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If there’s anything I’m proud of in this world, it’s the fact that I’ve had people come up to me on the street and at conventions over the years to tell me that they feel confident to call themselves a gamer because of my work, where before they were ashamed. Hearing that kind of stuff has kept me going, against the mainstream, against all odds.
So seeing 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.
I went home and was totally, utterly depressed.
So seeing 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.
I went home and was totally, utterly depressed.
She continues:
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 any mentally ill person who has 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.
Of course, shortly after posting this, people in the comments did exactly as we have all come to expect from Gamergate, they doxxed her. Not only that, but they again pushed forth the lie that Gamergate was not and is not about harassing women or people related to the gaming industry. They again said how Gamergate has not doxxed or released private information about anyone, which is a flat out lie.
You can (and should) read Day's full entry on her thoughts on GamerGate. As a result of comments like the ones seen in the above image, Day has disabled Disqus comments on her blog.
You're right Zips. I really am ****ing tired. I mean I'm a pretentious moron of an armchair critic (and I refuse to accept otherwise), but damn... These people are worse than me. Then again, maybe they're physically younger than me and I failed to notice being the naive moron that I am.
You've been SEVERELY misled by the games media - it is ENTIRELY about their corruption. That "ex-girlfriend" didn't leave him for a jounralist; she was sleeping around with 5 different men, around the SAME time, one of which was her married boss, and all evidence points towards her using it to curry favor for her inexplicably "critically acclaimed "game" " - Depression Quest, an html, i'm sorry flash, because there's any real difference in this case, flow chart about her subjective experience with depression that was used to shill for money for her as well as a PR platform to get her more attention in the industry.
It came out she also sabotaged another feminist groups game jam to promote women in gaming that was directly competing with hers, which has no judges, start date or location and the money being collected was initially going into her personal paypal account. Basically she's an unethical hypocrite and her relationship with Nathan Grayson of Rock Paper Shotgun, which they outright lied about, was denied. And yesterday Quinn accidentally outed Grayson as WORKING on the game, which he then denied, affirmed and denied all in the same panicked tweet. It was discovered he was credited in her "game" and he had written several articles 1-2 years ago about her, when he wasn't have supposed to have had ANY relationship to her by the "official story". Ooops.
After this evidence arose, there was massive censorship across the ENTIRE net for anyone talking about Zoe Quinn. To speak of what had transpired was labeled "harassment". This lead to the Streisand Effect and gamers lost their collective spaghetti at this pure horseshit.
The games journos, rather than apologizing and cleaning up their act, published a series of 10 articles, on a single day, within HOURS of each other all declaring gamers were "dead" or "over". The pieces were hateful and vitriolic and mercilessly shamed and attacked the journalists very readers for DARING to try and hold them to a higher standard. Basically replace the word "gamer" with "black" or "jew" and the rhetoric looks AWFULLY familiar.
Then, leaks came out that these journalists, ALL of them, even COMPETITORS, had a secret mailing list, and the emails were leaked, allowing everyone to see that these people collude on what games get covered, how it gets covered, and what games and developers get blacklisted, because of POLITICS, particularly sexuality and violence in games.
The journo's then became issuing slam piece after slam piece and dropped a story about a fabricated bomb threat at the IGF for one, Anita Sarkeesian, another terrible human being. The thing is, no one had heard about the threat, and to not inform your audience of a threat is, in fact, a litigious issue should anyone be injured in an attack. They made this claim, and provided no proof.
Next, the journo's began to focus their coverage on Anita Sarkeesian, the mouth piece of one Jonathan McIntosh, a "propagandist and cultural marxist" (for which he is apparently quite proud) and how she was "being harassed", which really meant the thousands of people who took offense to her videos that defamed gamers and men in general as sexist (and painted all gamers as male oppressors), culminating in a series of coordinated censorship tactics on her part with a little dose of trolling, until she let the comments on her most offensive and factually inaccurate video, where she actually outright lies regarding the game Hitman: Blood Money and it's intentions towards women and what that says about male gamers, open and then used the outrage that poured out from taking blind, broad shots at the internet to promote her kickstarter campaign, and raise about $160,000 dollars. She basically doesn't have to work as she's parlayed her liberal arts master's degree about how "there are no female heroes in games; they're all just imitating men because they use violence" (which isn't a misogynistic notion at all) she's only had for a few years into being a professional victim.
When criticized that no gamer would speak so universally badly about games, and lie on top of it, the journalists had come out with a series of pieces trumpeting the "no true scotsman fallacy" and calling her critics "exclusionist man-babies that don't want their dudebro culture to change". And then came the video of her giving a talk during her schooling where she actually admits "I'm not a gamer, I had to learn a lot about this subject while studying it, I'm not a gamer, killing people, blowing off heads, that's just gross!" Because virtual violence is real violence, as we all know! SIIIIIIIIIGH.
And we've spend the last 2 months fighting these peoples constant stream of hate speech against gamers of BOTH sexes, genders and every race you can think of. Research #NotYourShield - We're not all white hetero cis-males, and to make that claim is not only racist, sexist and bigoted, but also an epic fallacy that somehow that invalidates criticism.
These people hide behind professional provocateurs and professional victims and take every opportunity to lie and twist facts to spin their narrative to deflect from their own unethical behavior, because they'll be damned if they lose their meal ticket AND their culture war now. Except we, the Gamers, the REAL victims, have been contacting these peoples sponsors and linking them to these articles and to these peoples hateful, bigoted, INSANE sounding tweets and they are pulling away from them, costing them money and they are getting very, VERY agitated.
The Escapist and MMO-Champion have great threads on the subject with time lines and links to all the evidence and explanation videos. Sargon of Akkad and the Internet Aristocrat, two entertaining, but very clever YouTube personalities have quite a bit of info on all the people involved. Sargon is particularly known for his obsession with truth and his actual job is research, which he does to reveal the con-artists and disingenuous faux-intellectuals who are trying to harm society with their lunacy. I'd suggest you go and have a look.
Remember to ask yourself: Does it make ANY sense that Gamers wouldn't want women, or ANYONE, for that matter to play or make games? Does it really? From an anti-male "dudebro's run the world and oppress us in the 1st world" perspective, it might. But Gamers are always looking for the next best title, and better players, so why the FUCK would we exclude ANYONE, let alone WOMEN?
I stopped actually reading after his first sentence which is already bullshit. I wasn't aware that being a decent human being meant you were "left leaning." Also, I graduated with an Accounting degree and roll my eyes at hipsters.
But as for other points:
Quinn earned no favorable coverage as a result of her sex life. That myth has been shot down time and time again. His mention of HTML/Flash isn't even a point, it's just this person slipping in an unnecessary jab against Quinn. She also did not sabotage any game jam.
You know what? Read this:
It literally covers just about every bullshit point in that quote. These are all points of discussion that these people have brought up time and time again and have been shot down time and time again as being complete fabrications or spin.
That's how bad they are. That's literally at the point we're at. When your movement has become such a broken record that there are lists already set up to refute (with references and articles) anything you have to say, maybe it's time to just pack it in.