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AllYorBaseRBelong2Us

Posts: 10472

Posted on: 2020-04-21 03:47:51.000

I don't understand what side is what.

Every time over the past five years I have tried to read an article on it it just becomes this swirl in my brain:a ngry people, death threats, slut shaming, journalist ethics, gamers are oppressed/misogynists/irrelevant...

very few things confuse me as much as this.

Jeremy Reimer

Posts: 9357

Posted on: 2020-04-24 16:51:18.000

It's not that confusing, but it is saddening.

It started with a game developer, Zoe Quinn, releasing a text adventure game called Depression Quest. It was a small indy game, experimental and innovative, showing you options for dialog choices and actions that were greyed out because your character was too depressed to say or act on them. She released the game for free and it got good reviews.

Then Zoe's ex-boyfriend decided to spread rumors that the only reason the game got good reviews was because Zoe was sleeping with an online game reviewer. Never mind that this wasn't actually true. The ex-boyfriend was mad and he was going to get his revenge!

A bunch of people in the Internet then picked up on this "story" and decided that this was the biggest travesty ever in video game journalism.

This same group dubbed the incident "Gamergate" and themselves "Gamergaters". Then they went around harassing women all over the Internet who had anything to do with video games. For YEARS.

Women around the world sighed and tried to distance themselves from the issue. It's not like harassing women online was a new thing. But for women involved in game development, they had to put up with death threats and constant online harassment, taken to a whole new level of awfulness.

It was sad and pointless and driven entirely by sad and pointless men.