Remember "Gamer Gate"?

[Veilex]

For those that don't know, a short time ago, a Game Developer started receiving considerable amounts of hate-mail, up too and including death threats to her and her family. This became a proverbial shit-storm of people pointing fingers, deflecting, taking umbrage and so on.

The good news is two-fold today:

#1: The harassment has nearly completely stopped for that Game developer... and she and her family are alive and well.

#2: We now know what started this whole mess.
In short, it involved an ex-boyfriend of obviously exceptionally poor caliber of character... and a few internet communities.

This story is important to me for a number of reasons... first and foremost, someone's life had been threatened... and as someone who worked in a law-enforcement capacity for a Navy base, I take all threats to life very seriously. Second, there are a whole host of very progressive and feminist friends of mine up here in liberal leaning Washington State that self identify as Gamers. In fact, we rather embrace the culture, since games have frequently been on the leading edge of progressive causes. So, this is a big deal for me... for us... because a very vocal hateful group that has a habit of going out and trolling others for fun-and-profit posed themselves as gamers... thereby demonizing the term Gamer.

Anyway, enough of my explanation... here's the article that explains the what, why and how of what transpired.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-i-learned-as-internets-most-hated-person/

[Recursion]

1. "Remember"? It's still raging

I'm a game developer, and I have to deal with this bullshit. Fortunately, I'm male, so when I produce non-traditional games I'm not subjected to rape threats, just messages questioning my heterosexuality.

[Veilex]

2. I deal with it as a developer as well.

However, not on the level that exploded over the last month.
That, and I use the word "Remember" because this isn't normally the sort of story that gains much traction here.

Nice to see a fellow developer here though!

[Recursion]

3. Same here!

What's your stack?

I'm on SDL right now mostly, since it's an easy way to get on Steam. But I'm thinking of going back on Android.

[Veilex]

4. Android's a good way to go!

"What's your stack?" - Don't have one yet. I've been too busy handling the business side of the house to get my "hands dirty" so to speak. Right now I work mostly as admin. I've been hearing quite a few grumbles regarding steam as of late though... a lot of indie devs seem to be having second thoughts about valve as a launching platform.

[Veilex]

6. Also, we largely deal in table top games at the moment.

Though we've got a number of programmers within the team.
I've been considering making a push into C# myself... but I simply haven't had the time to do much research.
We've got a Kickstarter coming up, and that's been devouring my time... that and Marketing.
What about you? What's your stack?

[Laelth]

5. Quite interesting.

Lots of comments following the article.

-Laelth

[Veilex]

9. "Lots of comments following the article" - Almost 10k of em

I guess that goes to show how much of a hot-button this issue is.

[NuclearDem]

7. It's incredibly depressing as a gamer to be tied even remotely to misogynistic assholes like those.

Fortunately, the tide does seem to be turning...if only slowly.

[Veilex]

8. Indeed.

For me its more a matter of this:

The term "Gamer" doesn't belong to them... so, I'm not going to just sit back and let them claim ownership.

[Marr]

10. She's the one who made Depression Quest, right?

I've been meaning to try that game out. I've heard it's a pretty original game.

[Veilex]

11. "She's the one who made Depression Quest, right?" - Yes

You can find it here: http://www.depressionquest.com/

[Laelth]

12. Wow. Serious popcorn time!

I've been reading about this for hours, now. It's a big deal. I had no idea.



-Laelth

[Veilex]

13. Indeed!

Its directly and indirectly linked to what I like to call anonymous internet toxicity.

It also draws in feminists and MRA groups, as well as gamers, developers, game media folk and so on.