The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

The Gamer Press Woke Up, Decried Gamergate, Then Went Back To Sleep

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article shaming the press for basically ignoring GamerGate.  I was not alone, with Frank Cifaldi being one notable example who made literally dozens of tweets like the one below.

Erik Kain, a Forbes journalist who has written more sympathetically to the #gamergate cause, has also made that note from the other side.

Shortly afterwards, the Anita shooting threat and Brianna Wu being forced to flee her home resulted in the real press finally picking up on the story, and not surprisingly with those two events driving the coverage, my predictions were correct in that #GamerGate has been covered as primarily a vehicle for harassment.  #Gamergaters complaining that they aren’t covering their trumped up bullshit against Nathan Grayson don’t seem to get that those kinds of penny-ante inside baseball stories DON’T make national news, but potential school shootings sure as hell do. And THAT’S why stories have finally shown up in the MSM press, including CNN, MSNBC multiple times, New York Times, Rolling StoneCBS, and NPR among others.

I’m guessing that once the New York Times is reporting on their field of expertise while they’ve been actively ignoring it, the gaming press started to actually feel a sense of shame, because at that point they were pretty clearly derelict in their duty.  Brianna Wu calling them out from the Washington Post may have also been a factor.  Because it wasn’t until then that we started to see the flood of sites actually acknowledge and, in most cases, condemn #gamergate.

GiantBomb (10/17/2014)

[W]hen “GamerGate” rose up to cover over a campaign of harassment with a veneer of concern for the ethics of games journalism, it more or less set off every single disgust alarm I have. Though I’m sure some good people have been roped into this mess under this guise, the ethical concern portion of all this is largely a farce, a fallacy.

Polygon (10/17/2014)

Of course, this whole thing didn’t begin with “ethics.” When demands from the proto-GamerGate crowd to cover the Quinn “controversy” got louder, we discussed the topic internally. We debated its newsworthiness — it turns out we don’t always agree — but it was the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics that ultimately helped me make the decision to decline coverage of what was now being called a conspiracy. “Ethical journalism treats sources, subjects, colleagues and members of the public as human beings deserving of respect,” the code reads under the heading of “Minimize Harm.”

Gamespot (10/17/2014) – Attempts to play it safe by not mentioning #gamergate by name.

Although we consider any debate dealing with game journalism ethics to be vitally important, we do not condone any actions that are meant to harass, bully, or intimidate others. We also refuse to give oxygen to a disturbing minority who seek to use this debate as an excuse for their own appalling actions.

Kotaku (10/20/2014) – After they had just given oxygen to the short-lived counterprotest, they later published We’re all Tired of Gamergate.

Here’s where we seem to stand: Much of the press and the gaming world is repulsed by Gamergate, a movement that is—be it the case that it was the actions of extremists or not—inextricably associated with harassment and that, as much as its roots may be claimed to be about games journalism still suffers the core rot of having taken seed as a blog post written by a person trying to assassinate the character of his ex-girlfriend.

Game Informer (10/20/2014) – Notably, this magazine is effectively the house organ for Gamestop, the video game retail chain.  Note, this article is a surprisingly thorough history of the original sins of #gamergate, the harassment of Anita and Zoe, and seems to be pretty accurate, a good read if you want a reminder why you should be pissed off about the cataclysm that is #gamergate.

Media outlets outside of gaming are looking into this mess in the video game community and they see GamerGate as a hate group. It is hard for me to disagree with that conclusion. Many of the same people who harassed Anita Sarkeesian during her Kickstarter campaign two years ago, many of the same tactics of intimidation, victim blaming, and conspiracy theories, have come out of the woodwork to support GamerGate. Why wouldn’t they? It legitimizes and normalizes their hatred of these women. “GamerGate does not condone harassment,” has become a common quote when allegations of abuse crop up. I find that hard to believe. The goals of those who harass and send death threats and the goals of GamerGate are the same. Those harassers are comfortable in GamerGate; there is no reason for them to feel unwelcome. People on the GamerGate forums celebrated when Anita Sarkeesian cancelled her talk at USU because of the school shooting threat. Defending this movement after two months of this behavior is giving tacit support to an environment that encourages harassment of women in the video game industry.

Joystiq (10/20/2014)

The only story I’ve seen fished out with the GamerGate hashtag is legitimate harassment. I have seen absolutely vile, irredeemable messages delivered to women who have dared to make games, critique games and, you know, BE ON THE INTERNET in the vicinity of games. And by stating this, I am not inviting you to tell me, now, whether or not you agree with the views of industry critics like Anita Sarkeesian – that’s irrelevant.

If you feel defensive or angry right now, it’s because you’re being mentioned in the same breath as: those who send death threats to developers; those who launch volleys of sexist remarks at women reviewing games; those who threaten school shootings in order to shut down a woman’s speech (about video games!) at a university. I don’t believe Joystiq readers stand for that, but I also see requests for our team to get “back” to writing about video games whenever we touch on gender disparity or LGBTQ issues. Well, we can’t do that while people are getting attacked in the same room. We can’t talk about games or ethics or “just games” while this is going on.

Somewhere in here, the ESA offered the most milquetoast of all condemnations possible.  I suspect that next week, they’ll report that the sky is, in fact, blue.  Usually.

“Threats of violence and harassment are wrong,” said a spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association in a statement. “They have to stop. There is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats.”

This leaves some notable exceptions acting as cowards in stating a position.  IGN (the number one gaming site in the world), The Escapist (which is trying to pivot to cater to disaffected gamergaters).  PCGamer has no editorial I can find, but are limiting their comments to just twitter (and getting boycott threats for it), thus managing to be spineless and alienate gamergaters at the same time.

As for the rest of them, most of them for whatever reason haven’t posted about the issue since, which means that MSNBC has run more coverage than any of them.  It’s nice that they took the time to take a stand for what’s right.  Maybe, if we’re lucky, they’ll feel inclined to do it again in a month or two.

And for what it’s worth, none of them were as good as Clickhole’s.

Is Gamergate a vast, complex, and diverse community?

Yes! It is not composed, as the mainstream media would lead you to believe, solely of white male trolls. It also has female trolls. It has African-American trolls and Asian trolls, gay trolls and straight trolls. In fact, Gamergate is all about the inclusion of anyone—regardless of gender, race, or sexual orientation—whose views on video games and how we should think about them conform exactly to those of the movement at large.

….
It is important to remember that the members of Gamergate, only some of whom threaten to rape and murder women, are simply fighting for ethics in gaming journalism.

23 Comments

  1. Dave Rickey

    Clickhole was funny. Mean and silly, but it’s the site that The Onion started for jokes that were too mean and silly for their main site.

    –Dave

  2. A person

    Damion writes about GamerGate like he has stock in the company.

    Do you ever blog about design Damion? (That is the title of the blog!)

    I don’t understand the investment with GG. GG is pretty dumb for the most part and rabid anti-GG people are also pretty embarrassing in their own way. (Like those Gawker dudes)

    It’s vaguely interesting to check in on once in a while but I don’t get eating, sleeping and breathing GamerGate.

    I’m genuinely curious why you cover it so much. You keep providing updates but the updates are just “another guy wrote another think piece that’s a variation of something you already read 50 times.”

    It’s like 24 hour news. Wall to wall coverage of nothing significant.

    I’m not trying to be condescending or dismissive, I’m just really curious why this is something you devote so much time and effort to.

    • Consumatopia

      It’s surely infinitely more rational for Damion to spend time making blog posts on a gaming issue that has made national news than it is for the rest of us to spend time posting comments on his blog.

      On that note, good night.

    • DZ

      I don’t why Damion does it, but I can speak a little to why I follow GamerGate pretty closely by reading his and other people’s articles. (Though I don’t write nearly as comprehensively or as well about the subject)

      I’ve considered myself a gamer — and self-labeled as one when asked about it — for most of my life. Ever since my parents grabbed a used Atari 2600 in elementary school from a yard sale in the late 80s (I jumped on the NES bandwagon only a couple years before the release of the SNES), I’ve been hooked on video games. It’s been a hobby and passion through elementary, middle, high school and college, and has helped me connect with a group of friends that has persisted to this day.

      As such, it was with a certain kind of trepidation when I first witnessed the initial stirring of GamerGate. And with silent but potent alarm as GamerGate continued to build momentum, and be lead and baldly influenced by figures that I imagine a great many gamers would vehemently disavow given any other other circumstances.

      GamerGate is the largest gamer vs gamer conflict that I can remember. Sure, there have been “console wars” in the past, and I did once manage to get into a fight in middle school over Mario vs Sonic, but until now, I never really thought that the a group of people who loved games could truly fight themselves.

      It feels like a civil war, and I hate it. I hate that there appear to be people who genuinely care for integrity in gaming journalism because they care that deeply about games that are involved in a movement that is so easily, so *regularly* manipulated by figureheads and people of influence for their own agendas that really don’t have very much to do with gaming at large.

      I guess I could be labeled “anti-GG”, though I prefer to think of myself as a gamer who refuses to be influenced or led by people who a history of very obvious agendas. I like to them that I gather my own facts.

      Part of that means staying up to date with GamerGate and reading most things that I come across — both articles in favor of GamerGate, and pieces decrying the movement. I read the tweets of people like FartToContinue and that Akkad fellow because as much as I think they are terrible people, they are still (unfortunately) voices of influence in the GamerGate community.

      It’s probably not healthy, and I’ve actually recently made a goal to filter my list of sources to only a few places I think write interesting pieces (Damion and his site being one of them).

      But that’s why I care. I care because I feel like if I dont’ care, it means being in ignorance of the people who I feel, for the first time, are engaging in a gamer civil war.

    • Damion Schubert

      Because GamerGate is a cataclysmic event in terms of a certain line of thought inside of how games should be made and discussed. It’s resulting in a chilling effect that will likely take years to undo and overcome. Felicia Day’s piece on the matter was incredibly important, and I will hopefully find time to talk more on exactly this tomorrow.

      • Joel

        I have never personally met Felicia Day but I have followed her off-and-on since she appeared on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

        She has always struck me as a genuinely nice person. And I don’t mean “nice” the way you say it as a last-ditch attempt to describe someone with the personality of a bag of suet. I mean a kind, thoughtful, *real* person.

        I can’t say doxxing her was a “bridge too far,” because GG or the third parties stirring shit around it crossed that point about eight bridges back. But I think targeting her was a profound tactical error.

        • Damion Schubert

          I think it was the third party trolls. Or an INCREDIBLY STUPID first party actor of Gamergate. Since anyone can claim allegiance to the hashtag, there’s no way to know.

          • Max W.

            ” Since anyone can claim allegiance to the hashtag, there’s no way to know.”

            Wow, what a surprise, a disorganized and decentralised movement cannot police itself. Again and again, the promise of full inclusivity bites gaters in the ass.
            Carry on with your 4chan honor and get another round of kicking in the non-specialized press.

        • A person

          If it was the action of a random shit-stirrer then it wasn’t a tactical error at all. That action got a lot of attention, a bunch of people blamed GamerGate, and a lot of GamerGaters said “hey it wasn’t us” and then people fought some more.

          I would guess that this was some person looking to amuse themselves and I imagine they are amused. Basically their plan worked – they were able to have a large disruptive impact with minimal effort and no personal repercussion.

          • Damion Schubert

            Part of the reason why I am not so quick to claim it was a third-party shit-stirrer is that the initial response to her post on both KiA and 8chan was… well, pretty much unhinged from reality.

        • Kes

          I doubt the doxxer was a “True” Gamergater, whoever or whatever that is, but I’m sure, as has been said by many, most succinctly by Foldable Human, that person enjoyed exploiting the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that surrounds GG. Felicia Day was laying out as clearly as anyone the fear and chilling effect the harassment surrounding GG has engendered, and someone just couldn’t resist leaping in and proving that she was right to be afraid. Anita Sarkeesian has noted that the level of harassment she’s been fielding since August has been a major increase over the appalling level she usually gets.

          Feminists and social scientists like to note that people who hold misogynistic views often think that others tacitly agree with them on those base assumptions. When one guy makes a rape joke and the group laughs, both that guy and any guys who privately think that way of discussing women is “right” or, more aptly, “normal” have their biases confirmed, even if the rest of the group is just laughing nervously and hoping to change the subject. That’s why they get upset to the level of derangement when someone like Sarkeesian comes along, points out these implicit attitudes, and labels them “problematic.”

          • Joel

            Trying to talk about a “True” GGer is a shining example of the “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy. This is why groups have standards, organization, and mission statements as opposed to poo-flinging Internet mobs. 😉

          • Consumatopia

            Organization doesn’t really let you dissociate from threats/violence that’s done in the name of your beliefs–you can’t stop anyone from saying “I did this because X”.

            Organization would let GG dissociate itself from the much larger cloud of misogynist conspiracy mongering that currently surrounds GG and seems to attract idiots and trolls.

          • A person

            GGers won’t organize because organizing takes actual work, whereas posting on social media is an easy act of performance art.

            It’s the same reason why game developers constantly give stump speeches and pay lip service to diversity but diversity hiring rates are abysmal, barely improving, and minus any organized effort to improve.

            There’s a reason it’s called “slacktivism.”

            GG is slacktivism for the most part. So are most “social justice”, diversity and anti-sexism efforts in gaming.

            Why don’t GG organize and form a mission statement with goals and such? Why was the IGDA page on diversity last updated 10 years ago?

            The answer to both these questions is the same – people care about being demonstrative and theatrical online, not about the actual causes they’re ostensibly backing.

  3. Vhaegrant

    Looking forward to your imminent coverage of Felicia’s blog. Her blog is an interesting read.

    I also noticed the folks over at ‘Extra Credits’ have raised their heads above the parapet with a brief comment of their stance on their Facebook page.

    If anything the Gamergate event just highlights the risks associated with an ever increasing population of followers; It becomes ever harder to fit everyone under a one word label like ‘Gamer’.

    This should be fairly self evident given the schisms that form within any fanbase. The constant one upmanship that the game ‘you’ play is better than the game someone else chooses to play. The broader base a game is designed to appeal to, say MMOs, the more there is to disagree about; just within a games specific population let alone the ill words between competing MMOs.

    The ease and accessibility of commenting opens up trolling across all aspects, not just gaming. In the UK there are discussions on increasing the penalty should you be found guilty of specifically targeting and harassing an individual to up to 2 years imprisonment.
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-29686865
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29678989

    Leading back to the first blog in this series about anonymity and audience bringing out the inner-fuckwad there should be no surprise to find those that consider themselves to be ‘gamers’ that fall into the worst categories of trolling.

    What is disappointing is how slow many communities are at distancing themselves from such toxic activities.

    • Joel

      But not all groups schism like this.

      I mean sure. There are football fans who will argue you aren’t a REAL fan unless you attend EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. But you can call yourself a “sports” fan if you love curling, soccer, the WNBA, and competitive midget tossing.

      You may not be a fan of mainstream or traditional sports, but you can fairly say “I enjoy a specific set of sporting competitions.”

      “Gamer” should be analogous to “Sports.” Sure, not everyone who plays games is a gamer, anymore than everyone who plays a game of horse is not a basketball player. But you can be a “gamer” if you love MMOs. Or RPGs. Or FPS games. Or adventure games.

      I think the reason the name *must* lend itself to this kind of flexibility is that if you were gaming 20-30 years ago (and plenty of us were), the games you were playing then have virtually nothing in common with the games of today. Pitfall, Pong, classic Sierra Games, even the original Mario Brothers have little and less in common with Mass Effect or The Old Republic.

      I was a gamer then. I’m a gamer now.

      • Vhaegrant

        Maybe the choice of ‘Schism’ was a little harsh, but given the emotional context of the discussion it sort of lept to the forefront of my lexicon.

        It would be just as apt as to say ‘faction’ or similar synonym for a group sharing a similar set of beliefs.

        My point was the larger you make this initial umbrella definition of ‘Gamer’, the greater the number of smaller factions you will have sheltering underneath, each thinking they are the ones holding the brolly (own the term). Um, I’m not that great with metaphors 😉

  4. Joe

    I have a pretty grim view of GG on the whole (though I reject the “Anti-GG” tag they use in an attempt to paint opposition as some singular entity), but I find it pretty likely that Felicia Day’s ridding was the work of third party trolls, and can’t be pinned on the movement. What CAN be pinned on them, however, is the continued displays of apathy, dismissiveness and belittlement of her afterwards by members of their movements at each of their usual stomping grounds.

    Here’s a woman who has done nothing but good for the gaming community as a whole, and whose personal account of the movement’s effects was touching, yet ultimately mild and served more as a call to peace than anything else. But rather than offer empathy after her fears were actualized so quickly, a good number of them instead demeaned her as a “fake nerd girl” with little in terms of “real” contributions to the gaming community, whose always been a SJW (Gamergate bingo!). Oh, and then they insulted her apparently middling attractiveness, because that’s totally relevant and not sexist. And of course, since it’s not outright doxxing or threats, not a single word of condemnation from the moderates who otherwise seem so concerned with public perception of GG. That, IMO, is nearly as damning as if they had actually doxxed her.

    • Adam Conway

      Oh please with this Felicia Day worship. She had her agency address posted. big whoop.

      No one gives a shit when a GG gets a death threat, but apparently Felicia Day is the step to far. My eyes can’t roll fast enough

  5. Ricardo Lima

    Theres a lot to be embarassed about by the so called two sides of the issue. The lovely jokes linking Gamergate to the Ottawa shooting as it happened and to Ebola are very humane and endearing. Surely now we will be shamed into hinding in the basement we dwell.

    Its become clear to me that a lot of people in the games journaslism and industry, belive are the white male idiotic rabble they deemed us to be. We are not.

    The whole issue has created tons of ressentment that wont go away easily or at anyones convinience. Shut up I dont care usually doesnt work well.

    I wont let anyones hatred and prejudices define me and nobody should have to accept such.

    I respect Damiens work and understant that he really means well, even as I disagree with him.

    We are all beautiful and uniques snowflakes even if we are not all Zen in design.

  6. Joel

    One of Damions strongest points was that GG needed to organize or accept that public perception of the movement and its goals would be defined by its worst and most outrageous members. That is what happens whenever any social movement exists. GG rejects this.

    That does not justify the sorts of comments you reference, but it means that yes, GG will be ignored. Not told “Shut up and go away.” shunned altogether.

    Felicia Day wrote a post that boiled down to “This scares me.” someone immediately proved she was right to be afraid. That profoundly alienates everyone GG needs to engage with.

    • A person

      You have a funny way of ignoring GG.

      • Joel

        I have chosen to discuss GG in a handful of places with a small handful of people. I have written nothing about it professionally (it would be orthogonal to the topics I cover in any case).

        What I engage with professionally and what I discuss personally do not always overlap. While I obviously draw on my professional experience, there is a difference between engaging in discussion threads on a blog and writing my own stories on a topic.

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