Trench Warfare: A Reflection on my Fight for Truth Sophia Narwitz Follow Aug 16 · 13 min read

I’m not an easy person to like. I’m both overly snarky and abrasive; two traits that don’t exactly combine well when growing into a public figure. I understand that I’m divisive, but I’m not unrealistic about myself either. I am who I am. For better or worse, I’m just kind of me. Nothing I do is an act. I openly express my opinions, and I report on stories I think are worth sharing.

When it comes to the things I’m opinionated on, I can readily admit that I’m far from infallible. My point of view on various subjects are definitely open to critique, but hey, that’s also the nature of opinions! At least I know that mine aren’t immune from being misguided.

My reporting on the other hand, is a whole other matter.

I walked onto this scene less than two years ago, but I didn’t publish anything of worth until just last Spring. Yet even then, when looking back, those first opinion pieces of mine are poorly written (I was rusty AF), but worst of all, they’re too inflammatory.

If I was to say I had one regret since starting my journey on this road, it’s those first few articles. More so now as I think the websites I published on kinda suck. Sorry, but OneAngryGamer has devolved into racist trash, and the less said about The Daily Caller, the better.

As for the pieces they hosted, I still stand by my core arguments, but arguments exist to try and win people over, and I used language and terms that won’t exactly bring newcomers over to my side of thinking. At that point they stopped being anything other than reactionary bunk, and I don’t want to be known as a reactionary, so I began improving how I wrote. It‘s been a journey, and I’ve had stumbles, but improvement is ALWAYS on my mind. Part of this is because journalism is a passion of mine.

When I joined the Army at 18 I did so wanting to become a journalist. My military occupational specialty (MOS) was 46R, AKA, Public Affairs Broadcaster. As a teen I wanted to do documentary filmmaking and other types of reporting, and becoming a broadcaster very much scratched that itch.

But then, as many of you now know, things fell apart. I became disabled, was medically retired from the military with full benefits, and I spent much of my 20s living in a pit of despair. I was a nobody, and I hid from the world. But let’s not dwell on that, it’s in the past, and I’ve since allowed myself to begin improving.

My point is that I’ve always yearned to write and report on stories that matter.

Last August I published my first expose’. Looking back, like much of my early work, the writing sucks, and it was loaded with buzzwords that I think ultimately belittle the piece, but the meat of what I revealed was solid.

The article was about turmoil facing Arkane Studios and the battle they face from inside and outside forces. The latter being the corporate force of Zenimax that is stifling creativity, and the former being far left ideologues who began making life tough for other developers on the team.

I worked with sources at the studio, and I was told about how a couple of employees express views AT WORK about how white men suck. This has created a somewhat tense working environment given such toxicity effects those who must constantly hear it. Not helping matters was that my sources disclosed how they must hide their own right leaning political views lest they be attacked, or worse, lose out on career opportunities. It is so bad they no longer feel safe following certain voices on Twitter, so they hide their own beliefs, never allowing themselves to be open with their thoughts and opinions; a sad reality when one considers how their co-workers can act without consequence.

Also revealed during this piece was that Arkane was struggling to get projects green-lit after a Prey 2 was shot down and Dishonored was forcibly shelved after a pitch for a third game was denied. With no projects officially permitted, members of the team began to work on Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot and other content within the series.

All of this would be officially announced by mainstream game media in March, with no credit ever attributed to me for breaking the news more than half a year earlier.

I was swept under the rug.

The only ‘reward’ I got for my reporting was the mud stuck to my face after a few journalists began to drag me. Kirk McKeand of VG24/7 went so far as to misgender me, and he even liked Tweets by other individuals who suggested I was a self-loather; a common insult for any trans person who leans ever-so-slightly to the right.

It sucked being dragged, but the experience helped toughen me up and I took comfort in the truth of my coverage. That story was my first real news break and in time, much of it was proven verifiably true. Arkane’s name is attached to Wolfenstein Youngblood and the VR title Cyberpilot, and there’s no way I pulled it out of my ass that the studio was working with Machine Games on the series. Yet to journalists, that didn’t matter. They ignored facts and decided to attack me in an effort to discredit the news I broke, something that only became more common as my career progressed.

In April I reported on Laura Kate Dale and the outrage bait her writing relies on, but more bafflingly, her ability to fail upwards even as she continually tells obvious lies.

Here’s an except from my piece:

In 2013 Laura claimed she was “completely dehumanized” on stage during a live Xbox One event in London. Claiming that comedian Fraser Millward referred to her as “he,” “this one,” “it,” and “thing,” or as Laura phrased it in a Tweet:

Immediately the press jumped in, and websites like The Daily Dot, Pink News, Kotaku, and others made it out as if Fraser was a transphobe, who once again in the words of Laura Dale, had “dehumanized her.” The problem? None of that happened. Fraser Millward at one point had referred to her as “this person,” something Laura deemed as misgendering. Ignoring that “this person” is gender neutral and a phrase countless people use for a variety of reasons, Laura took it as an attack, then made up that he had also called her “it,” “he,” and “thing,” and slandered him online. She later retracted her claims in a joint statement with Fraser, the whole event was eventually swept under the rug, and Laura was able to continue her track towards becoming a game journalist.

Can you imagine what would happen if I made up something that was even a fraction of the lie that hers was? The media would crucify and destroy me, yet Laura gets a pass. So I reported on just that.

The media reaction was predictable.

Refusing to come to terms with her falsehoods I was instead thrown under the bus by journalists who rushed to her defense. It was said I wrote a hit piece on a trans journalist. Never mind that I MYSELF AM TRANS. As would become normal, nothing in my article was ever proven wrong, and it was the comment section that was thrown in my face. Words said by people who are not me were used to paint me as a villain. Hilariously, this same journalist admit that his own articles get horrid comments, it’s just they get moderated.

“Rules for thee but not for me.”

Shortly after that, I wrote another massive expose’ about author Blake Harris, and the abuse he received from game and tech journalists after he published an article discussing a major story they had botched. The response to my reporting was surprisingly quiet, but behind the scenes my head was spinning.

Blake had shared with me private messages between him and other journalists. Not all of it got reported on, and what I could write about was done under the expectation that I don’t reveal the names of those involved. Obviously I respected these wishes, but the things I saw only proved just how busted this industry has become.

A sentiment that would only grow tenfold as I began work on my next major story.

On July 14th I published an article I had been working on for months. This was about the failed Zoe Quinn Kickstarter in which she received $85,000 and which was pitched on the promise that the game was only a few months from completion. Multiple years later is has yet to come out, and backers of the project haven’t even gotten an official update in an entire year.

Unlike other Quinn articles that pop up, I was thorough and fair. I reached out to as many members of the game’s dev team that I could, and surprisingly I received some responses. I was told the game is a failed project, but that the people working on it don’t view it as a scam. Everyone was paid on time and by the book. One source told me some off the record information that didn’t paint a good picture of Quinn, but the game itself wasn’t a scam.

As I would write in my piece:

I know a lot of folks are quick to label Zoe Quinn a scammer, and in some areas of her life she very well may be, but in regards to the FMV game I think the actual answer is far more simple. Zoe Quinn is the beneficiary of a gaming media too unwilling to provide scrutiny towards certain individuals. She has ties to a lot of journalists and they aren’t going to make her accountable. It is my belief that she set out to make a legitimate game, but fell way over her head. She didn’t properly budget the title, and she made too many late term decisions to increase the project’s scope. The switch to mobile was probably the final nail in the coffin, and with whatever funds she had available, they just couldn’t make it work. My assumption is that the cost of finishing the title is still much too high, and she’d just rather not devote her own funds to the project. That doesn’t make her a scammer, it just makes her irresponsible, and given the circumstances surrounding the project, a bad developmental lead.

The bit about the media stems from the fact that while in the Kickstarter phase, her project was boosted by Kotaku, Metro, AV Club, The Daily Dot, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, RockPaperShotgun, Kill Screen, Logo, Inverse, Polygon, and Birth Movies Death, just to name a few. On top of that, some of those articles were written by journalists with close ties to Quinn.

One such individual was Andrew Todd of Birth Movies Death. Him and Zoe have hung out on multiple occasions, and she’s even said publicly that she loves him. Yet his article offers no disclosure of friendship. A serious breach of ethics as he essentially told his readers to support her project.

Not helping kill the incestuous image of modern game journalism is that not a single website mentioned above has since reported on the status of the game. They were all willing to boost her project and help her raise funds, but they don’t give a flying fuck about the consumers who gave her money and have yet to receive a game, let alone an update as to its status, something backers are beginning to get annoyed about.

As expected, I would only get attacked by the press for my reporting. This even resulted in me getting an email from a very well known individual. They called me things I am not, and there appeared to be a threatening undertone to the entire message, an uncalled for assemblage of words given nothing I wrote was false. Notice how I’m called a liar and a conspiracy theorist, yet these same people can’t debunk my work. You’d think it’d be easy if I was just making stuff up. In fact, Jim Sterling would inadvertently confirm the soundness of my reporting not too long ago.

But somehow I’m the baddie for informing consumers what happened to the game. That I’m simply not “permitted” to write about certain topics without being attacked certainly says a lot. I think my Tweet tonight said it best:

I reported on a failed Kickstarter game where consumers gave a creator 85 grand for a project that’s missed every deadline, and backers have now not been updated on its whereabouts in a YEAR. Yet I got dragged by media folk for looking into and reporting on it… makes ya think.

Everything regarding how the press has treated me came to a head a couple weeks ago when I broke the news about the Entertainment Software Association data leak. This is the story about how the ESA doxxed over 2000 journalists, industry insiders, streamers, and others.

It’s a huge story, and the fallout will be felt for years. The ESA faces lawsuits, E3 is going to have issues next year, and that’s only just scratching the surface. Yet to the media, I was once again the villain. They’ve even tried sweeping the fact that I broke the news under the rug. ResetEra has even banned me as a source.

Since breaking the ESA data leak I’ve been labeled ‘alt-right’, a ‘conspiracy theorist’, a ‘harasser’, and it’s even been suggested that I purposefully broke the story when I did so that everyone would get doxxed. All things that ignore reality, but this toxic and incestuous industry just doesn’t care. I point out their flaws, but I’m not one of them, so I am someone to be destroyed.

As I’ve recounted more times than I’d like, I was scrambling to get the document pulled off the E3 website. I called and emailed the ESA, contacted multiple journalists and industry insiders (including an enemy of mine at Vice), talked to a lawyer, and I even waited to publish the story until the webpage had been pulled.

In an effort to be as transparent as possible, I showed proof of every phone call, text, DM, and email. I tried damn hard to contain the story, but the reality is that no matter what I did, I was going to be attacked, which I think kicks the door wide open as to how this industry operates.

This month is the fifth anniversary of Gamergate, it also marks my one year anniversary of being a game journalist. While I had written about games beforehand, I count my Arkane expose’ as my first real moment of journalism. Everything else before that had been opinion pieces.

It’s fitting that it all lines up this way, because it has been an eye opening year to say the least. I was already pro-Gamergate before I came onto the scene, but the things I now know that I can’t report on (info revealed off the record), my own experiences with other journalists, and even the way I’ve seen friends get mistreated, only reinforce the notion that modern journalism is broken.

There’s an expectation that people on this side of the sand always remain strong. It often feels like we can’t publicly waver, or even show weakness for the briefest of seconds. But behind the scenes people struggle. Many months ago I spoke for hours with a high profile individual as they contemplated suicide. I’ve witnessed others retreat into solitude as the weight of the industry becomes too much to bear. Another person who has become almost a best friend is leaving gaming entirely because it’s eating them alive. I’m watching in real time as passion gets sucked out from those who love this medium.

Meanwhile, ideologues who seemingly hate everything about it, and who see game journalism as nothing more than a space to push their own brand of activism are reaping the benefits as they publicly tarnish anyone who disagrees.

I laugh publicly as I’m labeled “bootlicker”, “self-loather”, “terf”, “conspiracy theorist”, and “alt-right”, but deep down, it stings. I’m not supposed to admit that of course. I‘m expected to be strong. I‘m expected to stand tall. I‘m expected to let every lie bounce off me. And yeah, I crack jokes, and I poke fun, because this stuff is ridiculous, but it does build up. And saddest of all is that I don’t even have it that bad. Not when compared to others.

I won’t toss names around, but think of how those in this circle get absolutely slandered. Google their name and you see some of the worst terms under the sun associated with them. And it pains them. Deep within the eyes of those you look up to, is sadness.

No one wants to see behind the curtain, but here I am holding it wide open, and the scene that’s been hidden is ugly. This industry is toxic and it affects people more than you may think.

I’m an emotionally closed-off person. But it hurts to see the joy get sucked out of those who face attacks on the daily. The allusion to war with my title of this piece is very fitting. Adults with a sparkle in their eye head overseas only to return a husk of their former self, and for as hyperbolic as it sounds, the same thing is happening in this medium.

Many writers rally behind ending harassment, but they are often harassers themselves. They attempt to kill careers with their keyboards, bludgeoning good folks to death simply for having a different outlook on life. Just look at how Colin Moriarty, Chris Maldonado, Tim Soret, or even myself, is covered by the media.

Journalists lie, slander, and abuse those they disagree with, and they bury the hard work of those they dislike, only to act like old news is new once enough time has passed so that the original source is forgotten.

Gamergate may be five years old, but if my first year as a journalist has taught me anything, it’s that nothing has changed since the movement began. But for as hard as it can sometimes be, I’m not going anywhere.

This past year I’ve made great strides to improve the quality of my work, and I’ve yet to hit my peak. So lie about my intentions, slander my name, and call me every horrid thing under the sun, because all you’re doing is motivating me to do what I do.

Or as Howard Beale proclaimed in Network, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”