GamerGate’s toxic torrent has been at once enfeebling and enervating. Its furious assault on, chiefly, women in games and those who espoused anything approximating feminist views therein has had the effect of galvanising and unifying a whole range of people in gaming who had not been talking to one another before. Even as some people were driven away from the mainstream drags of gaming journalism, they have committed themselves instead to a “third way” of writing criticism and making games that is less dependent on the mainline industry for support. In the process, such critics, like writer and designer Mattie Brice, are charting a new path for feminism in the world of gaming which could at least furnish us with a positive legacy from what has been an indisputably destructive two months.
GamerGate has proven itself to be a nesting doll of ironies, but one of the more interesting (and positive) ones is that by so viciously attacking an entire class of creators in gaming because of their perceived ties to one another, they have ended up actually creating new connections for hitherto isolated people in gaming. The unified assault got critics talking to each other, and talking to game developers, who in turn got talking with academics. Friendships were forged under fire during these last two months whose productive effects may not be fully realised for several years.
That, however, will depend on the lessons we all walk away with. There are a number of obligations incumbent on the gaming industry, of course, but I want to focus on what’s next for feminism in gaming and where we go from here as we rebuild our communities from the greatest storm to ever hit the wide networked world of video gaming.
Mattie Brice’s recent essay, “More Than My Pain,” illustrates one of the most urgent issues we need to work on: how we resist the commodification of our pain in the midst of harassment campaigns. The challenge of her essay is addressed to those who speak out against mobs like GamerGate rather than their supporters, and she specifically calls out progressives for allowing the idolisation and pedestalisation of women, people of colour, and queer people who have been harassed but often to the exclusion of their productive contributions to the world of gaming.
As Brice argues,”Minoritized voices often only get visibility and resources when they are talking about their pain.” Feminists in gaming can, unfortunately, be complicit in this, often with the best of intentions.
It remains regrettably true that for so much of our media “if it bleeds, it leads,” and for those already minoritised in gaming, this means that if we are to lead, we must bleed. For those who consider themselves feminist activists or allies in the industry, combating this means being much more forthright about spreading positive messages amid harassment rather than negative, defensive ones. Brice goes so far as to suggest that how we engage with harassers often encourages them—I can’t say I agree, but she has a point insofar as she suggests that our mode of engagement too often centralises both the attackers and the pain they cause, excluding the humanity of those who have been harmed.
We need to be more proactive about promoting the lives of abuse victims outside of how they have been harassed. Brianna Wu is a brilliant game developer whose first game Revolution 60 was a critical and commercial success, and her studio, Giant Spacekat is providing both employment and an independent perspective for people in the industry who want to do something new. We have to recognise that these women deserve support not out of sympathy for their pain, but because we can clearly see that they were harassed in no small measure for being good at what they do. Celebrating and promoting that should be part of what feminists in gaming do, not sullenly circumambulating around their traumas.
Secondly, a few feminist critics are moving in non-traditional directions. For some, GamerGate was clear proof that the mainstream industry will hang harassment victims out to dry, especially if they are already from underrepresented backgrounds. The fact that the gaming press took two months to clearly and (usually) unambiguously condemn GamerGate was proof enough of that, for many of us, who could not help but note that this farrago had to become literal front page news everywhere else before our own press sat up to take notice.
I do believe that mainstream games journalism can be saved in this regard, and the existing critics doing interesting things with it—like Danielle Rindeau or Patricia Hernandez—should be encouraged. Kotaku’s move towards covering gaming communities and re-examining the technical and cultural development of games well after their launches also signals a shift in direction that is friendly to the types of deeper analysis often brought by feminist critics.
But there can be little doubt that, save for a few examples, it is difficult to break into mainstream criticism as a woman or minority unless you’re willing to cover the bigotry beat, preferably rolling up your sleeves to reveal your own scars and talk about how dreadful it all is.
Pushing back against this on two fronts is essential for feminist gamers, first in doing so in the mainstream press by pitching stories, analysis, and reviews that do not tokenise us, but also by supporting and emulating critics like Lana Polansky and Mattie Brice who are looking to write about games in outlets of their own creation, or in places not traditionally considered gaming presses. I myself have done some of my best games criticism in publications like Bitch Magazine and Feministing, and got my start in games crit at the feminist blog The Border House. These alternatives exist and should be both highlighted and encouraged.
That brings me to the last point: cyber-feminists must keep talking to mainline feminists about the vital importance of this field. Games matter more than ever, and the long, proud tradition of feminist art criticism is being continued by a diverse, young generation of committed activists and thinkers talking about an intriguing new medium that will do for the 21st century what movies did for the 20th. They deserve a place at the table.
We will need that support in the coming months and years for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that GamerGate imbricates with the wider cultural issue of online harassment more generally and gaming feminists have a good deal to add to discussions about things like legal remedies, policy changes in social media, and strategies of resistance.
There is no shortage of things to depress us if we take stock of social media lately, but I have borne witness to an energised rather than purely demoralised discourse. There is energy there, new bonds being forged, new cultural awareness, and a newfound passion that was not there two months ago. For my own part, I have never been surer of my “identity” as a games critic.
This has been the violent, stormy turning of the season in the world of gaming, but we can build something lasting and beautiful upon the ruins GamerGate has left behind.
Photo by Joey, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
The comments on the commodification of pain reminded me of a conversation I had once with someone who had suffered burns as a small child. He told me that he and others don’t like to be referred to as burn victims, but instead burn survivors, defining themselves by the strength they have Ty overcome their pain instead of the events that caused it. I wonder if we can get people to start framing these stories in a similar way, focusing on the accomplishments of these suffering people in spite of the obstacles, rather than in terms of the obstacles they face.