How did a piece of parochial tittle-tattle turn into a row that has exposed a divisive rift in the gaming community, and what will be the long-term fallout? John Moore takes a look.
No story that begins with a blog post from a disgruntled ex-boyfriend claiming infidelity by his former girlfriend is likely to end well, but no one really had a clue quite how deep the GamerGate rabbit hole was going to be. For the past month, it's been a war of words that's sectioned off its own increasingly bitter and murky corner of social media and progressively leaked into the mainstream gaming media. If you have no idea what we're talking about, here's a quick synopsis.
In mid-August, Eron Gjoni posted a long, painfully detailed and righteously indignant series of blogs (which you can read at thezoepost.wordpress.com), outlining the messy demise of his relationship with game developer Zoe Quinn, presenting her as some sort of Manic-Pixie-Nightmare-Girl-Gone-Wrong, accusing her of a string of infidelities. Usually such a blog would carry little interest (beyond tabloid-ish titillation and rubberneck curiosity) outside of the immediate circle of the former couple's friends and colleagues. However, some of the names cited (specifically Nathan Grayson of website Kokatu and Joshua Boggs, Quinn's boss at developer Loveshack Entertainment) piqued the interest of gaming fans and quickly fired up a lot of discussion on 4Chan, Reddit and Twitter.
Much of the debate concerned whether Quinn's alleged relationship with Grayson had led to preferential treatment for her or her employers' work. She was, at the time, best known for her interactive story, Depression Quest, and Loveshack for its iOS/Steam title Framed, which she worked on as a narrative consultant. Then things escalated quickly, as the issue became simultaneously a wider debate about whether the games press was compromised by its relationships with game makers and entwined with Quinn's gender and her position as a perceived Social Justice Warrior (SJW; a pejorative term used to describe someone who campaigns/argues for causes on social media.
Anyone following the gaming scene will probably know the very special treatment those dubbed SJWs, such as Anita Sarkeesian, get from certain parts of the videogaming community for questioning the moral codes underpinning many games, bemoaning the lack of women in the industry as a whole or appealing for a wider range of game types. For those who don't, it runs the gamut from indignant repostes to their ideologies, through mild insults and on to threats to life, limb and family.
There are a couple of pretty comprehensive timelines of the events that helped this argument blow up, which have proved an invaluable resource in creating this article, at tinyurl.com/kfv7nax and tinyurl.com/ms3g2kf. They solidly outline the basis of the argument and point out the salient interjections across various sources. However, long story short: story hits blog, becomes cause сё1ёЬге on social media/4Chan/Reddit, Quinn allegedly tries to use legal routes to get a video about the blog taken off YouTube, gaming press are reluctant to report on the issue,a fact that certain individuals begin (along with the support for Quinn on social media) as part of a cosy relationship between her and the press, and begin to associate this with her alleged infidelities (they dub it The Quinnspiracy). Ultimately, this begins a questioning of the wider developer/press dynamic, and Kokatu is forced to comment and limit the ways in which its writers personally support game creation to stop accusations of bias, the whole thing gets messier and more personal very quickly.
Full Court Press
There's a very famous quote, of disputed origin (tinyurl.com/k2qrjcg), that attests, "News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising". Whoever said it provided us with a lucid expression of the dichotomy that faces journalists, whatever subject they cover. The relationship between the press and the other players in the sphere it covers is often close. For obvious reasons (especially in niche industries such as game development/ marketing), they often move in similar social circles, are brought together by industry events and mutual friends, and may have even worked together at different points in their careers. It makes it easy to imagine how close relationships can be formed on mutually beneficial grounds. To make matters more murky, tech writers (as I can attest) are often in the field because it's their hobby, so they're predisposed to being positive about the subject on which they write, and they're likely to have a natural affinity with the kind of people representing the products they cover.
I can tell you, as someone with a decade or so of experience across various industries, reviewing products and writing features like this, the waters can get a bit muddy at times. What it's not, though (at least as far as I'm aware), is people meeting in rooms to discuss the score of their next game with the writers who will be reviewing it. Think of it more as a loose affiliation of like-minded individuals; that sounds innocuous but can be very powerful.
The systems established by companies to handle their relationships with the press actively seek to blur the lines of this relationship and create affinity to their brands. The best ones do this without pushing too far and without making outright threats or inducements that can quickly generate cynicism among the press packs they deal with (every journalist will likely have a tale of the overly pushy/arrogant PR).
The more influential and important a company or game, the more explicit the fear of limited access becomes for magazines, blogs etc. And these days, the fear of exclusion is a real danger to impartiality and to competing companies that can't/don't have the resources to manage their PR merry-go-round, as they get pushed aside in the clamour for headlines. Indie developers have little more that they can rely on to promote their work than leveraging of their contacts and friendships with writers, websites and magazines -and, in general, we like to help. From the outside, the connections that underpin the GamerGate issue appear to be overly cosy, and for many are indicative of something rotten in the industry.
However, it seems that the real fuel to the GamerGate fire was the sexual element and, frankly, that Zoe Quinn is a woman who aligns herself with feminist thinking.
We can continually debate the alleged actions of Quinn (if true, selfish at best), the response of Gjoni (definitely angry; arguably ill-advised and vindictive) and the double standards therein (on both sides) - not least the question of whether Quinn's alleged actions would have attracted such debate had she been male (answer: probably not). It does bear noting that this is not one person's narrative, though; there are multiple sides, and no one can really be sure what the truth is. There is still a raging debate about the facts, with claims and counter claims from both sides regarding who is pulling the strings behind the furore.
The fact that on Gjoni has gone to the trouble of detailing his version of events in forensic detail does not make his the One Truth To Rule Them All, just a more credible narrative than the more obtuse Quinn has provided. She undoubtedly has her truth too, as do the other men allegedly involved, but no one gets to take the high ground here. No one looks good.
What's worrying about the GamerGate accusations is that Quinn is being judged by many as a woman as much, if not more than, as an employee of Loveshack or as an indie developer. With the issue already in the public domain, it's perhaps right to question the veracity of the accusations but more pertinent to ask whether the people involved have acted in an unprofessional manner, in a way that compromises their work or contradicts statements they've made in public. That's not a gender issue, though. It's not even about social justice. GamerGate is a nasty break-up writ large, and while it's always healthy to discuss the relationship between the press and its subjects, it's the descent of this debate into trench name-calling that quickly turned matters toxic and led to a stream of articles decrying misogynistic gamer culture.
What Now?
That a personal matter between a couple managed to ignite a debate that has called the whole culture of videogames into question speaks volumes for the tinderbox on which the scene has been sitting for quite a while. We see the 'Feminist' side questioning the logic and morality that underpins the majority of the tentpole games we're offered year on year, and the 'Gamer' side arguing that in a marketplace driven by its money, no one has the right to dictate the nature of the products they buy. In terms of this wider debate, both sides have good cases to make; it just strikes us that one side is doing it a much better way than the other. Any medium that wants to be taken seriously - and gaming does - has to be willing to accept critique; it has to be open to analysis. Threats, insults, doxing and misogyny do not form a valid part of that process, so those who perceive a threat to their chosen pass-time by feminist critique need to up their game if they're serious about defending it to a wider audience. All that nastiness may fly on 4chan, but the wider world is going to need more convincing if they're going to gain traction.
4Chan may or may not (depending on whom you believe) have fanned the flames of this argument, but the dry straw was already laid and the matches lit. The debate that is currently raging may provide no tangible conclusion or discernible benefit to the scene in general (and certainly not to the parties involved), but the topics it has raised will almost certainly frame debates about videogaming for some time to come. That's probably not a bad thing, but the bad taste this bitter debate will leave is not great either...