I work in the Gaming Industry, and I do support #gamergate. I don’t claim to have read it all, and I sure as hell object to any threats, but what I read on twitter is mostly quite based.

I have been critizising modern feminism for quite some time now.

The Gamasutra Article was well..stupid? Offensive? Let’s not go there.



That said, I want to write a bit about the gaming industry. Most of the people working there are gamers. We love what we are doing and we are working together with people that love the same things. Being as old as I am, my first job in the industry reminded me a lot of my first LAN party.

There are a few occasions where we meet, the GDC, E3, here in Germany the Gamescom, in Korea the G-STAR. Some conference around the world. We meet each other. We know each other. We party. That even extends to gaming journalists. Quite a few of them worked in the PR departments of the publishers.

So, while I can understand that there is a conflict of interest if one writes an article about her boyfriends new game, the claim to disclose all relationships in the industry is imho way out of proportion.

So, why is the gaming industry so quiet? Why is there almost no gaming company taking a pro gamergate stand?

Remember the shootings? I am not so sure how it was in the states, but German school shootings are almost always instantly blamed on the evil computer games.

What stand did the companies take? Right, none. We don’t have a powerful NRA behind us, any stand that we would take would be seen as proof how evil we really are.

If a company took a pro gamergate stand, the mainstream media would probably construct it in a way that XY supports threats against women. And I am not talking about gaming magazines but the normal news. We already have to struggle a lot with politics. Playing more than an hour per day? OMG, addiction! Watching 10hrs of television? No problem at all.

Would I care if women were really discriminated in our industry? Of course. I recently was part of a panel discussing cultural diversity in IT companies. It astonished me quite a bit what other IT companies face. I work in a company with some 400 employees and around 30 nationalities. Yet we experience almost no culture based problems. We all share a culture. The gaming culture. Yes, there are differences. But in our field of work the difference between a gamer and a non gamer is far bigger than the difference between a women and a man, between a muslim and an atheist, between a Korean and an American.

Even so, there are nice people and assholes working in the industry. Being a gamer is sharing some culture, and not a description of your character.

However, let me assure you, there are companies that strongly believe that gamers are our audience. We will continue to make and publish games for gamers.