I was vaguely aware of some of the early games criticism (critical games theory basically) at the time because I was following a lot of the discourse around ‘are games art?’ debate. It was a super niche corner of the internet mostly of leftish libs trying to do some critical analysis of games and gamer culture. The whole GG thing amplified this tiny niche ala Streisand Effect but with a lot more misogyny. That’s the basic contours from my memory at least.

If the GG escalation had not happened, we might not have developed “we add another gender every time you complain” for another few decades.