One of the big developments this week in GamerGate is that the world – as opposed to the internet – has taken notice. The “movement,” such as it is, has come into the public eye. Pieces have appeared in Rolling Stone, Newsweek, The New York Times, twice in The New Yorker, and five times on CNN.com (to say nothing of on tv), at least at my last count (which might be off). This is in addition to pieces on Gamasutra, Kotaku, IGN, GameSpot, and Polygon, which are too numerous for me to even think about linking. Celebrities like Felicia Day, Chris Kluwe, and even the Hulk* have weighed in, and others – like Joss Wheedon – have tweeted their support for those being harassed. (*Not the ‘real’ Hulk.)
GamerGate, just in case you’ve lived somewhere off-grid, started as a hashtag from Adam Baldwin, ostensibly over corrupt gaming journalism ethics, and derailed so quickly that it never actually made it to any sort of legitimate discussion thereof. That’s not to say that there aren’t things to discuss concerning “ethics” and “games journalism,” just that the hashtag went off the rails so quickly that this particular discussion never went anywhere useful, actionable, or productive. Even the initial “scandal” which spawned the tag – that developer Zoe Quinn had exchanged sexual favors for a positive review from a journalist working at Kotaku – is blatantly factually erroneous (neither the journalist in question nor any journalist at Kotaku never reviewed her game, Depression Quest).
Since then, the internet – and Twitter especially – has exploded with pro- and anti-GGaters howling insults, sending threats, and generally behaving like infants, with a few staunch adults thrown in here and there. (For a sense of what the conversation on Twitter looks like, check out Andy Baio’s research project.) Many gaming, feminist, and pop culture outlets – like Feministing and Geek Feminism – have been cautious about engaging the discussion out of fear that they will become subject to the rage of GGaters – like Quinn, Day, and Anita Sarkeesian. Others – like Mangotron – were covering GGate and withdrew that coverage because of harassment.
This isn’t a post attacking GGate or defending feminism or bemoaning the state of women in the games industry (although I have done all of the above before). This is a post reminding all of us that when we write on the internet, whether on Twitter or Facebook or a blog or in the comments section, we are writing in a public space. Whether or not we are read or retweeted or shared, we are nevertheless in public.
Many members of the gaming community – whether GGaters or not – have long been accustomed to the sense that they are screaming into the void. Recent news attention shows us now that the void has both eyes and ears – it has been watching and listening all along. (I’m also not going to digress into a post about how everything we do, say, and post online is being recorded by Google, the NSA, and various nefarious spybots, either, but it is.)
What remains to be seen is whether the creatures of the void are going to prove to be monsters or angels or something in between; whether the airing of GGate’s extremely dirty and smelly laundry will galvanize an army of detergent-wielding knights or coalesce into a stained-sock-golem that will wreak havoc on the gaming community.
I hope that we’ll find out that there are a lot more people who recognize that with the maturation of the games industry comes the responsibility to act like adults and do the damn wash.