To be honest it is highly frustrating to see many people in this thread just throw in a 'GG is about harassment and misogyny' and completely ignore everything else. If we define GG and resetera as the two sides, I'd always choose to align with GG. I do not harass women. I am far-left politically.
So why do you refuse to educate yourself, to look at people individually, and instead take cases of harassment and unconditionally attach them to GG? It is dishonest and leads nowhere. Here I am explaining in detail what GG is, what is not. Yet you ignore everything I swrote and simply throw in another 'GG is about harassment and misogyny'. It's as if you're afraid of having to re-evaluate your own knowledge. There's no shame in finding out you were wrong, had a false understanding of something, and update your information.
You read about GG only on websites like Kotaku and Polygon, from instigators like Zoe, Wu or Anita, who demand that they define what GG is. That is wrong. GG is what it decided itself. The aforementioned websw/people don't like what that is, so they keep attaching harassment and misogyny to it, knowing how easy it is to kill denounce a movement with such accusations.
Let's make it simple: I'm a GamerGater. I don't harass women. I'm politically very left. Do you still refuse to acknowledge that? (And just for the record: I don't call myself a 'GamerGater', labels are silly)
So, what is the difference between "pushing a political agenda." and "They carry certain messages, but those are very general or subtle."? You mention it being a "real world politics" thing, but the GTA games are all about real-world politics and yet they don't seem to be hated by GG. You also mention the word "agenda" quite a bit, tell me if I'm wrong, but it appears that you're indicating that certain games are made only to affect a kind of political change. This, I think isn't the sole reason for any art, however, I would say almost all art uses that as one of its reasons for existing.
I will try explaining it one more time, although I don't think it's that complicated. Every game, every piece of art, no, every decision you make in your everday life is in some way political - if you chose to interpret it. Games like Zelda, Mario, Dark Souls, Skyrim, Persona 4, etc. certainly can be interpreted in certain ways - but they never push any political agenda in the players face.
That's different in games with an obvious political agenda. Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect Andromeda both had characters that wouldn't shut up about 'hey, look, I'm transgender!' (and ironically were criticized by trans people for that). In Mass Effect 3, you couldn't carelessly talk to the new buff guy, because any dialogue with him using male Shepard would be pushed toward homosexual romance (which sucked,because it reduced the guy to being homosexual). The Tomb Raider-reboot developer gave a public statement about reducing Lara's breast size. And apparently Far Cry 5 comes down to killing Republicans.
These are examples of games pushing a political agenda. GG wouldn't complain about a game with transgender characters (I mean, any good game wouldn't even let you know about it, unless it thematically explores tbe topic of transgenderism), GG also wouldn't complain about homosexual characters. But when topics like these are used as big talking points by developers, it garners criticism. Which I share. When I play Mario, I never feel like Miyamoto pushes his personal political believes into me. I do, however, feel that way with many modern western games. These days, even Japanese games manage to portray more interesting female characters than western games. Unfortunately, Japanese games are continuously dismissed, otherwise Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles X would have won many awards for how great of a female character she was.
The BotW idea that people from different backgrounds can come together and do great things, is a pretty modern (almost pro-diversity) message, or do you believe that's a poor interpretation of the work?
That message of coming together to defeat evil is as old as men telling stories. I mean ... really?
I can argue about pretty much anything reasonably well, including Peterson, and I've seen lots of people arguing very coherently about why Peterson is completely wrong. I'm more than happy to PM you with links if that takes your fancy. I'm not in the resetera Peterson thread, so I won't comment on that.
I've never seen anyone successfully explain why Peterson is wrong/bad. If you can, I'd prefer you do it publically, as many others would probably like to hear it. I've watched so many videos of him. He stays with the facts, he's not alt-right in any way. I'd be honestly surprised to see an argument that can change that.
Doesn't that idea feel petty? The "Nintendo gave in to social justice activists." idea. We don't do that with anything else. If I complain about bad graphics, or a bad story, or a game not being open world, anything else within a game, would your response be to not like that solely because people asked for it to be changed? It's people feeling upset just because that change indicates that their perceived "side" is losing something when nothing has really been lost. It's partisanship at it's highest. It's ideology over events. Some might even call that "feelings over facts".
I love video games. It's probably my number one interest in life. When a group of crazy people suddenly gains influence on the development of games, I won't sit and watch quietly. I make my opinion heard. It's the least I can do. Good people doing nothing while bad people ruin things is how everything gets worse with time.