GamerGate

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Overview

GamerGate refers to the online backlash against perceived breaches of journalistic integrity on video game news sites that occurred as a result of the Quinnspiracy, an online controversy surrounding indie game developer Zoe Quinn’s alleged affairs with a number of men working in the video game industry, including Kotaku staff writer Nathan Grayson. The term has also since been used to describe the group of internet users, based mainly on Twitter, who claim that there is a lack of transparency within the video game journalism industry. These same people have also been criticized of practicing misogyny and sexism by many, most notably social justice warriors

Background

The Zoe Post

On August 16th, 2014, game developer Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend Eron Gjoni published an online expose detailing their relationship called the Zoe Post. In the expose Gjoni claims Quinn cheated on him with several men in the gaming industry, including Kotaku journalist Nathan Grayson. These claims were subsequently refuted by Kotaku editor-in-chief Steve Totilo in a post on the website.^[76] In this post he claims that the only time Nathan mentioned Quinn was in a post about a gaming competition known as GameJam.^[77] The day following the publication of the Zoe Post, YouTuber MundaneMatt uploaded a video critiquing Quinn’s game Depression Quest and commenting on the alleged affairs with men working in the video game industry.^[3] The video was subsequently removed due to a copyright claim allegedly by Quinn for using a still image from the game.^[2] On August 18th, YouTuber Internet Aristocrat uploaded the first in a series of videos titled Quinnspiracy Theory, in which he discusses the issue of cronyism in gaming media and the indie game development community. (For more information, please check out KYM DB – Quinnspiracy.)

Ethics in Gaming Journalism

As concerns over the alleged integrity of gaming journalists increased, it was discovered that several were actively contributing money to Quinn’s Patreon account,^[5][6] including Polygon editor Ben Kuchera who had been donating to Quinn for several weeks prior to writing an article about her game. Kotaku writer Patricia Hernandez subsequently came under scrutiny as well when gamers began investigating her alleged romantic relationships with other video game developers.^[7] Similarly, many criticized sound designer Robin Arnott for having an alleged affair with Quinn while appearing as a judge in the Indiecade game competition, which gave Quinn an award for Depression Quest.^[8]

On August 26th, Kotaku^[4] editor Stephen Totilo posted a statement regarding the gaming news site’s code of ethics, announcing that Kotaku journalists would not be allowed to contribute to the Patreon accounts of game developers. The same day, Polygon^[11] followed up with a similar statement announcing that all writers must disclose any contributions they have made to developer’s Patreon accounts. Readers later released a statement condemning Polygon’s new ethics policy for being unsatisfactory^[9] Some criticized the new policies for being unfair, while others suggested the policy change was the result of sexism and misogyny.

Sexism in Gaming Culture

After the Zoe Post, many commentators online, including social justice bloggers, began to condemn the gaming industry, and the culture surrounding it, for being filled with sexism and misogyny. Many news sites began to report on these allegations, many of which saw this alleged harassment as proof of the sexism rooted within gaming culture.^[78][79][80] Among those who were targeted by this harassment included video game developer Brianna Wu,^[81] and actress/livestreamer Felicia Day.^[82]

On October 29th, 2014, video game critic Anita Sarkessian appeared on Stephen Colbert’s late-night news show The Colbert Report to discuss sexism in the gaming industry.^[83] The clip of Sarkessian and Colbert’s discussion was later uploaded to Comedy Central’s YouTube channel (shown below), and was reported on by various sites such as The Verge^[84] and The Washington Post.^[85]

Notable Developments

#GamerGate

On August 27th, actor Adam Baldwin posted a tweet linking to Internet Aristocrat videos along with the hashtag #GamerGate."^[1] In the first week, the hashtag was tweeted over 244,000 times^[13] according to the Twitter analytics site Topsy (shown below left). By November, the hashtag had been tweeted just over 1.8 million times in the prior month, with an average of 50,000 tweets per day (shown below right).

 

Anti-“Gamer” Backlash & “The End of Gamers”

On August 28th, several news sites published articles calling for an end to the “gamer” cultural identity, including The Financial Post, Ars Technica, The Daily Beast, The Stranger, Beta Beat, Gamasutra, Polygon and Kotaku (shown below).

On September 1st, journalists and independent developers involved in this ‘anti-gamer’ movement published a signed open letter to the gaming community, asking gamers to end the harassment towards critics and developers.^[15] The following day, software engineer Benjamin Quintero published an article on Gamasutra questioning the strategy of gaming sites deliberately alienating their core readers by denouncing their culture.^[16] Shortly after, Quintero tweeted that he had been downgraded by the video gaming news blog. On August 30th, the GamerGate Harassment Tumblr^[10] blog was launched, which chronicled harassment of gamers by those associated with the online social justice community.

On September 3rd, YouTuber Boogie2988 uploaded a video responding to accusations of bigotry toward those who support GamerGate (shown below). In the first 24 hours, the video gained over 111,000 views and 7,000 comments.

“Bloggers” vs “Journalists”

Once the calls for journalistic integrity began to grow louder, various writers for mainstream gaming media outlets started publicly rejecting the title of “journalist” and began referring to themselves as “bloggers”. During the PAX Prime 2014 Q&A panel on August 29th, several panelists made a point to repeatedly declare themselves as “not journalists.”. Contrary to the trend however, Kotaku stated that it hired “journalists” and not “bloggers”.

#GameOverGate

On September 5th, Zoe Quinn posted a series of compiled screenshots from an IRC chat claiming it as evidence that GamerGate was a conspiracy started by 4chan to get people to harass women and gaming journalists. Immediately afterward, the hashtag #Gameovergate^[17] was created by Quinn’s followers to mock the gamergate movement.^[14]

On the following day, The Escapist Magazine’s Co-founder Alexander “Archon” Macris, visited the IRC channel to cover their side of the story in an article.^[18] In the article, the members of the channel shared how all the screenshots Quinn showed were taken out of context to mislead viewers or written by trolls attempting to disrupt the channel who were subsequently banned. Additional chatlogs^[19] were provided for the missing context.

“GameJournoPros” Mailing List

After several articles critical of the “gamer” identity were being posted on gaming news websites, people began speculating that journalists had worked together to promote a narrative against gamers that disagreed with them. On September 17th, Brietbart staff writer Milo Yiannopoulos posted a tweet hinting he had obtained information about a “co-ordinated approach” used by journalists who wrote the articles (shown below).

Later that day, Breitbart^[20] published and article titled “Exposed: The Secret Mailing List of the Gaming Journalism Elite,” revealing a private Google group mailing list titled “GameJournoPros,” purportedly used by gaming journalists cooperating to work against GamerGate. The article contained several screenshots taken from the mailing list, which discussed ways to approach the topic of Zoe Quinn and the GamerGate controversy (shown below).

Julian Assange’s Reddit AMA

On September 15th, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange participated in an “ask me anything” thread on the /r/IAmA^[22] subreddit to answer about his new book When Google Met WikiLeaks. After Redditor ShaskaOtselot asked for his opinion censorship of GamerGate discussions on Reddit, Assange replied that it was “pathetic.” After another Redditor pointed out that ShaskaOtselot had been shadowbanned, Assange edited the post to point out that a user had been banned for asking him a question about censorship. On the same day, Julian Assange tweeted about this event using the hashtag #gamergate.^[23][24]

It is later revealed that the user was shadowbanned months prior for violating site-wide rules and that the mods thought his comment was mistakenly marked as span and approved it.^[55]

Censorship on 4chan

Starting in mid-September, many posts discussing GamerGate were deleted on various board on 4chan, leading many users to question the integrity of the site’s moderation team. On September 17th, YouTuber Dr. Layman posted a video revealing an IP range ban on 4chan blocking users in Germany from posting to the /pol/ (politics) and /v/ (video games) boards.

On the following day, members of the /sp/ (sports) and /v/ boards spammed images of the janitor from the animated television series Arthur^[21] with the phrase “He does it for free” aimed at 4chan’s moderation team. On September 19th, 4chan founder Christopher Poole posted an announcement explaining why all GamerGate threads were being removed from the site, claiming that many were violating the site’s global “no personal information / raids / calls to invasion” rule (shown below).

Exodus to 8chan

After experiencing censorship issues while on 4chan, many supporters of #GamerGate subsequently flocked to the rival site 8chan as an alternative image board with fewer restrictions. Users then began to mockingly refer to 4chan as “halfchan” and sarcastically lamented the site’s demise with the expression “4chan is kill.” Supporters temporarily gathered under the board /gg/, but soon fled to a new board titled /gamergate/ after experiencing a general disagreement of moderation practices that were executed by the original owner of the /gg/ board.

Wikipedia Edit War

On September 23rd, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales tweeted that he would be looking into the edit war occurring on the GamerGate Wikipedia article. Two days later, Wales posted 11 tweets addressing the article, referring to it as a “badly written battleground” (shown below). In the period following, Wales continued to be involved with the page and over time had requested various editors to step back from editing the article.^[38][39][41]

C.H. Sommers’ Commentaries

On September 16th, 2014, the American Enterprise Institute YouTube channel upload a video in their “Factual Feminist” series titled “Are video games sexist?”, in which host Christina Hoff Sommers refutes arguments by feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian (shown below). In the first three weeks, the video gained over 440,000 views and 7,700 comments. As the video began circulating online, GamerGaters began referring to Sommers as “Based Mom.” On October 28th, 2014, Ronan Farrow interviewed Sommers about #gamergate at MSNBC. Following the interview, many people criticized the interviewer’s behaviour.^[40]

Oppressed Gamergater

Oppressed GamerGater^[31] is an image macro series orginally intended to mock the GamerGate community, but later turned into mocking the viewpoints and stances of the opposing side of the controversy. On October 9, 2014, video game developer Brianna Wu^[33] tweeted an image macro series titled “Oppressed GamerGater” to criticize the GamerGate community.^[32] In reply to this, on the online imageboard 8chan, users started to create new image macros of the character with messages that disagree with the contra-gamergate community.^[30] This development was subsequentally shared the next day on the /r/KotakuInAction subreddit.^[34][35]

Brianna Wu Doxxing

On October 10th, an anonymous user on 8chan posted Wu’s address, phone number and email to the /gg/ (GamerGate) board. Several users responded denouncing the post and raising suspicions that it was part of a false flag attack (shown below, left). That evening, Wu tweeted that she was contacting the police after receiving threats from a Twitter account named “Death to Brianna” (shown below, right).

       

On October 13th, MSNBC covered #Gamergate with Eric Johnson and Brianna wu during which Wu claimed the death threats she recieved came from #Gamergate and 8chan.co (shown below, left). On October 14th, Frederick Brennan and Brianna Wu were featured on a Huffpost live segment in which Wu blamed Brennan and #Gamergate for her doxing, after which Brennan refuted the mistakes of Brianna’s explanation (shown below, right).^[37]
On March 17th, 2016, Syfy channel aired episode 102 of “The internet ruined my life”. It featured an interview with Brianna Wu about the death threats she received.^[97]

#StopGamerGate2014

On October 14th, 2014, video game critic Anita Sarkeesian tweeted that she canceled her talk at Utah State University when her requests were denied for pat downs or metal detectors after receiving death threats (shown below).

That evening, the hashtag #StopGamerGate2014^[36] began trending worldwide on Twitter, accompanied by tweets denouncing the GamerGate movement as misogynistic and promoting violence toward women.

YouTuber MundaneMatt subsequently posted a video addressing the hashtag, arguing that the majority of the GamerGaters were not represented by those who were sending threats (shown below, left). Meanwhile, YouTuber Boogie2988 posted a video calling for a compromise between the two sides (shown below, right).

On October 15th, 2014, YouTuber Philip DeFranco uploaded a video in which he complies a history of GamerGate up until the #StopGamerGate2014 movement (shown below).

The David Pakman Interview Series

On October 27th, David Pakman began a series of interviews on prominent figures in #GamerGate by interviewing Brianna Wu with questions about the hashtag and her death threats she had received. Towards the end of the interview, Brianna accused David of conducting a hit piece interview.^[52]

On November 14th, CBC released an article covering #Gamergate in which they portrayed Milo Yiannopoulos and David Pakman as GamerGate Supporter and showed Pakman’s video on his opinions of Gamergate while labeling Pakman as a “Harasser of Women.”^[54] David Pakman later released a video in response to this.^[25]

Databases

On November 21st, the Independent Game Developers Association (IGDA) released an anti-gamergate Twitter blocklist bot created by Randi Harper which automatically blocked anyone who followed specific Twitter accounts the readme of the tool describes as “GG ringleaders”(shown below).^[49] Due to the tool not analyzing the content of the blocked users,^[50] various independent developers and the chairperson of IGDA Puerto Rico, Roberto Rosario,^[51] ended up on the list. The link was taken down a day later alongside an official reply from the IGDA.^[53]

“Takes a list of the supposed ringleaders of GG, looks at their follower lists. Generates a list of sheeple following more than one account, as well as a list of your followers that might be questionable. This does not rank users. It doesn’t look at bios, it doesn’t look at hashtags.”

On March 24th 2015, a man named Matthew Hopkins filed a County Court claim lawsuit against the creator of the blockbot, James Billingham^[74]. But the claim has been discontinued ^[75].

On May 8th 2015, a redditor named BoneGolem created the website deepfreeze.it^[71], which is designed to help consumers determine the reliability of various video game journalism sites. TechRaptor writer Allistair Pinsof claims that the site would be the future of GamerGate^[72] while Jonathan Homes of Destructoid expressed concerns that it only lists negative traits and could be perceived as biased^[73].

On September 1, 2014, a GamerGate wiki was made by a user named Drybones and hosted on the gamergate.me site^[67]. which is serving as a separate database with articles and a timeline^[68]. Around January 6 of 2015, WordPress user JennOfHardwie had started a list documenting cases of harassment against Gamergate^[69]. On GitGud, Another database, known as the Current Happenings List^[70] also attempts to detail the timeline of the event and movement. The oldest documented edit of the List dates back to October 19 2014, but the edit is a rename. The list itself seems to date back to August of that year as it started documenting data from that time.

#PizzaGate

On February 1st, 2015, Twitter user @KachoArinoDesu^[26] tweeted a screenshot of an edited Brianna Wu tweet asking if “pineapple on pizza” was a euphemism for “penis” accompanied by the hashtag “#PizzaGate” (shown below).

That evening, GamerGate supporters tweeted various pizza-themed jokes with the hashtag, including other edited tweets by feminist figures like Anita Sarkeesian (shown below), many of which mocked GamerGate criticisms. In 24 hours, the hashtag was tweeted over 18,900 times according to the Twitter analytics site Topsy.^[28] Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales posted several #PizzaGate tweets which were subsequently posted on the /r/KotakuInAction^[29] subreddit (shown below, middle).

Also on February 1st, YouTuber MundaneMatt uploaded a video titled “WTF is #PizzaGate,” which explained the origins of the hashtag and how it could be helpful for the GamerGate cause (shown below). On February 2nd, The Mirror^[27] published an article about #PizzaGate.

Calgary Expo & The Honey Badger Brigade

On April 17th, 2015, a group of co-hosts of the Honey Badger Brigade (HBB), an online radio show, set up a booth at the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo (CalEx) at which they also sold GamerGate-related merchandise (shown below, left). That same date, the official CalEx Twitter account shared that they didn’t allow a GamerGate booth after being approached by it and were looking into it.^[58] According to research by pop culture website Themarysue,^[59] HBB used the webcomic of one of their members to apply for vendor status and not their own site. Also according to an earlier crowdfund organised by the HBB to attend to CalEx, they were initially working in “stealth mode”^[60] in order to be able to attend (shown below, right).

On April 17th, following a Q&A session at a panel event where a member of the HBB publicly disagreed with one of the panelists (recording below),^[56] the HBB’s booth was approached by convention staff and requested to leave. According to security staff at the expo, they had received complaints over the presence of a GamerGate booth on social media, including 25 allegations of harassment,^[57] although details of these allegations remain vague. The official twitter account for CalEx released a tweet on the eviction later that day, which stated that the reason lied with their show policies.^[65] The next day, the official Youtube account for the HBB uploaded a video of their member Alison Tieman, the same person who publicly disagreed with the panelist, explaining the events of that day from their perspective.^[66]

On April 19th, the HBB organized a meetup in a park to not dissappoint fans of the radio show, but were shortly interrupted by the police which were allerted by the Expo’s staff according to the officer at the scene.^[61] On April 25th, the HBB announced they are seeking legal advice to hold the Calgary Expo accountable^[62] and launched a crowdfund alongside this.^[63] The events surrounding the HBB’s eviction from the expo and the events following this were also discussed on Twitter under the hashtag #ExpoGate.^[64]

SPJ Airplay debate

On August 15th, journalist Michael Koretzky held an event as part of the 2015 regional conference of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) at Koubek Center, Miami: Airplay (shown below), a two-session panel meant to present the pro-GamerGate side of the story to the media. The first session was about gaming media and how its journalists can do a better job. The second was about how mainstream media can and should cover online controversies. Among the panelists where Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopolous, Washington Examiner’s Ashe Schow, Breitbart writer Allum Bokhari, and games writer Mark Ceb.^[98]

Around 2:30PM, Police began clearing the Koubek Center after receiving a “credible” bomb threat. The threat was for the bomb to go off at 2:45. About 75 people were forced to wait a block and a half away while police dogs were taken inside. After the center was searched, the police said that no physical evidence was found to suggest a public threat.^[99] The threat was the second in two days for the conference after organizers had the building swept on Friday. An independent security team was hired for the event and locked down the facility overnight, according to Koretzky.^[100]

Despite the bomb threats, a Q&A was still held.^[101]
Later, Yiannopoulos published an article on Breitbart about the remarks he wanted to make at the panel^[102]

#SavePoint SXSW 2016 Panel

On October 19th, The Open Gaming Society announced their panel about “the current social-political climate of the gaming community” and “the importance of ethical integrity in gaming journalism” had been accepted for the 2016 South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW).^[93] That panel would be hosted by game developer Nick Robalik, President-Elect of the Society of Professional Journalists Lynn Walsh and GamerGate supporter and adult film actress Mercedes Carrera.

On October 22nd, writer Arthur Chu tweeted that he would not be attending SXSW due to the GamerGate panel (shown below).^[92]

On October 26th, SXSW^[91] posted an announcement that the “SavePoint” panel had been canceled along with an anti-GamerGate panel titled “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games” due to “numerous threats of on-site violence.” The same day, The Open Gaming Society^[89] posted a statement regarding the event’s cancellation, revealing that they would be “organizing, funding and hosting” the panel themselves. Meanwhile, tweets containing the hashtag #gamergate and #sxsw increased dramatically according to the Twitter analytics site Topsy^[90] (shown below).

On October 27th, BuzzFeed^[94] announced plans to withdraw from SXSW if the conference refused to reverse its decision to cancel the two panels and published a letter sent to SXSW interactive director Hugh Forrest from BuzzFeed staff. The same day, Vox Media revealed on their tech news site The Verge^[95] that they would not attend SXSW “unless it takes harassment seriously.” Meanwhile, SXSW^[96] published a follow-up statement responding to criticism, claiming they were “working with local law enforcement to assess the various threats” and would be “evaluating several programming solutions.”

Search Interest

External References