Gamergate started when a guy found that his girlfriend, a game developer with mediocre games but great reviews, found out why she was getting great reviews: she was sleeping with reviewers and editors at the game magazines and sites.
Gamers demanded ethics in game journalism, but feminists saw this as attacking women, since “most gamers” are men. That’s actually not true, women DO tend to play different games, and in different ways, than men, but it was all the opening that the grievance feminists needed.
Actor Adam Baldwin, a gamer himself, dubbed this whole brouhaha “#gamergate”, and a hashtag was born. It then spun up fully into grievance mode, some “feminist” game devs (Anita Sarkeesian, notably) claiming there were threats of violence and even death against her.
Now, any time conservatives, males, or worse still, conservative males, criticize women in the arts, someone inevitably trots out “Gamergate”. It’s sort of an update to Godwin’s Law. . .
Might be of interest—http://spectator.org/articles/62372/sci-fi’s-pod-people