7 ms·

Up until about five years ago, I've only ever wanted to create and share video games. After a couple years doing it independently and getting my first professio

Up until about five years ago, I've only ever wanted to create and share video games. After a couple years doing it independently and getting my first professional game job, gamer gate happened. It's absolutely terrifying to see the lengths at which people will go to make someone's life a living hell. Every industry friend was affected, and reacted mostly by reducing their online presence, and I've done the same. Some were targeted personally. A few left the industry. It's hard to want to make games now. The best feeling in the world was watching someone on YouTube play something I'd made. It's different now. Part of it is fear of being targeted, but it's also made me think of why I would put so much effort into something that attracts so much vitriol. I know it's a minority of people, but games take months of hard work to create and these thoughts take a toll over time, especially on bad days. The more personality a person puts into their game, the more they risk being targeted. It's depressing to have to hide self expression, reduce social media presence, and use pseudonyms when all I really want is to make games for others to have fun with.

monkeydreams 9y ago
Game design is a form of expression which requires substantial investment both from the developer and also from the participant. The customers have serious skin in this interaction in the form of money spent on the game, time invested in progression, social standing (sometimes you have to be playing this game because all your friends are playing it) and so on. This leads people to thinking that the moral high ground lies with them - they paid for this, they spent precious time, etc, etc - and the game developers should listen to them (and them alone). In a way the relationship is like the archetypal "number one fan" for a musician, writer, artist in times past, who had seen all the shows and purchased all the books and now feels, because the object of their attentions has made a choice they disagree with, somehow they have been betrayed. What game development has done is lower the cost of entry into these toxic relationships.
ManuelKiessling 9y ago
As someone who heard and read about Gamer Gate, but not more, I'm genuinely curious: What exactly is it that GG did to people working in the industry? My understanding was that the two parties having a fight were female developers and game reviewers on one side and a horde of "young angry white males" on the other (at least if you simplify the whole thing enough). And from this I understood that it was mostly the life of these females that was made a living hell. So, are you one of those female game developers, or did the mob turn against everyone creating games, regardless of gender? I hope this doesn't come across stupid - it's just that it seems to be an extremely complex topic and I just want to understand it a bit more.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Going by memory here, since most of the search results about the topic are very... polarized. The genesis of the problem, as with so many problems, is that two people were in a short term sexual relationship. The issue with that is the woman made video games, and the man reviewed video games. His review of her video game "Depression Quest" was glowing - a sentiment most people who played the game didn't feel was warranted. The relationship was uncovered, accusations started flying, and a mob was formed on both sides. Those mobs proceeded to do what mobs do - attack each other. The biggest impact I saw was that people in the industry were not allowed to be neutral, so they just didn't comment. Why interact with the crowd when you're just going to be pilloried in a highly visible fashion by one side or the other?
  - jdlshore 9y ago
    GamerGate was orchestrated by misogynistic racists on 4chan's /pol/ board. They used "ethics in journalism" as a deliberate excuse to rile people up, and tricked a large crowd of gamers into buying that excuse and thus providing them with cover and additional power. Ultimately it was a disgusting and successful attack against women and people of color. By repeating the excuse (that it was about a game review, when in fact it was an orchestrated attack, and the supposed review does not exist), you're perpetuating a mistake (providing cover to a small group of misogynistic racists) that caused a lot of harm. I doubt you did this intentionally, so I suggest you do some more research. There is a fantastic YouTube series that goes into detail, including investigating the public record of the people behind GamerGate, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ If you can't watch the whole thing (although it's worth it), this part goes into the origins of GamerGate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs .
    - esyir 9y ago
      The argument made was about positive publicity, though that was also turned into "positive reviews" via the wonders of the internet telephone game. GamerGate was a far more complex scenario than you're simplifying it to.

monkeydreams 9y ago

Game design is a form of expression which requires substantial investment both from the developer and also from the participant. The customers have serious skin in this interaction in the form of money spent on the game, time invested in progression, social standing (sometimes you have to be playing this game because all your friends are playing it) and so on. This leads people to thinking that the moral high ground lies with them - they paid for this, they spent precious time, etc, etc - and the game developers should listen to them (and them alone). In a way the relationship is like the archetypal "number one fan" for a musician, writer, artist in times past, who had seen all the shows and purchased all the books and now feels, because the object of their attentions has made a choice they disagree with, somehow they have been betrayed. What game development has done is lower the cost of entry into these toxic relationships.

ManuelKiessling 9y ago

As someone who heard and read about Gamer Gate, but not more, I'm genuinely curious: What exactly is it that GG did to people working in the industry? My understanding was that the two parties having a fight were female developers and game reviewers on one side and a horde of "young angry white males" on the other (at least if you simplify the whole thing enough). And from this I understood that it was mostly the life of these females that was made a living hell. So, are you one of those female game developers, or did the mob turn against everyone creating games, regardless of gender? I hope this doesn't come across stupid - it's just that it seems to be an extremely complex topic and I just want to understand it a bit more.

falcolas 9y ago
Going by memory here, since most of the search results about the topic are very... polarized. The genesis of the problem, as with so many problems, is that two people were in a short term sexual relationship. The issue with that is the woman made video games, and the man reviewed video games. His review of her video game "Depression Quest" was glowing - a sentiment most people who played the game didn't feel was warranted. The relationship was uncovered, accusations started flying, and a mob was formed on both sides. Those mobs proceeded to do what mobs do - attack each other. The biggest impact I saw was that people in the industry were not allowed to be neutral, so they just didn't comment. Why interact with the crowd when you're just going to be pilloried in a highly visible fashion by one side or the other?
- jdlshore 9y ago
  GamerGate was orchestrated by misogynistic racists on 4chan's /pol/ board. They used "ethics in journalism" as a deliberate excuse to rile people up, and tricked a large crowd of gamers into buying that excuse and thus providing them with cover and additional power. Ultimately it was a disgusting and successful attack against women and people of color. By repeating the excuse (that it was about a game review, when in fact it was an orchestrated attack, and the supposed review does not exist), you're perpetuating a mistake (providing cover to a small group of misogynistic racists) that caused a lot of harm. I doubt you did this intentionally, so I suggest you do some more research. There is a fantastic YouTube series that goes into detail, including investigating the public record of the people behind GamerGate, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y8XgGhXkTQ If you can't watch the whole thing (although it's worth it), this part goes into the origins of GamerGate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6TrKkkVEhs .
  - esyir 9y ago
    The argument made was about positive publicity, though that was also turned into "positive reviews" via the wonders of the internet telephone game. GamerGate was a far more complex scenario than you're simplifying it to.