Can someone tell me what is GamerGate?

It seems like kind of a big thing, and even after reading through the wikipedia articles and other sites, I don't get it because half the time it's fighting misogynists, the other half they ARE the misogynists?
 

Can someone help with explaining to me what #GamerGate is? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Totally curious man.

Short, family friendly version:  A woman who is an independent game developer broke up with her boyfriend.  Said boyfriend ran a smear campaign against her, claiming her games good reviews were due to, well, reasons besides the quality of the game.  Things you'd expect a jilted ex-boyfriend to say.

Those interested in Gamergate fall into 2 camps:  One which blames her, one which blames him.

Generalizations are tough with that one, because there's a few different agendas behind that hashtag. But there seem to be two primary modes of gamergate from what I've seen.

-People concerned about corruption in game journalism in regard to the close relationship between companies/developers and the people who write about them. As a journalist myself, I'm not sure "corrupt" is the right word. I would go with "unprofessional" to describe most of the game news sites, which makes sense given that they're not professional journalists, most of them are just game enthusiasts who found a platform. Adopting some kind of "ethics code" might be a good idea. Although, the gamergate argument about this is weakened somewhat by the fact that it originated from salacious accusations against one independent game dev which turned out not to be accurate (now there's journalism at work!). 

-Then there's the reactionary s who harbor frothing-at-the-mouth rage for anything remotely feminist or progressive and are mounting campaigns of horrible harassment against prominent women who talk about games. Games are becoming a more inclusive medium and for some reason, people think this means all their fun is going to be forcibly taken from them by a horde of angry women. It's a modern incarnation of a pattern that repeats through history - when progress is made, the forces of the status quo attack. This is not an exception.

As for whether it's been good or bad, well, so far it's been pretty bad. While there are surely people who drop the gamergate tag with good intentions, it's been incredibly tainted by the awful behavior of the troll faction. Honestly, if I were them, I would just keep talking about those issues and maybe come up with a new hashtag. If in the end, people learn something and the online discussion about games is less nauseating, then ultimately it will have done some good. But man, it's got a steep hill to climb.