Gamergate controversy

Gamergate or GamerGate (GG) was a controversy in video game culture in which long-standing issues of sexism and misogyny in the gamer community became high-profile on social media in August 2014. The controversy also includes discussions about journalistic ethics in the online gaming press, particularly conflicts of interest between video game journalists and developers, and a reaction to a perceived change in the "gamer" identity.

Gamergaters accused video game journalist Nathan Grayson of an unethical relationship with video game developer Zoë Quinn. More broadly, they alleged unethical collusion between the press and feminists, progressives, and social critics. These claims were widely dismissed as trivial, conspiracy theories, baseless, or unrelated to actual issues of ethics in gaming and journalism. Gamergate supporters frequently denied that the harassment took place, falsely claiming it to be manufactured by the victims.

Gamergate has been described as a culture war over cultural diversification, artistic recognition, feminism in video games, social criticism in video games, and the social identity of gamers. Many supporters of Gamergate opposed the increasing influence of feminism and so-called "social justice warriors" on video game culture. Gamergate led figures both inside and outside the gaming industry to focus on methods of addressing online harassment, ways to minimize harm, and prevent similar events.

History

The controversies and events that would come to be known as Gamergate began in August 2014 after inciting a blog post by Eron Gjoni. Called "The Zoe Post", it was a lengthy, detailed account of his relationship with Zoë Quinn and their breakup that included copies of personal chat logs, emails, and text messages. The blog implied that Quinn received a favorable review of Depression Quest in exchange for her sexual relationship with Nathan Grayson, a reporter for the gaming websites Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun. Gjoni later said that he had "no evidence" of a sexual conflict of interest on Quinn's part. Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning her was published before their relationship began. Nonetheless, as reported by The Daily Dot, gamers online used Gjoni's blog to accuse Quinn, without evidence, of trading sex for professional advancement. A link to the blog that was posted to 4chan, where many users had previously been highly critical of Depression Quest, led to renewed attacks on Quinn.

After Gjoni's blog post, Quinn and her family were subjected to a virulent and often misogynistic harassment campaign. Online attackers of Quinn at first used the label "Quinnspiracy", later adopting the hashtag "#Gamergate" after it was coined by the actor Adam Baldwin, whose nearly 190,000 Twitter followers helped the spread of the hashtag. Harassment of Gamergate targets was coordinated via Internet Relay Chat (IRC), spreading rapidly over imageboards and forums like 4chan and Reddit.

During these events, gamers used social media and sites such as 4chan and Reddit to explain and support their position, and figures like Adam Baldwin (who was the first to use the hashtag #GamerGate on Twitter) highlighted the issue to the population at large. A portion of those that support the #GamerGate movement took issue with the widespread description of the movement as misogynist. A a second Twitter hashtag, "#NotYourShield", was started, intending to show that women and members of other minorities were also seeking for changes in the ethics of the video game industry and denying that the core issues behind #GamerGate were driven by sexism. Quinn has stated that the #GamerGate movement was manufactured by members of 4chan operating on an IRC channel specifically to attack her and her followers for her feminist views, while those posting under #NotYourShield were not of the claimed minority groups. These statements have been denied by some members of 4chan.

A self-described radical feminist group supportive of the #GamerGate movement known as The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC) reported that their account for their charity game jam on Indiegogo had had its password cracked. Prior to #GamerGate, Quinn had spoken out against TFYC's campaign concerning their rules on transgender participants and on how the participants were not being paid; TFYC has explained that their rules stipulate a particular date before which participants had to have identified as women to ensure men would not abuse the process by lying about their gender identity and that the participants were only providing conceptual work, rather than the bulk of computer programming. During the initial argument between the two camps, TFYC's website suffered from an unintentional DDoS attack due to increased traffic from the discussion on Twitter. The group also states that a sponsor withdrew support over the transphobia concerns, costing them US$10,000. After #GamerGate gained traction, TFYC noted that 4chan members had donated US$17,000 to their Indiegogo project, allegedly out of spite, and designed a mascot character ("Vivian James," the fictional everywoman of gaming) which the group decided to use in their games; the 4chan video games board /v/ is explicitly mentioned in the message put up by the perpetrator of the password crack.

In mid-October Brianna Wu, another independent game developer and co-founder of video game studio Giant Spacekat, saw her home address and other identifying information posted on 8chan as retaliation for mocking Gamergate. Wu then became the target of rape and death threats on Twitter and elsewhere. After contacting police, Wu fled her home with her husband, saying she would not allow the threats to intimidate her into silence. Wu announced an US$11,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for those involved in her harassment, and set up a legal fund to help other game developers who have been harassed online. As of April 2016, Wu was still receiving threats in such volume that she employed full-time staff to document them. In August 2021, The Washington Post described Wu as "a vocal proponent of forgiveness" for those harassers "who apologize and show they have grown" despite the extensive harassment she endured. However, "insults and continued harassment" still outnumbered apologies "10-to-1".

Gamergate supporters subjected others to similar harassment, doxing, and death threats. Those who came to the victims' defense were ridiculed as "white knights", or "social justice warriors" (SJWs); this characterization was intended, according to Heron, Belford and Goker, to neutralize any opposition by questioning their motives. The term "social justice warrior" emerged as the favored term of Gamergate proponents, resulting in its pejorative use becoming mainstream. Shortly after the Gamergate hashtag was coined, video game developer Phil Fish had his personal information, including various accounts and passwords, hacked and publicly posted in retaliation for defending Quinn and attacking her detractors. The hacks and doxing also exposed documents relating to Fish's company, Polytron. As a result, Fish left the gaming industry and put Polytron up for sale, calling the situation "unacceptable" and saying, "it's not worth it".

8chan was a central hub for Gamergate supporters after 4chan banned discussion of Gamergate

Gamergate was coordinated primarily in 2014 and 2015 through anonymous message boards such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, particularly the "KotakuInAction" subreddit. Ars Technica reported that a series of 4chan discussion logs suggests that Twitter sockpuppet accounts were used to popularize the Gamergate hashtag. Early Gamergate IRC discussions focused on coordinating the harassment of Quinn by using astroturf campaigns to push attacks against her into mainstream view, while initial organizers attempted to cultivate a palatable narrative for public consumption, internally focusing on personal grudges against Quinn and aggressive sexual imagery. Gamergaters circulated a blacklist of publications along with email templates and phone scripts to use in lobbying companies to pull advertisements from sites critical of Gamergate. Media scholar Torill Mortensen wrote in Games and Culture that Gamergate's structure as an anonymous swarm allowed it to create an environment where anyone who criticized it or became its target was at risk, while allowing them to avoid individual responsibility for harassment.

There has been considerable discussion of self-policing and the responsibility supporters of Gamergate share when the hashtag is used for harassment. A number of websites have blocked users, removed posts, and created policies to prevent their users from threatening Quinn and others with doxing, assault, rape and murder, and planning and coordinating such threats. In September 2014, 4chan founder Christopher Poole banned all discussion of Gamergate on the site as more attacks occurred, leading to Gamergate supporters using 8chan as their central hub.

Many Gamergate supporters have denied that the harassment took place, or falsely accused victims of fabricating the evidence. Gamergate supporters have used the term "Literally Who" to refer to victims of harassment such as Quinn, saying they are not relevant to Gamergate's goals and purposes. Several commentators have decried the use of such terminology as dehumanizing, and said that discussions on Gamergate forums often focus on those referred to as "Literally Who".

By September 24, 2014, over one million Twitter messages incorporating the Gamergate hashtag had been sent. A Newsweek and Brandwatch analysis found more than two million Twitter messages between September and October 2014. Software developer Andy Baio also produced an analysis of #Gamergate tweets showing a discussion that was polarized between pro- and anti-Gamergate factions. One quarter of the tweets sampled were produced by users new to Twitter, most of whom were pro-Gamergate.

Demographics

While the number of Gamergate supporters is unclear, in October 2014, Deadspin estimated 10,000 supporters based on the number of users discussing Gamergate on Reddit. According to The Washington Post, "Both mainstream gaming critics and many Gamergate supporters insist the brutal trolls are just a small, vocal minority. There's plenty of social science to back that up, too: We know that people are more aggressive, more argumentative and more nasty when they're permitted to comment on something without using their real name."

Katherine Cross, a sociologist, game critic and target of harassment from Gamergate, noted that "For a long time, Gamergate adamantly resisted that [far right] characterization", adding that "They said that notions that they were conservatives were slander and dismissed them. They posted straw polls that they've taken in KiA that demonstrate this. I've said time and time again that that largely means nothing." Vice News noted that "The obvious problem here is that th[ese are] unscientific internet poll[s], which can be easily gamed by a community that often games polls." and that "the threads on [r/KotakuinAction] tell a different story. On February 8, for example, all the off-topic threads had a clear, far-right bent, claiming that Facebook is censoring crimes committed by immigrants, complaining about college professors who criticize Trump, and more. In the eyes of Gamergaters fighting against 'political correctness' doesn't necessarily conflict with liberal politics, but I also couldn't find any threads that could be construed as liberal." Vice News also noted that "while the majority of Gamergaters resent the affiliation [of alt-right], many of the movement's leading figures, who were right wing pundits before Gamergate, have graduated from rallying against political correctness in games to supporting Trump and the alt-right.", including Mike Cernovich and Milo Yiannopoulos.

Organization

The series of events that came to be known as Gamergate has been described as "torturously complex". As a movement, it had no official leaders or clearly defined agenda. Because of its anonymous membership, lack of organization and leaderless nature, sources differ as to the goals or mission of Gamergate and defining it has been difficult. Frank Lantz of NYU's Game Center wrote that he could not find "a single explanation of a coherent Gamergate position". Christopher Grant, editor-in-chief of Polygon, told the Columbia Journalism Review: "The closest thing we've been able to divine is that it's noise. It's chaos [...] all you can do is find patterns. And ultimately Gamergate will be defined—I think has been defined—by some of its basest elements."

As the threats expanded, international media focused on Gamergate's violent, misogynistic element and its inability to present a coherent message. Bob Stuart, in The Daily Telegraph, reported that "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 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." The campaign's focus broadened to take on other targets in the news media, as with Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against Gawker Media.

Jesse Singal, in New York, stated that he had spoken to several Gamergate supporters to try to understand their concerns, but found conflicting ideals and incoherent messages. Singal observed Gamergate supporters making a constant series of attacks on Quinn, Sarkeesian, and other people, while frequently stating that Gamergate "is not about" them. Chris Ip of the Columbia Journalism Review said that Gamergate supporters espousing critiques of ethics in journalism could not be separated from harassers. 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.

Jon Stone wrote in The Guardian that "[Gamergate] 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". Polygon's Grant said that as of October 2014, Gamergate had remained amorphous and leaderless so that the harassment can be conducted without any culpability.

Gamergaters attacked gaming websites that criticized Gamergate and gaming websites that expressed support for diversity in gaming culture, including Kotaku, Gamasutra, Ars Technica, Polygon, and Gawker.

Harassment and Twitter

While organized through anonymous message boards such as 4chan and Reddit, Gamergate harassment was most prominent on Twitter. Michael Salter, a University of Western Sydney criminologist, writes that Twitter's design and architecture was "highly conducive" to such abuse campaigns, allowing Gamergaters to overwhelm users' ability to individually block the large numbers of fake or "sockpuppet" accounts used to send abusive and harassing messages.

Twitter was criticized for its inability to respond quickly and prevent harassment over the service. Within the United States, Twitter and other social media sites are not liable for content posted by third-parties of their service under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996), and so have no legal obligation to police malicious content such as harassment and threats. Brianna Wu, shortly after becoming a target of harassment, stated that Twitter facilitated harassment by the ease with which anyone could make a new account even after having an earlier account blocked, and challenged the service to improve its responsiveness to complaints. Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic said Gamergate is an "identity crisis" for Twitter, and by not dealing with harassing users, the platform is failing to protect victims.

Early on during Gamergate, software developer Randi Harper started the "Good Game Auto Blocker" or "ggautoblocker", an expanding list of known Twitter accounts that were tied to the Gamergate hashtag which could be automatically blocked, therefore reducing the degree of harassment received. In November 2014, Twitter announced a collaboration with the non-profit group "Women, Action & the Media" (WAM), in which users of Twitter can report harassment to a tool monitored by WAM members, who would forward affirmed issues to Twitter within 24 hours. The move, while arising in the wake of the Gamergate harassment, was due to general issues of the harassment of women on the Internet. In May 2015, WAM reported that of 512 reported harassment instances by the tool during the month of November 2014, 12% of those were tied to the Gamergate controversy based on the ggautoblocker list, with most harassment occurring from single-instance accounts targeting a single person.

Efforts to affect public perceptions

File:Vivian James.jpg

4chan users designed the character Vivian James to be used in the winning entry of TFYC's game design competition; her striped sweatshirt is a reference to a visual rape joke that became a viral 4chan meme.

Early in the controversy, posters on 4chan focused on donating to a group called The Fine Young Capitalists (TFYC), which had been embroiled in a dispute with Quinn over a women-only game development contest she had organized. They were an organization that sponsored a video game design contest for women in 2014. They were created by a partnership between Colombian media developer Autobótika and Canadian organization Empowered Up. It was founded with the goal of helping women and other underrepresented groups get involved in video game design. Its founder is Matthew Rappard, who is the only member who is publicly identified.

Advocating donations to help TFYC create the game, posters on 4chan's politics board argued that such donations would make them "look really good" and would make them "PR-untouchable". For their donations, TFYC allowed 4chan to create a character to be included in the game. The result was "Vivian James", a character designed to appear like an ordinary female gamer; her name is meant to sound like "video games". The colors of her striped purple and green hooded sweatshirt represent a viral 4chan meme known as "daily dose", which depicted a character from the anime Dragon Ball Z sexually assaulting another character. Allegra Ringo of Vice called her "a character masquerading as a feminist icon for the express purpose of spiting feminists".

To respond to widespread criticism of Gamergate as misogynistic, posters on 4chan created a second Twitter hashtag, #NotYourShield, intended to show that Gamergate was not about opposition to feminism or wanting to push women out of gaming. Many of the accounts used to tweet the tag were sockpuppets that had copied their avatars from elsewhere on the Internet; the methods used to create it have been compared to #EndFathersDay, a hoax manufactured on 4chan using similar methods. Quinn said that in light of Gamergate's exclusive targeting of women or those who stood up for women, "#notyourshield was, ironically, solely designed to be a shield for this campaign once people started calling it misogynistic". Arthur Chu wrote that the hashtag was an attempt to discourage allies from supporting the people being attacked by Gamergate.

Fine Young Capitalists post-Gamergate

The winner of the contest was Afterlife Empire, designed and written by Danielle Maiorino; Autobótika developed the game, which was released on Steam on August 21, 2015. Other projects by The Fine Young Capitalists included videos about female video game designers, which were sponsored by 4chan users during the development of Afterlife Empire. In 2015, The Fine Young Capitalists worked with pornographic actress Mercedes Carrera to create a scholarship for students studying in STEM fields. Fundraising included a live webcam show featuring Carrera; $11,280 was raised.

Targeting advertisers

Gamergate supporters were critical of the wave of articles calling for diversity that followed the initial outbreak of the controversy, interpreting them as an attack on games and gamer culture. Gamergaters responded with a coordinated email campaign that demanded advertisers drop several involved publications; in a five-step 'war plan' against organizations that offended them, a Gamergate posting described how they would choose from a list of target organizations, pick a grievance from a list others had compiled, and send a form letter containing it to an advertiser. Intel reacted to this by withdrawing an ad campaign from Gamasutra in October 2014. After a number of game developers criticized Intel for this, arguing that it could have a chilling effect on free speech and that it amounted to supporting harassment, Intel apologized, ultimately resuming advertising on Gamasutra in mid-November.

Sad Puppies

Gamergate became associated with the "Sad Puppies" and "Rabid Puppies" during 2015 Hugo Awards for science fiction writing. These groups organized voting blocs to promote overlapping slates that dominated the 2015 Hugo Award nominations, though they failed to win the awards. The campaign was described as a backlash against the increasing racial, ethnic, and gender diversity in science fiction. Members of the blocs said that they sought to counteract what they asserted was a focus on giving awards based on the race, ethnicity, or gender of the author or characters rather than quality, and bemoaning the increasing prominence of what they described as 'message' fiction with fewer traditional "zap gun" science-fictional trappings. By 2018, the Sad Puppies had diminished visibility, and Quinn's 2017 memoir Crash Override was nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Related Work (for non-fiction works related to science fiction or fantasy).

Purpose and goals

The most active Gamergate supporters or "Gamergaters" said that Gamergate was a movement for ethics in games journalism, for protecting the "gamer" identity, and for opposing "political correctness" in video games and that any harassment of women was done by others not affiliated with Gamergate. They argued that the close relationships between journalists and developers demonstrated a conspiracy among reviewers to focus on progressive social issues. Some supporters pointed to what they considered disproportionate praise for games such as Depression Quest and Gone Home, which feature unconventional gameplay and stories with social implications, while they viewed traditional AAA games as downplayed.

The issue of journalism ethics has been highlighted as a concern of the controversy. Vox Media writer Todd VanDerWerff highlighted an essay written by game developer David Hill which explained that he believed #GamerGate made good points, but targeted the wrong people. Hill wrote that "a lot of [game] journalists hate the nepotism, and most importantly, they hate the relationship the industry has with journalism", stating that the industry was "coopted" by the AAA publishers as marketing for their titles, and thus acting as gatekeepers for gaming criticism. "We want to approach these works of art as works of art, and not just as the next success or flop. But that can't happen on any large scale, because of that corruption, because of the commercialism of it all," Hill said. But, he wrote, the movement's focus on the sex life of an indie developer rather than advertising by AAA publishers sent it veering in a "toxic" direction. According to Hill, "the biggest targets of Gamergate have been people who are frankly powerless in the games industry. People like Zoe Quinn and Phil Fish, they are not gatekeepers. They are not able to enact any real, significant influence on the industry."

Gamers have also become distrustful of gaming journalism due to their ties with game publishers and actions taken, with two prior incidents weighing heavily. In 2007, Jeff Gerstmann was fired from his position at GameSpot after he gave a poor review for Eidos Interactive's Kane & Lynch: Dead Men; Eidos were heavily advertising the game in question on the site and threatened to pull sponsorship. In 2012, Geoff Keighley's game reviews filmed in front of promotional posters for Halo 4 and accompanied by Doritos and Mountain Dew was dubbed "Doritosgate", and led to Eurogamer's Robert Florence to remark on the issues regarding such promotions in the industry. Kotaku's Totilo wrote in 2012 that the game journalism industry had become indistinguishable from public relations, with writers and reporters inundated with promotional material to receive positive coverage. Some of those supporting the #GamerGate principles argue that as journalism has shifted to covering independent video games, "indie game developers and the online gaming press have gotten too cozy", according to Vox's VanDerWerff. Quinn agreed that a discussion on journalism ethics was needed and suggested that all those instead use the "#GameEthics" hashtag to discuss the matter without the baggage of misogyny and harassment that have attached to #GamerGate.

Supporters of #GamerGate have also expressed concern over the use of video games to present cultural criticism and moving them away from an entertainment form. In recent years, video games have come to be accepted as works of art by mainstream media, and numerous games are designed by their creators to create an emotional response in the player. These types of games have become more common through independent video game development that allows developers to release titles without publisher interference, who would otherwise not likely publish these titles. However, GamerGate supporters believe that titles such as Depression Quest or Gone Home are not really games, according to What Culture!'s Jordan Ephraim. Ephraim expresses concern that these titles, in taking up popular culture points such as depression in Depression Quest or LGBT issues with Gone Home, are critically praised on how they present these cultural points and less on the nature of the game mechanics. Some supporters believe that these games are designed to push political agendas; the Los Angeles Times quotes two GamerGate supporters stating "Can we please just keep the agendas out of video games? Entertainment is meant to be the furthest possible thing from politics", and "It'd be nice if the gaming industry/gaming journalism would just...focus on games over politics." Attributing the controversy to a gulf between some traditional video game fans and the increasingly-diverse nature of the industry, Leigh Alexander said that the maturing and ever-more-mainstream nature of video games opens the genre to longstanding cultural critiques and new perspectives. She also said that there was room for both "games as product" and "games as culture" in the industry.

Relating to this, several journalists have noted that the changing market of video games and their place in the culture is challenging the perceived identity of the average video game player, leading several to suggest #GamerGate may be the "death of the 'gamer'". Until about 2013, young adult males dominated the video game consumer market. In reports published by the Entertainment Software Association based on retail sales, the proportion of female games was about 45% in 2013, and 48% in 2014. These studies have also highlighted the trend of older, female gamers over younger males due to the popularity of the casual game and mobile game markets. These have lead changes to publishers to reconsider the target demographic for titles and accommodate the broader gender and age differences, and changing the meaning of what a "gamer" is. Vox's VanderWerff notes in light of #GamerGate, that "Many involved [...] don't want the term 'gamer' to go away, but they also want it to be as inclusive as possible. But the term already is exclusionary, because it's so heavily associated with the stereotype." Slate's Auerbach quotes a blog post made by academic Dan Golding which states that the situation of #GamerGate "is an attempt to retain hegemony" of the gamer identity.

Several writers who attempted to understand Gamergate's motivations concluded that, rather than relating to purported issues with gaming journalism ethics, Gamergate represented an effort to suppress opposing views. Salter writes that "mass media had a decisive role in evaluating the competing claims of Gamergate and its critics, and ultimately dismissing Gamergate as a misogynist abuse campaign". Screenshots of 4chan boards, collected and published by Quinn, suggested that complaints about ethics in games journalism were invented post hoc by Gamergaters to distract critics from their ongoing abuse of Quinn. Jay Hathaway wrote at Gawker that this strategy emerged once Gamergaters found that harassing Quinn about her sexual history was unlikely to win them support; according to Hathaway, IRC chat logs showed that "the [Gamergate] movement was focused on destroying Zoë Quinn first, reforming games reporting second".

Other commentators argued that Gamergate had the potential to raise significant 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. Visible support for Gamergate in the form of tweets, online videos, and blogs seldom involved discussion of ethics, but often featured misogynistic and/or racist commentary. The targets were mainly female game developers, academics, and writers.

Researchers at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University described Gamergate as a "vitriolic campaign against Quinn that quickly morph[ed] into a broader crusade against alleged corruption in games journalism" which involved considerable abuse and harassment of female developers and game critics. Concerns have also been raised when juxtaposing the behavior of Gamergate supporters with their claimed message. Dr. Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a professor and media ethics expert at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wrote that while Gamergate supporters claimed to be interested in journalism ethics, their "misogynistic and threatening" behavior belied this claim. "Much of the conversation—if I can even call it that—has been a toxic sludge of rumor, invective, and gender bias. The irony comes from people who claim to be challenging the ethics of game journalists through patently unethical behavior."

After analyzing a sample of tweets related to Gamergate, Newsweek concluded that it was primarily about harassment rather than ethics, stating that the sample "suggests that [...] contrary to its stated goal, Gamergate spends more time tweeting negatively at game developers than at game journalists". Casey Johnston wrote for Ars Technica that, based on logs from the 4chan users who initially pushed Gamergate into the spotlight, the goal behind the hashtag campaign was to "perpetuate misogynistic attacks by wrapping them in a debate about ethics". An academic analysis of a week's worth of public posts tagged with #Gamergate found that the issue publics involved were not "only or even primarily" concerned with ethics in gaming journalism.

In an interview with Anita Sarkeesian in The Guardian, Jessica Valenti said that "the movement's much-mocked mantra, 'It's about ethics in journalism'" was seen by others as "a natural extension of sexist harassment and the fear of female encroachment on a traditionally male space". Sarkeesian asked, "if this 'movement' was about journalism, why wasn't it journalists who had to deal with a barrage of rape and death threats?". Wu told The Boston Globe that the ethics claims were "a pretext" and described Gamergate as "an actual hate group [...] they're upset and threatened by women who are being very outspoken about feminism".

Gamergate has been criticized for focusing on women, especially female developers, while ignoring many large-scale journalistic ethics issues. Alex Goldman of NPR's On the Media criticized Gamergate for targeting female independent ("indie") developers rather than AAA games publishers, and said claims of unethical behavior by Quinn and Sarkeesian were unfounded. In Wired, Laura Hudson found it telling that Gamergate supporters concentrated on impoverished independent creators and critics, and nearly exclusively women, rather than the large game companies whose work they enjoyed. Vox writer Emily 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. Adi Robertson, of The Verge, commented on the long-standing ethical issues gaming journalism has dealt with, but that most Gamergate supporters did not seem interested in "addressing problems that don't directly relate to feminist criticism or the tiny indie games scene".

Feminist Media Studies described Gamergate as "a convenient way for a loose coalition of frustrated geeks, misogynists, alt-righters, and trolls to coalesce around a common idea—that popular culture was 'overly concerned' with a particular kind of identity politics—even if their tactics and actual motivations for participating were varied."

Kyle Wagner of Deadspin argued that "By design, Gamergate is nearly impossible to define. It refers, variously, to a set of incomprehensible Benghazi-type conspiracy theories about game developers and journalists; to a fairly broad group of gamers concerned with corruption in gaming journalism; to a somewhat narrower group of gamers who believe women should be punished for having sex; and, finally, to a small group of gamers conducting organized campaigns of stalking and harassment against women." and that "This ambiguity is useful, because it turns any discussion of this subject into a debate over semantics." Wagner also argued that Gamergate is "The Future Of The Culture Wars".

Social, cultural, and political impact

Observers have generally described Gamergate as part of a long-running culture war against efforts to diversify the traditionally male video gaming community, particularly targeting outspoken women. They cite Gamergate supporters' frequent harassment of female figures in the gaming industry and its overt hostility toward people involved in social criticism and analysis of video games. The Washington Post's digital culture writer Caitlin Dewey said that "Whatever Gamergate may have started as, it is now an Internet culture war" between predominantly female game developers and critics advocating for greater inclusion, and "a motley alliance of vitriolic naysayers" opposed to such changes. Vox said that Gamergate supporters were less interested in criticizing ethical issues than in opposition to social criticism and analysis of video games and in harassment of prominent women. Ars Technica quoted early members as saying that they had no interest in video games and were primarily interested in attacking Quinn.

Gamergate has been described as being driven by antifeminist ideologies. Some supporters have denied this, but acknowledge that there are misogynistic voices within Gamergate. Antonsen, Ask, and Karlstrom wrote in Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies "in the case of #gamergate, it is the explicit goal of many of the participants to exclude groups of people, particularly women, from the debate and from the game industry and limit women's rights as citizens." Jon Stone, in The Guardian, called it a "swelling of vicious right-wing sentiment" and compared it to the men's rights movement. Commentators such as Stone, Liana Kerzner, and Ryan Cooper have said that the controversy is being exploited by right-wing voices and by conservative pundits who had little interest in gaming. Chrisella Herzog states that in addition to violent sexism, Gamergate has virulent strains and violent sentiments of homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and neo-Nazism. Gamergate supporters also promoted the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory.

Quinn said the campaign had "roped well-meaning people who cared about ethics and transparency into a pre-existing hate mob", and urged industry publishers and developers to condemn the hashtag. They further asked those Gamergate supporters who had any earnest discussion about ethics to move away from the "Gamergate" tag.

TheGamer noted that Gamergate was "a polarizing debate which you were either for or against, with no in-between."

Gamer identity

A woman playing Go Play One in 2010

Gamergate is often considered to be a reaction to the changing cultural identity of the "gamer". As video games grew in mainstream popularity during the 1990s, a "gamer" identity emerged among predominantly young, male, heterosexual players, and the types of games designed to appeal to them. Over the years, the growing popularity of games expanded that audience to include many who did not fit the traditional gamer demographic, particularly women. Games with artistic and cultural themes grew in popularity, and independent video game development made these games more common, while mobile and casual games expanded the scope of the industry beyond the traditional gamer identity. The games most popular with typical "gamers", often featuring explicit violence along with exaggerated gender stereotypes, were joined by a more diverse set of games that included gay, lesbian, and transgender themes. "Indie" gaming blogs and websites were created to comment on these developments, in contrast to the more established gaming press, which was traditionally dependent on the games industry itself.

The media-studies scholar Adrienne Massanari writes that Gamergate is a direct response to such changes in video-game content as well as changes in the demographics of players. Surveys by the Entertainment Software Association in 2014 and 2015 showed that video-game players were between 44% and 48% female, with an average age of thirty-five. This broader audience began to question some assumptions and tropes that had been common in games. Shira Chess and Adrienne Shaw write that concern over these changes is integral to Gamergate, especially a fear that sexualized games aimed primarily at young men might eventually be replaced by less sexualized games marketed to broader audiences. Gamergaters often dismiss such games and their more diverse, casual group of players as being not "real" games or gamers. Alyssa Rosenberg of The Washington Post said that some of Gamergaters' concerns were rooted in a view of video games as "appliances" rather than art, that should be reviewed based on feature checklists rather than traditional artistic criteria. Chris Suellentrop of The New York Times criticized resistance to innovative uses of the gaming medium, and the belief that increased coverage and praise of artistic games like Gone Home would negatively affect blockbuster games such as Grand Theft Auto V.

Gamergate is particularly associated with opposition to the influence of so-called "social justice warriors" in the gaming industry and media, who are perceived as a threat to traditional gaming culture. As the video-game market grew more diverse, cultural critics became interested in issues of gender representation and identity in games. 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 female stereotypes in games. Her fund-raising campaign and videos were met with hostility and harassment by some gamers. Further incidents raised concerns about sexism in video gaming. Prior to August 2014, escalating harassment prompted the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) to provide support groups for harassed developers and to begin discussions with the FBI to help investigate online harassment of game developers. In an interview on Comedy Central's program The Colbert Report, Sarkeesian said she believes women are targeted because they are "challenging the status quo of gaming as a male-dominated space".

In late August 2014, shortly after the initial accusations against Grayson and harassment of Quinn, several gaming sites published opinion essays on the controversy that focused on the growing diversity of gaming and the mainstreaming of the medium, some of which included criticism of sexism within gamer culture. These so-called "gamers are dead" articles were seen as part of a conspiracy to undercut traditional gamer identity and were used by participants to rally support for Gamergate. One of these articles, published on Gamasutra and written by Leigh Alexander, was titled "Gamers' don't have to be your audience. 'Gamers' are over". Slate's David Auerbach and The Sentinel's David Elks criticized these articles for alienating their publications' audience by attacking the gamer identity. Writing for Paste, L. Rhodes said the antagonism in the Gamergate controversy was a result of the industry seeking to widen its customer demographic instead of focusing on core gamers, which Rhodes says "is precisely what videogames needed". Brendan Keogh of Overland stated that Gamergate "does not represent a marginalised, discriminated identity under attack so much as a hegemonic and normative mainstream being forced to redistribute some of its power".

Law enforcement

Katherine Clark, the U.S. Congresswoman from Massachusetts' 5th District, sought to expand the FBI's ability to take action against cyberharassment similar to that faced by Wu.

Though Newsweek reported that the FBI had a file regarding Gamergate, no arrests have been made nor charges filed, and parts of the FBI investigation into the threats had been closed in September 2015 due to a lack of leads. Former FBI supervisory special agent for cybercrimes, Tim Ryan, stated that cyberharassment cases are a low priority for authorities because it is difficult to track down the perpetrator and they have lower penalties compared to other crimes they are tasked to enforce. In June 2015, the US Supreme Court ruled in Elonis v. United States that harassing messages sent online are not necessarily true threats that would be prosecutable under criminal law and, according to Pacific Standard, this poses a further challenge in policing Gamergate-related harassment. However, the Court's decision also suggested that if threats made over social media were found to be true threats, they should be treated the same as threats made in other forms of communication.

Wu has expressed her frustration over how law enforcement agencies have responded to the threats that she and other women in the game industry have received. On public release of the FBI's case files on Gamergate, Wu said she was "livid", and that "Only a fraction of information we gave the FBI was looked into. They failed on all levels." The lack of legal enforcement contributes towards the harassers' ability to maintain these activities without any risk of punishment, according to Chrisella Herzog of The Diplomatic Courier; at worst, harassers would see their social media accounts suspended but are able to turn around to register new accounts to continue to engage.

U.S. Representative Katherine Clark, one of whose constituents was Brianna Wu, called for a stronger response from law enforcement to online abuse, partly as a result of advocacy by the women targeted by Gamergate. On March 10, 2015, Clark wrote a letter to the House Appropriations Committee asking it to call on the Justice Department to crack down on the harassment of women on the internet, saying the campaign of intimidation associated with Gamergate had highlighted the problem. She asked the U.S. Department of Justice to "prioritize" online threats against women, saying, "We do not think this a harmless hoax. We think this has real-life implications for women". Clark also hosted a Congressional briefing on March 15, along with the Congressional Victims' Rights Caucus to review issues of cyberstalking and online threats; during the briefing, Quinn spoke of her experiences with Gamergate, which an executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence described during the hearing as "an online hate group [...] which was started by an ex-boyfriend to ruin [Quinn's] life". On May 27, the United States House of Representatives formally supported Clark's request for increased measures to combat online abuse against women, explicitly pressing for more investigations and prosecutions by the Department of Justice. On June 2, Rep. Clark introduced the "Prioritizing Online Threat Enforcement Act of 2015" to Congress. The bill would have allocated more funding for the FBI to employ additional agents to enforce laws against cyberstalking, online criminal harassment, and threats. Two years later, in June 2017, Rep. Clark introduced the "Online Safety Modernization Act of 2017" with co-sponsors Reps. Susan Brooks (Indiana) and Pat Meehan (Pennsylvania), which combined several of Clark's previous bills. The bill focused on penalizing "cybercrimes against individuals", including doxing, swatting, and sextortion, as well as granting $20 million for law enforcement training to help tackle such crimes, and $4 million to establish the National Resource Center on Cybercrimes Against Individuals in order to study and collect statistics and information related to these crimes.

Gaming industry response

Some sites adopted policies in response to perceived conflicts of interest between gaming developers and journalists. Polygon now requires its writers to disclose contributions via Patreon, while Kotaku prohibits such contributions to game developers, except where required in order to access materials for review. Destructoid and The Escapist updated their ethics policies in reaction to the controversy. Destructoid's editor-in-chief, Dale North, wrote in part, "We also ask for disclosures upfront as part of our employment paperwork." The Escapist co-founder Alexander Macris wrote a five-page editorial on the subject, saying, "Any personal or professional interests that conflict with that obligation, whether in appearance or in reality, risk compromising our credibility. Staff needs to be vigilant in disclosing to both our supervisors and the public any circumstances where loyalties may be divided... and when necessary, recuse themselves from related coverage." He noted that this policy would extend to all Defy Media websites, not just The Escapist.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation characterized Gamergate as a "magnet for harassment", and notes the possible financial risk for companies dealing with it on social media platforms. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) issued a statement condemning the harassment, stating that "[t]here is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats". ESA president Mike Gallagher, speaking at the June 2015 Electronic Entertainment Expo, clarified that the ESA did not become more involved as they felt it was an argument that was outside their industry and their involvement would have been disruptive, but praised the efforts to counter harassment that will benefit the industry in the future. 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 were widely interpreted as referring to Gamergate. CEOs of both the American and European branches of Sony Computer Entertainment, Shawn Layden and Jim Ryan respectively, said the harassment and bullying were absolutely horrific and that such inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated at Sony. The Swedish Games Industry issued a statement denouncing the harassment and sexism from Gamergate supporters. In 2016, Nintendo of America denounced Gamergate, calling it "an online hate campaign" and that "Nintendo firmly rejects the harassment of individuals in any way".

Responses to Gamergate have encouraged the video game industry to review its treatment of women and minorities, and to make changes to support them. Intel, following its accidental involvement in Gamergate, pledged more than $300 million to help support a "Diversity in Technology" program with partners including Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency organization and the IGDA, aimed at increasing the number of women and minorities in the industry. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich stated in announcing the program that "it's not good enough to say we value diversity, and then have our industry not fully represent". Electronic Arts (EA) COO Peter Moore said the controversy made EA pay more attention to diversity and inclusion, telling Fortune "[i]f there's been any benefit to Gamergate, [...] I think it just makes us think twice at times". Speaking about Gamergate harassment to the Seattle Times, IGDA executive director Kate Edwards said, "Gaming culture has been pretty misogynistic for a long time now. There's ample evidence of that over and over again... What we're finally seeing is that it became so egregious that now companies are starting to wake up and say, "We need to stop this. This has got to change."

Representation in media

"Intimidation Game", an episode of the crime television series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, portrays a fictionalized version of Gamergate, including a character whom some observers said resembled Sarkeesian and whose story seemed based on those of women subject to the harassment campaign. The 2015 documentary film GTFO analyzed issues of sexism and harassment in video gaming. The film's director, Shannon Sun-Higginson, stated Gamergate was "a terrible, terrible thing, but it's actually symptomatic of a wider, cultural, systemic problem". The Gamergate situation was covered as part of a larger topic of online harassment of women in the June 21, 2015, episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The impact of the Gamergate controversy on Brianna Wu was the subject of the March 16, 2016, episode of The Internet Ruined My Life.

In October 2021, Mind Riot Entertainment announced that a fictional series based on Gamergate co-created and co-written by Wu and J. Brad Wilke was in production. The series will focus on the origins of the controversy through the lens of multiple, fictional people in the game industry such as executives, journalists, and indie developers and their subsequent reactions. On March 8, 2022, it was announced that Norman Lear and Brent Miller will be executive producers.

See also

• Comicsgate