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An open letter from a #GamerGate supporter to @CBCnews

To whom it may concern,



Hello. I am Lum and I am a gamer. I've worked in the industry for 4 years as a QA technician. The pay was shoddy, the work mindless and the respect non-existent but I didn't care. I was working in an industry I loved.

More than working on them though, I love talking games. What games bring something new, like Bioware's games that give the player access to a homosexual romance option and whether they feel like a convincing gay character or simply a change of voice actor and texture. What games explore a thought or feeling, such as Limbo and Dark Souls. Both evoke a sense of loneliness and of a hostile world, but do they arrive at the same goal via the same methods? What storylines are left which have not been covered, and are there any differences in portrayal in women in gaming? Games where you play as a male and get the girl are dime a dozen, but while there are hundreds of examples of games where you play as a strong female lead, such as Tomb Raider or Metroid Prime, but how many are there where she gets the guy?



These are all conversations I have had with women. I value what they can tell me about these issues, opening me up to challenges and experiences I never thought about in games before. One woman very dear to me recommended to me The Last Remnant, a JRPG from SquareEnix because it was her favourite game. I tried it out, the combat was incredibly clunky and almost entirely based on dice rolls. I thought it was kinda.. crap. I kept playing though, and here is where it gets odd. Whether intentional or through clunky translation I can never know, but there was a massive subtext of homosexuality between two of the main characters. I wound up forgetting about the slow loading, the stop-start gameplay, the incredibly convoluted crafting system, it didn't matter. I wanted to see how the story of these two guys ended. That was all that mattered to me, and is something I never would have experienced were it not for her input.



I mention all this as I wanted to give you a bit of background about myself. I am also pro gamergate. To the outsider, this stance and the paragraph above couldn't be written by the same person. What I think is very important is the reason I wanted to be a part of the movement. It was the tale of The Fine Young Capitalists, a charity organisation designed to get more women involved in gaming by providing them with a development team to flesh out and sell their idea to the public. During their early stages they were forced to the edge of closure, and turned to the gaming media to ask them to help save their work from oblivion. They went to 3 different gaming journalist sites, and were turned away by them all. This is what made me want to be a part of gamergate. I don't want anyone to have their voices taken from them, to be left alone to die with no one to help. I want a media where everyone can feel safe turning to, where the personal politics of a journalist hold no sway over what they report. This is the goal of so many of gamergate.



This brings me on to your coverage of gamergate. I felt that while smaller gaming journalists would cover only one side of the narrative (many of their jobs now depend on this narrative) I was sure those larger news organisations would show fairness in their coverage. I was sure that both sides would have an equal voice, but instead we have only seen the views of those opposed to gamergate. On your coverage, no mention was given to us who want better standards, to those who want people to never have to suffer in silence. Please do not get me wrong, in no way shape or form do I want a one sided narrative. The harassment that people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian suffered through was deplorable, and saddening. My heart goes out to those harassed, it truly does. I may disagree very strongly about their opinions, but in no way do I want them to have to deal with what they did. Calling these actions for the bullying that they are is the right thing to do, and I applaud you for it, but I have to seriously question your ethics regarding your coverage of the other side of gamergate.



No mention was given to the women who are such strong figureheads of the movement, such as Liz f or @_icze4r. No mention was given to Oliver Campbell, a man who created the hashtag #notyourshield to show that our movement was made of all people, men, women, black people, asian people, hispanic people, gay people, trans people, all voicing their support for better ethics in gaming journalism. No mention was given to the subsequent attacks on gamergate supporters, and this is the reason I am writing this letter.



Through one sided coverage of gamergate such as that which you have published people who are outside the core of the controversy have become involved. They think that all we want is to kick women out of gaming, to remove all that they have done and will continue to do. They think we are misogynist. I can't blame them for this. They can only have an opinion based on what they are provided by the media. I have no problem with people disliking me, to be honest there's a lot about me to hate. The problem is that now we have a participant of gamergate who was threatened, harassed and hurt in his own home. We had people who feel justified in calling SWAT, or other law enforcement, to prominent figures within gamergate. People who feel justified in their actions because... well... they're fighting misogynists, right? They are threatening, doxxing, silencing misogynists. Who can fault them for standing up for an entire gender?



The problem is, I am not a misogynist. The vast majority of people who are a part of gamergate are not misogynist. But so long as main stream media such as yourselves continue to claim that all gamergate want is women out of gaming, then that is all I am in their eyes. So long as our voices are not heard, all I am is a misogynist. All I am is to be hated. All I want from the media is that all voices can be heard, it's my reason for joining gamergate. I don't care about the damage that has been done, I care that going forward all voices can be heard.



My name is Lum, I am against harassment of any person, and I no longer want ethics in gaming journalism. I want ethics in journalism.

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