I’ve read quite a few summaries, explanations, apologies, and long-form excuses related to the train wreck we’re by consensus calling #gamergate . I wasn’t personally familiar with Anita Sarkeesian’s work until now, but this summary of her work and her experience with the Internet’s reaction to it is genuinely excellent.
You might notice that I didn’t plus-mention her above; That’s because there are so many fake accounts using her name and image that I honestly couldn’t find the correct one (which I know exists, because Yonatan Zunger plus-mentioned her recently). I feel like that fact provides a useful meta-commentary on the issues she’s addressing.
Is there a good simple description of what gamergate is somewhere? I searched for it and didn’t find anything comprehensible..
LikeLike
Dustin Mitchell : simple? woman provides obvious and straightforward critique of sexism in videogames. sexist idiots send her death threats and rape threats and threaten her family. predictably. because the internet.
the wikipedia article is fine, too, but it’s longer.
LikeLike
Todd Underwood not quite. Anita was part of the beginning but #gamergate as a whole is a lot of things. As with all large crowds there are instigators. For me #gamergate is about letting game creators do as they please without outside influence ‘dictating’ what should be OK and to support transparency on all levels of the gaming community/industry.
LikeLike
Wait. Someone is stopping game developers from being sexist idiots?!?!? Who? Why are those people so ineffective at actually improving the quality of games? We need better people doing games developers?
LikeLike
What game developer has displayed actions that make you believe they are sexist… Or idiots. Or are you calling them that as just an insult?
LikeLike
Wow, sorry, didn’t mean to start this post’s decline into flames. Thanks for the answers.
LikeLike
There you have it. It’s about us changing, stopping every form of sexual exploitation. Unfortunately some “industries” heavily rely on it. So it becomes an issue of “if it’s fair game for one, why not for me”. So it circles back to changing the entire species’ habits. Personally I think it’s impossible to be fair and impartial in these issues without being a bit hypocritical at the same time.
LikeLike