Can #Gamergate be rebranded? Should it be? Interview with Nick Robalik

It's difficult to keep up with gamergate, but the David Pakman show works hard at it. Pakman has interviewed John Bain (pro Gamergate), who says he was offered free swag for good reviews, as well as Arthur Chu (anti Gamergate) who defends tactics such as doxxing. Meanwhile Utah State University has made a statement that no credible threat to students, staff or the speaker was made, and are disappointed that students did not benefit from Anita Sarkeesian's presentation as she chose to cancel it. Mozilla is the latest brand to step on the #Gamergate landmine, when they offered Georgina Young a spot to rebut Audrey Watters post. Mozilla has apologised for allowing those two articles to exist, while The Verge has a copy of a recent email by Mozilla executive chairwoman Mitchell Baker who says Gamergate coverage was a mistake. With the controversy still causing such ruckus in the third month now, I wonder if it's even possible to rebrand gamergate.
Who better to ask than a Gamedev that works in advertising? Nick Robalik of PixelMetal Games, creator of the indie game Sombrero a fast paced Spaghetti Western-themed multiplayer game that looks like a truckload of fun judging by those smiles. Nick has worked at Razorfish and IMC2 on clients like M&M's and Diet Coke and Dove, now he runs HERO.
Dabs: The image of "gamer" has been tarnished by this. Lets pretend we have an Ad Council, but for games instead. Funded by Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, Activision etc. What could they do to change the image of video games, from what it currently has among a broader audience?
Nick Robalik : I don’t think, in general, there’s really an issue with games appealing to a “broader” audience. It’s one of the largest entertainment industries on the planet - larger than Hollywood’s film industry by a measurable margin - and it’s already been quite well accepted as a form of entertainment for a large, diverse audience.
The closest thing the games industry needs to an Ad Council is a ratings system - and it already has one of those. The ESRB is very detailed in terms of why certain games are rated what they are, more so than the MPAA in the film industry. I see little benefit, but many potential problems, in the game industry creating something more similar to the ad industry’s Ad Council.

Dabs: Did you have any inkling, prior to the birth of the hashtag #gamergate, that there were issues in the gaming industry and gaming press? Do you have thoughts on what caused this?
Nick Robalik : Absolutely. Having been involved in games either as a player or a dev for most of my life, outside of my work at some of the top ad agencies around, I’ve watched the quality of the enthusiast press drop significantly over the years. These last few years, the full commoditization of “clickbait” articles has assured that controversy now receives more clicks than honesty. GamerGate is simply the final straw for the general consumer audience, who seems to be tired of being told that they are unimportant to the multibillion-dollar industry they support.

Dabs: What do you think keeps this - for lack of a better term; movement - going?
Nick Robalik : I think that the movement is driven by a combination of passion and the ability to do the actual research that we expect journalists to be able to do. This consumer movement -- I know some would prefer to call it a “consumer revolt,” but I feel that “consumer movement” sums it up better -- has been building for years as the quality of reporting and reviews has been decreasing throughout the past decade or so. The final straw was when over a dozen articles were being published within 24 hours on over a dozen game industry news websites, stating that “gamers” no longer had to be their target audience. The cognitive dissonance in thinking that such an attack on their previously loyal base would net a positive result is mind-boggling.
For some time now, many of these sites have seemed preoccupied with pushing the notion that games need to be more “inclusive.” This idea, to anyone who’s been paying attention, is fairly ridiculous since gaming has never, at any point in its history, been more inclusive than it currently is. Gaming has become this way thanks to the industry being of a size - and monetary value - that allows it to be large enough to cater to anyone, anywhere, with any kind of game that a person may be interested in playing.
What these sites seemed to really want, in my opinion, is an industry that is less inclusive and caters to the tastes of only some - let’s call them “tastemakers” - who give games like Call of Duty or Bayonetta 2 bad reviews because, though all scientific research and evidence points to the contrary, they make people who play them more violent or more sexist. It’s blaming D&D for Satanism in the 80’s. It’s Jack Thompson blaming violence on videogames in the 90’s.