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The Gamergate controversy, centering on a debate about sexism in video game culture, came to public attention beginning in August 2014 because of ongoing harassment and threats, primarily targeting women in the video game industry. Many supporters of the self-described Gamergate movement say that they are concerned about ethical issues in video game journalism, but media commentary has primarily focused on the attacks by Gamergate supporters, which have been broadly condemned as sexist and misogynistic. Gamergate is often seen as a manifestation of a culture war against targets such as women, the diversification of gaming culture, recognition of video games as an art form, social criticism of video games as a medium, and the way in which these things threaten the traditional gamer identity.

The controversy began after indie game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend alleged that Quinn had a romantic relationship with Nathan Grayson, a journalist for the video game news site Kotaku. Quinn was then subjected to severe misogynistic harassment, including false accusations that the relationship had led to positive coverage of Quinn's game. A number of gaming industry members supportive of Quinn were also subjected to harassment, threats of violence, and the malicious broadcasting of personally identifiable information about them (doxing); some of them fled their homes. The targets were mostly women, and included Quinn, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian, and indie game developer Brianna Wu. The harassment came from social media users, particularly those from 4chan, 8chan and Reddit using the #gamergate hashtag. These attacks often include anti-feminist and misogynistic rhetoric, and have heightened discussion of sexism and misogyny in the gaming community.

Gamergate supporters have been unwilling to move beyond the unorganized, leaderless and anonymous origins which has resulted in an inability to control the behavior and messaging of those acting under the Gamergate hashtag. While some have said that they are concerned with ethics in video game journalism, some members launched a campaign to convince ad providers to pull support from sites critical of Gamergate and others continue to harass those they perceive as opponents. Gamergate's origins in false allegations of ethics violations and the subsequent harassment campaign targeting Quinn and others, its failure to identify significant ethical issues in games media, and its frequent criticism of game critics who discuss issues of gender, class, and politics in their reviews have also been cited as evidence that the ethics concerns are a front for a culture war against the diversification of video game demographics.

History

[edit]

In February 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, an interactive fiction browser game through the depressionquest.com website. Though the game was met positively by critics, it generated a backlash from some players who believed that the game received an undue amount of attention in comparison to its quality, especially after a planned Steam distribution platform release. Quinn began to receive hate mail over the game upon its release and criticism from some parts of the Steam user community, receiving enough harassment to cause her to change her phone number and restrict harsh commentators from posting on the game's Steam discussion forum. This elicited further outrage from others and by September 2014, Quinn had already endured eighteen months of increasing harassment, which had created "an ambient hum of menace in her life, albeit one that she has mostly been able to ignore."[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Game developer Zoe Quinn was the original target of the harassment campaign.

Shortly after the release of Depression Quest on Steam in August 2014, Quinn's former boyfriend Eron Gjoni wrote a blog post, described by The New York Times as a "strange, rambling attack",[7] containing a series of allegations, among which was that Quinn had an affair with Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson.[8] This led to false allegations from Quinn's detractors that the relationship had resulted in Grayson publishing a positive review of the game.[2][8][9][10][11][12][13] Kotaku's editor-in-chief Stephen Totilo affirmed the existence of a relationship, but clarified that Grayson had not written anything about Quinn after the relationship had commenced and had never reviewed her games, though he did acknowledge a piece written before the two began their relationship.[10][14] A number of commentators in and outside the gaming industry denounced the attack on Quinn as misogynistic and unfounded.[1][15][16][17]

"Next time she shows up at a conference we ... give her a crippling injury that's never going to fully heal ... a good solid injury to the knees. I'd say a brain damage, but we don't want to make it so she ends up too retarded to fear us."

A threat issued to Zoe Quinn, as reported by The New Yorker.[2]

As a result of these allegations, Quinn and her family were subjected to a virulent harassment campaign[1][8][15] including doxxing, threats of rape, hacks of her Tumblr, Dropbox, and Skype accounts,[4] and death threats. She began staying with friends out of fear that she would be tracked to her home.[2][8][18] Quinn told the BBC, "Before [Gamergate] had a name, it was nothing but trying to get me to kill myself, trying to get people to hurt me, going after my family. [...] There is no mention of ethics in journalism at all outside of making the same accusation everybody makes towards any successful woman; that clearly she got to where she is because she had sex with someone."[19] Quinn told The New Yorker that she feels sympathy for her attackers because they have "deep-seeded loathing in themselves."[2] In an interview with MSNBC's Ronan Farrow Daily, she said she regards her Gamergate detractors as becoming increasingly irrelevant in the industry due to the democratization of game-making tools,[20] but nonetheless noted later in an interview with the BBC that, "I used to go to games [sic] events and feel like I was going home... Now it's just like... are any of the people I'm currently in the room with ones that said they wanted to beat me to death?"[19]

Others were targeted by similar harassment, doxxing, and death threats under the Gamergate umbrella. Those who came to Quinn's defense were targeted and labeled by their opponents with the derogatory phrase "social justice warriors" or "SJW" for short.[21] Among those so described was fellow video game developer Phil Fish, who had been a focus of controversy on social media in 2013.[22] Fish, reportedly known for his combative hostility on social media, was hacked and doxxed after speaking in support of Quinn; the attack exposed documents relating to his company, Polytron, as well as many of his personal details.[23][24][25] As a result, Fish sold Polytron and left the gaming industry.[4][26]

Gamergate hashtag

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Actor Adam Baldwin is credited as coining the Gamergate hashtag.

Within social media, the Twitter Gamergate hashtag was first used by actor Adam Baldwin in a tweet with links to two videos critical of Quinn, shortly after he retweeted a statement from a feminist blogger who had readjusted her stance to be critical of Quinn.[27] The tag was then used to discuss the allegations against Quinn and Grayson and other concerns about alleged corruption in gaming journalism,[28] alongside coordinated discussions on forums like 4chan and Reddit.[29][30] Because these discussions often featured verbal attacks, misogynistic harassment of Quinn and others, and doxxing, some websites blocked users and removed posts relating to the controversy, and at least one YouTube commentator had a video critical of Quinn removed following a DMCA request. Such incidents led some gamers to complain about censorship, which columnist Erik Kain said led to a Streisand effect that brought more attention to Gjoni's accusations.[30] By September 24, 2014, over 1 million Twitter messages incorporating the Gamergate hashtag had been sent,[31] while a Newsweek and Brandwatch study found more than 2 million Twitter messages between September and October 2014 with many coming from newly created accounts.[32] It is estimated that as of October 2014, there are at least 10,000 users that support Gamergate based on readership numbers on a dedicated Gamergate subreddit.[33]

Twitter itself has received complaints due to its inability to respond quickly and prevent harassment over the service. Brianna Wu, shortly after becoming a target of harassment, stated that Twitter "makes it very easy to create an account—and then create another account—to harass people with", and challenged the service to improve the speed of responsiveness to abusive account requests.[34] Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic said Gamergate is an "identity crisis" for Twitter, as by not dealing with harassing users as Facebook has, the platform is failing to protect victims and losing readers.[35] In November 2014, Twitter announced a collaboration with the non-profit group Women, Action & the Media (WAM), in which those who believed they have been harassed over Twitter can report harassment to a tool monitored by WAM members, who would forward affirmed issues to Twitter within 24 hours. The move, while in the wake of the Gamergate harassment, was due to long-standing issues of the harassment of women on the Internet, and the data will be studied for further discussion.[36]

Subsequent harassment

[edit]

In mid-October, indie game developer Brianna Wu shared an image macro on Twitter that mocked Gamergate supporters as, among other things, "fighting an apocalyptic future where women are 8 percent of programmers and not 3 percent." Soon afterwards her home address and other identifying information were posted on 8chan. Wu then became the target of rape and death threats on Twitter and elsewhere, which Wu and a number of sources have attributed to Gamergate supporters. After contacting police, Wu fled home with her husband, but said she would not allow the threats to intimidate her into silence.[37][38][39][40] Wu later offered a personal reward for any information leading to a conviction for those involved in her harassment, and set up a legal fund to help any other game developers that have been harassed online.[41]

Feminist cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian faced death threats after releasing a new Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video.

The harassment expanded to include renewed threats against Anita Sarkeesian, after a new episode in her series ("Women as Background, Pt. 2") was released shortly thereafter. Sarkeesian received death threats, including her home address,[42] that compelled her to temporarily leave her home.[43][44][45][46] At the XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon, she said, in regard to the accusations that high-profile women were making up the threats against them, that "One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they talk about their experiences," and that "The perpetrators do not see themselves as perpetrators at all... They see themselves as noble warriors."[47] Sarkeesian canceled a speaking appearance at Utah State University after the school received several anonymous terrorist threats, at least one of which claimed affiliation with Gamergate.[48] The threats included allusions to the École Polytechnique massacre, a 1989 mass shooting motivated by anti-feminism. Though Sarkeesian had spoken before at other events in the wake of Gamergate which had received similar threats, she opted to cancel when the school could not assure her safety under existing Utah state weapons laws.[37][49][50][51] The New York Times referred to the threat as "the most noxious example of a weekslong campaign to discredit or intimidate outspoken critics of the male-dominated gaming industry and its culture."[37] Some Gamergate supporters have alleged that Wu and Sarkeesian made up the threats themselves as a so-called "false flag," which led The Verge to describe the movement as "completely devoid of empathy."[52] The FBI is actively investigating the threat to attack Sarkeesian at USU,[53] as well as documenting police investigations related to activities related to the #gamergate hashtag.[54] In an interview on The Colbert Report, Sarkeesian said she believes women are being targeted because they are "challenging the status quo of gaming as a male-dominated space."[55]

After actress and gamer Felicia Day made a blog post noting her concerns over Gamergate and how she has avoided discussing it due to fear of the backlash, her address was posted in the comments section. Actor Wil Wheaton and former NFL player Chris Kluwe also posted criticisms of Gamergate, with Kluwe's being noted for its use of creative insults, but neither was doxxed.[56][57][58][59] This contrast between targeting a woman over two men was cited by some commentators, including Stephen Colbert, as evidence of there being misogynistic intent behind the harassment.[60][61]

Various supporters, some of whom requested to remain anonymous, said that they had been harassed for supporting Gamergate, and one said after he reported threats to police he was instructed to leave his home.[62] Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted that he had received a syringe in the mail, but was not concerned,[27][63] and YouTube personality Steven "boogie2988" Williams also remarked that a comment on one of his videos included his address and a threat to his wife's life.[64][65] The BBC reported that a well-known trolling group was involved and was simply trying to provoke further conflict rather than actually supporting either 'side'.[66]

There has been considerable debate on the concept of self-policing and on what responsibility, if any, supporters of Gamergate share when the hashtag is used for harassment. In an interview with NPR's Marketplace, voice actress Jennifer Hale called on the gaming community to improve the self-policing of its small and vicious fringe, and said there are still race and gender barriers within the industry.[67] Writing for Vox, Todd VanDerWerff wrote that the Gamergate supporters' "actually interesting concerns" were being "warped and drowned out by an army of trolls spewing bile, often at women."[29] David Auerbach said that there were some Gamergate supporters, whom he called the "Gamergate moderate", working to identify and report those that have engaged in harassment under the Gamergate banner and to better present the concerns of the Gamergate hashtag to the public at large.[68] In Salon, Elias Isquith criticized Auerbach's analysis, calling it an appeal to moderation "that negates any group or individual responsibility" for Gamergate's behavior.[69] One concern is that Internet trolls are responsible for many of the threats solely out of a desire to stir up conflict.[62][64][66]

Political views

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Many Gamergate supporters contend that the movement is concerned with ethical issues in video games journalism. However, observers tend to describe it as a culture war against diversifying social norms in video games—and women in particular.[43] Evidence which is said to justify this belief is the movement's origination in false accusations and trolling, its frequent harassment of female figures in the gaming industry, its disinterest in criticizing ethical issues with major game publishers, and its opposition to social criticism and analysis of video games.[70]

Gamergate has frequently been described as involving anti-feminist ideologies. Some supporters have denied this label, but acknowledge that there are misogynistic voices within it.[13][62][64][71][72][73] Commentators have otherwise been divided over its political characterization. Jon Stone, in The Guardian, called it "a swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment" and compared it to the men's rights movement.[71] Cathy Young, writing for Reason, described Gamergate supporters as leaning left-libertarian, but said that it has been supported by right wing voices.[27] Commentators such as Jon Stone, Liana Kerzner, Ryan Cooper, and Erik Kain have said that the controversy is being "exploited" by these right-wing voices and by conservative pundits who had little interest in video games or video game ethics beforehand.[71][74][75][30]

Gamer identity

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See also: Gamer

The idea of a gamer identity emerged in the early years of the video game industry and gained widespread recognition with the rise of the internet. The emergence of the industry also gave rise to numerous publications specializing in the coverage of video games and catering for the interests of a predominantly young male audience. Such publications were seen by industry leaders as a means of promotion for their products rather than sources for honest critical discussion and there was recurring criticism of the close relationship between gaming journalists and major gaming companies.[9][76] The growing popularity of games among casual consumers, due to more accessible technologies such as the Nintendo Wii and smartphones, expanded the audience for the industry to include many who did not fit the mold of the traditional hardcore gamer. As games also came to be seen as an art form rather than a product, games which featured meaningful artistic and cultural themes grew in popularity. This increasing perception of games as art prompted gaming publications to move towards cultural criticism of the games. Independent video game development, which allows developers to release titles without publisher interference, has made these games more common.[29][77][78][79][80]

The growth of the gaming audience also brought in many female gamers, which resulted in a diversification of the male-oriented gamer identity. This new audience began to question some assumptions and tropes that were historically used by game developers. Critics became increasingly interested in discussing issues of gender representation and identity in video games.[29][78] One prominent feminist critic of the representation of women in gaming is Anita Sarkeesian, whose Tropes vs. Women in Video Games project is devoted to criticism of female stereotypes in games. Her initial Kickstarter to raise funds for the series and her subsequent videos have all been met with hostile commentary and harassment from some gamers, who view her discourse as threatening. Further incidents, such as those concerning Jennifer Hepler, raised concerns about sexual harassment in video gaming.[29][78][81] Prior to August 2014, concerns about escalating harassment prompted the International Game Developers Association to provide support groups for harassed developers, and to begin discussions with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation to help investigate online harassment of game developers.[81]

In August 2014, shortly following the initial accusations towards Quinn, a number of gaming sites published op-eds which argued for the "end of the gamer identity", citing the growing diversity of gaming and the mainstreaming of the medium, while those associated with Gamergate were stated to be a reactionary force against these changes.[46][82][83] Some of these articles and essays were heavily critical of sexism within gamer culture. One of these, a Leigh Alexander column in the game developer trade publication Gamasutra titled "'Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over." argued that, "Developers and writers alike want games about more things, and games by more people. [...] We will get this, because we're creating culture now."[7][84] Responding to articles such as Gamasutra's piece, David Auerbach of Slate accused the games press of attacking their own readers, arguing that video game journalists risk obsolescence as audiences turn to commentators and amateur journalists.[11] Other concerns about the divide between gaming journalists and gamers were raised by The Guardian's Keith Stuart and Forbes.com contributor Erik Kain.[9][85]

Misogyny and antifeminism

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See also: Sexism in video gaming

A number of commentators have argued that the Gamergate hashtag had the potential to raise important issues in gaming journalism, but that the wave of misogynistic harassment and abuse associated with the hashtag had poisoned the well, making it impossible to separate honest criticism from sexist trolling.[8][17][29] The hashtag has also been associated with criticism of feminism and so-called "Social Justice Warriors." According to Sarah Kaplan of The Washington Post, "sexism in gaming is a long-documented, much-debated but seemingly intractable problem," and became the crux of the Gamergate controversy.[8] Writing in The Week, Ryan Cooper called the harassment campaign "an online form of terrorism" intended to reverse a trend in gaming culture toward increasing acceptance of women, and stated that social media platforms need to tighten their policies and protections against threats and abuse.[86] Speaking on Iowa Public Radio, academic Cindy Tekobbe said the harassment campaign was intended to "drive women out of public spaces" and intimidate them into silence.[87] In the words of Macleans, "Whether it was supposed to be or not, GamerGate is largely about women."[88]

Issues like sexism and misogyny had been identified as problems in the video game industry and community prior to the events of Gamergate.[89] Wu stated in a November 2014 interview with Develop that the game industry "has been a boys’ club for 30 years", describing that the common portrayal of women as "sex symbols and damsels in distress" in video games has led to the players taking the same attitudes.[90] Brendan Sinclair writing for GamesIndustry.biz stated that though the events of the Gamergate controversy were "reprehensible and saddening", the situation "has made abundantly clear is that this industry has some profound issues in the way it treats women".[91] Quinn said the campaign had "roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a pre-existing hate mob",[92] and urged industry publishers and developers to condemn the hashtag.[66] She further asked those Gamergate supporters who had any earnest discussion about ethics should move away from the "Gamergate" tag[66] Alex Goldman from On the Media wrote that the movement's involvement in harassment had caused it to lose mainstream credibility, and urged its supporters, "Come up with some other means of self-identification" (other than gamers) as a way of distancing themselves from their worst representatives.[17] The Washington Post described a Gamergate supporters as saying that they and other Gamergate supporters are making efforts to reject harassment and quickly report threatening or hateful comments to help keep the conversation respectful.[62]

Many commentators have said that the harassment associated with the movement tapped into this existing well of deep-seated misogyny, and that it was just brought to the fore by the anonymity of the Internet. Amanda Marcotte in an article for The Daily Beast noted that the allegation of Quinn having sex for a favorable review of her game was wrong, and accused the video game world of being, "thick with misogynists who are aching to swarm on any random woman held up for them to hate, no matter what the pretext." She also related the attacks to harassment sent to a woman who made a negative review of a Teen Titans cover and to a community manager for the Mighty No. 9 video game because she drew a feminine Mega Man, and virtual "rapes" committed against women's player avatars in Grand Theft Auto V and DayZ.[15] In March 2014, game designer Cliff Bleszinski wrote a blog post commenting on the "latent racism, homophobia and misogyny" that existed within the online gaming community.[93] It is believed this itself is tied to the anonymous, male-dominated nature of the Internet; Astra Taylor of Mother Jones documented harassment against women from online communities in April 2014, in which the harassment was played off by the male posters as if it was just "harmless locker room talk".[94] Developer Peter Molyneux considered that the Internet's instant accessibility of social media allows for people to express of-the-moment opinions without thinking about their consequences, leading to a "whole Pandora’s Box" of both good and bad issues that society must consider in terms of freedom of speech.[90]

GamerGate's targets have overwhelmingly been women, even in situations where both men and women have both been doing things that would otherwise draw their ire. Writing in The New Yorker, Simon Parkin said the attacks on Quinn, which the male journalist who was also falsely accused largely escaped, revealed them as "a pretense to make further harassment of women in the industry permissible."[2] In an opinion piece for The New York Times, Chris Suellentrop spoke of his issues with the hashtag such as its attacks on women, but also brought up the desire of Gamergate to shift focus away from innovative uses of the medium. He criticized the movement's apparent belief that increased coverage and praise of artistic games like Gone Home would negatively affect big mainstream games such as Grand Theft Auto V. He also noted that a colleague was the centre of a petition to have her fired for criticizing the portrayal of women in GTAV, despite many male critics (including himself) raising similar concerns, but not facing similar reprisals.[93]

Debate over ethics allegations

[edit]

Many Gamergate supporters contend that their movement is about ethical concerns revolving around the close relationships between journalists and developers, reviewers acknowledging social issues, and private conversations occurring between journalists.[6][33] The accusations behind these concerns have been largely rejected by media critics and commentators as ill-founded and poorly supported, with the overwhelming majority of commentators saying that reporting on social issues in reviews is not an ethical issue.[33][70][95][96] Writing in Time, Leigh Alexander, editor-at-large of Gamasutra, described the campaign's ethics concerns as deeply sincere but based on conspiracy theories, saying that there is nothing unethical about journalists being acquainted with those they cover and that meaningful reporting requires journalists to develop professional relationships with sources.[78] Writing in Vox, Todd VanDerWerff said "Every single question of journalistic ethics Gamergate has brought up has either been debunked or dealt with."[70]

Gamergate's demands have often been hard to quantify, but numerous journalists who have attempted to do so have come to the conclusion that they are an attempt to suppress views which Gamergate supporters disagree with as part of a long-running culture war. The Verge's Chris Plante wrote that under the guise of ethics concerns, Gamergate supporters repeatedly criticized him for writing reviews that discussed social criticisms of mainstream video games.[97] Columbia Journalism Review writer Chris Ip said "many criticisms of press coverage by people who identify with Gamergate (...) have been debunked" and concluded that "at core, the movement is a classic culture war."[33] Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post' said that some of the movement's ostensible ethics concerns about video game reviews are actually rooted in Gamergate supporters' belief that video games are appliances rather than art and should be reviewed based on feature checklists rather than traditional artistic criteria.[98] Newsweek/Brandwatch performed an analysis of about 25% of two million Twitter messages with the Gamergate tag from September 1, 2014 onward, and suggested it confirmed that "contrary to its stated goal, GamerGate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists".[32]

Similarly, the movement has been criticized for focusing primarily on women, especially female developers, and for ignoring many large-scale journalistic ethics issues. Alex Goldman of NPR's On the Media criticized Gamergate for targeting female indie developers rather than AAA games publishers, and said the movement's claims of unethical behavior by Quinn and Sarkeesian were unfounded.[17] In Wired, Laura Hudson found it telling that Gamergate supporters concentrated on impoverished independent creators and critics, and nearly exclusively women, rather than the large game companies whose work they enjoyed.[99] Vox writer Todd VanDerWerff highlighted an essay written by game developer David Hill, who said that corruption, nepotism and excessive commercialism existed in the gaming industry, but that Gamergate was not addressing those issues.[79]

Some news sites have adopted new policies in response to the controversy. Polygon now requires its writers to disclose contributions via Patreon, while Kotaku prohibits its staff from supporting any game developers through the website, except where it is required in order to access materials for review.[30][100] Defy Media adopted stricter ethical standards policies for all of their subsidiaries, including The Escapist and GameFront. Destructoid updated its ethics policies after Gearbox Software developer Anthony Burch pointed out his connections with Destructoid staff.[101]

In mid-September 2014, Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart published leaked discussions from a mailing list for gaming journalists called GameJournoPros, which included discussion of Gamergate events. Yiannopoulos and Gamergate supporters saw the mailing list as evidence of collusion between journalists.[62][102][103] The list's founder acknowledged suggesting that journalists write an open letter of support repudiating harassment linked to Gamergate, but said other members of the list had rejected his suggestion and helped him understand why his idea was inappropriate.[102][104][105] The overwhelming majority of commentators described the list as evidence of nothing more than the fact that journalists engage in professional discussion, advice and debate.[29][33][73][75][106] Following the leak, the mailing list was closed.[105]

Some Gamergate supporters alleged that the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), a non-profit group that coordinates academic research on video games, was working with journalists to advance a feminist agenda. Inside Higher Ed described the argument as a conspiracy theory.[107] The Executive Board of DiGRA has publicly condemned this as harassment and bullying.[108] Prof. Mia Consalvo, president of DiGRA, said that the effort to discredit its members' research demonstrates hostility to feminism and a failure to understand academic research.[107]

Parodies about Gamergate supporters' purported concerns about ethics circulated under the hashtags #readergate[109] and #actuallyethics.[110]

Gamergate organization

[edit]

Following the accusations against Quinn, proponents of Gamergate began to use the "KotakuInAction" subreddit and boards on 8chan to discuss and organize activism using the hashtag. Because of its anonymous membership, lack of organization and leaderless nature, sources widely differ as to the goals or mission of Gamergate. With no single person or group able to speak for Gamergate, defining it has been difficult.[13] Upon additional threats towards Sarkeesian, Wu, and Day, international media focused on Gamergate's violent, misogynistic element and its inability to present any coherent message. Writing in The Daily Telegraph in the wake of those incidents, Bob Stuart summed up the hashtag's troubles, saying "GamerGate has since swelled into an unwieldy movement with no apparent leaders, mission statement, or aims beyond calling out 'social justice warriors'. ... When members of the games [sic] industry are being driven from their houses and jobs, threatened, or abused, it makes GamerGate’s claim that it is engaged in an ethical campaign appear laughable."[12] Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, said that Gamergate has remained an amorphous and leaderless movement consisting solely of the hashtag so that the harassment can be conducted without any culpability.[111] Grant said that meant that "ultimately Gamergate will be defined—I think has been defined—by some of its basest elements."[33]

Jesse Singal, writing for New York based on a post he made to Reddit, stated that he had spoken to several Gamergate supporters to try to understand their concerns, but found conflicting ideals and incoherent messages. Singal observed that despite being told by supporters that Gamergate was not about misogyny, he saw movement supporters making a constant series of attacks on Quinn, Sarkeesian and other women.[13] The Columbia Journalism Review's Chris Ip said any legitimate message from Gamergate supporters regarding ethics in journalism was being lost in the noise created by harassment, sexism, and misogyny. With anyone able to tweet under the hashtag and no single person willing or able to represent the hashtag and take responsibility for its actions, Ip said it is not possible for journalists to neatly separate abusers from those seeking reasonable debate.[33] Both Singal and Ip were critical of the movement's lack of organization and leadership, with Singal commenting on their "refus[al] to appoint a leader or write up a platform",[13] and Ip calling the disarray to be "by design" as "they resist cohesion, they resist leadership, they resist order".[33] Ryan Cooper of The Week highlighted an analysis written by writer Jon Stone, citing: "(Gamergate) readjusts and reinvents itself in response to attempts to disarm and disperse its noxiousness, subsuming disaffected voices in an act of continual regeneration, cycling through targets, pretexts, manifestoes and moralisms..."[75]

Oxford University research fellow Anders Sandberg argued that Gamergate's failure to connect with a broader audience and the "train wreck" of a debate it generated is a function of its origins in imageboard subculture, which he said values anonymity, promotes chaotic discourse and fosters a hostile, vituperative atmosphere within its own sphere. Noting that those rules are "radically different" from most other cultures, he said the result was that "when the Chan culture touches other cultures of discourse there will be fundamental misunderstandings about the very nature of what a discourse is supposed to be."[112]

Although coverage has generally described Gamergate supporters as predominantly white and male, Allum Bokhari, writing on TechCrunch, has said that it also includes some women and minorities.[63]

Activities

[edit]

The Fine Young Capitalists

[edit]
Main article: The Fine Young Capitalists

Early in the controversy, Gamergate supporters focused on supporting a self-described radical feminist group called The Fine Young Capitalists, who had a dispute with Zoe Quinn over a game jam they organised. They began receiving financial backing for their project from Gamergate supporters, particularly those from 4chan's board /v/,[30][113] The backers raised over US$17,000 for the campaign.[30][72][114]

Operation Disrespectful Nod

[edit]

Gamergate supporters were critical of articles that spoke of the "death of the gamer identity" such as Leigh Alexander's piece in Gamasutra. In response, supporters organized "Operation Disrespectful Nod," an e-mail campaign to advertisers demanding that they drop several involved publications. After receiving complaints from Gamergate supporters, Intel withdrew an ad campaign from Gamasutra in October, though it later apologized for appearing to take sides in the controversy [115][116][117] and began advertising on Gamasutra again in mid-November.[118]

Operation Baby Seal

[edit]

In mid-October 2014, Sam Biddle, an editor for the Gawker affiliate Valleywag, made a series of tweets that concluded with a call for a return to the bullying of nerds. This led to Mercedes-Benz and Dyson temporarily pulling advertising from Gawker and Adobe Systems requesting that Gawker remove their logo from a portion of the Gawker website.[119][120] Gawker reported losing thousands of dollars as a result[121] but editor-in-chief Max Read said his only regret was that the site had not adequately called out Gamergate's "breathtaking cynicism and dishonesty."[122] Adobe later clarified that it had never been a Gawker advertiser and explicitly disowned Gamergate.[121][123][124][125] Biddle later stated that the tweets were jokes, but ultimately apologized for their content.[119][126] Commenting on the actions of Intel and Adobe and the public response, trade publication Advertising Age warned advertisers that responding to Gamergate was a "lose-lose situation", and that brands "not responding are in better shape than those who have".[127]

Gawker Media affiliate Kotaku was at the center of the initial allegations that started Gamergate. Gamergate supporters initiated "Operation Baby Seal" in late October, renewing focus upon Gawker. This campaign aimed at removing Google's AdSense and Amazon's Associates advertising platforms from Gawker by mass-reporting apparent violations of the ad agencies' terms of service in Gawker's published content. Vox's VanDerWerff identified that while past efforts of Gamergate to convince advertisers to pull ads has been something done through the history of journalism, this new tactic of targeting the ad providers is on a grander scale and has the potential, if successful, to financially harm Gawker. He stated that the campaign showed that Gamergate was not so much exposing ethical lapses as adopting a scorched earth approach to sites it didn't agree with.[128]

Other actions by Gamergate supporters have been the practice of using archive sites that remove advertisements to attempt to divert advertising revenue from specific websites while still using those sites for information. This practice attracted some criticism.[129]

#NotYourShield

[edit]

Many Gamergate supporters have taken issue with the widespread description of their movement as misogynistic, saying that the press’s focus on misogyny served mainly to "deflect criticism of the increasingly leftist orientation of indie games".[8] To respond to this criticism, a second Twitter hashtag, #NotYourShield, began to be used, with the intention of showing that women and other minorities in the gaming community were also critical of Quinn and Sarkeesian.[8][18][130]

Quinn released a series of logs from chat rooms and discussion boards on 4chan, which she said showed that Gamergate was manufactured by 4chan users and largely pushed by sockpuppets.[28][131] Following Quinn's release of chat and discussion logs she got from 4chan, Ars Technica and The Daily Dot said that these logs showed that the #NotYourShield hashtag was manufactured on 4chan and that many of those posting under #NotYourShield were sockpuppet accounts impersonating women and minorities.[28][131] Quinn said that in light of Gamergate's exclusive targeting of women or those who stood up for women, "#notyourshield was solely designed to, ironically, be a shield for this campaign once people started calling it misogynistic."[132] Members of 4chan have said that some information has been taken out of context or misrepresented.[130][132] Arthur Chu says the hashtag was an attempt to weaponize white male guilt and keep allies from supporting the people being attacked by Gamergate.[133]

Industry response

[edit]

The harassment campaigns launched against Quinn, Sarkeesian, Wu and others have led many industry professionals to speak out against Gamergate, condemning the attacks it has spawned as damaging for the video gaming community. Independent game developer Andreas Zecher wrote an open letter calling upon the community to take a public stand against the attacks, which attracted the signatures of more than two thousand professionals within the gaming industry.[43][77] The large and varied response to the letter was considered by many in the industry to be a sign that the people involved in the harassment attacks were not representative and comprised a vocal minority of the overall industry population.[21] Writing for The Guardian, Jenn Frank described the tactics used in the harassment campaign, and the climate of fear it generated through its attacks on women and their allies. Frank concluded that this alienating abusive environment would harm not only women, but the industry as a whole. Frank subsequently received harassment on a false pretext related to disclosure in this article, and left games journalism.[11][29][134] Games designer Damion Schubert called Gamergate "an unprecedented catastrof**k" and stated that silencing critiques of games harms games developers by depriving them of feedback.[135]

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) issued a statement condemning the series of harassment, stating "There is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats."[136] At BlizzCon 2014, Blizzard Entertainment president and co-founder Mike Morhaime denounced recent harassment, blaming "a small group of people [who] have been doing really awful things" and "tarnishing our reputation" as gamers. He called on attendees to treat each other with kindness and demonstrate to the world that the community rejects harassment. His statements have been widely interpreted as referring to Gamergate.[137][138][139][140] When asked about the controversy Sony Computer Entertainment of America CEO Shawn Layden called harassment and bullying "completely unacceptable", but that there isn't "one statement or one position on it, or one answer to whatever this very broadly-defined #GamerGate really means".[141][142] Developer Peter Molyneux stated that the industry needs to "adopt a level of professionalism and diversity commensurate with other industries", and recognizing some of the issues surrounding Gamergate existed within the industry; Molyneux pointed to the large amount of support Valve's Gabe Newell received after being sent a death threat from a developer who was condemned widely and quickly by the community, but found the lack of similar prompt action in the case of the harassment of female figures in Gamergate disturbing.[90] The Swedish Games Industry issued a statement denouncing the harassment and sexism from Gamergate supporters.[143]

Gamergate was named by CNET as one of "Tech's biggest flops and gaffes in 2014".[144]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
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