Tag: games

Sparklepunter (Chris Kluwe) and McRapey (John Scalzi) were chortling on Twitter the other day about how the “idiots” of #GamerGate had “no clue” what they were in for. And then, the pinkshirts pulled out the most fearsome artillery in the mainstream media….

That’s right! A NEW YORK TIMES article! So what do you think about THAT, bitches?
(Um, wait, isn’t that sexist?)
(SHIT! DELETE TWEET, DELETE TWEET DAMMIT!”)
What do you think about that, evil gamerhate death threaters!
(That’s better.)
That’s right, a NEW YORK TIMES article entitled “Can Video Games Survive? The Disheartening GamerGate Campaign”:

FOR
more than five years, almost every word that I’ve written
professionally has been about video games. I used to cover things like
presidential campaigns and prison reform. But at some point, video games
began to seem as consequential as those subjects, if not more so.

As
they became more popular, more profitable and, most important, more
powerful as a means of creative expression, video games started to feel
to me like the Internet had in 1999: a technology on the verge of
washing over our culture and reshaping it wholesale. Millions of people
of all ages were playing games. These were boom times, and thanks not
just to the mega-studios that produce things like the Call of Duty
series, but to countless small, independent developers as well. Game
design began to be taught in art schools alongside theater and
sculpture. The interactive age had arrived, and video games were its
most promising entertainment.

Translation: newbie journalist discovers games market, reviews some games, and now thinks he’s an expert. Also believes that all the johnny-come-latelies attempting to make a buck off the huge and growing gamer population are indicative of more than trivial parasitism. Speaking as someone who has professionally lectured on game development and game design at a technical institute in Europe, those game design degrees from art schools are completely worthless. (Something I point out in my lectures, by the way.) They are almost always taught by people with virtually no experience in the industry and none professionally designing games.

And then came GamerGate. Over the past few weeks, as this inchoate but
effective online movement has gathered momentum, I’ve begun to wonder if
I’ve made a horrible mistake.

He did. He chose… poorly. He lined up with the pinkshirts against the players. If you are anti-GamerGate, you are no longer a gamer. Period. You may play games, but you are not a part of gaming culture. You have rejected it.

It’s the players who enjoy this culture, even as they distinguish themselves from the worst of the GamerGate trolls, who truly worry me. If all the recent experimentation and progress in video games — they’re in the permanent collection at MoMA now — turns out to be just a plaster on an ugly sore, then the medium’s long journey into the mainstream could be halted or even reversed.

Given what the mainstream presently represents – ideological domination by SJWs, thought-policing by pinkshirts, kowtowing before feminists and sexual freaks, and relentless parasitism – that sounds like a very desirable result indeed. Who gives the smallest fleck of a fly’s shit about video games being “in the permanent collection at MoMA”. So fucking what?

Other game designers, journalists and cultural critics have been threatened, or have faced hacking attempts on their online accounts, from email to social media to banking. Video games are unquestionably poorer than they were two months ago when this strange and disheartening series of events began. Talented people are quitting. If this continues, the medium I love could go backward into its roots as a pastime for children.

The game industry didn’t need those no-talent ideological parasites before. It doesn’t need them now. And the game industry could do a lot worse than go back to its roots, which happened to produce some of the legendary classic games that are just as fun to play today as they were two decades ago.

To me, these anti-intellectual players, who want games to be “just games” and want criticism of them to be devoid of things like political and social context, are almost as worrisome as the horrifying, and criminal, actions of the harassers.

Of course it is worrisome to him. Games that are just games have no need of parasites like him trying to make a living about talking about them. Given his endorsement of inept pinkshirt-games, he’s clearly incapable of expressing an opinion about gameplay that any gamer will feel any burning need to know.

She’s [Leigh Alexander] more discouraged by her peers at websites that took two months to denounce GamerGate. Others have yet to make a statement at all. Some of the participants in the community of intelligent writers and designers who think and talk about video games in print and online, on websites and social media networks and podcasts, are being cowed into silence. In particular, if the large companies that make video games remain quiet, they risk allowing GamerGate to win the debate over whether diversity — of people, of ideas, of games themselves — has a place in their culture.

If the large companies that make video games are dumb enough to attack their core market, they will die. Intel and other companies are withdrawing their money from anti-GamerGate media companies like Gawker because they would like to continue selling their products to gamers. This is all the more true for the big game companies, which would also face an internal rebellion because many, if not most, of their employees are GamerGaters or at least sympathetic towards GamerGate.

(Let’s not forget, Leigh Alexander is not only the person who declared games to be dead, but also told an indie game developer: “Be careful with me. I am a megaphone, I am much less kind than Rami and I won’t mind making an example out of you.” For the record.)

@Nero commented that the people at one big company are “split right down the middle” on the issue. I’ve spoken to a few high-level people in the industry myself, including two “name-on-the-box” designers and one CEO, and they are definitely NOT anti-GamerGate. I would say that the most common opinion is one of indifference, mostly because the mainstream media’s opinion is totally irrelevant to them. But they do recognize one thing. #GamerGate is the gamers. Anti-#GamerGate is not. And at the end of the day, If you are anti-#GamerGate, you are no longer a gamer. You may play games, but you are not a part of gaming culture. You have rejected it and you are no longer a part of it.

Anti-#GamerGate is #GamerHate.

I’ll leave the kid’s actual Twitter address out of it because he obviously doesn’t know any better, but I suspect some of you will find this as amusing as I did:

    Feminist Frequency ‏@femfreq
    There are not two sides to this. This is a war on the women, critics, and feminists who care about making gaming more diverse and inclusive.

    Vox Day ‏@voxday
    @femfreq We like our games the way they are. You want different games, make your own damn games.

    Elijah @elijah
    yea make your own games unless your @zoequinnzel or @Spacekatgal than don’t cus reasons or ethics, yeah ethics

      Vox Day ‏@voxday
    Let them make whatever they want. No one cares about that. I certainly don’t.

    Elijah @elijah
    I know right why cant games continue to revolve around my entitled white maleness???

    Vox Day ‏@voxday
    I’m an Indian, Elijah. Feather, not dot, with an actual tribe, casino, and everything.

    Elijah @elijah
    @voxday Yo i’m sorry man I shouldnt assume that if someone says something stupid that they’re white that is racist

Hey, I don’t make the rules. I just play by them. If they hand you a hammer, it’s only polite to hit them with it. What else is it there for? But it certainly is amusing to see how fast they shift into reverse.

By the way, all members of the Dread Ilk have my formal permission to use the term “Redskins” in the context of the Washington football team. I take no offense at it, and you are certainly welcome to cite said permission in the event of an SJW objecting to it.

Gawker’s Max Read makes it clear that #GamerGate is winning in writing what may have been the dumbest, most self-destructive opinion piece ever written:

On October 1, the computing giant Intel pulled its ads from Gamasutra, a trade website for game developers, over an essay called “‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over” by a journalist named Leigh Alexander. Intel had been successfully harassed by a small, contemptible crusade called “Gamergate”—a campaign of dedicated anti-feminist internet trolls using an ill-informed mob of alienated and resentful video game-playing teenagers and young men to harass and intimidate female activists, journalists, and critics.

Unable to run Alexander out of game writing, as they had with the writer Jenn Frank, or force her from her home, as they did to the developer Brianna Wu, or threaten her from public engagements, as they did the following week to the critic and activist Anita Sarkeesian, Gamergate went after her publisher. And, in an unbelievable and embarrassing act of ignorance and cowardice, Intel capitulated. The company’s laughable “apology,” released late on that Friday afternoon, didn’t cover up the fact of Gamergate’s victory: Intel was not replacing its ads.

Failing to adequately cover this act of spinelessness was the first big fuck-up we at Gawker committed. Intel surrendered to the worst kind of dishonesty, and we allowed it to do so without ever calling it out. So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity. It folded to misogynists and bigots who objected to a woman who had done nothing more than write a piece claiming a place in the world of video games. And even when confronted with its own thoughtlessness and irresponsibility, it could not properly right its wrongs.

Last week, a Gawker writer tweeted “bring back bullying.” He, and later I, made the tactical mistake of publicly treating Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves. As a consequence, our advertisers were quickly inundated with the same kinds of emails that spooked Intel. Gamergaters were passing around a sample letter and list of advertiser contacts to coordinate the campaign; the Washington Post’s Caitlin Dewey wrote an excellent breakdown of the efficient mechanism by which the relatively small group of Gamergaters was able to make itself immediately annoying to advertisers:

    Step 4: Plug all of your choices into one of the many form e-mails that leaders of Disrespectful Nod have helpfully written already. […]

    Step 5: Keep it up, even when you get no response, and be — to quote the operation’s guide! — “an annoying little s—.” A representative for a high-profile communications company that advertises on Polygon confirmed that he’d received “dozens” of e-mails from Gamergate supporters over a period of several weeks.

    Operation Disrespectful Nod also encourages Gamergaters to reach out to the bosses and managers of journalists who have written “negative” stories, demanding the reporter in question be fired or asked to resign. Topping their most-wanted list, at present, is Gawker Media’s Biddle, who tweeted a string of jokes about Gamergate on Thursday. In context, at least, the jokes were an obvious — if tongue-in-cheek — commentary on the movement’s well-documented, often hateful, idiocy. Critics construed them as an endorsement for bullying. (Biddle later apologized for the tweets.)

Transparent and documented though it was, the obsessive campaign worked. Mercedes-Benz—listed on the site as a former partner, and therefore a target—briefly paused its ads on a network that serves ads to Gawker. I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions. Consequently, the editorial director of Gawker Media, Joel Johnson, took to the front page of Gawker to clarify that Sam Biddle does not want to bully anyone, and that Gawker Media as a company and institution is not pro-bullying. (Let’s note here that the admitted goal of our Gamergate trolls is not to eke an apology out of Sam, or the company, but to literally put us out of business entirely.)

If this seems bizarre to you, you’re not alone. I feel like I went to sleep in the regular world and woke up in an insane new one where “bullying” is something that it’s possible to be seriously and sincerely “for.” Yesterday, Adobe wrote to one Gamergater on Twitter that it had asked Gawker to remove its logo from the advertising site because it did not support bullying; a few confused hours later, Adobe was forced to clarify to the world:

    We are vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind and would never support any group that bullies.
    — Adobe (@Adobe) October 22, 2014

Brands like Adobe and Intel, willing to distance themselves from independent publishers over the spurious claims of a limited but dedicated group of misogynists and trolls, share an important core value with Gamergate: Misogyny. Kidding! Kidding. The value that defines both Gamergate and brand response is cynicism. A brand that honestly believes it needs to clarify that it is “vehemently opposed to bullying of any kind”—as though there are or have ever been genuine corporate supporters of bullying, and as though anyone was ever in danger of thinking the makers of Photoshop might be among their number—passes on to its adult customers the same corroding cynicism that the opportunistic reactionaries running Gamergate imbue in their maladjusted teenage followers. Releasing into the world a statement as vacuous as Adobe’s tweet, or as inane as Intel’s “apology,” demonstrates not that those brands stand against something (how else can anyone possibly feel about bullying?) but that they stand for nothing.

Maybe that’s too much to expect from a brand. But it seems like the bare minimum to expect from ourselves. Gawker is rarely perfect, but it strives to be honest and fearless. For us to have apologized for a joke—to have even clarified—in the face of such breathtaking cynicism and dishonesty, from both “ad partners” and the enemies who leverage those brands’ fearfulness to silence opposing voices, feels like an utter abdication of those responsibilities. Frankly, that sucks. If anyone is owed an apology, it’s our readers. So: Sorry.

I’ll be very surprised if Gawker Media keeps this lunatic loose cannon around much longer. Despite all his lies, misrepresentations, and ad hominem attacks, the piece is very interesting for what it admits.

1. GamerGate is clearly winning. Advertisers correctly understand that GamerGate is a broad-spectrum movement of gamers who do not trust the games media and oppose the interference of the SJWs attempting to, in LW1’s words, “make gaming more diverse and inclusive.” Intel’s reaction is particularly important because they are much more keenly attuned to the gaming market than most big corporations, because they depend upon it more heavily than most people realize. I worked closely with them on the release of their MMX chips in 1996 and 1997 – I was one of 12 CEOs (and with Ubisoft and Epic, one of three game dev CEOs) brought in to spend a day consulting with Andy Grove concerning Intel’s marketing of the MMX prior to its release – and they will never, ever blow off gamers. And they also understand that the games media is not to be confused with the gaming community itself.
2. Neither Biddle nor Read feel any remorse for their actions. They are only sorry that they PUBLICLY treated “Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves”. They have learned nothing.
3. GamerGate’s is correctly focused on the media’s Achilles Heel, its advertisers. The games media is so foolish and arrogant that they don’t care what their readers think, but they do care greatly about their advertisers. That is their corporate lifesblood, and that is the place that GamerGate should continue to target its efforts.
4. The pinkshirts still don’t understand that the numbers are not on their side. They don’t grasp that the fact that all the media organizations are on their side means nothing concerning the actual numbers of gamers who support one side or the other. Most gamers support GamerGate, to the extent they lean one way or another (they are mostly uninterested in the whole thing) the developers oppose any interference with how they design and develop their games, and the people responsible for selling products into both communities understand this.
5. The “bullying” is simply a proxy. It could have been anything, but that happens to be the hammer that the anti-Gamergaters handed GamerGate, and so it is the hammer with which GamerGate is going to repeatedly hit them. The real issue is that the gaming media is now not only attacking its readers, it is attacking its advertisers as well.
6. Max Read is very, very stupid. “So let’s say it now: Intel is run by craven idiots. It employs pusillanimous morons. It lacks integrity.” I suspect he’s going to bitterly regret those words soon, if he doesn’t already. If Gawker doesn’t fire him and Biddle, and promptly kowtow before GamerGate and announce its love of games, gamers, and game developers who do whatever they want to do, they’re going to see their advertising revenue continue to decline.
7. Max Read is projecting. The only “dishonest fascists” here are the pinkshirts opposed to GamerGate.
8. In case it isn’t clear yet, GamerGate will never quit. Because making the games we want to make and playing the games that we want to play is part of who we are.
9. The pinkshirts don’t give even the smallest damn about “death threats” or “harassment. I’ve been getting angry emails and death threats from the Left for 13 years now and no one pretending to be so terribly concerned about the “death threats” aimed at LW1, LW2 or LWu has ever said one single word to denounce them. Here are just two examples from this year that were posted in public:

In better days, people were easily thrown out of the city and the gates were locked behind them, let them starve. We need a system like that today, people like Vox Day need to die on the vine. Anyone who holds such opinions should not be allowed in society, it doesn’t matter what the quality of their “art” is. I’m sure that there were many people who thought Hitler was a good painter. – Blackadder Apr 23, 2014 at 9:38 pm

Oh dear sweet Cthulu, I think a little part of my soul just died…  Frankly, Vox is a great big steaming pile of human garbage. He’s an absolute piece of shit. This isn’t his first set of fuckery in the SFF community, either. He ran for President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and part of his platform was that he’d ban all women from writing any hard sci-fi or fantasy and only allow them to write paranormal romance (I believe wereseals were specified as the only thing women should be allowed to write about. The fucking jackass doesn’t even know they’re called selkies, but that’s irrelevant). That’s the sort of shit this guy is…. Seriously, vox is an absolute piece of shit. I want him to die a slow and agonising death. – LJP · April 25, 2014

And speaking of pinkshirts doubling down, here is John Scalzi:

“If you’re still pro-GamerGate at this point, you’re a shitty human, or a shitty human’s useful idiot.” – John Scalzi

I tweeted that to @torbooks. Because while Mr. Scalzi has repeatedly announced that he doesn’t care who reads his books and as well as his hatred for GamerGate, it is possible that Tor Books, which sells considerably more HALO and other game tie-in books than it sells John Scalzi books, may feel differently.

I have written to Joel Johnson, the editorial director at Gawker Media, asking him to request Max Read’s resignation due to Mr. Read’s open disregard for the gaming community and one of its leading corporate supporters. If you wish to do likewise, Mr. Johnson’s contact information is available at his personal site.

UPDATE: Nero has a piece on the same Max Read article up on Breitbart.

The irony of Gawker’s career-destroying, far-left authoritarians squealing about fascism and bullying will not be lost on observers. “I’ve been told that we’ve lost thousands of dollars already, and could potentially lose thousands more, if not millions,” wrote Gawker’s Read last night.

UPDATE 2: On a related note, here is the posted list of Gawker’s advertisers, with contact information.

Brianna Wu, who may or may not be the former Bruce Freeman, has successfully sold his sob story to the Washington Post:

They’ve taken down women I care about one by one. Now, the vicious mob of the Gamergate movement is coming after me. They’ve threatened to rape me. They’ve threatened to make me choke to death on my husband’s severed genitals. They’ve threatened to murder any children I might have.

This angry horde has been allowed to wage its misogynistic war without penalty for too long. It’s time for the video game industry to stop them.

No. What part of this does he not understand. “You could say all gamers drink the blood of innocents under a full moon and I still wouldn’t give a fuck.” – Phasmal. That is exactly how the average gamer feels about this. Whether Wu ends up being ritually tortured and force-fed Ebola before being sacrificed to Cthulhu on an altar made of desert-aged E.T. cartridges or not, his fate is not going to alter any of our opinions on the matter in the slightest. We don’t care. People are dying of Ebola in Africa too. We are still going to design, develop, and play exactly the sort of games we want to design, develop, and play.

And as for those hypothetical children, well, to paraphrase the immortal Zaphod Beeblebrox, count the chromosomes.

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

No, #GamerGate is a broad spectrum of gamers who have no intention of permitting a small group of pinkshirted SJWs do to games what the pinkshirts have done to SF/F literature, namely, destroy it through hyperpoliticization. And we are well aware that the so-called “game journalists” are conspiring with those pinkshirts to do it.

The next day, my Twitter mentions were full of death threats so severe I had to flee my home. They have targeted the financial assets of my company by hacking. They have tried to impersonate me on Twitter. Even as we speak, they are spreading lies to journalists via burner e-mail accounts in an attempt to destroy me professionally.

Boo-freaking-hoo. Even if we assume those “death threats” are genuine, Wu destroyed himself professionally when he lined up with the pinkshirts in the media against the gamer community. No serious gamer will ever play one of his games, no matter how many ideological sympathetic game journalists write favorably about it.

We’ve lost too many women to this lunatic mob. Good women the industry was lucky to have, such as Jenn Frank, Mattie Bryce and my friend Samantha Allen, one of the most insightful critics in games media. They decided the personal cost was too high, and I don’t know who could blame them. Every women I know in the industry is terrified she will be next.

We don’t want them, and it is entirely obvious that we don’t need them either. There are more than a few real genuine women who are part of GamerGate. Obviously Wu doesn’t know any of them, because unlike him, they are not pinkshirt-wearing political activists who are more considerably interested in ideological propaganda and self-inflating genre than in electronic entertainment.

The culture in which women are treated this way by gamers didn’t happen in a vacuum. For 30 years, video games have been designed by men, marketed to men and sold to men. It’s obvious to anyone outside the industry that video games have serious issues with the portrayal of women. It’s not just oversexualized examples, such as Ivy of the Soul Caliber series. Games are still lazily falling on the same outdated tropes involving women. Princess Peach, of Nintendo’s Mario games, has been kidnapped in 12 separate games since 1985. Perhaps the most disturbing of all is the propensity of games to have women thoughtlessly murdered as a motivation for the male hero, such as Watch Dogs.

The consequence of this culture is male gamers have been trained to feel video games are their turf. In stopping Gamergate, the men who dominate it – not just women — must address the culture that created Gamergate.

No. In a word, no. We don’t have to do anything of the sort. Nor do we wish to do so. It is our culture. Also, I note that Wu is dismissing the work of very single genuine female in the industry over the last 30 years. Roberta Williams, Jane Jensen, Brenda Laurel, Scorpia and Charlotte Panther at CGW, just to name a few. (To say nothing of Dani Bunton.) As for the “women thoughtlessly murdered” in video games than the men, surely Wu doesn’t imagine that the virtual body count is even remotely close to being distributed equally on sex grounds.

Some have. But many more have been silent. In the male-dominated video game media, many have chosen to sit by and do nothing as Gamergate picks us off, one by one. IGN has not covered Gamergate. Game Informer has not covered Gamergate. Ironically, the people who most need to hear this message are not hearing it, because of an editorial choice to stay on the sidelines.

He spoke too soon; Andy caved earlier today. So, it is an absolutely ludicrous lie to claim that anyone in the game industry is not hearing the absurd message, especially when anti-gaming pinkshirts are openly bragging about how the media is in their back pocket.

There are many straightforward steps we can take to change this.

First, major institutions in video games, which happen to be dominated by men, need to speak up immediately and denounce Gamergate. The dam started to break this week as Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb broke the silence at their publication on Monday. Last week, the industry’s top trade group, the Electronic Software Association spoke out against Gamergate, saying “Threats of violence and harassment have to stop. There is no place in the video game community for personal attacks and threats.”

No one, literally no one, cares what “the Electronic Software Association” has to say. Considering how successful they were attacking video game piracy, if they’re on the anti-gamers’ side, the pinkshirts ought to raise the white flag now.

Secondly, I call upon the entire industry to examine its hiring practices at all levels. Women make up half of all gamers, yet we make up only a fraction of this industry. While it’s possible to point to high profile women in the field, the fact remains. Women hold a shockingly disproportionate number of high level positions in game studios, game publishers and particularly in leadership roles. There are just 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, according to The Boston Globe. Game journalism also plays a critical role. It doesn’t matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women’s voices will never be heard.

Women no more “make up half of all gamers” than Brianna Wu has two X chromosomes. Playing Candy Crush Saga or Angry Birds or Kim Kardashian’s Mutant Butt Destroys the Sheboygan Mall doesn’t make one a gamer any more than playing Myst did. “Gamer” is derived from “wargamer” and it is shorthand for “core gamer” or “serious gamer”. It does not refer to anyone who happens to play an electronic game any more than it refers to someone who plays hopskotch. No one is stopping women from starting their own game reviews. That’s exactly what I did in 1991 when virtually no one was reviewing games in the mainstream media and that’s how I ended up being nationally syndicated, with a game review column running weekly everywhere from Boston to San Francisco.

My friend Quinn told me about a folder on her computer called, “The Ones We’ve Lost.” They are the letters she’s gotten from young girls who dream of being game developers, but are terrified of the environment they see. I nearly broke into tears as I told her I had a folder filled with the same. The truth is, even if we stopped Gamergate tomorrow, it will have already come at too high a cost.

To dream of “being game developers” is not at all the same thing as doing the hard work of developing games. Those young girls may desire the status, but they show  absolutely no sign of wanting to actually do the work involved. Anyone who really and truly wants to make games will do so, and will not permit anyone to dissuade them. You don’t need anyone’s permission to be a game developer. You don’t need anyone’s encouragement. You don’t need hugs and a welcome mat. Thanks to the panoply of great tools available, it has never been easier to develop games. Wu can cry if he likes, but the fact is that none of “The Ones We’ve Lost” were ever going to develop a single game. Ever. Not even if they were welcomed into the industry with pixies, unicorns, and rainbows.

This guy quite clearly doesn’t understand how the game industry works and is attempting to put the media cart ahead of the millions of horses that are the gamers of the world.

I compiled a list of the news and opinion outlets that have published articles critical of #gamergate just in the last few days. They’re welcome to boycott these all, it’ll just hasten their increasing irrelevance.

• Arcade Sushi – The Entertainment Software Association Speaks Out On GamerGate
• Associations Now – Game Industry Voices Denounce “Gamergate” Harassment
• B-Ten – #StopGamerGate2014 Explodes on Twitter. Here’s Why This Matters.
• BBC News – Feminist video-games talk cancelled after massacre threat
• BBC News – GamerGate: ‘Press must tackle misogyny,’ says developer
• Business Insider – ‘Gamergate’ Taught Me What Twitter’s Biggest Problem Is
• Bustle – The “#Stop GamerGate2014” Movement Has Been A Long Time Coming
• Buzzfeed – The Man Who Sparked GamerGate Regrets The Harassment, Says He’d Do It Again
• Canada.com – GamerGate has nothing to do with ethics in journalism
• CANOE – GamerGate reveals game industry’s girl problem
• CBC.ca – #StopGamerGate2014 hashtag suggests internet is growing tired of GamerGate
• CBS News – “Gamergate,” guns and threats against women collide in Utah
• China Topix – Female Game Developer Receives Death Threats for Crossing Gamergate
• CNN – Behind the furor over #Gamergate
• Complex – The Hashtags and Death Threats Behind #GamerGate, Gaming’s Latest Controversy
• The Daily Beast – Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage
• The Daily Wildcat – Column: Sexism isn’t answer to gaming’s problems
• Deadspin – The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate
• Dumb-Out – Organizer of E3 Says GamerGate Threats are Just ‘Wrong’
• Eurogamer.net – E3 organiser and trade group ESA speaks out against GamerGate
• Eurogamer.net – We cannot let this become gaming culture
• Forbes – #GamerGate Opponents Rally Behind #StopGamerGate2014
• Forbes – Gamergate And The Unbearable Maleness Of Computers
• Fresno Bee – Appleton: With Gamergate, video gaming community an ugly place right now
• The Frisky – Brianna Wu Speaks Up About The GamerGate Threats That Chased Her Out Of Her Home
• The Frisky – A #GamerGate Reading List To Catch You Up On The Violent And Deceptive Nature Of The Movement
• Game Politics – Leigh Alexander Lists Ethical Concerns With the Video Game Industry
• GamePlanet – E3 organiser speaks out against GamerGate
• The Gamer Headlines – Anita Sarkeesian’s Virulent Critics Are Only Strengthening Her Cause
• GameSpot – Harassment Must Stop, Says E3 Organiser in Response to “Gamergate”
• GameSpot – An important message to our users regarding online harassment
• GamingBolt – The ESA Finally Speaks Out In Response to GamerGate
• Gawker – The Angry Ex Who Ignited Gamergate Has No Regrets
• Giant Bomb – Letter From the Editor 10/17/2014
• Gizorama – “Keep Politics Out Of Gaming” – Why Games Journalists Won’t Leave Their Ideologies At The Door
• The Globe and Mail – A guide to the ideas and words of Gamergate
• Grantland – How Do You #StopGamerGate2014?
• The Guardian – Brianna Wu and the human cost of Gamergate: ‘every woman I know in the industry is scared’
• The Guardian – Lazy coverage of Gamergate is only feeding this abusive campaign
• Guardian Liberty Voice – GamerGate Targets Another Female Developer With Death Threats
• Gulfnews.com – Gamergate and the ‘war on gaming’
• Heavy.com – Gamergate: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
• HLNtv.com – Opinion: There’s nothing new about #Gamergate
• Huffington Post – Dear Media: In Wake Of Death Threats, It’s Time To Take A Stand Against GamerGate Violence
• Huffington Post – The Threats Against Anita Sarkeesian Expose The Darkest Aspects Of Online Misogyny
• Indie Wire – GamerGate: A War on Women Hiding Behind a Mask of “Ethics”
• International Business Times UK – E3 Organisers Stand Up To #GamerGate: ‘Attacks and Threats Have No Place In The Video Game Community’
• The Inquisitr – Gamergate Takes Dark Turn From Online Bullying To Threats Of Mass Shootings
• Irish Times – The misogynistic gamer minority – don’t feed their fantasies
• Kotaku – Thousands Rally Online Against Gamergate
• Liberation – Feminist vlogger vs. sexist gaming industry
• London Free Press – GamerGate reveals game industry’s girl problem
• Los Angeles Times – It’s time to silence ‘gamergate,’ end the misogyny in gaming culture
• Los Angeles Times – Anita Sarkeesian bravely confronts sexist video gaming culture
• The Mary Sue – #Gamergate’s Harassment Of Women Hits The Front Page Of The New York Times
• The Mary Sue – Man Who Sparked Gamergate Says The Movement Is “For The Best” Despite Harassment
• MCV – Global media rallies against #GamerGate misogyny
• Metro – Online trolling and sorry excuses – why GamerGate needs to stop
• Metro – GamerGate – what is it, and why are gamers so angry?
• MetroNews Canada – What is #GamerGate?
• Mic – After Online Misogyny Goes Too Far, the Internet Rallies Around Its Feminist Gamers
• Mind of the Geek – GamerGate: Is Enough Finally Enough?
• MXDWN.com – MXDWN Talks About: Gamergate
• New York Magazine – Gamergate’s Silver Lining
• New York Times – Feminist Critics of Video Games Facing Threats in ‘GamerGate’ Campaign
• The New Yorker – Gamergate: A Scandal Erupts In the Video-Game Community
• NEWS.com.au – #Gamergate: What is really going on in the gaming industry?
• Newsweek – Who is Anita Sarkeesian, One of the Women at the Center of #GamerGate?
• OS News – GamerGate terrorists threaten mass school shooting in Utah
• OSU – The Lantern – Opinion: Gamergate evolves into a misogynistic power struggle
• PC Magazine – What’s New Now: Gaming Trade Group Talks Gamergate
• PBS NewsHour – #Gamergate leads to death threats against women in the gaming industry
• PC Magazine – E3 Organizer Slams GamerGate Threats as ‘Wrong’
• Polygon – On GamerGate: A letter from the editor
• Re/code – The Gaming Industry Could Stop Gamergate – But It Won’t
• Refinery29 – An Awesome Twitter Response To Sexist #GamerGate
• Regina Leader-Post – GamerGate’s mysognistic campaign against feminism has failed
• Reuters Blogs – GamerGate: We now know what evil lurks in the heart of man – or trolls
• RollingStone.com – Anita Sarkeesian on GamerGate: ‘We Have a Problem and We’re Going to Fix This’
• Salt Lake Tribune – Utah State mess brings #Gamergate to light …
• SiliconBeat – Gaming Trade Group Says “Gamergate” Must Stop
• Slate Magazine – A Former FBI Agent On Why It’s So Hard to Prosecute Gamergate Trolls
• Stuff.co.nz – Gamergate: A proxy war for cultural battles
• TakePart – The Nasty Online Movement That Has Women Feeling Unsafe in Their Own Homes
• Tech Times – Gamergate continues: Female video game developer flees home after receiving chilling death threats on Twitter
• TIME – What Is #GamerGate and Why Are Women Being Threatened About Video Games?
• TIME – Fixing What’s Wrong With Gamergate Starts With You
• Toronto Star – Gamergate: Videogame industry speaks out against harassment
• Upstart – Gamergate’s bizarre escalation leads to massacre threats against Anita Sarkeesian
• The Vancouver Observer – Gun violence threats against feminist Anita Sarkeesian send strong message about male power
• VentureBeat – DeanBeat: With GamerGate, enough is enough
• VentureBeat – GamerGate is McCarthyism. Don’t let it silence you (opinion)
• The Verge – The guy who inspired Gamergate ignored his mother’s advice to ‘cool off’
• The Verge – A lot of people are finally fed up with Gamergate’s dumb crusade against women
• VICE News – Violent Threats Against Women Are Getting Even Worse in the Gamergate Controversy
• The Vine – Seth Rogen dives into #Gamergate, calls Adam Baldwin “a fucking idiot”
• Vulture – You Don’t Need to Care About Video Games to Care About Gamergate
• The Week Magazine – Gamergate has backfired spectacularly on its nincompoop perpetrators
• Washington Post – The game industry’s top trade group just spoke out against Gamergate
• Washington Post – What tolerating online harassment costs us
• Washington Post – More women play video games than boys, and other surprising facts lost in the mess of Gamergate
• Washington Post – Why is it taking so long to identify the anonymous Gamergate trolls?
• Xojane – It
  Happened to Me: I’ve Been Forced Out Of My Home And Am Living In
  Constant Fear Because Of Relentless Death Threats From Gamergate
• Boing Boing – Why #gamergate is bullshit

And yet, none of this is having ANY effect whatsoever on the activity of game developers. Literally none. There are no AAA developers suddenly deciding that instead of a 3D shooter, they are going to develop Kim Kardashian’s Mutant Butt Goes to the Mall. Blizzard is not going to halt Warlords of Draenor in order to put more clothes on the girl-Dranei or ensure that they are sufficiently Strong and Independent for Literally Who’s liking. Matrix is not going to start publishing Fashion Quest: Kicky Heels instead of its 576th World War II wargame, Operation Johann: the Czechoslovakian Plan to Invade Lichtenstein. And as far as I am aware, no one is running out to hire Zoe Quinn as a design lead.

But #GamerGate is having a tangible effect on the media organizations. Intel and Mercedes have stopped advertising on Gamasutra and Gawker. Other advertisers will follow suit; I have heard of other publications discovering that their advertising revenues are imperiled. The pinkshirts of the games media are going to find out, over the next few months, just who is truly irrelevant, who is truly impotent. And it isn’t the gamers of #GamerGate.

#GamerGate ultimately comes down to one thing. We gamers like our core games the way they are, and we aren’t going to change them for anyone or for any reason except better gameplay. And we don’t give a quantum of a damn what any casual gamer who plays Myst/Cooking Mama/Farmville/Angry Birds does, thinks, wants, or says. All the theatrical handwringing rhetoric about misogyny and harassment and death threats means absolutely nothing to any of us. It doesn’t matter if Literally Who, Literally Who 2, and Literally Wu wind up being ritually tortured and force-fed Ebola before being sacrificed to Cthulhu on an altar made of desert-aged E.T. cartridges, that’s not going to alter any of our opinions on the matter in the slightest.

One gamer, by the name of Phasmal, speaks effectively for us all: “You could say all gamers drink the blood of innocents under a full moon and I still wouldn’t give a fuck.”

D’accordo. In the meantime, if you’re interested in either reading honest game reviews or writing a few yourself, check out Computer Game World. I’m in the process of adding many of my old reviews and others are adding new ones every day.