Inside Gamergate

by James Desborough

  Geek media, subcultural media, has a justified siege mentality. Video games, in particular, have constantly been under assault over one thing or another since the 1970s and 80s[55]. These attacks have been consistent, whether it's about addiction, violence, Satanism or – in the latest incarnation of the panic – sexism, racism, diversity and representation. Gamers have been used to it, have fought back against it each time and it is that, coupled with the 'holier than thou' turning out to have feet of clay, that made Gamergate erupt so forcefully and viciously. You have to understand the context to understand the outrage and vehemence.

  Properly understood, Gamergate was a community coming together to defend their hobby and art form. It was a protest against creeping corruption and nepotism in a business that only gets bigger, grander and more ambitious year by year. Some will dismiss games, still, as childish - but as a business, it now makes twice as much as the movie industry's box office receipts and has since 2013[56].

  Games have been attacked nearly since their inception.

  Games are big business.

  Games are art.

  People are passionate about their games.

  None of this should be surprising.

  What's Different About Gamergate

  While Gamergate fits into this continuum of moral panics and communities coming together against interlopers and attackers, there is something different about the situation around Gamergate. This also applies to the newer moral panics affecting tabletop games, nerd movies, comics and other 'geek media'.

  In previous panics, the judgements and problems came from outside. There were agenda-driven campaigners, people who knew nothing about the mediums involved. There were glory-seeking pseudo-scientists, people driven by personal tragedy, governments seeking more control, moral busybodies and religious groups looking to impose their beliefs and demonise the 'other'.

  This time the attacks have come from within.

  Where with the violence issues and Jack Thompson the industry, games media and fans came together to reject the attacks in an almost entirely united front, this time people are divided. The attacks are coming from the hobby's media outlets and websites. There are people embedded within companies trying to force these agendas of censorship and diversity box-ticking exercises. There are regionalisation 'experts' failing to do their jobs and instead injecting their politics into the material they're entrusted with. The games media itself is either metaphorically in bed with and corrupted by large games companies, or literally in bed and corrupted by Indie games companies.

  Where previous battles were against invading outsiders, Gamergate – and other more recent wrangles in other nerd media – are civil wars, and all the more bitter for it.

  This is the part that has been so personally devastating to me with regard to Gamergate, perhaps even more so than all the people credulously, and without the slightest thought, buying into the harassment and misogyny narratives.

  I'm a creator, an author, a game designer. I work with artists, writers, editors, designers, people at all levels of the creative process. In the past, I've seen them come together to tell censors and authoritarians to piss off. I've seen them fight to defend their art from interference and the art of others from interference – even things they hated or disagreed with.

  This time though?

  This time there's buy-in from people in the creative community, and they have used their influence and power to marginalise people they don't like or agree with. Accusations have been hurled, boycotts supported, whole groups of people have been banned for fora or put on block or blacklists. For what? Entirely subjective interpretations of what constitutes some transgression of a mercurial set of standards, which are rooted in postmodern relativity anyway, and as insubstantial as shifting sand.

  I had, perhaps foolishly, thought that – based on past behaviour – creative communities shared my devotion to free expression. Discovering that this had changed was genuinely, shatteringly depressing.

  Chapter Four: Franz Ferdinand

  Ask someone who was part of Gamergate what it was about and you'll almost certainly hear about ethics in games journalism and censorship issues. If you ask someone against it, or uninvolved, and you'll likely hear something about harassment, trolling, cyberbullying and possibly some waffle about the alt-right or Trump. If you hear anything about ethics or censorship from those people, it will be in scornful and dismissive tones as though this was never what it was about. Slightly more sophisticated critics will likely describe an – entirely spurious but compelling – scenario about 'white cishetmale rejection of women and minorities invading their hobby'.

  So how is it that we have this enormous gulf between how Gamergate sees itself, how it is perceived by its enemies and how it has been portrayed in the mainstream and games media?

  If it is this repressive, regressive, reactionary, right-wing movement – how is it that its members are so diverse and primarily left-liberal in political standing? If it is this alt-right, Trumpist, troll-nest, how is it that I – a left-anarchist, militant egalitarian and anti-censorship activist would be involved with it?

  To understand that gap in perception you don't only have to know the background of moral panics and the Zeitgeist in which Gamergate took place, you have to understand how Gamergate started. For that reason, it's important to talk about Zoe Quinn, Depression Quest, Eron Gjoni and the Zoe Post. Even though none of these things mean that much in and of themselves when it comes to Gamergate.

  Underlining that last point is important; Gamergate was not about Zoe Quinn, nor limited to Zoe Quinn. Gamergate's detractors often try to make it all about the 'harassment' of women, and about Zoe Quinn in particular, ignoring the broader historical and contemporaneous issues. Quinn's shenanigans and the fuss around them was only the starting point.

  Zoe Quinn & Depression Quest

  Zoe Quinn is a kinda-sorta Indie game developer. The main reason for which she is known, besides being a 'victim' of Gamergate, is her game Depression Quest.

  Depression Quest is nothing special. It's a text game that is supposed to, in some ways, replicate the experiences involved in being depressed. This is meant to be to help foster understanding and to educate people on those issues – which is a step up from 'I don't have to educate you, shitlord'.

  Apparently, she had some previous history, some things that had gone on before that which earned some ire, but it is through Depression Quest that Quinn became visible, known and began to attract serious dislike from gamers.

  You see, Depression Quest isn't a game. It's less of a game than something like Oregon Trail, even though both are educational. It's also merely a text game, with very limited inputs (I've tried my hand at this and made a 'game' in an afternoon[57]). Depression Quest began to get attention and plaudits well before Gamergate became a thing. This was done, arguably, at the expense of projects that were more genuinely games – as gamers understand it – and were more complex, more accomplished and more deserving.

  My Previous Support

  I used to be a supporter and booster of Zoe Quinn. As late as August in 2014 – when things were starting to go south around her – I was suspicious of the accusations and somewhat supportive[58]. As a depressive, I had welcomed the significant profile of Depression Quest in creating conversations about depression. While flawed, the game was useful in trying to get friends and family to understand what depression was like for me. It helped them empathise with what I was going through and why I got so withdrawn. I was grateful and unaware of the controversy that was already around her.

  When Quinn was mugged at the beginning of 2014, I donated to help her out[59]. When she got trolled and attacked pre-Gamergate, I offered some words of support. I let her know Depression Quest had helped me in getting people to understand. It wasn't until her scandals began to hit that I questioned my support and whether I had been acting on behalf of a good person or not.

  It turned out, she wasn't much of a good person. I'd been fool
ed.

  Zoe's Bad Actions

  I wish I could just skip over Quinn and all her dealings, as she is only the spark that set off a chain of events that culminated in Gamergate. It is important, however, in my estimation to establish that she is not some passive victim and that her scandals and the reactions to them did not come out of nowhere.

  I was not even familiar with much of this until things began to snowball, and uncovering all these things established a more compelling picture of a pattern of behaviour. Quinn's dishonesty and manipulation appears to have a rather long history.

  Wizardchan

  While trying to get Depression Quest onto Steam (a download service) Quinn came in for a lot of stick, trolling and downvoting (you need to have some level of approval to be allowed onto the platform). At the height of this process, she claimed to be getting harassment on her phone, and elsewhere, of a more serious nature. She chose to blame an image board called 'Wizardchan', inhabited – almost entirely – by socially anxious, virginal men. There were precisely two posts on that board mentioning her, which while rather nasty, made no call for brigading and were rather just discussing the game[60].

  There was no evidence of any brigading, no evidence it started on Wizardchan, but this site ended up getting a lot of attention and harassment in turn. Given the mentally damaged and desperate nature of many of the posters there, this was probably far more impactful than the trolling Quinn had received. On the back of that trolling and high profile support from key figures in the burgeoning 'social justice' gaming community, Depression Quest was greenlit and went up onto Steam. Despite being, essentially, a little web-page based text-clicking game.

  Now, it's important to note that I'm not saying that there was a conspiracy here. All I think there is, is irresponsibility, hypocrisy, and the establishment and continuation of a pattern of behaviour. We can see, here, the value and power of being a victim. We can also see the willingness of people to believe a harassment narrative – so long as it comes from a woman - without evidence. We can also see how the negative image of a group, such as Wizardchan, renders them villains, even when they're the ones being attacked and the ones who are vulnerable.

  Helldump

  Quinn was an active participant in a board on the site 'SomethingAwful' called 'Helldump'[61]. This was a board dedicated to trolling, doxxing and online harassment. Supposedly they (the board, rather than Quinn individually) had a 'confirmed kill'. That is to say; it's claimed and supposed that they had succeeded in harassing someone to the point of suicide.

  There have been numerous attempts to minimise and excuse this, to misrepresent what Helldump was, but Gamergate members were attacked and excoriated for far less, so there's at the very least a problem of consistency. She does appear to have been active under the name 'Eris'. She confessed to being a part of it and, even if it doesn't amount to much, she was at least implicitly guilty of doing all the things she would later condemn.

  The Fine Young Capitalists

  The Fine Young Capitalists were (are) a somewhat radical feminist group determined to support women in gaming and to get more women into gaming as a whole. To that end, they organised various events including a game jam, intended to highlight and assist female developers in gaining skills and experience[62]. They ended up entangled with Quinn after someone mistakenly took them for being transphobic, quite how you set a line and police someone's genuine female or trans-female status I do not know. Quinn's circle – and Quinn herself – took to trying to sabotage their project by that misunderstanding.

  According to TFYC themselves, they had immense trouble getting publicity and backing due to sabotage by Quinn and her friends. Outlets, sites and individuals had been warned away; horrible things had been said about them, their site was taken down by an attack. They tried to counter things as best they could, but it seemed they were tainted by the spurious 'transphobic' attack. The disapproval of someone like Quinn, whose profile was still increasing, gave them little room to manoeuvre or be heard.

  In the end, a rather unlikely group, /v/ from 4Chan, came to their rescue, donating the money they needed to finish their project (and birthing Vivian James in the process). Gamergate would continue to support and boost TFYC well into Gamergate, through to the final execution of their project. A band of supposed misogynists and harassers helped a feminist group to help women in games because they were attacked by... women in games.

  This doesn't exactly fit the narrative of sexist harassers.

  Polaris Game Jam

  The Polaris Game Jam was an effort between Polaris and Maker Studios to create a kind of 'reality show' around games programming and creation[63]. There's some reasons it fell apart, but part of the blame – and the cost – lies with Zoe Quinn who, self-admittedly, set out to cause it problems. Youtubers and other games figures were also pulled into the problems and dragged down with the ensuing failure.

  Whether Polaris would have succeeded otherwise, we don't know. It had plenty of other problems, but deliberate sabotage certainly cannot have helped it. Of particular note concerning Polaris and TFYC, Quinn ended up taking money for and promoting her own game Game Jam, the 'Rebel Game Jam', which never materialised.

  None of these elements makes any real odds as to whether she deserved to be trolled, harassed or abused. That's not the suggestion here. Rather this is to point out that this is no innocent victim. Quinn dished out much of what she ended up taking, was hypocritical about it and that there were lots of people who already had reasons to dislike Quinn. Victim blaming or not; I think it's less surprising that horrible people saying and doing horrible things get flak, even if perfectly lovely people do too.

  The Zoe Post

  In August of 2014 Eron Gjoni – at that point, Zoe Quinn's ex-boyfriend, posted 'The Zoe Post[64]' up as a blog. For somewhat inexplicable reasons this caught the public imagination within the gaming community. This was possibly due to pre-existing hostility towards Quinn over her non-game, and her actions within the community. She had also been cashing in on the growing 'social justice' attacks on gaming. Whatever the reason, Gjoni's rather intimate break-up blog got spread all over the Internet, along with all of its salacious details. Once it hit 4chan, it was all over. There was no stopping it.

  When you read the post itself, it is obviously and self-evidently the long-winded catharsis of a heartbroken man, a man betrayed by his lover and – frankly - abused by her. By her definitions contained within screenshots and logs in the blogs, she raped him. Her behaviour seems consistently psychologically abusive (though of course, this is a biased sample from an antagonistic blog). Her ambition and other factors appear to have led her, in particular, to sleep with a total of five different men behind Eron's back.

  Some have tried to portray his actions in outing her as slut shaming or somehow indefensible. Many of us, however, do consider Eron to be a victim of abuse and an example of how there is a double standard around such issues for men. If a woman had written this kind of post about a man cheating on and abusing her, the reception would have been much different.

  What Eron did is no different to what many women have done without much in the way of blow-back. Warning people away from abusive exes or potentially dangerous men is seen as a service to the community, not so much vice versa. 'Rapist' lists, with no backing, just open accusation, have even been circulated at universities, with little push-back or acrimony[65].

  Warn fellow women about men, without any evidence, accusing them of being sex criminals, and you're a folk hero.

  Inform fellow men about an abusive woman, with copious evidence and references, and you're a folk villain.

  “There ain't no justice”, as the saying goes.

  Further, Gjoni ended up being gagged by a court order, imposed by Quinn, making him unable to talk about the Zoe Post or its surrounding issues. This was considered a violation of Gjoni's first amendment rights by several legal observers and would have made a good test case if Quinn hadn't dropped her case and Gjo
ni had been able to continue. Needless to say, this activated the interest of a lot of free speech advocates and, coupled with the abuse involved in the case, also engaged a lot of Men's Human Rights Activists – as well as gamers.

  All of the legal wranglings are – frankly – beyond me, and it never made it to court anyway as the case it was tied in with was dropped/dismissed. There was no stomach within the legal system to take such a case forward purely for setting a precedent about first amendment rights. If you want to learn more, there is a Reddit thread that goes into detail and references the whole process[66].

  Whatever you think of the Zoe Post and whether it was misogynistic or whatever else, the information within it did reveal corruption and a lack of journalistic ethics. That's no contestable.

  Five Guys & Quinnspiracy

  Initially, of course, what garnered people's attention was the sex scandal. Gjoni did not come off any better from that than Quinn did. Being cheated on with five guys led to some early adopters overusing the term 'cuck' that is now, unfortunately, so familiar to us all. At least, at the time, they were using it in something closer to its original context.

  People put a lot of effort into figuring out who the 'five guys' were. The correlation with the burger restaurant of the same name led to a lot of memes at the expense of Quinn and her indoor-football team of lovers. 'Five Guys' was primarily just this, making fun of the tawdry sexual escapades. It was gossip. It was uncharitable, mean, but not anything to be too concerned over.