My daughter has been writing a paper on Gamergate. The stuff she's had to read for it makes my skin crawl. And getting decent media sourcing has turned out to be surprisingly challenging. The explosion of creepiness and misogyny on Twitter and elsewhere is the sort of thing that mainstream media misses, because it's just too unbelievable.
Three women who were interviewed all commented in the video about how BBC misrepresented their views and cherry picked quotes to fit the narrative
YOGSCAST Hannah: I pointed this out during my interview, and said online gaming companies need to step up and help support reporting and banning like DOTA 2/Valve did - looks like that didn't get through, they just kept the bit where I said abuse happens to everyone :(
0Apes0: 3 days ago Being the manager of the HoG (shooting the shot gun) I am very disappointed at the finished edit of this. This was supposed to be a film about women in gaming but 'sorry we had to change direction) in the last couple of weeks. It's only purpose is to make women feel like victims when we're not. MEN and women experience a use everyday online, the bet thing to do is to ignore it and ban the stupid people on Twitter, live, psn and twitch. Not worth the worry. I said this but clearly this was deemed too logical to show and we must all remain victims. Not happy with the finish product only that it's appeared on YouTube and not real TV. Also lol good job at bringing KSI in.
Ms 5ooo Watts: 1 day ago I'm honestly disappointed with how this turned out. I was approached to speak about women in gaming as a whole not to only talk about the negative side. Even during the interview I was asked to give my positive experiences with being a gamer as they didn't want this to be a one sided thing. None of my positive comments about my community and the gaming community as a whole were included at all. The initial email that I received asking for an interview said, and I quote "I’m working on a BBC3 documentary looking at the experiences of female gamers, how experiences are changing (and how the games themselves are changing)" No where in there does it say that the program will be about "the dark side of gaming" I never signed up to be some kind of warrior against sexism online, I was asked to talk about the experiences of women in gaming, how things are changing and how games themselves are changing to reflect women in gaming now being more represented. Not happy at all.
That was just one recent example. A simple google search of '{network name} + gamergate' will turn up multiple articles from every single major news network.
The gamers are grassroots because no media outlet represented them but old media (and mainstream new media) did run with the anti-gamer story. It was covered in CNN, NYT, Forbes... There was even a CSI episode.
Well, there are some news sites supporting the GamerGate side of the story. They're the ones on the GamerGate support lists, which include twenty/thirty/forty/whatever sites of various sizes.
I have no way of knowing if you’re old enough to remember, but that level of coverage is nothing compared to the ongoing nonsense in the late nineties and 2k’s. I never thought Jack Thompson would go away.
Anyway, look at it from the media’s perspective. “violent videogames turn your kids into sociopaths” is a pretty great hook, it’s going to get the suburban parents attention, it’s going to turn into endless PTA meetings, it’s going to make it to the House of Representatives. “women are getting horribly harassed in a particular industry” just doesn’t make the headlines.
