#Gamergate moral panic resembles the 90s, which directly affects women's career choices

Nicely done. Also, about this "And right at this very moment, there might be a young gamer-girl in College who is getting a phone call telling her that her internship won't happen because a dev is closing shop", something related may have happened already. This female dev here: http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2jk2rq/ama_im_a_female_game_developer_that_has_been_in/
talks about a lot of stuff, but one thing stood out for me: "Recently I was contacted by my favourite professor from college who told me he had a student in his Game Dev class that was worried about getting into the industry from allt he terrible things she reads online. This is a girl straight out of high school, in college to do what she loves, and these people are literally scaring the crap out of her and making her second guess her career choice.
I think that's absolutely reprehensible."

Thank you for sharing your story with us as well as not buying whats being propagated about #gamergate or its many diverse individuals.

I'm very sorry to hear that you career as a comic artist was ruined by similar people with agendas that even as an full grown adult I cant understand. The fear tactics that are being used are really counter productive for what these people claim to be for. Thanks once again for sharing your story and perspective on this!

I'm sharing this with everyone I see; it's an incredibly insightful and wonderful article. Thank you for your consideration towards #GamerGate.

I have heard many comparisons of #GamerGate with the comic book industry, but I had no idea of what happened to comics. This has been eye-opening. Thank you so much.

When you see some people propagating lies like "female programmers only earn a fraction of what males make" (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/female-computer-scientists-make-same-salary-their-male-counterparts-180949965/?no-ist), what impact is that going to have on a young woman trying to choose her career? I don't care who the hell is making my games, I just want to play fun video games damn it! And the more people making games, the better.

Sadly I have seen many women frightened during #GamerGate. One of those is exceptionally talented artist/animator Mariel Cartwright, who works on Skullgirls. She recently tweeted "I am grateful to be leaving the country this week because there is nothing more I want than to get away from the terrifying shit lately" and "it's a pretty scary time to be a lady in games." The thing is, gamers love her! She's not a corrupt journalist, she's not a target of #GamerGate. It's all so damn frustrating.

Thanks again, so much.

Hi, Future game developer here. I'm in college after several years of being a welder, decided to take 3D art specialization at the age of 26. 3 years in, I'm about to graduate.

Our class sizes are small labs, usually 20 people in them or less, and the gender ratio was equal or in favor of female students. It was really cool, some of the males/females were old enough that I didn't feel creepy hanging out with them. I made a lot of nice friends. Unfortunately, those under 26 are still attached to their parent's aid to go to school. If your parents earned a middle income, you essentially got no aid.

~Here is where the trouble comes in~

A lot of my friends that I've made over the last 3 years are not registering for their level 3 courses. I'd say about 30% of the women I know in the program who depend upon their parents are being pushed to give up game design and find another field because their parents read the slanted main stream media reporting and they're fearful for their daughters.

This sensationalism is making parents think their daughters will not be safe, or they will be sexually exploited.

This is awful. It is really awful. One of my very best friends was an exchange student from Finland, and now she's been called home because Finland is very politically dense with sex-negative, transsexual-excluding, radical authoritarian feminists and as a result their newspapers and television news essentially painted a picture of hell, and her mother called her home immediately.

This is not how you get more women in game development, this slander is creating a very terrible chilling effect.

Maybe I'm just upset that the party of 10 I was going to the "Captivate Conference" with is now down to 8.

Very well done. I am extremely pleased that you mentioned Aussie 8channers teaming up with GamerGaters to stop YET ANOTHER doxxing of Zoe Quinn.

Yet, for some reason that never gets mentioned by the big gaming press websites.

I support diversity in gaming.
I condemn threats and harassment.
I expect better behavior from my journalists.
I support GamerGate.

And I refuse to let anyone tell me I'm a bigot or a troll for doing so.

I didn't think about this from the advertisers point of view, but what's happening is definitely corrosive for the entire industry. There have been multiple cases of journalists and developers having their careers damaged or ended by games journalists that work together to push a single narrative. There have been multiple examples of developers work being forced to change to avoid a negative politicised backlash from journalists working together to push a narrative. It has to stop and soon before too much damage is done. GamerGate is only getting louder, and with the holiday season coming up - and developers largest sales season - they should be *very* interested in helping us bring this to an end as soon as possible.

Hey I just wanted to say that you're dead on in your analysis. The idea that our gaming press is so full of themselves that they aided and abetting a direct assault on gaming is still mind boggling to me. I saw one of the more infamous mental midgets blaming "GamerGate" for bringing this result around, all the while ignoring the fact that the only people writing negative articles about gaming, gamers and the games they enjoy are the press.

Simply put, the lack of self awareness here is just astounding.

They're driving away loyal customers from their media brands, driving consumers away from the industry en-mass and particularly driving away women and other minority demographics with their moral panic and slandering of gaming subculture. What parent like myself is going to buy a game for their daughter if he thinks that she's going to be abused? What parent is going to allow his son to participate in online games if he thinks it's going to turn them into a terrible person?

I have seriously never seen an industry so eager to slit it's own throat as I have video games.

Talking of Sony pushing the creative envelope, there was a brilliant billboard for the original Resident Evil. It was a just a simple white background and a bath full of blood, with the line "DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE HORROR OF PLAYSTATION".

Couldn't find it on Google, but that was something which really stuck with me.

Another great article. Very impressed by your work.

You know, I always thought people in PR would know wtf they are doing.
Clearly not all of them do. You have to be a special brand of moron to not understand why insulting consumers is a bad idea.

Captcha : glass ceiling - wow , relevant

Thank you for this article. It's refreshing.

Do you happen to have any contacts in a major media outlet, Dabitch? Brianna Wu is talking about using her platform at TheGuardian next week to push for legislation to mandate all websites in the U.S. track the IP address of every user on every content submission. I have pretty damning evidence she fabricated at least one threat against herself and reams of examples of her colleagues using very racist, sexist, and patently offensive behavior across a number of spectrums. One of them including Brianna Wu referring to a poor black person as a "hood rat". I have much more damning evidence that blackmail and threats are going on here as well, though it's much less clear on those who the one(s) behind it is.

Thanks for your sensible take on this.

I can totally understand why the current discussion would deter women from entering the industry, in fact I can clearly see that my spouse (of 6 years, we are in our thirties) takes all this debacle way more seriously and personally than I do. I haven't pushed it because why would I do that, but I think that there is a suspicion in her mind that what if some of what is being claimed is actually true, even though she is really levelheaded and sensible person (and working in unrelated graphic design).

Och hälsingar från den andra sida av vatten (den Moominsida).

Moral hysteria is amongst the most damaging things that can happen to any topic that holds a potential victim. As a child care and welfare worker, I wrote a thesis on how the 80/90s hysteria around pedophilia crippled attempts to build understanding for purposes of molestation prevention by muddying the waters and making it almost impossible to talk about a topic that was difficult to broach in the first place. Moral outrage peddlers do not care one whit about the issue they bleed for revenue.

That was great. A real fascinating look at moral policing affecting industries

Let me make sure I understand this: The way to prevent harassment and marginalization of women in the game industry is to ... not talk about harassment and marginalization of women in the game industry?

Because of course that usually works so well to prevent harassment and marginalization of women in other areas....

FYI, on Metafilter....

Nobody is seriously getting a suggestion from the media that "video games are bad because the people who play them are bad and harass people." The message is that "gamers," as a hard-core group of people who wish to rally behind this specific identity, are inexplicably rallying behind a movement that started, well, as the MetaFilter comment linked by eric above that you dodged only to quote another one as if it reveals some site-wide cognitive flaw, reads:

No-one's being "painted" as a misogynist creep; the first action of the people who would rally under #gamergate was to attack a woman on the say-so of an ex-boyfriend and to pry into her sex life.

I fail to see what anything that happened in your personal story (which doesn't involve your career being destroyed or you being personally harassed by hordes of assholes) has to do with this movement, other than introducing us with an effective disclaimer "everything you read here is colored by my unrelated experience and because I was personally affected in the past I will now trot out some non-arguments to further illustrate my bias for sympathizing with this "movement."

This movement is absurd on its face and it's vexxing to see so many people align themselves with it -- "just because on any established reality-based-timeline, this thing of ours started with doxxing and misogyny and the usual 'Gamer Culture Stereotypes' of angry white boys threatening rape and murder, and just because we continue to rally around this stupid fucking hashtag that is entrenched in this litany of shit, doesn't mean we aren't really just mad because we don't think we're getting good enough VIDEO GAME REVIEWS! and also you keep portraying ALL OF US this way when most of us JUST IDENTIFY with the PEOPLE WHO DO THIS because GAMES FUN and we want them to stop and play more games with us instead of making us look bad!

The only honest to goodness moral panic I'm seeing here is yours, centered around the "closing the dev shop" story. And in that sense I mean the misplaced concern-trolling slippery slope that ends with: what if the big nice Game Dev Shop closes down because of all these mean people calling out all of this fake feminism with their big bullying attacks on "gamers?" That will affect women too! So people who dislike the misogyny and the fact that this whole movement is ridiculous and self-important and started out with pure misogyny and doxxing and is seeking to rally around the most disgusting stereotypical elements of "gaming culture" that should be gleefully ridiculed (and if you don't identify with it, no need to defend it) will suddenly suffer from the 4D awesomeness of this argument and realize that the True Feminism is here on this side!

That's comes across as the sort of cargo-cult nonsense that the MetaFilter thread discusses well -- CTRL+F for "cargo" if anyone is interested.

As a longtime MeFite I do know you better (not that you know me, but you were around for much of my lurking phase) but that really is weak, first of all to make the leap that gaming as a whole is under attack and that shops will close because the worst elements of "gaming culture" are being exposed for the disgusting unwelcome assholes they are, those "gaming culture" loser-fucks truly being jealous and upset that MORE people are playing than ever...the thing is, the number of people who play these games is going up, the "hard core" is feeling threatened, and somehow feels like they are entitled to a more "objective" and dispassionate "games journalism industry" (so go do that) after decades of Nintendo Power and GamePro Magazine and EGM and so on, all amounting to advertisements with some cheat codes and tricks? Oh wait, that's probably too hard core for the "hard core" to remember or have experienced, but seriously, you expect me to believe all of this disgusting behavior and defense of same revolves around integrity in games journalism?

So let's get this straight. If society were to actually make a moral decision that Gaming Shops must be shut down (or a series of judgments and purchasing decisions that over time shuts down gaming shops as a result, because that's what you meant, I don't wish to straw man it), the argument that "women will also be affected because they won't be able to work in game shops" is just as meaningless as saying that some women are professional assassins and some women wish to become professional assassins, and so many professional assassins will be unemployed if we legalize all hard drugs, reducing the global demand for professional assassins. OK, a more realistic example, if we stop producing XYZ thing that we decide is terrible as a whole, whether it be weapons outlawed by the Geneva conventions, electric chairs, death panel gavels, or whatever, women will have less opportunity therefore "argument made."

I almost feel like that will come off as trolling because the moral panic really is on your side as "gamers" desperately flood twitter with nonsense about every "ally lost" or "advertiser pulled"... it's really comical actually -- but a typical slackjawed stereotypical gamer will read what I wrote and think HA, YOU THINK MAKING COMPUTER GAMES IS LIKE ILLEGAL DRUGZZZ! No, I'm just pointing out the absurdity of that argument, it doesn't belong anywhere serious, it comes across as intellectually dishonest, but you wrap it up in a layer of extra absurdity (dev shops being closed down because hardcore nerds were being mocked) that buries it further in more absurdity. The reality is that perhaps some of the demand for Yet Another Ultrarealistic FPS might drop but as the number of people who play games increases, the diversity of gaming as a whole increases, and your "hard core" will do just fine, and doesn't need to "stay hard and in the center" of gaming to survive as its own entity.

As a response to lordaych:

That is exactly what was suggested; First, that 'gamers' were all misogynistic white 'neckbeard' virgin losers who live in basements and troll women for being women, then that 'gamers' had been replaced by 'gamers' which were multicultural and multisexual and blah blah blah. I say it that way because 'gamers' had ALWAYS been multicultural and so on, and that it wasn't the efforts of 'right thinking modern feminists' that made it so, but gamers and their welcoming inclusiveness, of which you can find stories EVERYWHERE.

Gamers as a whole have always been a target; gaming has been seen, until fairly recently, as a child's or teenager's hobby by those not involved. That's changed over time with the concerted effort of gamers themselves, inviting their family members and friends in, and with the availability of 'softcore' games like mobile and web/facebooks games, and of course, the Wii (I personally think Wii bowling made many a gamer all on it's own). But that is the perception; the reality is that women and minorities have always played games. Maybe they grew out of it, maybe they didn't, but they played. And why wouldn't they?

The metafilter comment above is about bullshit. I checked it out, and Jen Allaway (who I'd never heard of before) puts up a completely unsupported opinion piece which you treat like research. Why is this meaningful, because you like what it says? There's plenty of research, based on data and not feelings and fears, that shows that #gamergate does NOT fit the model of a hate group, but rather a replacement for traditional news media. And what would you expect from a group that's been shown repeatedly it can't trust those entrusted by the public to report the news?

So no one's being painted as a misogynistic creep, except everyone that is, and you take a man's honest recounting (supported by evidence, mind you) of his abuse (and it was abusive), and the link that showed to a journalist having a sexual relationship with a subject (which makes Nathan Grayson the target, not Quinn) as him directing attacks? I imagine there were some people who did do that, though Eron repeatedly tried to stop it (and it shows in those IRC logs you evidently didn't bother to read yourself). I don't know the man, I've never spoken with him, and in fact up until #gamergate I was fully listening and believing her, but she's been shown to be a compulsive liar, and it keeps occurring over and over. Take some time and do the fact checking yourself; you'll find that things are just how I'm telling you. Don't believe me, verify it yourself. You can look at the logs yourself of what he said. You can find archives of the zoepost online (I think, I haven't checked) and see the chat logs where she admits everything (and he NEVER accuses her of sleeping with Grayson for positive press, that falls on others). And more, there were no doxx.

Here's the thing for those fact checking; Quinn's supposed Doxx were faked. As an example, her "father's phone number" was a motorcycle shop in Hawaii. If that's fake, why would you assume any of the rest is real? And if Quinn is a self-admitted compulsive lair (like her mother, evidently from what she says, though we've no idea if that's not another lie), why would you believe anything she says about how the 'doxx' were released? Seems likely she released fakes herself. She faked the 'wizardchan raid' to get enough sympathy to get Depression Quest greenlit (and having tried it myself, it's a horrible representation of depression and only likely to make things worse for someone using it to show others what depression is like). Do you not see a behavior pattern? Conclusion; all evidence suggests that the 'mysogyny and threats' are fabricated to garner sympathy, again.

But #gamergate didn't really come from that; it came from the Streisand effect due to censorship of the discussion. As an example, 28+ thousand reddit posts deleted concerning Quinn's use ofa false DMCA report to illegally take down a youtube video criticizing her and Grayson. That's what #gamergate came from, resistance to censorship and a suspicion (later proven true) of media collusion to censor the subject in support of their friend GRAYSON (and Quinn, no doubt).

Then come all the hanger-on sympathy-demanders, each with threats that come from throw-away accounts who give no indication of being affiliated with gamergate, or even gaming at all. This has been a problem for Sarkeesian for a long time; she seems to make enemies wherever she goes. She came from movies and music, giving the same sort of false-criticism there (I say false because she uses provably false statements to support her arguments, which makes the premise false, thus the conclusion of her argument is false). No evidence is ever provided, but the media is quick to blame gamers and demand they police the entire internet to stop trolls. How is that remotely reasonable? You can't even prove the threats came from gamers, let alone gamergate supporters, and the demand is that they prevent all trolling everywhere from anyone (because yes, that's what you're asking)? I tell you what, I'll do that just as soon as you prevent all cancer, for anyone, from anyone, for any reason, including in animals,plants, and at any time, including in the past. Yes, that's about as reasonable a demand.

I'm responsible for my behavior, and my behavior alone. I'm not guilty of something someone else in Gamergate does, and you can't even show that they did it. I'm not guilty of what another gamer does, and you can't even show that a gamer did it either. All you have to support your entire flimsy argument is the statement that it must be a gamer/gamergate because it is said so. All of the horrible things that happen on the internet cannot be laid at my feet, or the feet of anyone else not involved, just because you find it convenient to silence your critics this way.

And what's so galling is that people take you seriously; even me, right now, taking you seriously by wasting my precious time (and it is precious) to tell you how wrong you are and WHY you're wrong and WHY we can PROVE you're wrong with EVIDENCE rather than just ramblings and feelings. You are demonstrably full of shit, but here I am wasting time telling you that. And I have to keep doing that, rather than doing something more valuable with my time, because stupid people will believe what you say the way you stupidly believe what you're told without ever asking for evidence.

Recent data shows that just the #gamergate hashtag has had a steady use by over 150000 unique and consistent users, of which the average account life is approximately 1 year old. These aren't sockpuppet accounts; they aren't fake. If even half of those are supporters, and I'd wager real money that it's something closer to 75%, that means 75000 people hate women so much that they've devoted time for 5 months to attack them via the obtuse means of discovering ethical failures in journalism, pointing them out, and demanding change. So what sounds more absurd to you; 75k hate women for 5 months but attack them via not attacking them directly, or that 15 or 20 people coordinate coverage in an email list and a handful of women lie or exaggerate the threats and their origins in order to make up a lie to cover failed ethics and provide real monetary support (to the tune of some percentage of Intel's 300 million dollars, or 14k a month to Brianna Wu who almost certainly made her own threat; you can tell because she's prepared to screenshot the threat immediately, and it's not like that sort of thing doesn't already have precedent among other modern 'feminists')?

And if you can't find one instance of harassment from #gamergate with at least 75000 regular users, several million tweets, and 5 months of time, what does that say about your assertion that it's a hate movement? Not ONCE has this assertion been shown with any evidence.

I can tell you I've seen comments I viewed as racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist etc. I've seen all of them from those who oppose #gamergate, and in much more frequency, which given that I'm blocked by most of you because of Randi Harper's censorship list means a GREAT DEAL. Hell, half the horrible things listed there you can find just looking at Arthur Chu's tweets. I've seen some harsh, and on rare occasions unfair, criticisms from #gamergate to journalists and women (and men, mostly men), yet not once has any of the opposition ever shown one example that was linked to a gamer, let alone a gamergate supporter.

And if in all that, you still can't show me ANY evidence supporting what you're arguing, why would I believe you about ANYTHING?

I don't. Your argument is PROVABLY false and has no evidence in support. Your opinion is WRONG.

Given ALL of that, why would I give a shit about your criticism of video games or anything else? If you have to lie to support your argument, then the argument has no value. What a surprise (I think my eyes rolled so hard it adjusted the tide slightly).

Take your trolling elsewhere. Gamers aren't buying the snake-oil you're selling. If you want to play games, play. If you want to make games, make them. I may not have liked Gone Home, but I haven't seen anyone say it shouldn't be made or available for sale. If you want to pump five rounds into my digital face or top my high-score, bring it. I welcome the challenge and the chance for camaraderie. If all you want is yet another place to make everything the way you want it, get the fuck out and don't come back until you are willing to accept everyone else. It's not only your opinion that's important. If you don't like Hatred, don't buy it. I won't be, because that doesn't appeal to me. I haven't bought any GTA games either, but I'm not going to sit here and say no one else should be able to because REASON #11. And until you can do the same, you don't have a place here.

The table is open to everyone, but leave your baggage in your room.

Geez. Already in the second sentence this "article" spews lies.

The threat in Utah mentioned feminism as the root cause of the threat. no mention was ever made of #Gamergate.

Seeing as that's how you choose to start, I didn't even bother reading the rest of this garbage.

Apologies.

I read through it afterall. Good article that describes the real problem. Wasn't until later down that I realized you were simply showing us what the narrative tells us.