Conflicts Arise Over Misogyny in Gaming

Bridget Duggan and Kathryn Scavuzzo, Staff Reporter

GamerGate all started because an ex-boyfriend of Zoe Quinn, the developer of the Indie game called Depression Quest, was accused of sleeping with a video game critic to get a good review. This enraged gamers because they didn’t like the fact that there was a “lack of ethics” in gaming journalism. This idea went viral. People were posting videos and blog posts all about it. It wasn’t until Adam Baldwin tweeted with the hashtag #GamerGate that the term GamerGate was born.

Zoe Quinn and other women in the gaming industry began receiving death threats. Other women who were pointing out the misogyny in the video game industry also were receiving death threats. Many women, like Felicia Day, got “doxed,” where their private information was published on public forums. It got so bad that one female game developer, Anita Sarkeesian, was threatened to cancel her speaking gig at the University of Michigan. If she completed the event, the person threatening her claimed that s/he was going to shoot everyone at the gig.

There is great amount of problems with misogyny in the video gaming community. There need to be people to stand up and fight against the harsh attacks against these women.

Students in the MBHS community have expressed their opinions on the issue. Reuven Glezer, a member of our school’s Feminist Club, said “Gamergate is a load of b******t, because I don’t like the fact that they claim that it is about ethics in gaming, but really it is about a bunch of people who do not understand that there are now a bunch of women in an industry that was once dominated by men.”

Bree Darby, another senior at MBHS, stated that it is “disgusting that the ex-boyfriend would accuse Quinn of this when there is no proof. In a lot of fields, women are not getting the amount of recognition and appreciation they deserve.”

Ehimare Agboneni, a  student who is one of MBHS’s many gamers, said, “If what Quinn said is true, then it is crappy. Games should be fairly critiqued. But the people who were sending death threats were overreacting.” He also said that he understands that “gaming is some gamers’ livelihood. Gaming can be more than a hobby.”

An anonymous student who was a self proclaimed gamer shared that death threats are an “extreme way to react.” He also states that he sees the trend in which there is less misogyny in video games, finding that neither side is right or wrong.