Sometime last week, someone asked me in a comment here why I’ve been devoting so much time and energy to #Gamergate here on a blog that should be talking about game design. Shortly before that, Felicia Day provided me with an answer, in a clear, eloquent story describing how the scandal is affecting her. I’m clearly biased personally, because I have had a huge crush on Felicia forever to the degree that I would probably spontaneously turn into a 13-year-old fangirl if I ever met her, but its a beautiful, nuanced piece that describes her attempts to get past the paranoia that recent events have brought into her life.

[S]eeing another gamer on the street used to be an auto-smile opportunity, or an entry into a conversation starting with, “Hey, dude! I love that game too!” Me and that stranger automatically had something in common: A love for something unconventional. Outsiders in arms. We had an auto-stepping stone to hurtle over human-introduction-awkwardness, into talking about something we loved together. Instant connection! But for the first time maybe in my life, on that Saturday afternoon, I walked towards that pair of gamers and I didn’t smile. I didn’t say hello. In fact, I crossed the street so I wouldn’t walk by them. Because after all the years of gamer love and inclusiveness, something had changed in me. A small voice of doubt in my brain now suspected that those guys and I might not be comrades after all. That they might not greet me with reflected friendliness, but contempt.

Minutes later, she was doxed. Some have claimed that the ‘dox’ was just the address for her agent – I genuinely don’t know, although speaking for experience, pointing that out usually just acts as an invitation for the doxers to try harder, and it doesn’t matter that much, since it had the intended effect of spooking everyone. Die-hard gamergaters were quick to point out that you can’t prove that anyone who spoke for #gamergate did it, and there’s a good chance that a third party troll was behind her doxing, much as one probably was behind my own as well as that of many others, pro- and anti-gamergate.

But by no means is that guarunteed: the initial response to her post on KiA and 8chan was reactionary and vicious, particularly given her writing was a careful, quiet attempt at outreach. Lord knows, there are individuals inside of #gamergate who aren’t averse to that sort of shitty action – after all, the individuals who originated the hashtag on Zoe Quinn and Anita’s shitty treatment are still ensconched within. And the leaderless, organization-less structure of the organization means that everyone inside the hashtag is doing what they think is right, based on gut instinct. And if Gamergate is teaching anything, it’s teaching that a lot of people have terrible gut instincts.

But that’s not the depressing part. The depressing part is the number of #GamerGate participants who earnestly believe that Felicia Day has merely bought into the media hype that #Gamergate is actually about harassment. They think that Felicia freakin’ Day is somehow ignorant of what’s going on on the ground floor of the games industry. A couple of people called her not a ‘real gamer’, with noted Youtube personality Sargon of Akkad leading the way. Yes, in the tweet below, he’s challenging Felicia ‘the Guild’ Day’s gaming cred.

@tha_rami@feliciaday Strange that she calls herself a gamer given that she has taken an anti-#GamerGate or #NotYourShield stance. — Sargon of Akkad (@Sargon_of_Akkad) October 22, 2014

Yes, apparently some #Gamergate participants now believe that you can’t be a gamer without signing the #gamergate loyalty pledge or something. But Felicia was not fooled into being scared by an oppressive media voice. She described herself where the fear came from – and that was her even relatively minor interactions with the hashtag.

I have not said many public things about Gamer Gate. I have tried to leave it alone, aside from a few @ replies on Twitter that journalists have decided to use in their articles, siding me against the hashtag. Why have I remained mostly silent? Self-protection and fear…. I have been terrified of inviting a deluge of abusive and condescending tweets into my timeline. I did one simple @ reply to one of the main victims several weeks back, and got a flood of things I simply couldn’t stand to read directed at me. I had to log offline for a few days until it went away. I have tried to retweet a few of the articles I’ve seen dissecting the issue in support, but personally I am terrified to be doxxed for even typing the words “Gamer Gate”. I have had stalkers and restraining orders issued in the past, I have had people show up on my doorstep when my personal information was HARD to get. To have my location revealed to the world would give a entry point for a few mentally ill people who have fixated on me, and allow them to show up and make good on the kind of threats I’ve received that make me paranoid to walk around a convention alone. I haven’t been able to stomach the risk of being afraid to get out of my car in my own driveway because I’ve expressed an opinion that someone on the internet didn’t agree with. HOW SICK IS THAT? I have allowed a handful of anonymous people censor me. They have forced me, out of fear, into seeing myself a potential victim.

Yes, someone who has in the past SHRUGGED OFF restraining orders and stalkers as kind of old hat – this person felt the need to silence her opinions, based on replying to a tweet. I know of what she speaks. I’ve been making MMOs for my entire career. Early MMO communities were not very nice places. This includes a stint on Shadowbane, which had a playerbase that… well, let’s just say that the most hardcore SB players were pure red meat eaters and quick to anger. And nothing I’ve ever experienced compared to the bullying and harassment I got when I tried to reach out to the gamergate mob and suggest a way for them to … well, actually DO something regarding ethics in journalism. Yeah, that’s the treatment I got for trying to get them to BE MORE EFFECTIVE.

You know why more attempts at outreach and conversation with #gamergate don’t happen? That’s fucking why. They see what happens to the ones who try.

Anyway, it turns out Felicia’s fears about being more vocal were not unfounded.

It is probably true that most people in the #gamergate movement genuinely oppose harassment and bullying, and truly believe that there aren’t agents acting on their behalf who are engaging in these tactics. Even if you accept this to be true (and I have a very hard time believing this based on even casually browsing KiA and 8chan), there is literally no doubt that #GamerGate-the-hashtag is, at this point, utterly toxic. #GamerGate-the-hashtag is about harassment and bullying – people constantly flinging it, denying it, decrying it, blaming others for it and defending #GamerGate’s right to exist despite it. By comparison, almost no time is actually spent talking about actual events of journalistic ethics in games, and the times that it does come up is based on penny-ante bullshit, or is trying to claim that feminist views in games journalism represents ‘corruption’ somehow.

No matter which side of the fence you stand, you’re liable to get a riverful of shit thrown your way if you say anything even remotely interesting to anyone. Most souls wiser than I have decided just to stay the fuck away from the topic altogether, much the way you would avoid the bad side of town. This included press for the longest time, and still includes devs and publishers. No one wants to stumble where Intel did, and have to figure out how to apologize to half the people in an uncivil war.

A couple of nights ago, NicheGamer (a generally pro-gamergate press outlet) asked on Twitter if they should try to get more devs to speak out about (and in general, in favor) of gamergate. To which I can only say ‘good luck, dude’. #GamerGate-the-topic is a toxic swamp – or better yet, it’s an active minefield. The people who ‘belong’ to #GamerGate will try to claim that they’re not the ones burying the mines. That really matters very little to the people who have been asked to wander into the field. They might get some people who are willing to speak, but in no way will they get a representative sample of devs. Those of us who have chosen to speak (on both sides) are a little bit crazy, and made crazier having to deal with it.

I made a quick list. There are literally 3 dozen people – almost all game developers – who have, either on Facebook, email or in person (usually at work) come up to me and said some variation of ‘Thanks for saying all the things I want to say. I would say it myself but, you know, I have a wife and kids would really not like to set myself up as a target.”

Some of these people mentioned they are unwilling or cautious to even ‘like’ tweets or facebook updates.

There are literally two (2) people – both game developers, who have come to me and said, “Dude, you’re way wrong on this. And I totally want to say this on my blog, but you know, wife, kids, being a target….” Note, I’m not saying these 36/2 proportions match the opinions of devs (people tend to fill their friends list with like-minded people, and most people are adverse to just coming up to a friend and saying ‘dude, your writing is terrible’). What I’m trying to say is that #gamergate-the-event is seen as a horrible, toxic minefield for anyone thinking of entering if from either side.

Why am I posting about it then? Well, because I already fell into the tar pit. So as long as I’m already down here, I might as well give voice to a huge, voiceless part of the equation: the devs watching all this and going “for fuck’s sake, please stop. You’re hurting gaming, the thing you love. And we don’t really need your help here.”

And so its important to acknowledge one of the more subtle things lost in the catastrofuck: it’s shutting down relationships between devs and players. A lot has been made about the fact that female voices feel the need to shut down while this thing is live – I made that note myself regarding the female developers interviewed by the Escapist – but its true for all the men as well, just to a lesser degree. Developers don’t WANT to be dragged into this. They don’t want to be forced to pick sides. They don’t like having to suddenly be super-careful with every single word for fear of accidentally bringing either an army of GGers or an army of their opponents against the walls.

I’ve seen more than one dev blog or tumblr go fallow during this escapade. I’ve seen more than one dev twitter account get deleted to avoid something that’s ancient history be used against them or their employers. I’ve been told by more than one person working elsewhere that they have actual bans on talking to fans (usually just about GG, but in one case, about pretty much anything game dev related), for fear that someone says something that results in the firestorm landing on them or their studio. And all of this is tremendously sad.

And ironic, really. Because losing direct contact with the devs makes the games press even more important.

The better angels of #GamerGate are trying to clean it up. Last night, the same crew of third party assholes who doxed me previously turned on the Dox machine, and the self-appointed Harassment Patrol of #Gamergate jumped into action to try to take care of it, report it, and make it go away as best they could. Even the editor of Kotaku was forced to note that. Of course, since twitter sucks, these dox tweets were up 7 hours later. And it’s clear that #gamergate has a good idea of where it’s coming from, but no good ideas on how to stop it. (Note to #Gamergaters: as much as I disagree with you, if I had ideas, I would most certainly help).

But there’s no doubt that there are some decent people in #gamergate-the-group, and they’re trying to get the conversation about the cause that matters: ethics in games journalism.

The question remains, though: why bother? GamerGate is, as a cause, an ethos, and an organization, associated with its undeniable past – one born DIRECTLY from the harassment of Zoe Quinn and expanding to chasing several other women out of their homes or the games industry. And these women are NOT the unethical press. They are an academic and two DEVELOPERS.

So, yeah, that carries some inherent bias in the opinions of many devs. Remember, we live in a world where we get death threats for making minor balance tweaks in games. Most of us reject that this should be just the cost of video games as a career choice.

Gamergate’s not doing itself any favors, though. The voices who have claimed that by ‘harassment’ they mean ‘feminist influence’ has been rising in recent days. Return of Kings, one of the most vile and hateful sites on the internet, has in recent days posted 3 pro-GamerGate articles. Anyone who has actually ever read more than 2 articles on that site know that that’s pretty much the endorsement of the MRA hate machine. Simply put, big companies are NOT going to engage or negotiate to anyone who gets too cozy with fringe elements like that. But because GG has no real organization or structure, they have no real way to distance themselves from it, even if they were so inclined.

Even worse for those who care about ethical journalism, #gamergate-the-hashtag is now so corrupted as a brand that when they DO stumble upon something that might be worth exploring, it can now be easily discredited as a Gamergate witchhunt and ignored. It doesn’t help that most attempts to actually look into game journalism ethics have ranged from laughable to bad to the exact opposite of ethics.

Last night in an chat room, I got in an absolute screaming match with a friend of 15 years. He’s one of my best friends – like, literally, one of those people I’ve turned to at some of the darkest moments of my life, and vice versa. In that conversation, he implied Anita and Brianna as professional victims, and made the mistake of saying that all of these people claiming harassment are, effectively, making shit up or bringing it on themselves.

As someone who has actually ENDURED some of the shitriver that #gamergate-the-event is capable of dumping on someone’s head, my response was very much in all-caps. Only because the option of reaching through my monitor and throttling him wasn’t an option. I made it clear that yes, these women were probably living in terror basued just on what I’ve seen in my own minor experiences. I made it clear that YES, it’s clear that there are really assholes that big and that stupid on the internet, taking advantage of anonymity. I made it clear that no, saying that these women should just shut up and take it silently was NOT acceptable, and that setting a precedent that bullying women to silence their point of view was NOT something that should be condoned or blithely allowed. I made it clear that anybody in the cause who claims to be butthurt by Gawker bullying nerds while Zoe, Anita and Brianna are still enduring a daily river of shit from KiA and 8chan needed to stop being fucking whiny hypocrites.

I used the word FUCK a lot.

Both of us left the conversation wondering how toxic #gamergate was that it could result with us going at each other’s throats.

#Gamergate-the-event is like that. It’s a black hole of bad feelings. It’s a toxic cloud. It doesn’t matter whether you’re for it or against it, it cannot be engaged in a way that is even remotely civil or productive. Whether or not #gamergate-the-people ever purge themselves of their worst elements, #gamergate-the-event will always be about the harassment that it was born of, and the vileness that envelops anyone who engages it on either side.