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On August 2014, before Gjoni’s tell-all blog entry appeared, Quinn’s game Depression Quest went live on Steam. It’s hard to say how much of this was due to Quinn’s relationship with Grayson. Technically, Depression Quest is quite crude. It consists of a series of HTML-generated webpages joined by hyperlinks. You are given different scenarios and asked to choose a course of action, like the “Choose Your Own Adventures” books.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of indie games on Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam that exhibit greater technical ability than Quinn’s HTML game, yet receive no fanfare from the gaming press. For some reason, Quinn’s technically unimpressive HTML game attracted attention from gaming media. But again, it’s impossible to say (unless one of the five guys she cheated on Gjoni with comes forward) how much, if at all, Quinn’s affairs helped to get her game green lit on steam.
In one of the first acknowledgements of Gamergate by a mainstream game journalist Kotaku editor Stephen Totilo claimed that he had spoken to Grayson about his relationship with Quinn and deemed it of no consequence. However, the previous day Totilo had declared on twitter that journalists should “recuse themselves” from writing about subjects whom they are close to. Obviously this didn’t happen; Grayson remained close to Quinn and Totilo let him get away with it. Quinn herself admitted to Gjoni that she and Grayson were “close” before their relationship became physically intimate and that he “got kinda cuddly” with Grayson before she had broken up with Gjoni. Whether she was having sex with Grayson or not, she had by her own admission a close relationship with him. It’s not too much of a stretch to suppose that Grayson wrote about Quinn because of their relationship and not because her game is an exciting technical marvel.
Guinn’s connection to these men, and the reaction it provoked from the gaming community was largely ignored by the gaming press. On August 28, the gaming and mainstream press officially broke their silence by simultaneously publishing 10 articles denouncing gamers. All of the articles claimed that gamers, the gaming culture, or the gaming identity were “dead.”
One of the articles, a Gamasuta piece written by Leigh Alexander titled “Gamers” Don’t Have to be Your Audience, “Gamers’ Are Over,” describes Gamergate as a group of “angry young men” reacting to a changing industry that is neglecting them. Alexander writes that young men whom gaming companies marketed their products toward in the past have matured and are either not playing games or have migrated to “more fertile spaces.” Today, (so her thinking goes) young men are but one of many consumer groups game developers tailor their product to. Hence, young men have become “angry”; hence Gamergate.
Arguing on much the same lines as Alexander, Dan Golding wrote in a blog entry called “The End of Gamers” that the gaming identity was “stagnant” until recently, when games like Candy Crush could be enjoyed men and women alike. Golding adopts the same conclusion as Alexander: That gamers (“straight white men”) are angry that industry is no longer catering to them. As noted, there were 10 articles, plus Golding’s blog, published on August 28th. Most of them make the argument that male gamers are not being given preferential treatment by the gaming industry and have taken out their anger on Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu.
A few things can be said about this. First the claim that male gamers are retaliating against an industry that is not paying them sufficient attention is a hypothesis that is presented as fact. It is one explanation of Gamergate that is simply assumed as true by the authors of these pieces. The stated motive of Gamergate (to the extent that it speaks with a collective voice) is that gaming journalism is rife with corruption and ideological bias (e.g. collusion between developers and journalists, ideologically-based game criticism, collusion between gaming journalists); indeed, the state motives of Gamergate are dismissed by the writers in sneer quotes.
What is the evidence that young male gamers feel marginalized and have therefore sought to harass Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and others out of spite? It may be true that young, male gamers are incense that they no longer receive special attention from game developers; it may also be true that Sarkeesian et al have been harassed, yet these phenomena are unconnected. These authors assume a connection where none may exist. And even if some members of Gamergate are behind the online harassment of Quinn, Sarkeesian and others there is no reason to think they constitute the majority of Gamergate. However, if they do represent the majority of Gamergate, there are still people within Gamergate with concerns about the adherence of gaming journalists to a code of ethics that prohibits personal relationships with developers. One would think their concerns should at least be addressed, even if these writers think they are misguided.
Second, it’s not clear how Alexander and Golding came to the conclusion that Gamergate is comprised mostly of angry young men (possible because gamers, if you exclude causal gamers, are primarily young men). But even if most people who align themselves with Gamergate are young men, what difference does it make? Are youth, anger, and maleness qualities that somehow diminish anything a person has to say? Someone who watched David Pakman’s interview with Arthur Chu might think that he is an angry young man. Does that mean that everything Arthur Chu has to say is automatically null and void? Are the concerns of men somehow less legitimate than women? Perhaps the people behind Gamergate are angry, but they could also have a legitimate reason to be angry. (Alexander calls the concern over ethics in game journalism a “strawman’”).
Thirdly, everything these authors are saying about “traditional gamers” could be said of the gaming press itself. The gaming press is “dead” in the sense that it no longer has anything to offer its readers. Magazines like Electronic Gaming Monthly, GamePro and Nintendo Power once served a useful purpose of previewing and analyzing unreleased games. The first place you’d hear about a new game was the front cover of a gaming magazine. Now trailers are announced and you can go to the developer’s websites and view screenshots of forthcoming titles. The trailers for big-ticket games like call of Duty debut during televised sports events, not on sites like IGN and Polygon. Nintendo can release news about upcoming games through its Nintendo Direct service.
If gamers are patient enough to wait a few days after a game is released, they are guaranteed to be treated to a “walkthrough” of the game on Youtube, in which players complete the game from beginning to end with commentary. These walkthroughs, though they may spoil some surprises, are often more informative (perhaps too informative) than the reviews that appear on gaming sites.
Scott Cameron, Understanding #Gamergate: Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian and the Social Justice Warriors
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