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It's About Ethics in Games Journalism? Gamergaters and Geek

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It's About Ethics in Games Journalism? Gamergaters and Geek SMSXXX10.1177/2056305116672484Social Media + SocietyBraithwaite 672484research-article2016 SI: Making Digital Cultures Social Media + Society October-December 2016: 1 –10 It’s About Ethics in Games Journalism? © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Gamergaters and Geek Masculinity DOI: 10.1177/2056305116672484 sms.sagepub.com Andrea Braithwaite Abstract #Gamergate is an online movement ostensibly dedicated to reforming ethics in video games journalism. In practice, it is characterized by viciously sexual and sexist attacks on women in and around gaming communities. #Gamergate is also a site for articulating “Gamergater” as a form of geek masculinity. #Gamergate discussions across social media platforms illustrate how Gamergaters produce and reproduce this gendered identity. Gamergaters perceive themselves as crusaders, under siege from critics they pejoratively refer to as SJWs (social justice warriors). By leveraging social media for concern-trolling about gaming as an innocuous masculine pastime, Gamergaters situate the heterosexual White male as both the typical gamer and the real victim of #Gamergate. #Gamergate is a specific and virulent online node in broader discussions of privilege, difference, and identity politics. Gamergaters are an instructive example of how social media operate as vectors for public discourses about gender, sexual identity, and equality, as well as safe spaces for aggressive and violent misogyny. Keywords Gamergate, gaming cultures, geek masculinity, online harassment, social media At the end of August 2014, many online gaming communities situate themselves as the “real” victims, oppressed by calls erupted into vicious arguments—ostensibly about ethics in for diversity and at risk of losing “their” games to more video game journalism, but more pointedly about gender, inclusive ones. Thus, #Gamergate is about more than games: privilege, and gaming. #Gamergate has refocused popular as a set of anxieties, rhetorical strategies, and targeted hate discussions about gaming cultures into ones about gender, campaigns, #Gamergate is an articulation of technology, launched female game developers and critics into the public privilege, and power. spotlight, and raised additional questions about social media as an avenue for gendered harassment and threats. #Gamergate Gaming and Gender highlights aspects of dominant gaming cultures that many of its participants already know: they skew toward straight Historically, game companies have imagined an audience White males, and calls to recognize the full breadth of who filled with young, White, heterosexual males. Kline, Dyer- plays games are met with hostility from “real” gamers. As Witheford, and de Peuter (2003) describe how “the young games become an increasingly popular pastime across demo- male niche . was perceived as the key to dominance in the graphic categories, conversations about who counts as a whole business,” and game companies have tended to court gamer increase—in number, volume, and, often, negative this demographic (p. 250). This industry construction of tone. #Gamergate provides one perspective on the cultural “gamer” is often reflected in the content of games them- fissures around this redefinition. selves. Many games center on powerful White male protago- From this vantage point, we can also see “Gamergater” as nists, with women as damsels in distress or sexualized a gendered identity, tied to the popular perception of a gamer background decorations (Cassell & Jenkins, 2000; Kennedy, as a socially inept young White male. This stereotype’s inac- 2002; Sarkeesian, 2013). Non-White characters are fre- curacy generates many of #Gamergate’s defining anxieties. quently villains or obstacles, if they exist at all (Brock, 2011; When tracking #Gamergate discussions across social media platforms, we see Gamergaters on a crusade to save an University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada innocuous male pastime from killjoy critics. Pejoratively Corresponding Author: referred to as social justice warriors (SJWs), Gamergaters Andrea Braithwaite, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, 2000 discipline and discredit these critics as the wrong kind of Simcoe Street North, Oshawa, Ontario L1H 7K4, Canada. women, who need to be put back in their place. Gamergaters Email: [email protected] Creative Commons Non Commercial CC-BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 3.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Social Media + Society Higgin, 2009). These patterns contribute to the dominant to create multiple anonymous accounts on Twitter, Tumblr, image of “gamer” as a White male, for the “lack of portrayals Reddit, and 4chan. Some suggest #Gamergate comprised of marginalized groups in video games is often tied to the approximately 10,000 participants, based on the number of fact that the industry rarely recognizes members of these active subscriptions to key #Gamergate sites such as Reddit’s groups as gamers” (Shaw, 2011, p. 28). KotakuInAction (devomet, in FEMAcampcounselor, 2014), Yet recent research suggests that gaming is a widespread or the increased number of Twitter followers for vocal activity. The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) #Gamergate advocates (“So just how popular is notes that 42% of Americans regularly play video games, #GamerGate?,” 2014). The largest estimate, of 400,000, is their average age is 35, and 44% of them are female (ESA, based on the number of views for the most popular 2015). Even with such popularity, “gaming publics remain a #Gamergate YouTube videos and is admittedly “super gener- contentious area where identity, as viewed from the outside, ous” (De La Cruz, 2015, sec. 4b) since it cannot account for is continually negotiated and bounded by the many groups potential multiple views by a single person. On social media, which participate within the technological space” (Salter & however, prominence is not only a matter of size but also a Blodgett, 2012, p. 413). On discussion boards like Reddit matter of being heard and of who hears you. This is, as Tim and in the comments sections for YouTube videos, partici- Jordan explains, characteristic of online discourse, which pants haggle over what the label “gamer” really means and “requir[es] a communicative subject to be ‘heard’ before who can use it. These conversations go beyond simple tau- they become able to communicate” (in Shepherd, Harvey, tologies: a gamer is not just someone who plays games, and Jordan, Srauy, & Miltner, 2015, p. 3). Increasingly, being someone who plays games is not automatically a gamer. heard means being hateful, as our “technologies and cultures Rather, “being a gamer is defined in relation to dominant dis- of social media interpellate particular subject-positions, nor- courses about who plays games, the deployment of subcul- malizing behaviours that would seem inappropriate in other tural capital, the context in which players find themselves, contexts” (Shepherd et al., 2015, p. 3). and who are the subjects of game texts” (Shaw, 2013, para 1; #Gamergate, notably, is heard not only by gamers but see also Shaw, 2014). also by mainstream press. Recounted in high-profile outlets These are all shifting categories. The ESA report, for like The New York Times (Wingfield, 2014a), Rolling Stone instance, illustrates the gap between the image and reality of (Collins, 2014), and The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, who plays games, a reality that cannot be easily read off the 2014), #Gamergate brings discussions about gaming cul- games themselves. Fans, critics, and players engage in often- tures and gamer identity to the forefront of cultural com- contentious debates about these texts. Calls for different mentary. Much of this attention zeroes in on #Gamergate’s kinds of content reveal the importance of representation and treatment of women, emphasizing how “gamer” is gener- the reluctance of many players to critically confront their ally contingent upon gender. Such misogyny is a key com- games: ponent in understanding Gamergater as an iteration of geek masculinity. Geek masculinity is a gender identity charac- [P]osters who want to engage in sociopolitical discussions face terized in part by “a strong interest in technology and play- an up-hill battle. The forum may overwhelmingly reject the idea ing computer games . These performances of expertise, that sociopolitical issues are valid concerns when it comes to skill, and knowledge are not only sources of social connec- entertainment and delegitimize posters who raise such concerns tion and pleasure, but also work as important markers for by launching ad-hominem attacks and characterizing them as inclusion and exclusion” (Taylor, 2012, p. 111; see also not true video game fans. (McKernan, 2015, p. 245) Dunbar-Hester, 2008; Kendall, 2011). Like other gender identities, geek masculinity is relational: it is understood Attempts to intervene in privileged discourses of gamer relative to forms of femininity as well as to hegemonic identity, or to draw attention to games’ often limited repre- masculinity. sentations, regularly return sexist, racist, and homophobic As Connell (1995/2005) explains, hegemonic masculinity
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