HARI SREENIVASAN:

Sarkeesian, in turn, has drawn heavy criticism from some gamers, and even threats of violence that led her to cancel a speech at Utah State University.

But Sarkeesian's case is only one part of a broader online assault on women in the gaming industry in recent months. It goes back to August, when an ex-boyfriend of video game designer Zoe Quinn posted an online blog. In it, he accused Quinn of sleeping with a reporter to get a positive review on one of her games.

That sparked a campaign that came to be dubbed GamerGate, highlighting perceived corruption among video game journalists. From there, GamerGate has grown to include outright harassment of women like Quinn and Sarkeesian who work in or critique the industry. Threats on Twitter even forced Brianna Wu, another game developer, to leave her Boston area home after her address was made public.

Now another campaign, Stop GamerGate 2014, is trending. It calls for the harassment to end.

And Brianna Wu joins me now to talk about these issues and the problem of harassment. She is owner and head of development at Giant Spacekat, one of the country's few female-owned video game studios.

Now, Brianna, our audience is not nearly as connected to gaming as you are, and it seems that GamerGate has different definitions for different people. How do you define it?