A lot of you people against Gamergate talk about how the campaign is about harassment. How you’re against harassment and how, ergo, you’re against Gamergate, and how the campaign started as harassment of women. It’s a hate movement.



That’s understandable. To use the understatement of the century, harassment is bad. It is bad and it is wrong. It is badong.



But let me tell you a little something–HARASSMENT ISN’T JUST ON ONE SIDE.



I’m a game developer. Forgive me if I don’t give a whole lot of details.

One of the last projects I had been involved with had a Jewish protagonist with a mid-Holocaust setting. As a lot of people aren’t aware of the Holocaust much more than “that horrible moment when a lot of people died” or “OH BOY LET’S SHOOT SOME NAZIS” or “lol I can make jew jokes”, the purpose of the game was to give a different point of view, looking into our darkest sections of history with a set of eyes not a lot of people know of.

The entire team was looking forward to both a positive representation of a Jewish character and the opportunity to really get into the nitty-gritty of how monumentally agonizing that moment in our shared human history was.



If this was successful, we would have gone on to explore other avenues, different parts of history that could have barely gotten any mainstream media attention. Maybe the great Chinese famine of 1958-1962. The slaughter of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge Regime. Stalin’s Holodomor against Ukraine. We’ve got a whole menagerie of atrocities in our history that people simply don’t know of and need to be educated on. We had bright eyes that we could really teach a lot of people about the mistakes of our ancestors so that we could avoid the pitfalls in the future.

But, unfortunately, we never got that far.



You see, journalists found us.



The thing that really gets me about the whole “anti-Gamergate” thing is the idea that games have potential to advance as an art-form. That we need to break free from the confines of the typical identity gamers expect of us and start exploring out more. More women in games. More PoC in games. More enlightening experiences, something emotional and maybe a little troubling.

I agree wholeheartedly! Gaming is a budding art-form and we have real potential to expand as a medium. The problem is that art is inherently an offensive media, because art is about sending a message that not everyone is going to like. Either they don’t like the way it’s delivered, or they don’t like the subject matter, or they don’t like what it says.



And oh, were they offended by our little project. A game that exploited the suffering of the Holocaust, they called it.

If baffles me to this day. We were surrounded by journalists who would decry how generic gaming was becoming and how nobody would venture into risky territory, and then in the very next article they’d shame us for being exploitive and insensitive. They wanted games that explored uncomfortable subjects, and then when they see a game that explores an uncomfortable subject they call it exploitive. They talk about games that can be more than just the usual white male gun shooty bang whiz affair, and then they see our game, and…

What the fuck, guys? No, seriously, what the actual fuck?



And then came the harassment.

The biggest thing that disgusts me about internet communities is its love of vigilante-style “mob justice”.

Nash Grier makes a moronic video about what guys look for in girls, and his tumblr starts getting infested with people reblogging his dumb posts and making some sort of smart crack about how gross he is. They pat themselves on the back and chuckle.

Robin Thicke makes a moronic music video about how no means yes or something, and people start spamming his twitter with how he clearly wants it and that he really wanted it all along. They smile to themselves for a job well done.

I mean, sure, both Grier and Thicke are jackass people who did jackass things.



But what about the targets who are only guilty of “these people are making a game”?

Let’s define what harassment is: Persistent, unwanted, and aggressive pressure or intimidation. We became very familiar with this definition, because this was the default attack tactic of the offended. There was criticism, sure, we can handle criticism–you can’t make something good without criticism. But then there was outright harassment.

Tell them how offended you are, and why you’re offended about it, and how horrible you are for offending them. Get your friends to tell them how offended they are as well. Write long posts about how offensive this is, and get everyone to reblog/retweet/rewhatever it.

And then do it again. And again. And again. And again.

But then, simply for the sake of “justice”, why not go a little further?

Dig up their phone number to tell it to them in person. Dig up their family’s phone numbers and tell them how terrible their son is for offending them. Dig up the number to their local police station and report them for offending you (and also make up a legal threat or two). Write hundreds of articles across hundreds of different sites for how offensive you are as a person for this and how offensive your game is.

Push. And push. And push. And push. And keep pushing. And keep pushing. And then push some more.

Push until the team breaks up, unable to deal with the constant barrage.



And then dismiss it as either “white male tears” or “it’s just words on the internet”. Of course they can’t be hurt by it…at least, as long as they’re not on your side. Words only hurt if you’re personally involved, apparently.



Congratulations, you have officially harassed someone and ruined their life.

Nobody is going to report it because they’re not involved with Kotaku and/or not a high-profile woman. You, your family, and friends will suffer in silence, and will feel it again whenever some wise-ass three months down the line thinks it would be funny to get in one final kick with one more message.



I don’t know if anyone even remembers our game anymore or that it was even being developed. I don’t even know if it IS still being developed. I ended up leaving the team (and the country) when I found a package at my doorstep with a photograph of me cut into pieces and a note saying “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE, JEW-HATER”.



I support Gamergate because when journalists say they want more representation in games, they shouldn’t have some knee-jerk reaction about how offensive the game is for actually representing something sensitive.

I support Gamergate because independent developers should be free to explore questionable matters in a budding artistic medium without fear of having their project destroyed because it doesn’t comply with someone else’s views on what a game should be.

I support Gamergate because I know that if I revealed any more details about the project, who I am, or who I worked with, I would be instantly shot down and nobody would care about it.



I’m just a silent voice, who can’t do anything more than be anonymous and write up a giant sob-story about how life was so mean to him. But I sincerely pray that those people who support Gamergate fight to the bitter, bitter end.

And that, maybe, somewhere, someone who thinks Gamergate is only about harassment will maybe have a few seconds thoughts.

Maybe somewhere, someone who thinks the only harassment comes from Gamergate supporters will start wondering what else they were never told.

Because as long as we aren’t able to hold journalists accountable for their propoganda and their agendas, no developer is truly safe to pursue their dream of gaming as an artistic medium.