Comment by user68858788 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by user68858788 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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 .

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.

Hmm. Seems you're correct regarding the review. I must have mistaken the Giant bomb review I read for it. The journalistic impropriety did not include a review, just positive press.

Whomever stirred the pot, honestly, doesn't matter in this context. In the end, both sides used the mobs to their own ends. Both sides were contemptible in the end. It wasn't the mysogynists who attacked Total Biscuit (not to mention his wife and children) over his commentary about the journalistic impropriety angle, who sent him death threats.

Your response here bothered me, and it took me a while to figure out why. Ultimately, I think it's the false equivalency ("both 'sides' did terrible things, so they're both equally at fault") and the lack of regret for your mistake.

If you don't see the problem here, I don't think I can convince you otherwise, but I couldn't let this stand unchallenged. It is not okay to blow off a deliberate, well-planned, devastating attack against women and minorities. You spread misinformation that benefited the attackers. That was an understandable mistake. But then you doubled down on that mistake. The original mistake is understandable. The doubling down is not.

People suffered real harm as a result of this. We all have a responsibility as caring humans to do our part to prevent it from happening again. I'm not asking you to go out and volunteer, or send money, or anything hard. Just don't spread misinformation, and don't engage in false equivalencies that benefit aggressors.

Your summary basically reflects my understanding of the whole mess. However, the reason for my initial question here is that I was surprised to learn that it also affected people in the industry in general - and not only women/poc - so much, to the point where it sounds like making games is no more fun now (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16130003).

I think you've got cause and effect reversed—GamerGate worked because gamers were already prone to this sort of behavior. See "This is Phil Fish," [1] a video (by the same person who did the GamerGate video) about Phil Fish, the creator of the acclaimed indie game "Fez." He was driven off the Internet (or at least out of public participation) by similar toxic behavior.

Phil Fish is a white male.

I don't know how long this has been going on, and it does seem to be getting steadily worse, but I don't think GamerGate was a turning point. Just a particularly visible example of how bad things have gotten.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmTUW-owa2w

Is it fair to call them "young angry white males", when a fair number of the women and/or journalists are young and white too?

In any case, the case of Anita Sarkesian seems a bit different. And I dont see a great deal many female developers involved; Zoe Quinn appears to be involved more than simply being a female developer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com