Games aren't very fun these days.
As anyone paying even tangential attention to videogames likely knows, the medium is in the throes of a misogynist backlash so virulent it often could be described as terrorism. In the past nine weeks, three female games professionals—Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu, and Zoe Quinn—have been driven from their homes by death threats. Sarkeesian, a critic who received a bomb threat when she accepted an award at the Game Developer's Conference earlier this year, recently became the target of a terror threat promising “the deadliest school shooting in American history” if she gave a scheduled lecture at Utah State University.
Harassment is a sadly commonplace reality for women on the internet in almost any field—yet the ongoing death threats, rape threats, and harassment campaigns directed at women in games has eclipsed other media. But why has the emergence of new female voices in gaming provoked such a disproportionately violent reaction?
There's a reason "gamer" has become a singular term in a way "comic book fan," "movie buff" and "TV viewer" aren't. For some who play videogames, it's not a hobby, it's an identity— one in the midst of a cultural shift that has produced ugly and often frightening reactions specifically because it cuts so deeply to the heart not only of what people like to do, but who they are.
Forged in the fires of multibillion-dollar corporate interests, the modern notion of the "gamer" revolves centrally around young, middle-class men and their hobbies. But this image is increasingly at odds with the demographics of the people actually playing games: According to a recent study by the Entertainment Software Association, not only are 48 percent of people playing videogames today female, but there are more adult women playing games than boys under 18.
Women have become far more visible as players, critics, and game developers. While the demographics of videogame characters and developers have yet to catch up with these shifts, it's still an unequivocally positive development—a chance to expand not only of the breadth of experiences video games can express, but the audience it can reach. Yet for some gamers, this has been experienced not as cultural growth, but personal loss. They see the growing visibility of women, not to mention their incomprehensible insistence that games cater to their perspectives as well, as an unwelcome intrusion in a space that does not belong to them—even an existential threat.
Even more fascinating is how these insecurities have allowed some gamers to consider themselves a downtrodden minority, despite their continued dominance of every meaningful sector of the games industry, from development to publishing to criticism. That demonstrates a strange and seemingly contradictory "overdog" phenomenon: The most powerful members of a culture often perceive an increase in social equality as a form of persecution. (To wit: the significant number of white Americans who say they face more racism than black people, or the persecution complex of some conservative Christians who believe that increasing cultural acceptance of gays and reproductive rights has transformed them into an oppressed minority—despite the fact that more than 80 percent of Americans identity as Christians.)
Ultimately, the anti-feminist movement in games has a great deal in common with the religious right; in both instances, their fixations on "ethics" and "values" come down not to a desire for a pluralist culture with a wide array of perspectives and values, but one where anything less than the absolute dominance of their own perspectives and values is perceived as "oppression."
Though many involved in "Gamergate" claim it is based in a concern about "ethics" or "objectivity" it is impossible to ignore how little of either the movement has demonstrated, either in the "controversy" that initially inspired it—an unfounded smear campaign involving the sex life of a female game developer—or the overwhelmingly abusive tactics of its supporters. The banner of GG has attracted a loose collection of misogynists, deposed kings of nerd culture and 15-year-old libertarians with more idealistic fervor than life experience or context. In their own minds, these soldiers in the war against diversity are the Space Marine Todds of video games, folk heroes confronting folk villains (aka "social justice warriors") in the way that so many of them are accustomed to doing: with the power of their virtual fists. No wonder one of them created a game that you "win" by punching Anita Sarkeesian in the face.
While there are legitimate ethical concerns about games journalism, it's telling that the movement remains laser-focused not on the ethically shady behavior of the multimillion-dollar gaming studios making the mainstream games they enjoy, but small, often impoverished independent creators and critics—and even within that subset, the targets are nearly exclusively women.
As much as the harassers engaged in vicious slash-and-burn campaigns against female critics would like to see themselves as the heroes of this particular "game," the true heart of Gamergate isn't the idealism of a noble underdog fighting the good fight, but the roiling, jealous fury of a sun being told that it is now nothing more than a satellite.
Although Gamergate has inspired countless think pieces and editorials about the "end" of gamers, some of the ugliest and most persistent backlash has been reserved for Leigh Alexander, a female games journalist who wrote an essay titled 'Gamers' Don't Have to be Your Audience. 'Gamers' are Over:
And they got even madder. The vicious response to Alexander's article was rooted not in objective concerns, but in the deep, persistent fear that she was right: that they weren't the be-all and end-all of videogames anymore, that they might not always get to define what it means.
One of the most common and disingenuous tactics used to undermine women in games is to claim that they're not "real gamers" or that the works they produce aren't real games—it's a tack that effectively gerrymanders the districts of gamerhood and disenfranchises the growing numbers of female fans, journalists and creators. Much like the "fair and balanced" crowd that insists immigrants are taking jobs from "real Americans" rather than fueling the economy, the belief that women are stealing or corrupting videogames is rooted in xenophobia: These gamers would rather see games remain narrow enough to fit within their clenched fist than to see it flourish beyond their grasp.
That so many women are nonetheless willing to risk death and rape threats, professional ruin, even lifelong harassment to remain a part of the videogame industry reveals exactly how false and petty this "movement" really is. If passion and devotion to the thing you love—even in the face of blinding hatred—is any measure of commitment, then these women have claimed a space for themselves in games that is far more "real" and important than any of the small, angry people who have tried to tear them down.
[Disclosure: The writer has hung out socially with Anita Sarkeesian and Leigh Alexander on a handful of occasions. Since that will likely be introduced as evidence of the vast feminist gaming conspiracy, we might as well get it out of the way.]
