The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 and concerns misogyny and harassment in video game culture. While many supporters of the self-described Gamergate movement say that they are concerned about ethical issues in video game journalism, the overwhelming majority of commentators have said that the movement is rooted in a culture war against women and the diversification of gaming culture.

The controversy began after indie game developer Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend alleged that Quinn had a romantic relationship with Nathan Greyson, 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 (doxxing); 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. Often expressly anti-feminist and frequently misogynistic, these attacks heightened discussion of sexism and misogyny in the gaming community.

Many involved with the Gamergate hashtag have said that they are concerned with ethics in video game journalism; members launched a campaign to convince ad providers to pull support from sites critical of Gamergate. This campaign and others like it have been widely criticized in the media as evidence that the ethics concerns are a front for a culture war against the diversification of video game demographics. The Gamergate group's origins in the false allegations and harassment of Quinn, 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 for this position. The unorganized, leaderless movement has hitherto been unwilling or unable to distance itself from continued harassment.

The events of Gamergate are widely attributed to perceived changes or threats to the "gamer" identity as a result of the ongoing diversification and maturation of the gaming industry. As video games have become recognized as a popular art form, they have been subjected to social criticism and treated directly as a vehicle for such commentary. This move to recognize games as art is thought to have prompted opposition from traditional "hardcore" gamers who view games primarily as a form of entertainment. The resulting culture war led to the subsequent harassment and conflict.

History

At the beginning of the video game industry, games were largely focused on appealing to gamers with satisfying solitary experiences. People who had grown up playing these games developed a "gamer" identity, and as early gamers were predominantly male this contributed to gendered interpretations of the identity. The emergence of the industry also gave rise to numerous publications specializing in the coverage of video games and catering for the interests of gaming enthusiasts; some, such as Nintendo Power, were even owned by manufacturers themselves. 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 the major gaming companies.^[1][2][3] 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.^{[1][4][5][6][7]}

The growth of the gaming audience also brought in many female gamers, which resulted in a diversification of the male-oriented gamer identity, and who 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.^[1][5] 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.^[1][5][8] 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.^[8]

In February 2013, Zoe Quinn released her interactive fiction game Depression Quest as a means to represent her own bout with depression. Though the game was met positively by critics, it generated a backlash from some gamers who believed that the game received an undue amount of attention in comparison to its quality. Quinn began to receive hate mail over the game upon its release, receiving enough harassment to cause her to change her phone number. By September 2014, Quinn had already endured eighteen months of harassment, which had created "an ambient hum of menace in her life, albeit one that she has mostly been able to ignore."^[9][10]

False allegations against Quinn and subsequent harassment

Depression Quest was released through Steam in August 2014, which coincided with the suicide of actor Robin Williams. Quinn, who had received the notification of the release from Steam shortly after the news about Williams' death, decided to release the game free as a service to those who may be suffering from depression, the only revenue the game receives is "pay what you want" proceeds, part of which are donated to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.^[10][11] She said she did not want to be seen as capitalizing on the public tragedy, and decided that instead she would promote the game some time later out of respect for Williams.^[12][13][14] Nonetheless her timing was criticized.^[10]

Shortly after the release, Quinn's former boyfriend Eron Gjoni wrote a blog post, described by The New York Times as a "strange, rambling attack",^[15] containing a series of allegations, among which was that Quinn had an affair with Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson.^[16] This led to false allegations from Quinn's detractors in the gaming community that the relationship had resulted in Grayson publishing a positive review of Quinn's game, Depression Quest.^{[2][16][17][18][19][20][10]} 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, but did acknowledge a piece written before the two began their relationship.^[17][21] A number of commentators in and outside the gaming industry denounced the attack on Quinn as misogynistic and unfounded.^[9][22][23]

As a result of these allegations, Quinn and her family were subjected to what The Washington Post called a "virulent" harassment campaign^[9][16][22] including doxxing (the public release of private information such as home address, phone numbers, and credit card details), threats of rape, hacking attempts, and at least one death threat. She began staying with friends out of fear that she would be tracked to her home.^[10][16] Quinn told the BBC, "Before (GamerGate) had a name, it was nothing but trying to get me to kill myself, trying to get others to hurt me, going after my family. There is no mention of ethics in journalism at all outside making the same accusation everyone makes of successful women; that clearly she got to where she is because she had sex with someone."^[24] Quinn told The New Yorker that she feels sympathy for her attackers because they have "deep-seeded loathing in themselves."^[10] 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,^[25] but nonetheless noted later in an interview with the BBC after speaking at GameCity in Nottingham 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?"^[24]

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 reported that she had received death threats that compelled her to temporarily leave her home.^{[26][27][28][29]} 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."^[30]

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 "insulting"^[31] phrase "social justice warriors" or "SJW" for short,^[32] which The Washington Post described as "a derogatory term for people in the video-game industry who use the medium to talk about political issues," though the term has much broader, often negative implications.^[16] Among those so described was fellow video game developer Phil Fish, who had been a focus of controversy on social media in 2013.^[32] Fish, reportedly known for his combative hostility on social media, was doxxed after speaking in support of Quinn, which included numerous denigrating tweets he made about her opponents.^[33][34] Many of his personal details were released^[35] and documents relating to his company Polytron exposed in a hack that led him to sell Polytron and leave the gaming industry.^[36]

Further harassment and threats

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." When GamerGate supporters began mocking her in return, she promised not to back down and soon watched as her home address and other identifying information were posted on 8chan. Wu then became the target of threats on Twitter and elsewhere, which The Boston Globe called "a frightening online campaign threatening rape and death" that Wu and a number of sources have attributed to GamerGate supporters. After contacting police, Wu and her husband fled their home, 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]

Soon afterwards, 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.^[42] 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][43][44][45]} 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."^[46]

Felicia Day (left), Wil Wheaton (center), and Chris Kluwe (right), all gamers, made posts critical of GamerGate on social media, but only Day was singled out for harassment.

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 both apparently escaped harassment.^{[47][48][49][50]} 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.^[51][52]

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.^[53] Writing for Vox, Todd VanDerWerff wrote that the hashtags's "actually interesting concerns" were being "warped and drowned out by an army of trolls spewing bile, often at women."^[1] A portion of Gamergate supporters, called the "Gamergate moderate" by David Auerbach, have been 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.^[54] 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.^[55] One concern is that Internet trolls are responsible for many of the threats solely out of a desire to stir up conflict.^[56][57][58] One Gamergate supporter interviewed by BBC said that "the issue is quickly descending into a quagmire attracting trolls, extremists, and opportunists needlessly stirring the pot of controversy ... harassment [affects] both sides of this situation".^[56]

Various supporters, some who 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.^[57] Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos tweeted that he had received a syringe in the mail, but he was not concerned,^[59][60] 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.^[58][61] The BBC reported that "misogynist abuse - and vitriolic messages in general - is not limited to either 'side' of the argument".^[56]

Industry response

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.^[4][26] 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.^[31]

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."^[62] 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.^{[63][64][65][66]} 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".^[67][68] 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 an example where the industry raced to support Valve's Gabe Newell after receiving 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.^[69]

Twitter itself has come under complaints due to its inability to respond quickly and prevent harassment over the service. Brianna Wu, shortly after becoming an harassment target, 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.^[70] Supporters of Gamergate that have been trying to police users that engage in harassment have also found Twitter's tools for reporting abuse to be insufficient.^[56] 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.^[71] 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.^[72]

Debate over legitimacy of ethics concerns

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.^[26] Evidence which is said to justify this belief is the movement's origination in false accusations and trolling involving a female indie developer's sex life, its frequent harassment targeting 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.^[73]

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.^[74][75] Defy Media adopted stricter ethical standards policies for all of their subsidiaries, including The Escapist and GameFront; and Destructoid updated its ethics policies after Gearbox Software developer Anthony Burch pointed out his connections with Destructoid staff.^[76]

Commentators largely view the movement's journalism ethics claims as ill-founded and disingenuous. Examining the controversy, Columbia Journalism Review writer Chris Ip said "many criticisms of press coverage by people who identify with Gamergate—about alleged collusion in video games between journalists and developers or among reporters—have been debunked" and concluded that "at core, the movement is a classic culture war."^[77] 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. "The service of the press is to critique the world it interrogates. That is the service that the gaming press and Anita Sarkeesian provide when they look critically at the way women are treated in gaming," Goldman said.^[78]

Blogger Kelly Maxwell, a GamerGate supporter, penned a "Gamer Bill of Rights" to publicly present GamerGate's positions, which has been cited as one of the movement's few attempts at defining concrete goals. In it, Maxwell wrote that GamerGate is not about harassment, that "GamerGate is a scandal" and that the movement is opposed to "journalists pushing dogmatic fringe ethics." Maxwell says that the movement favors "freedom of expression, artistic vision and a free market," while criticizing negative reviews of video games and saying that a given video game should be reviewed only by its fans. Mic.com writers Jared Keller and Tom McKay analyzed the manifesto, finding little connection between its stated goals and journalism ethics. Instead, they found the demands to amount to blanket opposition of cultural criticism of video games, concluding that "the grandiose missive ended up being emblematic of many of the movement's excesses and miscalculations."^[79] 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.^[80]

In Wired, Laura Hudson wrote that "it’s telling that the hashtag remains laser-focused not on the ethically shady behavior of the multimillion-dollar gaming studios making the mainstream games they enjoy, but small, often impoverished independent creators and critics—and even within that subset, the targets are nearly exclusively women."^[81] 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 by targeting "powerless" indie developers such as Quinn or Phil Fish. Hill instead wrote that AAA games publishers "coopted [games journalism] as a marketing arm" and said that many games journalists agree that those publishers hold too much power over the media. Hill said that Gamergate's perception of how the games industry works is "completely different" from reality.^[6] Writing separately in The Week, Ryan Cooper and Marc Ambinder both criticized the movement's ethics claims. Cooper said "not a single person in the movement has been able to elaborate a coherent, morally-grounded argument" about journalism ethics, which he said demonstrated that the movement's true objective was to harass opponents of misogyny and prejudice in gaming.^[82] Ambinder said that "Gamergate really can't claim to have exposed anything but their own visceral meanness, which borders on fascism." He agreed that debate about video games journalism is needed, but said the hashtag was rooted in "a vocal minority (using) the tools of internet shaming" against outspoken women. He concluded that the widely-publicized harassment incidents "have given substance to the stereotypes [gamers] hate."^[83]

Writing in Vox, Todd VanDerWerff said "Every single question of journalistic ethics GamerGate has brought up has either been debunked or dealt with", yet "GamerGate seems to keep raging simply to do two things: harass women and endlessly perpetuate itself so it can keep harassing women."^[73] Newsweek/Brandwatch performed an analysis of about 25% of two million Twitter messages with the Gamergate tag from September 1, 2014 onward, analyzing the data for mention of specific participants of the controversy, and the tone of the messages (positive, negative, or neutral) using automatic word detection routines. The study found in general female figures central to the debate, like Quinn, Sarkeesian, and Wu, were mentioned more frequently than their male counterparts like Grayson or Totilo, and while they received a smaller proportion of negative tweets compared to the males, they received many more net negative tweets overall.^[84] Newsweek suggested from this data that "contrary to its stated goal, GamerGate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists".^[84]

Writing in Time, Leigh Alexander, editor-at-large of Gamasutra, described the campaign's ethics concerns as "deeply sincere" but based on "bizarre 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.^[5] 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 "the same sort of analysis of aesthetics and ideas that have been applied to every other medium for decades, if not centuries."^[85]

Liana Kerzner, writing for MetalEater.com, criticized gaming journalists for making generalizations about GamerGate supporters, saying that it had been unfair to paint all of them as motivated by ill will rather than legitimate concern for the state of games journalism. She also urged the gaming community to challenge and reject the "small subgroups of gamers" whose actions had stigmatized the community, saying that the problems of bigotry in gaming were real.^[7]

GameJournoPros

In mid-September 2014, Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart published leaked discussions from a mailing list for gaming journalists called Game Journalism Professionals or GameJournoPros, which included discussion of Gamergate events. Yiannopoulos and Gamergate supporters saw the mailing list as evidence of collusion between journalists.^[86][57][87] Kyle Orland of Ars Technica, the founder of the group, said that the accusations of collusion were misplaced, and that the list had featured wide-ranging discussions with frequent disagreements. He apologized for suggesting that group members write a letter of solidarity to Zoe Quinn, saying the group's largely-negative reaction helped him "realize that this would be overstepping our primary role as reporters and observers."^[88] Erik Kain, a contributor to Forbes.com saw the conversations as largely professional, but did note two discussions he said "ought to raise eyebrows". One was a member inquiring on when it is appropriate to report on the private lives of subjects, only for him to be shut down quickly. Another was primarily between Polygon writer Ben Kuchera and The Escapist's editor-in-chief Greg Tito; Kuchera and others urged Tito to close a discussion on Zoe Quinn on The Escapist's forums, but Tito refused, saying a civil discussion should be allowed.^[86] James Fudge, editor of GamePolitics.com, had joined Kuchera in suggesting that the discussion be closed because, he explained later, "allowing a thread about Zoe Quinn's sex life and repeating an accusation that wasn't true wasn't fostering discussion — it was throwing gasoline on an already untamable inferno." Following the leaking of GameJournoPros' contents, the mailing list was closed.^[89]

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.^[59] The tag was then used to discuss the allegations against Quinn and Grayson and other concerns about alleged corruption in gaming journalism,^[90] and began coordinated discussions on forums like 4chan and Reddit.^[1][74] Because these discussions often featured verbal attacks, misogynistic harassment of Quinn and others, and releasing of private information (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.^[74] By September 24, 2014, over 1 million Twitter messages incorporating the GamerGate hashtag had been sent,^[91] 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.^[84] 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 subforum at Reddit.^[77]

Nature and organization

Following the initial accusations against Quinn, proponents of Gamergate began to use dedicated forums at the "KotakuInAction" Reddit sub-forum and on 8chan to discuss and organize the hashtag's activism.^[20] Because of the hashtag's lack of organization, anonymous membership, and leaderless nature, sources widely differ as to the goals or mission of GamerGate. With no single person or group able to speak for the hashtag, defining them has been difficult.^[20] Upon additional threats towards Sarkeesian, Wu, and Day, the international media focused on GamerGate's predilection for violent, misogynistic threats and its inability to present any coherent message for positive change. 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."^[19] 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.^[92]

Grant said that meant that "ultimately Gamergate will be defined—I think has been defined—by some of its basest elements."^[77] Jesse Singal, writing for New York based on a post he made to Reddit, stated that he had spoken to several people that supported the GamerGate cause to try to understand their concerns, including on the primary Reddit board, but could not determine what the ultimate goal of GamerGate was due to the lack of cohesion in their message and conflicting ideals. Singal observed the constant presence of threads attacking the women who had been targeted previously despite being told to look beyond the claims of misogyny.^[20] 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.^[77] Ryan Cooper of The Week highlighted an analysis written by writer Jon Stone, citing: "While various patterns of behavior coalesce around the hashtag, gamergate's protean nature resists attempts toward summary and narrative. It 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..."^[93]

Quinn released a series of logs from chat rooms and discussion boards on 4chan, which she said showed that GamerGate was manufactured by 4chan and pushed by sockpuppets.^[90][94] Members of 4chan have claimed that some information has been taken out of context or misrepresented.^[95][96]

Diversity and the debate over #NotYourShield

Many supporters of the GamerGate hashtag took issue with the widespread description of their movement as misogynistic, saying that the press’s focus on misogyny served mainly to "deflect criticism" of games reflecting a different political orientation.^[16] 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 seeking changes in the ethical guidelines of the video game industry and press, whilst denying that the core issues behind GamerGate were driven by sexism.^[16][95][97] William Usher on Cinemablend stated that the accusations of misogyny use women as a "shield to be silently used in order for gaming media — and those that gaming media represents — to push an agenda".^[98] Allum Bokhari, writing on TechCrunch, said that media coverage has unfairly treated GamerGate as being about white men resisting diversity in gaming and that many women and minorities support the movement.^[60]

Following Quinn's release of chat and discussion logs she got from 4chan, Ars Technica and The Daily Dot suggested the #NotYourShield hashtag was manufactured on 4chan and that many of those posting under #NotYourShield were sockpuppet accounts impersonating women and minorities.^[90][94] 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."^[96] According to Cathy Young, some women supporting GamerGate have been greeted with skepticism.^[59]

Political views

GamerGate supporters include some men and women who identify as feminist and support greater diversity in gaming, though it is acknowledged that there are also misogynistic voices within GamerGate.^[57][58] Cathy Young, writing for Reason, described GamerGate supporters as leaning left-libertarian, even as right-wing and right-leaning libertarians support the hashtag as resisting feminist criticism.^[59] Young said that supporters of GamerGate who are critical of feminist critiques of gaming are not necessarily opposed to greater diversity in the medium, but are upset over the approach of prominent feminist critics and a lack of tolerance for dissenting views. She characterizes GamerGate as being "an anti-authoritarian rebellion, not an anti-woman backlash."^[99]

In The Guardian, Jon Stone called GamerGate "a swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment", saying it included known neo-nazis, it almost exclusively attacked "others" and those it sees as "biased", it has hit lists of undesirable journalists, and used military-style hyperbole. He also said that any attempts to engage with GamerGate was seen as an act of provocation while silence on the matter was seen as hostility. He also said that when The Escapist tried to get a balanced piece from people on both sides of the argument, the male Gamergate interviewees were "eager to provide and flesh out a mythology that rationalises hatred towards the feminist/progressive element in games", leading Stone to compare them to Rush Limbaugh and Richard Littlejohn, while any female participants sought anonymity. He also compared them to the men's rights movement in that they sidelined any discussion on sexism for which they may hold a form of responsibility, and instead make themselves out to be victims.^[100]

Liana Kerzner writing in Metaleater.com said that the various issues that were plaguing the Gamergate debates were pressured by external forces. She stated that after she had an argument with Milo Yiannopoulos where she was critical of his coverage of the controversy, she was harassed by Gamergate supporters on Twitter and anonymous message boards. Kerzner remarked that Yiannopoulos was one of many external voices to the debate who she felt was using Gamergate in a proxy war, keeping moderate voices silent, and rhetorically asked why gamers were so angry and concerned about writers expressing opinions.^[101] Ryan Cooper of The Week criticized Yiannopoulos' involvement in the hashtag, alleging Yiannopoulos "had little but sneering contempt for gamers" beforehand.^[93]

Gawker's Sam Biddle, who caused a backlash from GamerGate over a series of tweets,^[102] later raised the issue of right-wing external forces "exploiting" GamerGate, noting the presence of Sommers, Yiannopoulos, Baldwin, and others whom he claimed had nothing to do with video games prior to GamerGate. Biddle wrote that these people had previously made derisive statements regarding gamers, and were attracted to GamerGate by its anti-progressive nature, seeking to promote themselves to a new audience that had no "heroes and allies".^[103]

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have made mentions of GamerGate on several occasions, including pointing GamerGate supporters at media corruption that goes "all the way to the top". WikiLeaks described GamerGate as "not interesting", but "that highly apolitical youth suddenly awaken to broader censorship, media ownership is". Assange also stated opposition of censorship in Internet communities in reply to a Reddit user's question on GamerGate; the user was later "shadowbanned" by Reddit administrators.^{[60][104][105]}

Some GamerGate supporters have also backed charitable causes, such as a charity of suicide prevention and anti-bullying causes.^[57][106]

Support for The Fine Young Capitalists

A self-described radical feminist group known as The Fine Young Capitalists began receiving financial backing for their game jam from supporters of the gamergate hashtag, particularly those from 4chan's board /v/, after it was discovered that the group had a prior dispute with Zoe Quinn concerning their planned competition's rules.^[74][107] The backers raised over US$17,000 for the campaign, a point after which they were allowed to produce an original character to be featured in the winning video game proposal, resulting in the creation of the character "Vivian James" (meant to sound like "video games").^[74][108] In Forbes, Erik Kain described the character as an "every-girl of sorts, and maybe not what you'd expect from 4chan".^[74][108] Tom Mendelsohn of The Independent wrote that 4chan had created Vivian as an emblem for their campaign to demonstrate their lack of sexism, and described the character as "a sardonic dream woman who games in slouchy hoodies, has long, lascivious tresses of red hair and doesn't ever want to hurt them".^[109]

Both Steven Melendez in Fast Company and Rob Beschizza of Boing Boing linked the character's green and purple color scheme to a old 4chan meme depicting sodomy. Beschizza said that most GamerGaters who were not involved in the graphics' creation "were obviously not clued into the color scheme's history at 4chan," but Melendez wrote that this had undermined "the group's stated goal of creating a deliberately non-sexualized, gamer-girl-next-door mascot". Matthew Rappard of TFYC, along with other supporters on 4chan, said there was no link to the old meme and that green and purple were symbolic of 4chan, but Melendez and Beschizza noted acknowledgement of the meme in 4chan threads leading to the creation of Vivian James.^[110][111]

On August 24, 2014, The Fine Young Capitalists reported that their Indiegogo account had been compromised by an unknown party (later confirmed by Indiegogo staff), and had been replaced by a message claiming Indiegogo staff had shut down the campaign and specifically called out 4chan's video games board /v/ as being "abhorrent" for their participation in the harassment against Zoe Quinn.^[112]

End of Gamer Identity articles and "Operation Disrespectful Nod"

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.^{[29][113][114]} Some of these articles and essays were, as described by The New York Times, "critical of gamer culture and rampant sexism in it".^[15] 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."^[15][115] 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.^[18] Other concerns about the divide between gaming journalists and gamers were raised by The Guardian's Keith Stuart and Forbes.com contributor Erik Kain.^[2][116]

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. Intel's decision was widely criticized from within and without the industry as an apparent endorsement of the movement,^[117] leading to a corporate statement from Intel which apologized for appearing to take sides in the controversy.^[118][119] In mid-November, Intel began advertising on Gamasutra again, saying the site's game-developer readership was an important market for the company.^[120]

Gawker Media and "Operation Baby Seal"

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 bullying of nerds. This led to Mercedes-Benz temporarily pulling advertising from Gawker and Adobe Systems requesting that Gawker remove their logo from a portion of the Gawker website.^[121] Gawker reported losing "thousands of dollars" as a result^[122] 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."^[123] Adobe later clarified that it had never been a Gawker advertiser and stated "we are not and have never been aligned with Gamergate."^{[122][124][125][126]} Biddle later defended himself saying that the tweets were jokes, but ultimately apologized for their content.^[102][121] 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 sites have been a center of the Gamergate controversy previously; their 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 whole other scale" and has the potential, if successful, to financially harm Gawker. He stated that the campaign showed that Gamergate "seems less to want to expose ethical lapses at this point and more to drive sites it doesn't agree with from the face of the Earth."^[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. Jason Koebler writing on Vice's Motherboard imprint was critical of this, arguing that the archival of thousands of such articles did not comply with the fair use doctrine of American copyright law.^[129]

Accusations against digital games academics and researchers

Some GamerGate supporters^[who?] 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".^[130] 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.^[130] The Executive Board of DiGRA has publicly condemned "the harassment and bullying that some of its members have faced over the last few months due to their work researching and studying video games."^[131]

Role of misogyny and antifeminism

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.^[1][16][78] 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.^[16] 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.^[132] 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.^[133] The feminist journalist and author Laurie Penny characterized the reasons for the ferocity of the reaction against the shift in gaming culture thus: "The problem is that women are creating culture, changing culture, redefining culture, and those cunts, those poisonous cunts, those disgusting, uppity cunts must be stopped."^[134]

Issues like sexism and misogyny had been identified as problems in the video game industry and community prior to the events of Gamergate.^[135] 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.^[69] 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.^[136] It is believed this itself is tied to the anonymous, male-dominated nature of the Internet; Astra Taylor of Mother Jones documented a series of 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".^[137] 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.^[69]

Attacks on women

Quinn said the campaign had "roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a pre-existing hate mob",^[138] and urged industry publishers and developers to condemn the hashtag.^[56] She further asked those Gamergate supporters that had any earnest discussion about ethics should move away from the "Gamergate" tag^[56] Writing for The Guardian, Jenn Frank described the tactics used in the harassment campaign, and of 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 alleging that she had concealed her Patreon support of Quinn; Frank had included a disclosure, but it was removed by editors at The Guardian who did not deem their relationship a "significant connection". Following the harassment, Frank left games journalism.^[1][18][139] In Paste magazine, Garrett Martin suggested that any concerns about ethics in journalism were merely a cover for attacking women, even if some sincerely believed otherwise.^[140] Amanda Marcotte in an article for The Daily Beast described the controversy as arising from the comments of a "vindictive ex-boyfriend", stated it was "pure misogyny to use online harassment troops" against Quinn, and that the ethics violation discussion is merely a "desperate attempt to justify" their harassment. Marcotte 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 made comparisons to the initial outrage against Sarkeesian's video series, 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.^[141] 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."^[142]

Writing in The New Yorker, Simon Parkin said, "In Quinn's case, the fact that she was the subject of the attacks rather than the friend who wrote about her game reveals the true nature of much of the criticism: a pretense to make further harassment of women in the industry permissible."^[10] T.C. Sottek, a news editor of The Verge, wrote an editorial urging people to stop supporting Gamergate, detailing various issues he perceived in the hashtag, including using the search for ethics as a justification for the harassment campaign, little credibility in their claims, convincing apolitical gamers that a problem existed, and its embrace of anti-feminist conservative journalists and commentators. He described the hashtag as a "boggling witch hunt that continues to raise more questions than it answers because it didn't have any useful questions to ask in the first place", saying that its origin was attacks on Zoe Quinn concerning her personal life.^[143]

Alex Goldman from On the Media wrote that the movement's involvement in harassment had caused it to lose mainstream credibility. "If you see yourself as a bloc of people who call themselves "gamers," to outsiders you are only as good as your worst representatives, and the past month have shown those representatives to be racist, homophobic, misogynist, and threatening," Goldman said. "If you want to be seen as a monolith, publicly shame the bad actors in your cohort. If you want to be seen as individuals, well, stop calling yourself gamers. Come up with some other means of self-identification. Because as of right now, the worst people standing behind the mantle of gamer have spoiled it for all of you."^[78] The Washington Post described a supporter of the hashtag as saying that they and others in the hashtag are making efforts to reject harassment and "quickly" report threatening or hateful comments to help keep the conversation "respectful".^[57]

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 hashtags'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 said 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.^[136]

Social criticism

According to Erik Kain, writing at Forbes.com, the GamerGate hashtag is driven by a backlash against social criticism of video games "because many readers don’t want to be told what’s good or bad about a game’s social politics, they just want to hear about the game itself". Kain said gamers should be "distrustful of ... rightwing non-gamers suddenly swooping into the [video game] scene with inflammatory anti-feminist headlines".^[74] Writing in Overland, Brendan Keogh described the rise of social criticism in video gaming as part of the maturation of the art form and a natural consequence of video games becoming accepted as a force in mainstream culture.^[144] Kyle Moody, professor of communications media at Fitchburg State University, said the increasing cultural criticism of video games has helped the industry to reach a "higher artistic discussion," and that those opposed to discussions of class, sexuality, and race instead want their games to remain "toys".^[133] Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post considers GamerGate to be part of a larger culture war that has been occurring for the last decade, spurred by the ease of interaction between creators and consumers, and which begs the question of "whether culture is changing fast enough, and whether change means chucking out old ideas, storytelling tropes and character types".^[145] Political consultant Allum Bokhari said that Gamergate was the reaction of non-political gamers to an increasingly politicized pastime that had been overtaken by "moral crusaders." ^[60] Philip Tan, a research scientist and instructor at MIT associated with Game Lab, has remarked of GamerGate that, "It's extremely demoralizing to see people who claim they are passionate about games and work so hard to prevent women from voicing their opinions about games", and that an educator's role was "to make it easier for a larger range of people to contribute to the growth of this medium".^[146]

Presence of misogyny and inclusiveness

Author and scholar Christina Hoff Sommers disagreed with the criticism leveled at gamers, in a video she released through the American Enterprise Institute. She said that "[a]ll the data we have suggests that millennial males—these are people born and raised in 'Video Game Nation'—are far less prone to these prejudices than previous generations ... My suggestion to their critics: stand down."^[148] William Audureau in Le Monde said that "the question is not whether video games 'make' gamers sexist, but whether they express and maintain a negative portrayal of women, already present and unconsciously accepted."^[147] Writing in the Pacific Standard, Noah Berlatsky said that the misogynistic harassment targeting Quinn and Sarkeesian should be viewed not solely as an issue specific to the gaming community, but as evidence that misogyny is pervasive in American culture, "and everyone needs to confront it in their own communities."^[149] Zaid Jilani in Salon criticized Sommers' participation in the Gamergate debate, as she had no prior experience with video games or journalism but was rather simply making anti-feminist statements, as he also said of Milo Yiannopoulos.^[150]

See also

References