Natalie Zina Walshots writes: Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic best known for her YouTube series “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” cancelled an appearance at Utah State University after she received an anonymous threat of a shooting massacre were the talk to go ahead (as a concealed carry state, security at the event could not guarantee no one with a gun would be allowed in the building while Sarkeesian was speaking.
Sadly, Sarkeesian has long been the target of sexist attacks—ever since she first launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2012 to support the series. “The threats against Ms. Sarkeesian are the most noxious example of a weeks-long campaign to discredit or intimidate outspoken critics of the male-dominated gaming industry and its culture,” Wingfield wrote.
Even former avowed Gamergaters have hung up their trilbies and abandoned their positions as everything became more extreme and untenable—or they suddenly found themselves on the opposing side of the harassment campaign. Those within the industry openly made statements against Gamergate, including: gaming companies such as Blizzard and the Entertainment Software Association (commonly know as the ESA and gaming’s top trade group); publications like Game Informer, Polygon, and Giant Bomb; and creative luminaries such as Tim Schafer and Damion Schubert.
And yet—and yet—it is still happening. On January 11, Zoe Quinn charted her struggles to get the legal system to do something about the avalanche of hate spewing her way. She talked about how demolished her life was and continued to be by the campaign. She wrote, in full: “The same wheels of abuse are still turning, five months later. I’ve been coming to terms that this is a part of my life now, trying to figure out what to do about it, and how to move forward with so many people trying to wrap themselves around my ankles. It’s been hard to accept that my old life is gone and that I can never get back to it. But I’ve found purpose in the trauma, in trying to stop it from happening again, to use my experience to show how these things are allowed to happen, and to further a dialog on how to actually stop it. If I can’t go home, maybe I can at least get out of this elevator shaft. Maybe I can help end August. Maybe you can, too.”
In the games publication Giant Bomb’s discussion forums, game developer and tech writer Brianna Wu wrote “I was talking to Zoe Quinn this week, who told me about a folder on her computer called, ‘The ones we lost.’ And it was young girls that wrote her saying they were too scared to become game developers.
For every visible woman who has stepped away from their platform, how many less vocal or less well-known participants have we lost? In the wake of Gamergate, for instance, Kathy Sierra, a tech writer who was once the target of hacker and horrible person weev, walked away from the online persona she’d built as Serious Pony to insulate herself from further violence. How many women stopped participating in online communities and massively multiplayer online and co-op games? How can we possibly know the real numbers of the ones we lost.
