Revision as of 02:12, 15 March 2019

Gamergate

As video games have grown, now becoming a major professional sport, it’s no surprise that something would come to light to address issues within the community. That something is gamergate. Gamergate at its core is movement focused on Identity in the gaming community, however, since the movement took off it has encompassed much more than just that. Gamergate has been an issue for women in gaming, identity, and ethics in game journalism.

Start of Gamergate

Gamergate started in August 2014 with Zoe Quinn. Quinn was a female game developer who had just released a new game called Depression Quest earlier that year. During this time Quinn’s former boyfriend wrote a blog post accusing Quinn of cheating on him with multiple game journalist. The post claimed that Quinn had traded sex for positive reviews of her game. This post, which was denied by both Quinn and the journalists, then sparked #Gamergate as people attack, threatened and doxed Quinn’s address and other personal information. Due to these treats Quinn had to leave her home. Quinn not the only person who was personally attacked from gamergate.

Gamergate also went after other women causing the same thing that happened to Quinn to happen to others forcing women to leave their homes out of fear for their safety. However, gamergate claims that they are targeting issues within the game journalism sector and is not just targeting women in the gaming community, even though issues with game journalism have never been addressed. The issue with game journalism started earlier than gamergate itself. The problem with game journalism is that there is a belief that people in the game community influenced the journalism on the topic. Game journalism also came under fire when articles where released with claims about gamers’ identity, now known as “Gamers are dead article”. This then ignited an identity crisis within gamergate.

Identity

This gamergate outcry almost has nothing to do with ethics in the general sense but has become a cultural war over who is “mainstream”, or belongs. Gamergate wants to get rid of the stigma around traditional, patriarchal, dude-dominated gaming culture. The supporters of gamergate are trying to break tradition, which can be difficult when identity is involved. Being a gamer not only is an identity to so many but, the identity that most people associate with gamers can be very stereotyped. People place a lot of feelings and beliefs in their identity and when that gets puts under question people can get very defensive. This then caused the tension that allowed gamergate to explode in the first place.

Ethics

Ethically there are a couple issues surrounding gamergate. The one that stands out the most to me as unethical is the idea of doxing women because of rumors and other issues within the community. Posting people personal information on the internet without their consent is extremely unethical. The other unethical thing that stands out to me has to deal with the identity side of things. Identity online can be very different than what people might portray in real life. In the situation for the gaming community Floridi’s take on identity “At the roots of such transformations, there seems to be a deep philosophical change in our views about our ‘special’ place and role in the universe” fits. This summarizes gamergate because in the concept of identity for this situation also deals with who belongs and who doesn’t. The reason gamergate became a thing is because people felt that they belonged and that this community was there “special” place and when the controversy broke out this belief shifted and in turn the identity of gamers themselves could transform. For the issue with game journalism there is essentially an entirely new set of ethical dilemmas. The collusion between gaming companies and journalism it unethical in the fact that the readers should be getting an unbiased report. Journalist taking information

In Conclusion

Everything about gamergate relates back to identity in one form or anything. When it comes to things that are still relevant today on the concept of identity or the internet people have to understand that the identity is different than it was 10 years ago and will continue to shift and change.