Sexism in Gaming

Sexism is a huge issue within the gaming world, from girls being harassed in online video games, to women working in the industry being treated unfairly. It’s nothing new that a woman might get a lower salary than a man for the same job, and might have a harder time acceding to higher positions, but there is another level of unfair treatment towards women within the video gaming culture.

Recently, a controversy known as GamerGate has brought a lot of attention to the unfair treatment of women in this culture. A female indie game developer named Zoe Quinn had allegedly had scandalous affairs with video game journalists as a way to get them to give her game better reviews. These allegations were made by an ex-boyfriend of Quinn’s, which could call in to question how true the claims were. However, whether or not she had illicit affairs, or whether or not she did it to earn her game ratings it didn't deserve isn't the real issue that was brought into the light from this scandal. At least not the one I'd like to talk about. The problem lies within the reaction of the gaming community to this alleged scandal.

Quinn became the target of a flood of hatred. Hate mail isn't news when someone does something disliked by the public, but Quinn was the target of violent threats. Threats of rape and even death were sent her way. Her personal information was being spread around so that more people could join in, and the privacy of her and her family was being completely violated. Sadly, this sort of abuse can really happen to anyone, especially when the internet is involved, but I think this case exemplifies sexism in the gaming culture.

A developer having strangely close relationships with journalists and publishers is not a new thing. Normally the relationship between a company’s marketers and other outside publishers can be interesting, because the outside publishers can make marketer’s jobs difficult, especially when the publishers or journalists don't like the product. However, when it comes to video games, it’s not at all unusual that a company would do what it could to ‘butter up’ the journalists to score an extra point on their game’s score. That could be from treating them to all sorts of nice things when the journalist comes to review the game, or it could simply be giving only certain journalists the inside look needed to write about the game before it’s released to the public. If a company thinks journalist A is going to give a better review than journalist B, the company is going to invite A to come check out the game and write about it, as opposed to B. It’s logical from the company’s standpoint, if not a bit unethical.

So why was it suddenly such a big deal if Quinn attempted to get herself unfair reviews? Perhaps it was the involvement of an illicit affair tossed into the mix. If she did have an affair, however, there was no proof that it was in order to get better reviews for her game. We could argue about the ethics of her affair, but in the end, that’s her personal life, so why did it get brought into her professional life? The amount of hatred she got as a game developer was unprecedented. The leaders of companies don’t get threats of rape or death when they do something unethical to get themselves undeserved reviews. So why did Quinn? I think the issue lies with the sexist tendencies of the male gaming population. Not to pin the blame on any male gamer, but it’s undeniable that women in the gaming world get harassed more than men, and often sexually. I’ve seen it happen myself, as an online gamer.

Sexism is an issue everywhere, but it seems so extreme in the gaming community by comparison. It’s something that will hopefully change, and the gaming community becomes more main stream as years go on, and the female percentage of gamers continues to balance with the male.  What can gamer’s do to help? Treat everyone like they actually have feelings, male or female, regardless of scandalous things they've done, and stand up for those being harassed.