GamerGate

Samir Mehta | December 12, 2014
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Scott Hardie | December 13, 2014
For years, video game fandom has been dominated by loud, boorish, entitled, trollish, horny young men. The big publishers cater to these players' worst impulses, and treat female characters especially badly. For pointing this out, feminists like Anita Sarkeesian have suffered insults and threats of violence.

Against this backdrop, "GamerGate" started when a gamer took offense to his girlfriend Zoe Quinn, an "indie game developer" (she made one obscure web game), allegedly cheating on him with a game blogger. He published a long rant about her infidelity online and shared private details of their sex life. The trolls turned their vitriol on her, doxxing her and making violent threats that drove her from her home. When feminists and female celebrities spoke out against this, they got the same treatment, but men speaking out against this were mildly criticized at best.

Gamers said their real complaint is that "game journalism" (magazines and blogs covering games) has been in bed with publishers for years, giving good reviews in exchange for access. The phrase "it's actually about ethics in game journalism" was repeated so often that it became a meme. Their complaint about game journalism may or may not have been valid, but it missed the much more important point that their treatment of women is horrifying and totally unacceptable. No matter what their "real" cause is, they're not going to win anyone to their cause with tactics like that. (It reminds me of PETA: They fight dirty for a good cause too, by publicly shaming people and corporations into behaving according to their rules, which wins them few converts. But PETA doesn't send frequent graphic rape threats with victims' home addresses, or call in bomb threats to prevent their victims from making public speeches, the way that gamers do.)

So GamerGate is about a bunch of things at once: Game journalism being corrupt, female critics being silenced, games treating women badly, trolls being awful human beings, and more. Some people take the long view that this conflict is necessary for the industry to grow up, that it's the angry young male gamers raging in vain aganist their diminishing influence as they are being forced to share their hobby with so many other people picking it up, and that gaming will be more inclusive and fair in the future. I hope that's true.

Personal thought: Gaming magazines and blogs are not traditional journalism operations with integrity or codes of ethics. Who expects them NOT to cater to publishers in exchange for more access? That's like criticizing Entertainment Tonight for not being objective in its showbiz journalism. Idiots.

Also: I despise the hypocrisy of Internet trolls doxxing people as a punishment for disagreeing with them. These assholes would never reveal their own real names or private information because of the significant real-world consequences they would face for being trolls, and yet they have no problem dishing out what they can't take. That alone sacrifices any moral high ground they claim to have.

Also: Do I qualify as an indie game developer? I've made more games than Zoe Quinn has.

Samir Mehta | December 13, 2014
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Scott Hardie | December 14, 2014
There are quite a few gaming magazines and I'm sure far more online publications. Illegitimacy has been a problem in these publications for a while; I recall when popular writer Jeff Gerstmann was fired from Gamespot because he gave an unenthusiastic review to an advertiser's game. But that's a tiny problem compared to the abominable treatment of women by gamers, and it doesn't justify gamers' behavior toward female critics, and it's crazy that they think that it does.

I was discussing this with friends not long ago when one mentioned that men suffer more harassment online than women. I found this laughable, but then I did some research online just to see if he was on to something. The conclusions vary according to what website you read, but generally, the consensus was that more men experience harassment and verbal abuse and teasing online than women do, something like 44% to 37%. However, there are important distictions: The online harassment of women is much more sexually charged than it is with men, and the threats against women are more specific and detailed than those against men (women get graphic rape threats with their home address; men get called names), and threats made against women online are more likely to turn into real violence offline than those made against men. In other words, if you want to argue truthfully about online harassment and gender, draw a distinction between quantity and quality.

Erik Bates | December 16, 2014
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Scott Hardie | February 6, 2015
A friend of mine is torn. On the one hand, she recently came out as a woman after living for years as a man, and has passionately liberal and feminist and LGBT-friendly beliefs. But on the other hand, she's a lifelong gamer who spends a lot of money on the hobby, and she identifies as one of the gamers who is sincerely upset about ethics in game journalism. I read that she spent months trying to moderate a forum on the subject, trying to calm down both sides and get them talking, but eventually the trolls overwhelmed her and drove her out with their hateful bile. It's too bad.

I'm disappointed to learn that "mens' rights activist" has become a dirty word. Despite men having overwhelming advantages in society, there still are a few areas in which mens' rights activists do have legitimate causes to fight for, such as family courts awarding custody of children to mothers at much higher rates than to fathers. It's a shame to see the term mocked and made synonymous with misogyny.