Revision as of 10:17, 23 April 2019

Gamergate is an online hashtag movement in the gaming community that began as a movement addressing a lack of ethics in video game journalism, the gamer identity, and gaming culture. As a result, the community observed an unanticipated trend of harassment focused on women, minorities, and their allies.^[1] At its core, Gamergate controversy revolves around identities within the gaming community.

Start of Gamergate

The Gamergate controversy began in August 2014 with attacks on female game developer Zoë Quinn. Quinn had just released a new game called Depression Quest earlier that year.^[2] During this time, Quinn’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, 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 was denied by both Quinn and the involved journalists. The #Gamergate movement began when people attacked, threatened, and doxxed Quinn, eventually causing her to leave her home out of fear for her safety. Similar events occurred to other women in the gaming community, including Jessica Price, who took to Twitter to explicitly voice her annoyances with online harassment and disrespect.^[3]

Gamergaters claim that they were targeting issues within the game journalism sector and not just women in the gaming community, even though issues with game journalism have never been addressed.^[4] The issue with game journalism as a whole started long before this controversy. They stem from the belief that people in the game community have the ability to influence journalism on games. Game journalism also came under fire when articles were released with claims about gamers’ identities, now known as “Gamers are dead" articles. The articles, which were meant to be inclusive and change how we view gamers, ended up igniting an identity crisis within the gaming community and the Gamergate movement.

Anita Sarkeesian

Media critic Anita Sarkeesian quickly became another target of the Gamergate harassers. Sarkeesian caused controversy through her Tropes vs. Women in Video Games video-series, a series of video essays examining how many video games appeal to their presumed audiences of straight, white men. This is accomplished in many ways, mainly by making most playable characters male, oversexualizing female characters, and using female characters as motivations for male characters' actions.

Gamergate harassers voiced their disagreement with Sarkeesian's critiques by doxxing her and creating vulgar games which allowed the player to simulate sexually assaulting her. False bomb threats were called into venues to prevent her from speaking there. The harassment eventually caused Sarkeesian to leave her home and contact the police, although she did not stop making critical YouTube videos. To this day, any content produced by Sarkeesian or mentioning her name in a neutral-to-positive tone brings several thousand trolls out of the woodwork.

Identity

The Gamergate outcry turned into a movement that did not pertain to a lack of ethics, but has become a cultural war over who is “mainstream” or belongs within the gaming community. Gamergate largely represented the stigma of traditional, patriarchal, male-dominated gaming culture.^[5] Many of the victims of Gamergate and their defenders tried to break tradition, which can be difficult when identity is involved. The identity that most people associate with gamers can be very stereotypical: that of a young, white male.

The Beliefs of GamerGate

Gamergate believes it is fighting for the three C's; Corruption, Collusion, and Censorship in gaming journalism and the games industry. They believe that gaming journalism has become corrupted by nondisclosure of conflicts of interest that may arise both financial and social. Reviews should reflect accurately what the game deserves rather than what they have been paid to say. They believe that the games industry has collusion to suppress certain topics and messages with some outright blacklisting. They also believe that their message needs to be said and that censorship exists on the internet to remove all anything that challenges GamerGate related topics.^[6]

#NotYourShield

The #NotYourShield hashtag has been used by many minority communities who argue that many of the people that have come under fire for their connection to GamerGate related topics are using their connection and support for these communities as a shield from criticism. The message of #NotYourShield is that GamerGate isn't purely a sexist issue and that there are women, LGBTQ, and racial minorities on the side of GamerGate. They insist that GamerGate's issue is with the games industry and it is not a movement meant to attack minority communities within gaming. ^[7]

Ethics

Harassment

Sarkessian's entrance and the subsequent "gamers are dead" articles fueled the flames of hate messages sent out. Various studies have tried to pinpoint the number of accounts involved in the online harassment of Gamergate, with estimates ranging from 9-10 thousand, to upwards of 150,000.^[8] Thousands of individuals flocked around the allegations with vulgar and offensive messages aimed at Quinn, Sarkessian, and anyone defending the two women. While it can be assumed many of these individuals were self-identified gamers who were personally invested in the controversy, Adrienne Massanari points out that during events such as #GG, people use them as a cover to engage in harassment.^[1] These individuals either desire the opportunity to say offensive things as part of their personal political agenda, or do so to attract negative publicity around one side of the strife.

Privacy

In the case of Zoë Quinn, many aspects of her life were shared with the public. This began in Gjoni's manifesto about his relationship with Quinn, where he posted several screenshots of their purported conversations.^[9] Dean Cocking, author of Plural Selves and Relational Identity, writes that privacy relates to a user's control over their self-presentation^[10]. Quinn had no control over Gjoni's initial posts or the subsequent onset of doxing revealing her personal information. In addition, the shared information was used to attack aspects of her identity and her as a member of the gaming community. According to philosophers Luciano Floridi ^[11] and David Shoemaker^[12], one framework for privacy is protecting that which individuals hold as part of their self-identity. Clearly, Gamergate resulted in breaches of Zoë Quinn's privacy on many levels.

Doxxing

Main Article: Doxxing

This breach of privacy was also an example of doxing, as it was an attempt by Gjoni to silence Quinn.^[13] Quinn and other targets of the Gamergate movement were doxed by having private information about them released online leading to threats of death and rape ^[1] Those involved hoped that by threatening them and releasing their personal information online they would become afraid and leave the gaming community. Their intention was to remove these women from the gamer community, correcting what they thought was the problem within the community. Posting people's personal information on the internet without their consent is extremely unethical and can have major consequences on their lives.

Public Morality

Main Article: Public Morality

The intrusion into private information, harassment, threatening and doxxing are all things that are often seen as not publically moral. The use of the internet in this scenario, however, has made it easier to victimize, but harder to find the victimizers. The people who harrassed Zoe were hiding behind their screens and although she did no know them and they did not know her, these people were willing to go against public morality and make Zoe feel unsafe just due to rumors about her and her video game.

Accusational Damages

Negative reviews around the time of the accusation with few minutes logged and few details about the game experience of Depression Quest

Bias Against Women

The fact that Zoë Quinn is an attractive woman made her a target of harassment because it made it more realistic for the gaming community (primarily composed of males) to believe that she would use her looks and identity to gain an unfair advantage, despite unfound grounds.

This harassment also points to a larger issue of bias against women in the technology and entertainment industry. During the recruiting sessions for technology firms, female representatives are usually tasked to set up the event while their male counterparts gave more technical overviews. The presentations can also be filled with sexist jokes and other comments that make it a hostile environment for aspiring female programmers.^[15] In other forms of popular media such as cinematic pictures, there also exists a sense of antagonism toward females. During the release period for the movie Captain Marvel, popular movie review sites such as Rotten Tomatoes experienced an insurgence of negative reviews, predominantly from men, due to lead actress Brie Larson's comment that advocates for greater diversity in the demographics of movie critics. ^[16] Clearly there is an observed pattern of backlash in the form of negative reviews when a woman speaks out against a lack of critic diversity.

Game Journalism Bias

Regardless of whether or not Quinn's physical appearance may have impacted her career, Gamergate snowballed because people believed that game makers were getting positive game reviews for sexual favors. In fact, even with more established game review websites such as IGN, there have been accusations toward the site for being biased in its review scores because of the website's Public Relations or Marketing ties with certain game developers or publishers.^[17] Despite claims as independent entities, websites such as IGN depend on advertisements to finance its operations, and being able to obtain an early review copy of an upcoming video game so that the site can be the first to post a review can be a major factor to drawing user traffic to the website.

These circumstances (with the presence of collusion) are unethical since the report would be biased to favor a game that may not be deserving of high ratings. Close ties on their own are common within smaller communities and would not be cause for concern. However, fabricated inaccurate reports would be false and unethical, especially since those that don't give out favors have games that aren't reviewed as well.

Deindividuation and Online Mediums

Deindividuation is characterized by a loss of self-awareness in groups, and this phenomenon is used to explain antinormative crowd behavior like mob violence or genocide ^[18] The tendency for users to experience deindividuation online is enhanced when the online medium allows users to portray fractured representations of who they are and when users are allowed to interact anonymously. When users interact anonymously or with incomplete representations of who they actually are, they are effectively hiding part of their "self" from others. This is an explicit departure from who they are, and this deception is enforced by the design of the online platforms. This further raises questions about the design of the mediums through which the radicalized male gaming community were able to target and harass. In his book titled, "On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit", Harry Frankfurt wrote that "both in lying and in telling the truth, people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are"^[19], and this shines keen insight into the behavior of the online "mob", in which they ignore their own identity and choose instead to behave in accordance with the anonymous, unaccountable mob. As a result, those who join the mob enjoy the absence of accountability or responsibility that is almost guaranteed when taking part in such a movement.

Value Sensitive Design

The theoretical framework that is used in the design of Reddit is an example of a design choice that directly influences the culture and climate of the activity on the site.^[1] The design of the Reddit platform is linked to the factor of karma. In this case, karma is a point system that represents how much Redditors value a particular account’s contribution. When a user posts or comments on another post, it is accompanied by a total point score that consists of a certain number of upvotes and downvotes. According to the designers of the site, it is democratic in its design. Some argue that the karma design aspect glorifies certain posts that aren’t necessarily the “best” but simply reflect the most amount of people upvote. This presents an ethical conundrum because the only control over which posts are promoted and viewed the most lies in the opinions of the users themselves. This can leave certain posts suppressed and unnoticed while others are highlighted and gain much recognition, without much consideration to the actual content itself. According to Massanari, this design that embeds the value of karma can present a toxic culture which enables misogyny and anti-feminist behavior when dealing with certain groups on the Reddit platform^[1]. Reddit is an example of how the design of the architectural code of a website can influence the culture and behavior on the site.^[1]

Ethics in Online Identity

Online identities can be very different than what people might portray in real life. In the situation of 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” ^[20] fits. This concept captures the image of Gamergate because identity within Gamergate deals with the supporter's ideologies about who belongs in the gaming environment and who does not belong. The reason gamergate developed into such a controversy is because certain members of the community felt that they belonged and that this community was their “special” place. When that "special" place was seemingly attacked, those who identified with the community rallied together to address the detractor (or critic).

References

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5} Massanari, A. (2017). #Gamergate and The Fappening: How Reddit’s algorithm, governance, and culture support toxic technocultures. New Media & Society, 19(3), 329–346. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444815608807
2. ↑ Mortensen, T., Anger, Fear, and Games: The Long Event of #GamerGate, 2018, 789.
3. ↑ Ennis, Tricia. “Female Game Developers Report New Wave of Harassment Following ArenaNet Firings.” SYFY WIRE, SYFY WIRE, 12 July 2018, www.syfy.com/syfywire/female-game-developers-report-new-wave-of-harassment-following-arenanet-firings.
4. ↑ Hathaway, J., What is Gamergate, and Why? An Explainer for Non-Geeks, October 10, 2014
5. ↑ Dewey, C., The Only Guide to Gamergate you will ever need to read, October 14, 2014
6. ↑ GamerGate. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php?title=GamerGate
7. ↑ Not Your Shield. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ggwiki.deepfreeze.it/index.php?title=Not_Your_Shield
8. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named Finn
9. ↑ thezoepost. “Why Does This Exist?” Thezoepost, 16 Aug. 2014. https://thezoepost.wordpress.com/
10. ↑ Cocking, Dean. "Intimacy and Privacy Online", Plural Selves and Relational Identity, Cambridge University Press, 2008, 123-140.
11. ↑ Floridi, Luciano. Four challenges for a theory of informational privacy, Ethics and Information Technology, 2006, 109–119.
12. ↑ Shoemaker, David. Self-exposure and exposure of the self: informational privacy and the presentation of identity, 2009.
13. ↑ Douglas, D., Doxing: a conceptual analysis, June 28, 2016, 206
14. ↑ Peterson, Latoya. “In 'Crash Override,' Zoe Quinn Shares Her Boss Battle Against Online Harassment.” NPR, 8 Sept. 2017. https://www.npr.org/2017/09/08/548661962/in-crash-override-zoe-quinn-shares-her-boss-battle-against-online-harassment
15. ↑ Hempel, Jessi. “Why Are There Few Women In Tech? Watch A Recruiting Session.” WIRED, 1 Mar. 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/why-are-there-few-women-in-tech-watch-a-recruiting-session/
16. ↑ Raftery, Brian. “Trolls Are Tanking Captain Marvel's Rotten Tomatoes Reviews. But They Can't Stop Its Box Office Haul.” Fortune, 9 Mar. 2019. http://fortune.com/2019/03/08/captain-marvel-rotten-tomatoes-review/
17. ↑ NRumphol-Janc, Nathanial. “Former IGN Employee Admits Review Scores Are Skewed Due To Public Relations And The Almighty Dollar.” Zelda Dungeon, 10 Oct. 2012. https://www.zeldadungeon.net/former-ign-employee-admits-review-scores-are-skewed-due-to-public-relations/
18. ↑ "Deindividuation" Douglas, Karen M. Jan 04. 2019, Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/deindividuation
19. ↑ "On Truth, Lies, and Bullshit" Frankfurt, Harry 2009, pp 37. https://philpapers.org/rec/FRAOTL
20. ↑ Floridi, L., The 4th Revolution How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality, 2014, 86.