Aram Zucker-Scharff

“”In Quinn’s case, the fact that she was the subject of the attacks rather than the friend who wrote about her game reveals the true nature of much of the criticism: a pretense to make further harassment of women in the industry permissible.””

– Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest.

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“One has to wonder if this is down to game fans being systems thinkers, who see the world as an ecosystem of curiosities to discover and solve. Everyone wants to feel they’re part of something bigger, after all, that they might be a hero of an underground society that no one else knows about. And Twitter exposes us all to the vocabulary of extremes, an intense world where even minorities can feel very loud (a good thing for Ferguson, not so for video games).

As video games unshackle from old constraints, traditional fans double down on keeping the treehouse sacrosanct. The tension between “games as product” and “games as culture” is visible within these online controversies as everyone invested in the industry watches to see which will “win”. “

”

– Sexism, Lies and Video Games: The Culture War Nobody Is Winning.

Extending the branch (with tweets) · brett_douville:

I reach out to someone who jumped in to insult someone on Twitter.

Hello: Videogames Are For Everybody | Rock, Paper, Shotgun:

It’s time for us to talk about a difficult and complicated series of issues which have affected the gaming community in recent weeks. This is one of those

No-one has responded to it this time, because there is so little coherent argument to respond to. In fact, most of what is out there seems to point more concretely towards a conspiracy of misogynists to silence progressive writers and their supporters, than it does towards a conspiracy to corrupt or destroy games as a medium.

While there are certainly people who feel alienated from the games press, or who are (for whatever reason) unhappy about how the games press functions, many of the people who have pushed their ideas and opinions during this furore are people whose views are extreme and sexist. There are numerous individuals criticising the games press who are simultaneously harassing and abusing women. Many of these people have a history of attacking women. Their main intention is to attack women, not to improve practice across games. It’s deeply ugly stuff, and has little to do with ethics or games. It has to do with politics and hate.