Although sexism in the gaming community isn’t really new, the conversation has exploded again following allegations made against indie games developer Zoe Quinn and the following harassment – part of the movement called #Gamergate.
Before I get into #Gamergate, I want to make something clear: the gaming community and industry is an incredibly hostile place for women. Some people deny it or say that women are making it up, but I want to paint a picture before I continue, with some examples.
In 2012, game critic Anita Sarkeesian began a Kickstarter to fund a video series examining how women were portrayed in video games. For this crime, she received death and rape threats, had personal information released on the internet, and recently had to leave her home after she feared for her safety following the release of one of her videos last month.
Ubisoft executive Jade Raymond has always had to face allegations that she doesn’t know what she’s doing or that she’s only the face of Ubisoft because she’s pretty, culminating in the release of a pornographic comic featuring her as a brainless bimbo.
Bioware writer Jennifer Hepler made some innocuous statements saying that she didn’t play video games and that she thought there should be an option to skip combat. She and her family received death threats.
Toronto dad Mike Hoye hacked Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to change the pronouns so his toddler daughter could play Link as a female. He and his toddler daughter received death threats.
So now that you know what we’re dealing with, let’s get into #Gamergate.
Much like Occupy, #Gamergate is an incredibly complicated movement with many different prongs. As far as I can tell, it all began when indie developer Zoe Quinn’s ex posted a long diatribe on his blog detailing her cheating dalliances with various men in the gaming industry. Angry gamers latched onto one allegation: that Quinn slept with video game site Kotaku writer Nathan Grayson in exchange for favourable coverage of her game, Depression Quest. And this led to #Gamergate’s alleged main focus: supposed corruption in the video game industry. Debate started about the cozy relationships between writers and developers and bribes and journalists becoming rich due to symbiotic relationships with game makers.
There are two problems with this: no journalist is getting rich, through corruption, or otherwise. The second is that Grayson only wrote about Quinn for Kotaku once – about her participation in a failed reality show – about a month before their romantic relationship began, and then none since then.
I’m not going to get into the alleged corruption since I don’t know anything about the issue – though I do think gamers are mistaking a necessary working partnership between journalists and developers for corruption. And the Zoe Quinn situation is not even about corruption, not at its core. #Gamergate proponents are using it as a smokescreen for the real issue: once again, gamers are trying to shut women out of the industry.
There are a lot of accusations being thrown around about Quinn: beyond the “sleeping her way to the top” accusation are allegations that she lied about the harassment, she’s a manipulative cheater, and that she (for some reason) got a charitable event for female developers shut down. I obviously don’t know if any of that is true. But even taking that into account, here is what has happened to Quinn since her ex-boyfriend’s blog post: posters on 4chan discussed crippling her for life, they repeatedly called her dad to scream misogynist slurs about her, circulated nude photos, made death threats, and posted her friends’ personal information online. All this based on what strangers on the Internet are saying.
There’s an extremely vocal minority in the gaming community who want to keep women out. They don’t want games with new perspectives, they don’t want women writing about games, and they definitely don’t want women making them. Never mind that this stifles creativity and the gaming industry as a whole. This entitlement and this anger culminates in rape and death threats against women (just check out the sites notinthekitchenanymore.com or fatuglyorslutty.com if you think I’m understating it).
There may be some valid criticisms about corruption in the gaming industry. Who knows though? I spent hours researching it and any valid points were buried under the rants of angry gamers and posts detailing misogyny against women. I play video games, but I’m too scared to be an active member of the community. Why would you want to scare away new members of a hobby?
