Well, hello there! Here's another blog post about #gamergate by someone or another. Why should you bother reading it? Well maybe you don't feel like you need to know more, but in my opinion, this is the first truly unbiased survey of the topic, giving each side the benefit of the doubt, trying to see it both ways, at once.
There is a lot of information here, despite the fact that I tried to streamline the events I describe down to the most essential ones. In places where I have editorialized or go slightly off topic, I've used this smaller font, which hopefully allows you to skim over it if you so choose.
So, have you heard about #gamergate? Think you know what it's about? You're probably wrong.
I say that because I've just spent days researching every last nook and cranny of this topic, and I have yet to see anyone come to a clear, disinterested conclusion on the matter.
Let me introduce myself, I am not a gamer. I don't play games, and I could care less about the ethics of gaming or the role of women in gaming. I only found out about this because the hashtag was all over twitter and I finally had to ask "what the hell is this?" The mess of information that I found prompted me to write this.
Yes, I'm a woman, and essentially a feminist (if you want to label things), but before all those things, I'm an impartial researcher. I've walked into this project with no preconceptions at all, and I've been very diligent in chasing down leads, so I think my conclusions have merit. You can skip to the end to read those conclusions, if you like, but I encourage you to stick with me while I outline my evidence. Whichever side of this you fall on, you will probably be surprised by what I've found.
First things, first.
There is a woman named Zoe Quinn, she's a video game developer, and
she recently released a game called "Depression Quest" (which came out in early August), and participated in something called Game_Jam and then later something called Rebel Jam
(neither of the latter two bore fruit). There is a man named Eron
Gjoni, he used to date Zoe Quinn, I guess he's not in gaming, but he is in IT and used to work for a research lab in Boston doing AI stuff.
I'm going to be
super clear about the following: I have no god damn idea what
happened between Gjoni and Quinn, and I don't care. I don't care if
people cheated, if they argued about things, if he had an anxiety
disorder, if she was a depressed sex addict, or whatever. I
care about evidence, I'm an evidence person, and the evidence doesn't
and can't reveal what happened behind closed doors, and even so, it's no one's business. What did happen,
without question, is Gjoni wrote an entire blog detailing the end of his relationship with Quinn (called the Zoe Post, and published on August 19th), and why he felt betrayed by her.
(If you don't want to read the whole thing, and I don't blame you,
there's a handy tl;dr here. Don't worry, I read the whole thing so you don't have to. It's what
I do. Say thank you. No seriously, say thank you, he's a terrible
writer, and it's long.) The blog reveals a two things about Gjoni's
character that don't take much arm-chair-Freudianism to grasp: 1. he
is hurt; 2. he is obsessed, with a capital obsessed. (The
blog has been characterized multiple places as a “9,000 word
screed”, which is weird. It makes it fairly clear that people
aren't doing a lot of independent research on the front side of this
and are just copying each other;s sentences. Screed is not the word I
would use, and I also wouldn't use rambling, which I see a lot, too.
It's methodical and sourced; it's sad and pathetic, yes, lacking in
consistent voice and full of unexamined vitriol, certainly, but it's
not incoherent.)
I have no desire to judge whether people are ethical persons unless I have first hand experience with their actions. It's been claimed that not only was Quinn cheating (which she concedes in the various conversation logs in the Zoe Post), but that can be abusive, and supposedly she caused enough kerfuffle to destroy or nearly destroy various companies and ventures. It's obvious that some people haven't ever liked her, but that doesn't say much. Gjoni on the other hand, is no angel either; it takes two people to be in an unhealthy relationship, remember, and even he says that he doesn't care too much about the infidelity because he prefers polyamory, that he was mostly concerned with her hypocrisy as someone who comes from a social justice background; plus let's not forget, the dude posted an entire blog cataloging his ex-girlfriend's sexual life to get back at her, and lost his job (possibly) because of that. Then again, I've also never met this guy, and there are almost certainly nuances about this that I will never catch.
How did this become
#gamergate though? I mean, who cares about one guy being pissed about
his ex? Supposedly she cheated (gray area) with her boss
(dumb) who was married (jesus), and some other people too (dear god
break up with her now). OH! Someone who she slept with was a
journalist (Nathan Grayson, he works for Kotaku).
OK, this is a thing. People are worried about bias, and even possibly
corruption, in gaming journalism. I mean, it makes sense right?
Reviews are an important way for potential customers to hear about
your product. Like a book or a movie, if your game gets panned or
even ignored, this could totally alter your sales numbers. If you're
trying to compete against a bunch of people who are bribing
journalists, well, that would suck. Plus, this is gaming journalism,
not white house coverage, so if back room deals are happening, it's
unlikely to create serious systemic condemnation.
Obviously she was sleeping
with the journalist to get good game reviews.
Wait, what?
No, seriously, this is the
conclusion people leaped to. And I say “leaped” because I really
did read all of Gjoni's blog, and nowhere in there does he ever
suggest she was trading sex for reviews. Not once. (Say thank you
again, reading that blog was excruciating, but it was important that
I read it to be completely sure that the implication was not there,
at all.) What's more, the sex-for-reviews allegations are verifiably false.
(I did find a forum post
claiming that Grayson had, in fact, written a blog post reviewing the game, but that it has since been taken down. Ok then. I looked, and no one has a screen shot of this, or a wayback
version, or anything. Which is weird because nearly everything in
this whole snafu has been triple documented. This short post from
January does exist, but it happened before she slept with him. Although, I suppose you could argue that she could have
slept with him earlier than they claim... but
seriously? Is that really worth trading sex for? An hour of my time is worth way
more than that.)
Almost immediately after the Zoe Post goes up, a gamer, who often goes by the handle MundaneMatt, posted a video recapping Gjoni's blog and accuses her of getting
favorable reviews because she was having sex with the people giving
her those reviews. He does not appear to double check to see if those positive reviews
exist, or if they have been written by people she's supposed to have
slept with, he just makes the general suggestion.
This is where it
starts, everything afterwards is pure snowballing.
Shortly after MundaneMatt's video is posted, YouTube removes it, due to DMCA request. YouTube member, InternetAristocrat posts a video discussing the fact that the MundaneMatt video,
was removed from YouTube after Quinn made this DMCA claim, supposedly because the background image in the original video comes from her website, and reiterating the claim
that if Quinn is sleeping with certain persons in exchange for reviews, that would be abhorrent behavior. This video is another step towards
assuming that Quinn had indeed engaged in the behavior implied,
again, without linking the associated articles.
(As an aside,
there is a legitimate question about whether the removal of the
original video is an abuse of DMCA. The DepressionQuest website is
protected by copyright, which potentially excludes the use of screenshots, in a non-review capacity, without permission.
Whether Quinn chose to use DMCA as an efficient, but suspect, way of
removing a potentially libelous video, is not my comment to make, I
wasn't in the room when she made the decision. In the end, the onus is on YouTube for this one)
Stick with me, here. I know that the number of handles involved, as well as the numerous platforms, can get very confusing, and I'm sorry. I've tried to make all of this as clear as possible.
Now comes the first hints of serious harassment. Quinn complains
about having her tumblr hacked and personal information spread, at
one point she claims her father had been called. Allegations are that she made up the whole thing to get attention and sympathy, but
there's actually no evidence either way. Certainly some people have her phone number, and have called it to harass her. What is falsifiable, if you have the patience to do a lot of work and
dig through hundreds of pages of IRC logs, is the claim that
individuals and groups of persons worked towards and discussed
numerous ways to make her life miserable. Whether or not they actually got her personal information, they
certainly wanted to, and they didn't stop there. She had posted nude
photographs of herself online, earlier in her life, and these images
were now used as a kind of intimation campaign. I think this was done
mostly to shame her, but there was a constant undercurrent of sexual
violence in much of the harassment she received, and this worked as a
method to underline that. (I'm
going to recommend that if you have any sensitivity to images of rape
or sexual abuse, that you don't even attempt to read the IRC logs. I
could barely stomach to read the curated version.)
An
insanely long critique that gets posted on reddit, describing all the
holes in Quinn's version of events. I'll save you the trouble of reading it, it's called "Zoe Quinn
is a liar", and cites things she's said on twitter, and compares
them to to various other posts, with annotations. Unfortunately, it's
not very convincing, as it's full of logical holes, and is clearly
leaving incidents and important information out. It's too bad,
because it obviously took a long time to make, but I don't feel
comfortable using it as evidence, one way or the other. Essentially,
the best thing I can say about the Quinn being hacked thing, is that
while people were clearly talking about doing it, there's no concrete
evidence that it actually happened.
Over the next few days, several more
posts related to the blog are made in various places, including
something on TwitLonger by TotalBuscuit called "What the hell
just happened?" The TotalBuscuit post is fairly exemplary of the response in general. Commentators generate opinions with rapidity, but often without the willingness to do original research. It looks like a typical rumor mill, with people coming down on one side or another, reporting things they've "heard", basing their judgement on their opinion of the source they got it from, and riffing off guesses
There is a group of people
who run a website called The Fine Young Capitalists, which despite
it's name, is about women in gaming (and black characters in manga).
They accuses Quinn of having attempted to destroy their project. They
believe she was doing this because she saw them as a rival but note
that she used concerns over their trans-policy and the fact that they
weren't paying their contestants, as the basis of the attacks. (There are three different sources for TFYC's side of the story: an interview, a sound cloud “confession”, and a reddit post.)
This is possibly the only place where something slightly good comes
out of this whole thing. The group of people who have been
“against” Quinn, decide that they will jump in and help TFYC with
their crowd fund, which up to this point, had been floundering. They
successfully reach their goal and an agreement is made between the
harassers and TFYC to create a character based on their specifications. Then again, my guess is that some, if not all, people who were
involved in discrediting TFYC genuinely believed that there was something rotten going on, though given how much unbalanced negativity is coming out of #gamergate, it's hard to know how terrible they actually thought it was.
A woman named Rachel who
goes by “negat0ry” also comes out, who was a friend of Gjoni's,
who claims that Quinn prevented Gjoni from contacting her while she
was going through a difficult time, and also harassed her, and
involved other persons in that harassment.
I have nothing much to say about this. If this happened, it's terrible, but one would expect that Gjoni should have been man enough, and enough of a friend, to do the right thing. I really feel like I can divide the blame equally here.
In case you thought Gjoni
and #gamergate folks are the only ones who have a voice here, Quinn, has been collecting data from IRCs and tweeets. She writes a buzzfeed article,
and had earlier written a blog post,
detailing her side of the story.
Now,
the best question I can ask about Quinn, and her reaction, is whether
I might have done better. I'm sure I wouldn't have, and it makes a
certain amount of gut sense that nothing she could have done would
have come across as positive. It does seem like she's
really obnoxious and angry in her writing (her first blog post on the
subject calls her detractors “terrorists” which is a bit strong).
She video tapes herself talking to people who have found her phone number, and does not attempt to engage them in dialogue, just
harasses them back. None of this makes her any better than the
people she's going after.
OK, you might say at this
point, this is all fairly cut and dry. Quinn is a terrible person,
and people got legitimately mad, if insanely-over-the-top-mad. Obviously this was just textbook mob behavior. Quinn will eventually
be able to move on with her life, and this will all get better
eventually, right? Well, remember how Quinn had claimed that her
personal information had been disseminated? Let's pretend that was a
lie, and that it never happened. If this is the case, maybe that is
were some #gamergate supporters got the idea to start spamming,
revealing the private information of anyone they didn't like and
also, creating false profiles of people pretending to be pro #gamergate.
Confused yet? I'm going to
remind you of the time scale here. We're still less than a week in.
Large websites and groups where gamers congregate to discuss gaming,
and now #gamergate, begin to find it necessary to pass judgment or at least institute crowd control. By Quinn's request Reddit removes posts by certain users on the
topic. The same thing happens on 4chan, and with individual accounts on Steam. To be fair to those groups that did enforce censorship, raw cruelty
is something that is remarkably hard to quash, and it often seems
like the most expedient way of handling a problem like this one is to
wipe the slate clean and hope it goes away. Unfortunately, supporters
of #gamergate did not see it this way, and felt instead that the
“establishment” was simply working to suppress their complaints.
There are so many different opinions, and "sides" to this issue, that it would be impossible to cover all of them, without this blog post becoming ten thousand pages long. To summarize what happens next, people do what comes naturally to humans, they explain the situation to one another, sometimes incompletely, sometimes with embellishment, and the legend and problem outgrow their original boundaries. There is no clear consensus at first as to what the whole thing is about: is it about Quinn? is it about how feminists are destroying gaming with their unreasonable demands? is it about men threatening women?
However, it's important
not to forget that there are participators in this discussion who are
seriously concerned about gaming journalism. Given that gaming
journalism isn't exactly a giant field, it's hardly surprising that
journalists are friends with developers and programmers, that these
two groups form romantic or sexual relationships, support one
another, and accept favors from each other. One #gamergate supporter
creates an infograhic tracing what they consider to be the unethical blending occurring between gaming journalism and using Quinn as specific example. Kotaku and Polygon, two websites that review games, change their ethics policies to
prevent journalist from monetarily supporting games creation.
Unbelievably, while
this entire time I have been referring to one side of this debate as
#gamergate supporters, that term does not get coined until Adam
Baldwin posts a tweet suggesting the term, ten days after the Zoe Post. This tweet is a clean demarcation between when this was an infighting
problem, and when it became a mainstream concern, in which
celebrities weigh in with their own opinions. Anita
Sarkeesian, known for her Feminist Frequency YouTube videos, in which
she has covered issues of the depictions of women in games, tweets that, due to what she considers to be credible threats, she has left
her home and contacted the police. As a result of the fact that violent anti-feminists are the loudest
minority in the #gamergate discussion, it becomes all too common for
anti-#gamergate supporters to begin to criticize all detractors
equally, generally as misogynist, but other times in significantly more insulting ways. Understandably, this does not help matters, though it is hardly on
par with death threats.
It goes on from here, at about this
same pitch, through September and into October (remember, this started on August 19th, we are, now, more than two months in). Sometimes coverage of
it seems to slow to a trickle, but in general it stays level while
radiating outward into the mainstream. Stacks of articles are penned (which I won't link to here, if you're curious you can just google #gamergate) This is how I learned about
it. New hashtags are begun, and more women (and some men) are threatened, have their private information exposed, and feel afraid. TFYC meet their funding goal, thanks to #gamergate supporters, and anti-#gamergate supporters are accused of fabricating the threats (against themselves). The drama at this point has escalated so far, that both sides of the gap are receiving serious threats and harassment, not just the women and feminists who oppose #gamergate.
No
one has actually been hurt yet, despite numerous allusions to
violence, and outright rape and murder threats. It could be argued
that this particular brand of hate speech is more of an overblown
venting than anything warranting actual concern. It's not uncommon to
hear it a lot, in certain circles. However, if I were the one being
threatened, how would I know if the other person meant it or not?
It's almost as if what this situation needs, is a new emoji, or
something. The violence/rape equivalence of "no homo".
In Conclusion
Persons on both sides of
this issue are human, and have their own lives, and feel harassed and frustrated. MundaneMatt, the vlogger who kicked off this whole thing, feels like he's been unfairly targeted, and has certainly painted himself into the proverbial corner by refusing to back down from his allegations. Women are saying they are afraid to stay in their own homes after they receive a certain
level of threats, and at the same time, #gamergate supporters are refusing to take their concerns seriously. People who think that #gamergate is a legitimate
thing worth talking about are getting labeled misogynists and rapists, while people who are against it are
called SJWs (which I have to tell you doesn't sound that bad),
femenazis, or pussy-whipped, or at the very least, shills for the old style of gaming journalism. Anyone who
falls into a gray area is pushed to pick a side, even if all they want to do is point out the facts. Video game journalists are left holding the ball. And honestly, the depictions of women in gaming and their reception
as developers and designers was already wanting. This hasn't made anything any better.
Neither Quinn nor Gjoni come out of this looking like people I'd want to have over for dinner. Gjoni is getting painted
as nothing better than a jilted ex with an agenda. It doesn't help
that he says that despite the fact that he never intended for all of
this to happen, he has no regrets, but let's give the guy a break, he's hurting and it's not an easy thing to renege on. It's easy in hindsight to say that he was really just trying to point out what was wrong with gaming, or that was at least a part of
the message, even though according to the original document, it's not true. Quinn is accused of being a bitch, and a slut, and a even an actual whore; which is essentially inflation of the sophistication level of previous criticism. This is a serious problem that women in general find themselves
facing, whenever they are in the spotlight. It is not something I would condemn anyone to, regardless of whether I approved of their opinions. I really don't think I would enjoy getting to know either
one of them, they both strike me as immature and whiny at best, but
who knows, maybe that's just how they come off while their pants are
on fire.
Statistics show that the majority of tweets with the #gamergate hashtag are tweeted at the prominent women involved, rather than men, but that while the number of negative tweets outweigh the positive ones, a very large majority are actual neutral
So, what is #gamergate about, then? Is it about gaming journalism? or women in gaming?
No.
And here's the thing, here
at the end of all this work I've done, I'm going to take a
second and make a judgment call. That's right, I'm going to
express an opinion about all of this, come down on a side, and piss
some of you off.
You are all wrong.
I've spend days
marinating in your crap, and it's pretty clear no one is right.
No, really. There is no
evidence that what started this whole brouhaha had any real
relationship to the cronyism in gaming, and even if there was,
nothing about it warranted talking about killing or raping people. And yes, that's terrible and no one should be afraid for their lives, ever,
certainly not over something this pointless. I've been warned by someone peripherally associated with gaming and hardcore video game
culture, that it's possible that some people consider this
“community” a “safe space”, and that people feel threatened
when it turns out that place that they go to hide from the real world
is actually just another slice of the real world. The truth is that
you can't escape from the real world. Everywhere you go, people will
be jerks, have entitlement issues, be lazy, have hobby horses, think
you're not as authentic as they are, be mean just for the sake of it,
etc., etc., etc.
Jesus Herman
Christ on a broken pogo stick, get over it. We are talking
about video games, not world peace. This is not worth ruining other
people's lives over. I get it, any small community is full of cliques
and infighting. I've seen it among activists so often that I just
don't get deeply involved with activist groups anymore, not skeptics,
not atheists, not paganism, not feminists, not occupy, not even my
local library. Any unpaid, unpoliced mass of hoi polloi is going to
repeatedly dissolve into nonsense, especially when the internet is a
buffer between you and your fellow man.
And there is nothing you
can do to end it, except to stop participating. That's right, just
STOP. Trust me, I've been inside of flame wars, and since I stopped fighting back my life has been 100% better. I know, I know, the state of the gaming community, and
depictions of women in games, and gaming press nepotism and and and
and... Just STOP.
Nothing you do now, no
matter how passionate you may be, will ever achieve whatever goal you
have. Tactics like publishing people's personal information or
threatening rape and death will only piss people off. Saying that
you're mad at the fringe part of your “side” that is making you
look bad, and you're really here to talk about journalism ethics, is
not going to get heard any more, you're wasting your breath, everyone
else is too loud. If you're a feminist, or on the general “side”
of the feminists, you're getting in your own way, too. You're lumping
everyone who's “against you” into one category which is unfair,
and a straw man argument to boot. It won't make the hate speech go
away, only inflame it. The day will not come when your grandchildren
will ask you about your pivotal role in the culture changing event of
#gamergate. Now is not the time, this is not the hill you want to
die on. Just stop.
Take a break, read a book,
look at it again. This is a speck of wood in the ocean of life, and
if you just stop baling water, it will sink. If you don't like what
people have to say, don't listen, if you think there's no room for
your opinions, find a better place where there is room. Find a new hobby for
God's sake.
These are games, in
essence no more complicated than those involving a ball or a stick.
And there will always be games, nothing can kill that, because games
and playing them are fundamental parts of the human animus. But
games are by definition an arbitrary set of rules agreed upon by
consensus, when consensus stops, the game stops, so fighting becomes
it's own enemy. You're all wrong, this is stupid. Just STOP.
No, you don't need to take
a “stand against the attacks against women” or keep “fighting
the good fight” against people who don't want to reform gaming
journalism. Why? Because if you let this putter out, there will be
something similar to fight over later, and maybe that time there will
be a chance to win. But right now, there is no way any of you can win
this, and by continuing to act this way, you make yourselves all
look like idiots. Stop. No... stop. Take your fingers off the
keyboard. Even unplug your ethernet cord if you have to. Stop.
And give me my twitter feed back.
The problem with the internet. (credit)
For a time line, I
relied heavily on The #GamerGate Chronicles, this forum post, Know-Your-Meme, and Wikipedia, but since I don't have a lot of experience with this entire topic, I
tried to diversify and double check everything. If I got something
crucial wrong in the timing of events, or missed an event entirely,
please let me know.
