You often hear games conferences described as industry Christmas, seeing many friendly faces for the one time a year you get to see them. I think it’s why there’s as much buzz as there is around them, more than the actual conference or games really. As Christmas or any other holiday does, it affects people in different ways, and usually for me, it’s an uplifting, energizing experience.

The conferences I’ve been to this past month, and probably the ones for the next few, were somber and claustrophobic. It felt like people found out before I did that I only had a few more years to live. I was walking a procession of my own funeral.

My decision to leave the games industry is seen as something between giving up and a loss. I made my decision based on what made sense to me: the industry wasn’t providing enough sustenance and support to continue receiving abuse in its stead. Moving away from mainstream games culture and focusing on the edges of play allows me to create and write about topics I’ve been interested but wouldn’t really capture a large audience. It’s a healthy move.

What I’ve realized during my time engaging with the online community surrounding games media and development is that minoritized voices often only get visibility and resources when they are talking about their pain. This is particularly true for people who aren’t men, who on top of doing good work, they must put themselves out there enough for hordes to harass them. As is seen with turf wars with games journalism, people are looking for personalities in their media, and the technologies we converse on emphasize these tendencies. In a way, social media is reality TV the audience gets to heavily participate in and shape.

By continually engaging with the people of hate campaigns, people within the games community and industry reify this TV dynamic, often without the consent of the people who will be affected by it. Those on social media who feel like they have little political power are ultimately organizing in the same way these harassers are by just lashing out with memes and Twitter shaming tactics, which exacerbate the issue. This line of thinking seems to come from a couple of factors from what I can see: the ‘logical’ one of if society can see that people in the hate campaign are awful people, they don’t get credence, and the selfish one, that they want to do something but can’t bring themselves to a level where they feel like they can make a real difference. There’s a lot that goes into these two feelings, but simply, society already sees games culture as aberrant and horrible, and therefore doesn’t need to see it get worse to be convinced, and this entire conflict isn’t about gamers and wanting to feel like you’re a good person, it’s about the continual victimization and marginalization of minoritized people in games. It was in the beginning, always is, and yet there hasn’t been any real, healthy effort to counter this. Instead, people waste their energy dealing with people who can’t be convinced, and make bloodsport of it.

I say a “healthy effort” for a reason, because a part of this reality TV aspect of social issues is how fan culture creates personas out of people and groups and cheers them to battle against each other. We’ve created idols of victimhood out of people who are much more than their pain. And when we stop to talk about it, of course we don’t feel and think this way. In our actions however, there is an encouragement for victims to become martyrs incarnate for public catharsis by constantly engaging with the antagonists of the show, or even having in-group drama to shake things up for a boring month. Attention, connections, and resources goes to the ones most visibly being attacked in a very zero-sum manner, where if you aren’t also being cut apart and challenged in public along with your usual work, the industry and community very quickly forgets you.

Don’t believe me? Look up the name of any person now campaigned to continue heading into the abuse to somehow save games in the media. Try to find pieces that critically engage with the work they do, and you will see what I mean. Because the crowds can only talk about the drama and pain, and not about how or why this person matters to them, minoritized people in games will always just be chess pieces for dominant culture’s side of the diversity game. I’ve been doing what I do for over 3 years, and I can count on one hand how many times a major publication or conference asked me to talk about my work, because the dominant narrative will only let us exist if we are victims first, then humans. These past few months, 99% of the interview and speaking requests I’ve gotten were to retell my stories of pain. And how the community reacts to hate campaigns plays straight into that; instead of engaging the people who can actually change things (heads of companies, VCs, activist organizations), the community goes into a turf war with anonymous trolls more experienced at harassing people. How many times have you read that unlike the past, these particular past few months have been getting worse, not better? I am more than my pain. I am more than my pain.

I’ve already wrote pieces on how you can help; they are not the dramatic displays that social media encourages you to do, but they are things that actually work. To be honest, I throw up my hands in the air now when it comes to how little people actually turn to do these things. I feel like the community WANTS the social drama, you WANT the reality TV. Which has caused me a lot of pain these past few weeks to realize, with how few people in my life have offered substantial support these past few months. If you want to change your behaviors to actually help people, talk about how they matter to you outside of their ‘bravery.’ Quick tips:

1: Have you actually actively engaged with this person’s work? Have you not only experienced their work, but thought about it past a gut reaction? Can you explain to another person why this person’s work is unique outside of them being a minoritized person? If you answered no to any of these, you need to go and respect that person you claim to be fighting for and actually engage their work so you can appreciate them as a whole individual instead of just a icon for martyrdom.

2: Stop goading hate campaigners, because the end result is more harassment for already victimized people. If you want to show the public a different face of games, show them the work of people who condemn these cultish and discriminatory aspects of games culture. You are not painting a different image about games by making harassers and criminals resort to even more extreme tactics. Instead, publicly engage with the work you respect, whether it is to agree with it or criticize it. You don’t undermine them if you genuinely want to add onto their work from your perspective, assuming you’ve taken the effort to critically grapple with it.

3: Don’t assume that because someone has more followers on social media than you that they are somehow set for life. Many of us are broke, don’t have experience that institutions respect enough to give us jobs, are expected to give a lot of free labor for the community, suffer from multiple oppressions. A tweet is nice but gone from my timeline within a couple of minutes. If you care about a person and really want to be involved with their safety and well-being, take more than a couple seconds to reach out to them. Always respect boundaries, of course. At this point, however, the silence from so many people when I am struggling with pain is crushing.

I am more than my pain. I am more than my pain. I am more than my pain.

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