Gamergate

Gamergate, online harassment campaign in 2014–15 that targeted women in the video game industry. The attacks were attributed largely to white male right-wing gamers who railed against the rise and influence of women and feminism in the industry. Gamergate served as a recruiting tool for the growing alt-right movement and helped spur the online “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which soon spawned the wider QAnon conspiracy movement.

The Gamergate campaign was sparked by the release in 2013 of Zoë Quinn’s game Depression Quest. The game received acclaim from game critics and praise from mental health professionals, but it also spurred a backlash from a vocal minority in the online gaming community because its subject was depression. Although interactive fiction was among the oldest and most established genres in the history of video games, the text-driven interior monologue style of Quinn’s game was disparaged as boring. In short, Depression Quest was no Call of Duty.

In August 2014 Depression Quest debuted to a much larger audience when it was released on Steam, one of the world’s largest PC gaming distribution platforms. Days later, a former boyfriend of Quinn’s wrote a long post on the Penny Arcade and Something Awful forums that accused her of deceptive and manipulative behaviour during their relationship. Although both sites hastily removed the posts, the contents were copied by users on the anonymous forum 4chan. 4chan posters crafted a narrative that accused Quinn of having had a physical relationship with a journalist in order to obtain a positive review of her game and to advance her career. Although the accusations were proved false, Quinn became the focus of an online sexual harassment campaign, which included threats of rape and death, on sites such as Reddit and 4chan. After the latter forum banned further discussion of Gamergate, commentary on the controversy migrated to 8chan (later 8kun).

The online campaign was initially called “Quinnspiracy” before the hashtag #Gamergate was coined by conservative actor Adam Baldwin on Twitter on August 27, 2014. Right-wing columnist Milo Yiannopoulos popularized the hashtag on the Breitbart News site, and he soon became one of the most visible faces of both Gamergate and the broader anti-feminist movement. Steve Bannon’s Breitbart would do much to spread awareness of Gamergate, and Bannon and Yiannopoulos would use that platform to draw Gamergate supporters into the larger alt-right movement.

Gamergate widened its focus to target other prominent women in the gaming community, including Jenn Frank, who wrote about gaming for The Guardian and other publications; Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist blogger and critic of the portrayal of women in video games; and Brianna Wu, an independent video game developer and blogger. These women, who were labeled “social justice warriors” in Internet forums, were threatened online with physical harm. “Next time she shows up at a conference,” read one anonymous post on Quinn, “we…give her a crippling injury that’s never going to fully heal.” When Sarkeesian was scheduled to speak at Utah State University in October 2014, the school was threatened with a massacre of women on campus. “I have at my disposal a semi-automatic rifle, multiple pistols, and a collection of pipe bombs,” read the threat. One Twitter account targeting Wu was named “Death to Brianna.”

In addition to being subjected to physical threats, the women were doxed (personal information, such as their home addresses and phone numbers, was made public online). That common online trolling behaviour caused Quinn to leave her home and cancel public appearances. Several people who spoke out against Gamergate were targets of “swatting,” wherein a hoax 911 call, typically describing an especially hazardous ongoing crime, such as a hostage situation, is made in an attempt to send a heavily armed police force to the target’s address. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into the threats but later closed the investigation without prosecuting anyone. Wu and her family offered an $11,000 reward for information leading to a conviction. Others, including Internet pioneer and software engineer Marc Andreessen, also offered rewards.

As the Gamergate controversy continued, major tech companies, including Intel, temporarily pulled their ads from some gaming sites. The harassment and discussions kept raging on Twitter and other social media platforms. 8chan continued to host the derogatory messages and became heavily associated with extreme-right groups. Participants in the online forums framed attempts to curtail their discussions as an infringement of their free speech rights and legitimate concerns over ethics in video game journalism.

In 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Elonis v. United States that cyber harassment alone does not qualify as a punishable crime. Proof of intent to commit a crime is necessary. However, critics of Gamergate have called such anti-woman harassment campaigns a form of misogynistic terrorism and have argued that such threats should be prosecuted under existing terrorism laws. A significant portion of the male online gaming community has been labeled “toxic” and “poisonous,” and its actions have been described as rooted in deep fears about women gaining increasing control in the gaming industry.

The women targeted in Gamergate have continued to report harassment and ongoing frustration at the lack of action taken against the harassers, and Wu has said that she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of Gamergate. Some observers, however, believe that the gaming industry has become more diverse and open to women since the harassment campaign began.