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A resurgence of the infamous harassment campaign is targeting marginalized groups in a movement that mirrors broader cultural movements in the U.S. Northeastern experts say it is harming developers and games as a medium.
When legendary Canadian game studio Bioware released “Dragon Age: The Veilguard” this fall, it was supposed to be a redemption story.
After several unsuccessful releases, “The Veilguard” was a return to the studio’s roots as a purveyor of narrative-focused, single-player role playing games. The critical response was largely positive, and, at least at release, a lot of people were playing. However, even more people were talking about it, as “The Veilguard” became a lightning rod for a very vocal contingent of gamers who have started to target games they claim center diversity and progressive values.
The “anti-woke,” “anti-DEI” talking points probably sound familiar to anyone who has engaged with culture in the last few years, especially for anyone who played games in 2014 when the now-infamous Gamergate movement was launched. Gamergate was an online movement to reject feminism, diversity and progressive values in the games industry, specifically targeting women and journalists in an attempt to protect an exclusionary idea of the “gamer” identity.
Academics, journalists and internet personalities have already labeled this recent conflagration of online harassment Gamergate 2.0 for a reason: Gamergate never ended.
“That hashtag isn’t widely in use, but the behaviors and the conspiracy theory-like grift behind any of this has never really gone away and has evolved into the playbook for harassment online, cybermobs online, for far right recruitment of disenfranchised men on the internet. It has evolved and persisted,” says Fox Zarow, an assistant teaching professor of game design at Northeastern University.
The implications for the games industry should be concerning for both developers and gamers, adds Alexandra To, an assistant professor of game design at Northeastern.
“[Developers are] going to lose funding, we’re going to lose talented people because nobody is going to want to touch these topics,” To says. “It’s like that phrase ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face.’ Screaming how mad you are that there are suddenly new gender options or the option to be queer in a different way or transgender in games is somehow taking away from your ability to play yourself … is not true and you are actively discouraging people from making the things that you love and enjoy.”
The target has changed slightly –– from “feminist collusion” to “wokeism” –– but the argument behind the movement has stayed the same and found an even bigger audience. Gamergate and its latest offshoot fictionalizes the identity of “gamer” as a marginalized class of outcasts who must protect games from outsiders, says Zarow, who teaches about Gamergate.
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“In our world, there is a wheel that has turned, and culture has turned and now what were once niche spaces do contain multitudes,” Zarow says. “Those people are making games and making films and writing stories. … For some, that feels like an attack on their own little piece of the culture.”
The danger comes when those feelings are weaponized by others for political or financial purposes, Zarow adds, and the impact spills beyond the games industry into the broader cultural firmament.
There’s a reason the motivation behind Gamergate, with its exclusionary idea of protection and goal of reclaiming something from outside forces, is similar to the animating principles behind many far-right political movements. The original Gamergate became the playbook for many of those movements, and political actors like Steve Bannon have talked openly about how they learned to mobilize people from online games like “World of Warcraft.”
Echoing the words of games scholar Kishonna Grey, To says Gamergate 2.0 should be a signal to people outside the games industry, which is often the “canary in the coal mine” for where tech and culture are headed.
The end result of a campaign like Gamergate 2.0 is harm that lands, first and foremost, on the shoulders of individuals. Developers have reported harassment, and abuse from players is a widespread problem that impacts their mental health and sense of safety. Kotaku’s former editor-in-chief, Alyssa Mercante, was targeted by constant doxing and harassment to the point that she is seeking legal action.
Meanwhile, Sweet Baby Inc., a small narrative consulting company, became the spark that lit Gamergate 2.0 this year, as people rallied around targeting the company and its work with several major studios.
To says it also harms the very thing that people involved in the campaign claim they want to protect: games.
“If we create this situation where every single release comes with this enormous backlash that results in threats to people’s safety and mental and physical wellbeing, that things are getting torn down before they even have a chance to be seen by people, you’re going to get really boring art,” To says. “You’re going to get really boring, middle of the road, milquetoast games, television, movies. Is that the world that we all want?”
So, how does the games industry start to tackle Gamergate 2.0? Zarow says it has to start with acknowledging there is an issue. Few AAA studios have responded explicitly to the harassment aimed at their developers, opting not to give Gamergate 2.0 any air. Zarow says it’s clear after more than a decade that “not acknowledging it doesn’t work.”
Zarow wants to see activity more like the recent rebuke of Gamergate from the head of Ubisoft’s massively popular “Assassin’s Creed” franchise, who directly responded to the “lies, half truths and personal attacks online” that its teams have dealt with in recent months.
Without some measure of support from the industry’s biggest decision makers, Zarow worries the next generation of creatives will run away from the industry before they’ve even had a chance to enter it.
“Particularly my female students and queer students are put off by this. It’s a difficult place to exist in, and their imagination of themselves in this world, in this sphere, is limited if they are being pushed out at every point,” Zarow says. “If the problem persists that the industry and the culture are hostile, literally too hostile to endure, then we don’t get the people telling the stories that they are meant to tell.”