GamerGate Research

The GamerGate controversy emerged in 2014, ostensibly regarding concerns over journalistic integrity in the video game industry. However, it quickly morphed into discussions of sexism in gaming following several high-profile reports of harassment against women journalists and game designers. This situation resulted in GamerGate being directly tied to sexism in games and suggested gamers were associated with regressive, alternative-right thinking.

New research findings published in the American Psychological Association's journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture suggest that the GamerGate label may have been mistaken and that its supporters are fairly diverse and liberal.

"Who are GamerGate? A Descriptive Study of Individuals Involved in the GamerGate Controversy" is based on research by Chris Ferguson, PhD, professor of psychology at Stetson University, and Brad Glasgow, independent practice, in Central Lake, Michigan.

I had a chance to interview him to learn more.

Can you briefly describe what GamerGate is?

Hah...probably not!  That's because there's a lot of acrimonious debate about what it is.  Gamergate started as a movement about journalistic ethics in games journalism, particularly ratings of games.  There were accusations that games journalists were too cozy with some game developers.  However, this became overshadowed by harsh harassment including rape and death threats of some women involved in the games industry or games journalism.  Whether fairly or not, the two quickly became conflated (not least by games journalists, who arguably had their own conflict of interest), such that Gamergate became synonymous with sexism and misogyny.  However, it was never clear who exactly did the harassing...the same Gamergate supporters who worried about journalism ethics, gamers more generally, or internet trolls who didn't care at all about the issues and just saw an opportunity to be awful?  Things circled around, apparently, and those who supported Gamergate (the journalistic ethics bit) themselves were sometimes badly harassed.  Eventually, as things do, it spread out and became a wider stereotyping of gamers at large as mainly white, heterosexual regressive men, who could be linked to the alt-right, Nazism and anything else bad.  Eventually it started to sound like the heavy metal/Satanism panics of the 1980s.  

Trying to develop a timeline everyone agrees on is pretty much impossible though, so I've largely given up trying.

Why is sexism an issue in the video game community?

Well some degree of sexism is common among pretty much any community.  I think part of the mistake was singling out gamers and suggesting gamers or gaming, as a whole, have a "sexism" issue, as compared to other communities.  For instance, from one Pew Research study, harassment including sexual harassment is actually less common in gaming than on some other places on the internet, such as social media or comments section, though it does happen.  So, I think we have to be careful not to smear gamers with more stereotypes.  Gamers have themselves been a pretty easy and common target.  There's a balancing act between supporting marginalized individuals interested in joining in an activity or community in a constructive way, versus simply flipping the "-isms" around and simply becoming hateful toward the "majority" group.  In the end, I think the anti-Gamergate narrative failed at this in many ways and, in doing so, may have squandered an opportunity to really improve things for women and girls.  The harassment needed to stop, but there was a lack of strategic messaging.   

That said, gaming has been a traditionally male space for some time and that's particularly true for certain genres such as shooter gamers.  That's been changing over the last few decades, as girl and women gamers increase in number.  However, you'll always find some loud, aggressive voices who will be resistant to any kind of change.  And some of those loud, aggressive voices will be bullying and awful to the "newcomers".  Similar things have happened in sports such as golf, so we need to look for ways to support women and girls without smearing all men who are involved in the activity.  Unfortunately, we've had a larger trend, particularly on social media, where people on all sides of any issue feel they can establish moral credibility by torching someone else's humanity with meanness and smugness.  There are probably some interesting questions about how some people come to believe that is a way to signal virtue.   

What are some ways that this could be reduced?

Well in most cases people get used to the change eventually.  We need to make sure the doors are open to women developers and that we're seeing a variety of games including those that will appeal to both men and women.  I think there's room both for games that portray women and girls positively such as The Last of Us series, as well as your more salacious games like Grand Theft Auto.  If you tell people they can't have something, they just get angry which is counterproductive.  You're doing exactly the thing they're afraid of and made them resistant to change in the first place.  Some of it has to be a community effort, such that men and boys are clearer about welcoming women and girls into these spaces.  Not that we should think of ourselves as gatekeepers (women and girls have every right to online gaming spaces as men and boys), but more to foster a culture of inclusiveness.  

But we also need to be sure that, as we tackle barriers for women and girls on one hand, we don't stereotype entire communities either.  We don't see narratives about how golfers are regressive trolls in league with the alt-right, and we shouldn't be seeing this about gamers either, particularly as evidence now directly contradicts it.  That begins to slip into moral panics and virtue signalling which usually increases polarization and discord rather than helping us move past it.