Revision as of 14:53, 29 March 2019

Gamergate is a current online movement focused in the gaming community. Gamergate addresses issues like ethics in game journalism, the gamer identity, and gaming culture. As video games have grown, now becoming a major professional sport, it’s no surprise that something would come to light to address the issues within the community. Gamergate at its core is a movement focused on identity in the gaming community; however, since the movement took off, it has encompassed much more than just that.

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.^[1] During this time, Quinn’s former boyfriend wrote a blog post accusing Quinn of cheating on him with multiple game journalists. 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 attacked, threatened, and doxed Quinn’s address and other personal information, causing Quinn to leave her home. Quinn was 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 the supporters 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 ^[2]. The issue with game journalism, as a whole, 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 were released with claims about gamers’ identity, now known as “Gamers are dead article”. The articles which were meant to be inclusive and change how we view gamers ended up igniting 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 within the gaming community. Gamergate wants to get rid of the stigma around traditional, patriarchal, dude-dominated gaming culture ^[3]. 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 stereotypical of a young white male. 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

Ethics in Game Journalism

For the issue with game journalism there are a lot of ethical dilemmas. The collusion between gaming companies and journalism is unethical in the fact that the readers should be getting an unbiased report, whereas today there are still close ties between game companies and journalist. While these close ties themselves are not the damaging aspect of game journalism, the bias, collusion, and inaccurate reports that follow these connections are unethical. Game journalism is also unethical because game journalist that do not have those close ties could be reporting information that would contradict those bias reports. This would place those without ties at a disadvantage when they are the ones doing better reporting.

Ethics in Doxing

The very thing that sparked gamergate is unethical. Doxing, or releasing private sensitive information to the internet, because of rumors and other issues within the community goes against ethics. "Doxing attempts to silence the subject and prevent her from participating in activities."^[4]Quinn and other gamergate targeted people were doxed in this targeted manner. Hoping that by threatening and releasing their personal information online they would become afraid and leave the gaming community; in a sense getting rid of what these doxers thought was wrong with the community. Posting people's personal information on the internet without their consent is extremely unethical and can have major consequences in their lives.

Ethics in Online Identity

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” ^[5] fits. This summarizes Gamergate because 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 transformed.

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 as time goes on.

References

1. ↑ Mortensen, T., Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate, 2018, 789.
2. ↑ Hathaway, J., What is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks, October 10, 2014
3. ↑ Dewey, C., The Only Guide to Gamergate you will ever need to read, October 14, 2014
4. ↑ Douglas, D., Doxing: a conceptual analysis, June 28, 2016, 206
5. ↑ Floridi, L., The 4th Revolution How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality, 2014, 86.