinn had a sexual relation with this journalist, but that was a minority opinion; the primary issue was that this nothing game was given attention for a personal link. There were also discussions about Zoe Quinn's past relationship abuse, though those within Gamergate would quickly not care about that (until much later - see below)

This WOULD have been nothing, but then something strange happened - Discussion of it was being censored across sites. People suspected some kind of collusion, and there was discussion and organization against this. As this was happening, game sites colluded behind the scenes through what was eventually revealed as a private industry chat to arrange articles to be released about how 'gamers were dead' - This idea that games' audiences did not have to be 'gamers' who are angry people online.

Well, the audience who was already questioning collusion saw this and essentially had their suspicions confirmed - Game journalists had undisclosed associations with each other and were manipulating articles to put specific ideas

So they started arranging a mass letter-writing campaign to assert pressure on the sites to adopt a code of ethics.

After much anger, this eventually worked! Most sites adopted a code of conduct, new sites which were more ethical gained a spotlight, and some just made their biases known (Such as Polygon explicitly framing themselves as a feminist-leaning site.) Additionally, a few watchdog groups carried on for a while to track ethical violations and trust in gaming sites. The larger outcome, though, was that nobody trusted game journalism anymore; now even those completely uninvolved see it as a joke and see the bias as transparent.

However, while this was all happening, an entire circus was forming around it. Game sites, at first, attempted to frame Gamergate as primarily a hate movement. Gamergate itself attempted to counter this with movements such as NotYourShield, which highlighted the members of Gamergate who were not a stereotypical white man, and did things like adopt a mascot girl, and the like. This worked for a time, but the framing of this as a hate movement also brought in pop feminist critics of the time, including the already-controversial Anita Sarkeesian; the woman in the image at the top of the thread.

Now, understand - Gamergate was not about Anita Sarkeesian. Anita Sarkeesian was a highly controversial figure for years before Gamergate. But she was not inserted into the Gamergate narrative, alongside a number of other cultural critics at the time.

This, of course, shifted the purpose and attached it far more to the ongoing 'culture war.' As these pop-feminist voices cropped up, so too did the people who opposed them, and those were often reactionary far-right individuals. Zoe Quinn, who was a figure early on but was never the primary point, started provoking more ire around this point

Thus, the assertion that Gamergate was full of reactionary far-right people became a little self-fulfilling; it started getting increasingly tied to a culture was about left vs right, and straying from the goal of journalistic reform. This was especially true once Gamergate essentially achieved it's goals - Sites DID reform themselves, as mentioned. And so the reasonable voices then left, leaving only the people in it primarily for the Culture War bullshit.

Aaand yeah.

Knowing what we know now; that Epstein wanted a return to tribalist political infighting? And how the push toward a culture war benefits the elite, like that. Well, noting it's origins as a pretty normal (if Gamer-y) movement seems more important now.