Photo illustration by Kelly Schafler/The Cougar
The gaming world is in an uproar, and it is now seeping into the public eye. As threats against women in the gaming industry become more serious, causing several women to leave their homes, women’s rights activists and other supporters argue that gaming culture needs to carve out a safer space for women and other marginalized groups.
This movement, known as #GamerGate, gained traction in August and has recently come to the attention of the general public after conservative actor Adam Baldwin tweeted in support of the movement.
According to Vox, #GamerGate is essentially about two core aspects: ethics in gaming journalism and the treatment of women in gaming.
Gamers argue that #GamerGate is not about misogyny, but rather the disconnect between what gamers want to read and what gaming journalism actually is. Gamers argue that journalism has become too left-leaning and that a balance has been lost, particularly as journalists’ critiques about games address social issues.
Though it may seem like a battle for the world of gamers, the politicized nature of this movement gives way to implications that seep into other areas of our culture, where women and other marginalized groups face issues of visibility and inclusion. English senior Jesse Castanon, once an avid gamer, said that representation of women in video games has long been a problem in gaming culture.
“In most video games, women are hypersexualized. They are not created the (same) way as male characters,” Castanon said. “There is definitely not equality in the way that they’re perceived. The girl needs (the male character) and depends on him.”
Those who are part of the #GamerGate movement argue that they would rather read reviews of the game itself without evaluations of its social factors. Another heated debate that is creating a divide between gamers is journalists is defining what exactly a game is, as journalists are reviewing games that appear to be artistic in nature.
The series of violent threats and misogynistic comments fired at women began in August when game developer Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni wrote a lengthy blog post accusing Quinn of cheating on him with a game critic in order to secure positive reviews for her game.
Given that some gamers were already miffed that Quinn’s game could even be considered a game — it’s structured differently, more like an interactive novel — Gjoni’s post sparked outrage that had been boiling below the surface.
In addition to Quinn, YouTuber Anita Sarkeesian and game developer Briana Wu have already received violent threats. All three women have gone into hiding for fear of their safety, and as threats have become incredibly serious, the FBI is now conducting an investigation.
Chemistry sophomore Sara Tran said she’s not a gamer, but thinks that #GamerGate should gain more attention.
“It’s crazy that people are reacting this way toward these women,” Tran said. “I think they’re going too far.”
It is understandable that gamers may be frustrated that games are not reviewed within the context of the game itself. When playing games for enjoyment, one may not want to read about surrounding social and political implications, but rather a review that details the specifics of the game as a game.
It is true that at the heart of #GamerGate is mistrust between readers and gaming journalists, but there is no denying that it is a problem, and women are caught in this crossfire.
“(#GamerGate) could become a part of a bigger social culture,” Castanon said. “Gaming is a big part of the social culture for young people; you see people play video games religiously.”
Castanon adds that this reaction toward women comes from deficiencies in social interaction.
“I used to play World of Warcraft through middle school and high school, and a lot of people would say derogatory stuff toward women,” Castanon said. “People were socially inept and didn’t know how to be in society outside of the game, so it affects them socially. They spend their social time on games — it warps their perception.”
Discussions of gaming culture used to come with the assumption that gamers were straight, white males, but that is no longer the case. Because the gaming community has expanded to include other groups, their lack of representation and any insensitivity towards these groups portrayed in games becomes a problem.
Perhaps not all who support #GamerGate are crazy misogynists, but many have started to blame women for their discontent, and that needs to be remedied. Certain publications may want to focus only on reviewing games within the criteria of it being a good game, while other publications serve to evaluate games from a social and cultural perspective.
Opinion columnist Rama Yousef is a creative writing senior and may be reached at [email protected].
While the article actually tries to be neutral, it fails to see the “other side of the fence”. There are numerous reports of anti-gamergate people doxxing and harassing gamergate supporters, threatening their place in the game industry and going to full extremes saying things like “kill all men”, “men can’t be harassed because they’re men”, etc.
I believe that a lot of people without real relation to the situation are flinging the hashtag left and right with horrible things just to see the chaos that it would cause (yeah… trolls have no allegiances other than “teh lulz”)
What changes things are the actions each side is taking about it: Pro-Gamergate twitter users formed an “anti harassment patrol”, reporting harassers regardless of their position as pro or anti-gg. They even tracked down and identified the person who did the death threats against Anita Sarkeesian!
The other side created the “WAM report hotline”, and the first thing they manage to do is ban Milo Yiannopoulos under a false accusation of transphobia.
Gamergaters tries to attack the trolls, Anti-GG tries to attack anyone that doesn’t follow the ideas they preach.
I can send some links with data to the author of the article if she wants. Might help when checking the whole situation again
This is not a two sided debate. This is basically the entire civilized world vs gamergate. Only scumbags support gamergate at this point and if you had any brains at all you would drop that pathetic anti-women movement.
You imply I’m a scumbag, brainless and rotten, says that there are two sides but it can’t be a two sided debate, use offensive terms left and right, cites absolutely no source, info or data to back up your claims and feels entitled enough to say that all of the “civilized world” is against gamergate?
If they’re as civilized as you, I can’t feel ashamed of not being part of it.
8chan is a public site. I know you GGers are supposed to be nice out in public, but that forum is GG’s home and where its true colors lie.
A polite person in a hate campaign is still in a hate campaign.
But a hateful person hiding behind the name of a polite campaign doesn’t make a campaign hateful.
Gamergate doesn’t have a membership card or official site. 8chan is a hub to exchange ideas and data, but people can talk about anything they want. Even registrations aren’t required.
In a leaderless movement, all that ties people together are the ideals their follow. ask for 100 supporters of gamergate and most will say they fight for ethic conduct, transparency and accountability in gaming journalism and AGAINST censorship and harassment. Add to that, that no matter if you’re using the hashtag or not, if you harass someone, supporters of gamergate will shun the harasser even more than Anti-GG. As i said before, GG supporters created a group to help dealing with harassers. anti-GG created tool easily abusable to deal with contrary opinions.
Duke – You are not allowed to have a different opinion, otherwise you are not “civilized”. This is PRECISELY how they limit freedom; by throwing around insults, avoiding questions, and by acting as if the discussion is closed/decided. If anyone who agrees with you does something wrong, your entire opinion is invalidated. It’s easier to call you a misogynist then to debate.
Civilized people are not throwing insults at those with differing opinions, so that rules out you, and most of the anti-gg crowd from being in that “entire civilized world” bit.
Rofl this is dead brilliant, in a “do you say these things out loud to yourself before you post them on the internet” way. “Civilized world” – would that be all the people who thought taking sociology 101 and gender studies was a useful expenditure of time and money at uni? (here’s a hint, it’s not).
I like your slander against Milo (the man’s openly gay, so you’ll have to elaborate specifically on what his bigotry is). I also like that you fail to grasp that regardless of who he is or whom he writes for, his articles always have copies amounts of sources and citations, all in CONTEXT. But then again I guess if he made my false ideology look evil and warped I’d hate him too. :O
GamerGate isn’t anti-women, it’s anti-corruption. The Journalists engaged in censorship and when that didn’t work they held up Quinn and Sarkeesian as shields, because they’d done it before. And you seem to have “anonymous internet trolls” and “video game enthusiasts” confused with one another.
See, rather than advocate for censorship (which makes you a fascist), I would just advise you get off the internet entirely, since you lack the fundamental critical thinking ability to differentiate between groups and motives, as well as do basic background research and fact checking. Oh, but I’m sure your FEELS inform you on how to live your life, don’t they?
Yes, the online culture around gaming is full of toxic and abusive people. I’m not sure what you think it proves to point out that the assholes infest both “sides”. The fact that GamerGate created this whole shitstorm and has been partly hijacked by right-wing reactionaries who are even worse than gamers sort of undermines any attempt to defend GamerGate by making the other “side” look bad.
Toxic and abusive people are a vocal minority with exceptional talent to create chaos and get media attention. It’s also really intresting that while you talk about right wing “reactionaries” hijacking the movement, the ones attempting to control and limit communication and creative freedom are the anti gamergate (their proposals are desperately lacking transparency and accountability by the way).
I live in a place where exists over a dozen political parties, if there’s one thing I learned is that saying you’re part of a side, supporting the party that says it’s supportive of such side and following the ideas such side should spread and defend are 3 completely different things.
How exactly are they “attempting to control and limit communication and creative freedom”, and what does that have to do with anything I said?
And yes, it’s factually true that a handful of second-rate right-wing reactionaries have latched onto GamerGate for their own purposes. These people aren’t gamers and don’t care about games at all, but unfortunately a lot of well-meaning people in GamerGate have been suckered into thinking of them as allies.
WAM is a good example: It works as a “twitter harassment hotline”, but only for women, without being clear on what can be considered harassment, who they reported, how can a reported person defend itself, how will they deal with false claims, and which of the forwarded claims were resolved because of it.
The proposed #Cyber Civil Rights (which Anita supports, by the way) is pretty similar to SOPA or PIPA, but with harassment instead of piracy. Same problems apply: no specific conditions to frame someone, no transparency, accuseds can’t defend themselves.
It’s pretty easy to abuse these kinds of tools to silence anyone that disagree with you or have proofs of your wrongdoings. Paint it as “progressive” if you like, but it still is shady, poorly created and regulated and can be used too easily as a censorship tool.
and THAT’S where it have to do with what you said. If memory serves me right, Left-wingers are pro-freedom and transparency while Right-wingers are pro-control and regulation. How can a movement that wants transparency in journalism be Right-wing and how can the “progressive” anti-gg strangles freedom of speech and still be left-wing?
on a side note, be true to your claims and name who you call “a handful of second-rate right-wing reactionaries”
How Twitter manages its service is its own business; if you don’t like WAM, take it up with Twitter. In any case, it’s not like GamerGate is a stranger to using external pressure on a company to silence people they disagree with. I don’t understand the outraged accusations that someone else might do the same thing.
I’m skeptical of this comparison to SOPA/PIPA. Does the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative have federal legislation being seriously proposed and pushed with major financial backing? If so, I’ve not heard of it.
Your summary of left vs. right is bizarre; it sounds like you’re oversimplifying self-serving left-wing talking points, and I hope I don’t have to explain why that’s not a good basis to use for definitions. There’s no way to sum up either one without being self-contradictory, because large factions within the left or right often disagree with their “allies”–I’m still not sure what religious conservatives and libertarians have in common other than the inexplicable belief that mainstream right-wing politicians aren’t just lying to them to get votes.
In any case, I’d guess that most actual GamerGate supporters are more centrist libertarian than anything else, namely the “freedom without responsibility for any consequences” crowd who like to cry censorship when criticized and/or ignored.
Baldwin and Yiannopoulos are a couple obvious ones in it for attention and/or political goals. Sommers is also blatantly in it for political ends and doesn’t care about gaming, but she’s hardly second-rate, being a respected conservative voice who was politically relevant before GamerGate and will remain relevant after it fizzles out.
The idea that even the superficial and no longer extant birth of the movement regards games journalism as too left-leaning is simply untrue. Much like when radical leftists found themselves on the same side of many issues as the unfortunately astroturf Tea Party, the mainstream narrative loses cohesion and begins spouting dissonant nonsense. Our bipartisan society cannot handle the true, multi-faceted nature of science, humanity, economy, and politic. Start reporting what is real, because narratives no longer have any place outside of our less and less interesting TV, cinema, and literature.
Anita Sarkeesian and Briana Wu are both crazy. And if you call them that to their faces, they simply claim you dislike them because you’re a misogynist. Sometimes the public hates people for who they are, not because they’re a woman. Anita Sarkeesian was not hated for claiming that there is sexism in video games, but because she took thousands of dollars in support money, and squandered it in a very poor series that attempted to accuse Mario games as sexist. Rescuing a princess has been a trope throughout all of human history. Just because it carried over to video games, does not mean that video games are sexist when they use the trope.
People don’t hate on Sarkeesian and Briana Wu for the stuff that most people already know as true, but for the extreme stretches they make to claim everything as anti-woman. Yes, there is sexism in gaming culture, but many of the points they make are incorrect, and when confronted with people who disagree with them, they claim they are sexist, censor, or ignore them.
“Sometimes the public hates people for who they are, not because they’re a woman.” …and it just so happens that people the public hates are disproportionately likely to be women, but that’s totally a coincidence, because being more likely to hate a person who happens to be female is not misogyny at all.
Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.
And again an article that misunderstands the actual situation. While there are some questionable issues in the game journalism arena, the real purpose of #GamerGate is to attack, harass and threaten women and minorities. This is what it was about from the beginning. In fact, it’s been well established that the whole “ethics” thing was created as a smoke screen to hide the attacks. Even the #NotYourShield tag was started by sock puppets as an astroturf “grassroots movement” to, ironically, shield the attackers. To date, there have been no credible attacks on #GamerGate supporters either. So far, nearly everything the Gaters have brought up as proof has been discredited or debunked. They’ve even beenshown uundeniable evidence of all this but still insist on ignoring the truth. At this point, Gaters have entered into the realm of Truthers and members of the Flat Earth Society. Tell them the Sun is yellow and they’ll insist it’s blue.
To date, there have been no credible attacks on #GamerGate supporters either. .
Then the same can be said about the trio of girls claiming this as well. Or does blaming the victim only count if its being used against someone you agree with?
“Even the #NotYourShield tag was started by sock puppets as an astroturf “grassroots movement” to, ironically, shield the attackers.”
Nice name calling. Can I say the same about minorities against GG? (I won’t because i’m not a bigot that likes to paint broad strokes across an entire demographic) Oh wait that would make me a racist!
One of Gamergate’s very vocal supporters is Roosh V, MRA goon. He has just made a new proGG gaming website. A quote from Roosh: “Women do not get to choose when or if to satisfy you (men).” His site is truly horrible. Perhaps this is one reason why you are labeled as misogynists, GG?
GG deserves derision and scorn. Nothing else.
Pro GG here. I have no idea who this man is. If you expect me to disregard ethical concerns of gaming journalist because someone put up such a site and quote, you are quite naive.
“Perhaps not all who support #GamerGate are crazy misogynists, but many
have started to blame women for their discontent, and that needs to be
remedied.” It is the press like you who pretend to be neutral but can not hide the bigotry is destroying the idea of liberty and society in general. #NotYourShield disagrees with you. You guys are destroying the credibility of media and let me tell you, regrdless of gamergate future, media will not remain the same. You have killed yourself and more likes of you dies the better it is for society.
Actually #GamerGate was never about “issues with women” in gaming (and what about the other minorities? is it not fashionable to speak on their behalf anymore?). That was something that was shoe-horned in. After the Zoe Post dropped, angry accusations began flying at the games press. They said nothing… and then mass censorship across MULTIPLE websites (reddit, NeoGaF, basically any forum that talked about video games) began to happen. Users were shadowbanned and tens of thousands of user comments were deleted on Reddit alone. This led to even MORE outrage, and the Streisand Effect. And then the GamesJournoPros list dropped and not only proved that the journo’s collude with one another, but that they blacklist, advocate censorship, and have zero ethical restrictions when to the industry and their sources.
What came next was “Gamers are dead articles” and a whole slew of “omg gamers are misogynists” – a hand waving tactic to change the discussion from “journalists are corrupt” to “gamers hate women” (an argument which has no basis in reality, but is great for the careers of people like Anita Sarkeesian, professional victim and con artist). These journalists are STILL hiding behind these women. Which is why GamerGate supporters went after their add revenue by emailing advertisers. A number of advertisers left these sites, and many, which are owned by gawker media, lost considerable amounts of money. Gawker reported that the affair probably lost them over a million in revenue.
But it’s totally all about mindlessly hating women and not corrupt journalists peddling their radical, extremists ideologies and shilling for their friends, sexual partners or people they are financially connected to. That would just be silly!
I got something that prove something useful:
Just going to leave this here, for anyone who might come through at a later date:
http://guardianlv.com/2014/11/anita-sarkeesian-unmasked-feminist-icon-or-con-artist/
Mmmm sources and citations. Love it. Con artists are super awesome to follow in support of any cause, because they totally aren’t full of crap.
Chances are, someone claimed that those sites were funded by conservatives.
And how would that matter exactly? I am SO beyond sick of these childish Ad Hominems people keep throwing out (not you necessarily) that make me want to get a t-shirt cannon and start launching rolled out pamphlets outlining logic, rhetoric and argumentation/debate. “Oh, these people are conservative (without bothering to define what they actually mean by conservative) therefore what they are saying has no merit!” … regardless of whether or not it points to specific primary sources. The disbeliever only has two options to deny when confronted with primary source proof – go full delusional and deny reality, or just lie and keep on pushing their ideologically motivated agenda. This is why ideologues are bad – they don’t care about truth, and therefore not about reality.
If Anita did those things – and she did; the videos are viewable, the testimonials are readable, as his her horrendous masters in COMMUNICATION…. yeah, totally qualified to be a pop culture critic. Just like having a two year acting degree and a complete inability to dress herself (but apparently drink in a weight class twice her own) makes Leigh Alexander of Gamasutra a culture critic… and not just a blogger with a TWO YEAR ACTING DEGREE, a very blatant agenda (to her credit she doesn’t pretend to be unbiased) and a role as a provider of services to a consumer group. This is why subjective liberal arts programs are so… dangerous.
But really at the end of it all? The hypocrisy. I cannot STAND the hypocrisy. At least people like Jonathan McIntosh come off as sincere (albeit psychopathic white-guilt koolaid drinking sincerity), although I wish he could vomit something out via Twitter or Anita that wasn’t just garbage rhetoric repeated from which ever frigid, maligned 3rd wave “academic” feminist he finds fashionable that month. Nothing the man says is original or possesses even the barest sense of self awareness (which isn’t all that surprising considering that he comes from money)… So, projection. Lots and lots of projection and people drawing attention away from real problems and suffering in the world, because they need to feel special and working in a soup kitchen doesn’t fulfill them nearly as much as television interviews and raking in tons of cash in donations online.