Last night I said something incredibly stupid on twitter about GamerGate. You see, someone had decided to send child pornography pictures to Anita Sarkeesian through twitter, and I made a comment equating the act to GamerGate sympathizers. That was incredibly wrong of me to do and it was quickly pointed out to me how wrong it really was. I rightly apologized and then something happened that I’ve never had happen to me in my 10 years of being on the internet... people
didn’t dwell on my mistake and actually started to provide me with lots of helpful information about GamerGate! That really took me by surprise since I am so use to having every slip-up and mistake held against me forever. It was enough to make me realize that perhaps I have been wrong about the GamerGate movement being created to silence women in gaming.
And that’s why I’m going to apologize for the last couple of journals here on DA too. All last month it has been absolutely terrible to be a woman in the games industry. There have been so many attacks and accusations and harassment, it’s hard to look at things with an unbiased eye. And, if I may be so bold, I think my emotions of the situation got the better of me and that my last journal WAS a tad condescending. I still stand by the belief that saying “Not all ___” is a ridiculous thing to do, but after speaking with many people about the intents of GamerGate it was pretty clear to me that a lot of people are doing it because of trolls trying to derail the group by firing at both sides.
I do personally think that GamerGate has the best intentions in mind. The goal of wanting better ethics and journalistic integrity in gaming media IS a noble cause, to be sure. I am, sadly, still on the fence about how people are trying to effect change, however. This write up about the recent issues is actually a very good read and I suggest everyone at least read it once:
medium.com/@upstreamism/to-fai… but there is one part of this I wanted to copy/paste here to make a point.
More than once, I was pointed to the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics or the “10 Absolutes of Reuters Journalism” as a baseline for reform. Those codes were written primarily to uphold the reliability of news reportage, but not everything published in the gaming press is news reportage. That’s because, historically, games journalism grew out of what’s called the enthusiast press — meaning that it was (and still is) written primarily by gaming enthusiasts, for other gaming enthusiasts. When you write for an enthusiast press, though, you’ve already thrown out some measure of objectivity, since it’s assumed that you and your reader already agree that games are worth your time, money and interest.
I think that’s part of the reason a lot of the GamerGate controversy is a little unfocused. A lot of people are crying “corruption” and “ethics” without seemingly understanding why those broad things don’t necessarily apply to current games journalism as neatly as they would if this were, say, The New York Times. Coupled with the ongoing harassment of Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn, and you can understand why it’s sometimes hard to pin down what exactly people in support of GamerGate actually want.
Here’s where I propose something. Instead of attacking current game journalistic sites and outlets for their supposed lack of transparency and corruption, maybe instead you should band together and make your own gaming journalistic site that upholds those beliefs you think they don’t. Prove to the industry that what you’re doing truly is noble and that you can report on gaming culture without all the corruption and ethical lapses. In my opinion that would be something I could definitely get behind and support as a noble cause, and it would be fairly easy to do too if the right people got together and set it up.
And it’s important that GamerGate people who genuinely believe there is something noble in their quest DO something positive right now, because things are starting to look a little worse for their cause. Zoe Quinn, the person whom all of this started as a result of, has been lurking in the 4chan IRC chats and recording what’s been going on there... and the news is rather discouraging to anyone who believed in GamerGate as a positive movement.
The logs in question seem to indicate that a lot of GamerGate was created by 4chan users as a way of kicking out women and SJW’s from the gaming industry, with planned attacks, multiple fake accounts to make the cause seem bigger, and plans to specifically target key individuals. Remember how I said the sudden support from 4chan for The Fine Young Capitals looked like a planned attempt to spurn Zoe Quinn and make it seem like the movement was on the side of progress? Yeah... that kinda looks like I was right from the way these documents talk. You can read some of the key bits from Zoe’s own storify page here:
storify.com/strictmachine/game…
Of course her being the person dropping the bomb has generated some backlash, and a lot of GamerGate supporters are quick to point out that she was cherry picking key bits (though that’s still not very encouraging since they’re also not denying those things were said). So in the interest of full disclosure, if you want to read more you can read these key parts that show where she got her info from:
imgur.com/a/Mfh61 or (if you’re bold enough) you can actually read the chat logs themselves here:
archive.today/Ler4O
Before I close this off I would like to reiterate that I do genuinely believe there ARE good members of the GamerGate movement that DO have noble intentions and are being downright upstanding in the wake of all this. Many of the GamerGate supporters that I’ve spoken to have been very strongly in support of anti-harassment and will call out those they feel are attacking unjustly. So I know that there are good people in the group.
Last night I made a huge mistake. I apologized for it and vowed to look at the GamerGate movement with a more open mind. I was even starting to get behind the movement a lot more than I originally had... but then this morning Zoe Quinn dropped a bomb that almost completely shattered all that newfound good will I was amassing. So here is hoping that the people who DO want change can actually rise above this and prove that this IS a movement worth saving. To those individuals I say “Keep your chin up. Stay strong! And peace out.”
