Same old battle in new cultural space

Something is rotten with the state of gaming. For a so-called ‘subculture’ trying to establish its legitimacy as late as a decade ago, the multi-billion-dollar industry has now become a mainstream cultural activity.
Invisible to many of us, though, have been the problems that have been plaguing this rather new cultural phenomenon. Gamergate, the recent controversy that has taken the gaming world by storm, is a serious manifestation of these.Mainly a battle fought on the microblogging site Twitter, #Gamergate has attracted thousands of comments from gamers, game developers and critics, who have taken either a pro or contra position. In brief, this is a massive debate that started out as a debate on the lack of ethics in games development and an angry blog post by a programmer about his ex-girlfriend, indie games developer Zoe Quinn, where he disclosed personal details about her.
This was followed by a series of threats made against prominent feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, some of which threatened to rape and kill her. One of Sarkeesian’s videos on female characters in videogames had been released around the same time as the posts against Quinn. The threats made were quite specific in some cases and Sarkeesian was forced into hiding. More women game developers have been threatened and harassed, and the violence continues.
This has also led to a polarisation, where some of those who consider themselves ‘gamers’ have openly made anti-women comments and positioned themselves against game-writers, critics, developers and anyone else who has protested against such behaviour. As the problem rages across the world, the Indian game industry has remained relatively quiet and the forums on social media sites or online journals say nothing about Gamergate. So, do the problems that #Gamergate highlights not apply to the Indian scenario?
One couldn’t help feeling curious and asking women in the games industry here. Mohini Dutta, who hails from Kolkata but works both in the US and India as a game developer and narrative strategist, is clearly aware of the problems: “Any scope for reasonable discussion and dialogue appears to have been destroyed by the consistent responses from the GamerGate community in the form of violent virtual harassment, doxxing, and sharing private information.”
Her reactions are a mix of anger and fear: “I am furious about the situation. I cannot retweet posts by friends for fear of making them targets of even more harassment. Being part of a conversation brings with it faceless fears of becoming the next target.” While Mohini sees “parallels to the harassment and defamation tactics used by GamerGate in several cultural spaces in India, such as women’s rights issues, queer rights, and alternative politics”, Moumita Paul, also a game developer from Kolkata, has a few more perspectives. Moumita feels the “entire thing was politicized” and made to “spur the ancient battle of the sexes”.
Disappointed with the targeting of women in #Gamergate, she shares some personal experiences in the Indian scenario: she has seen many developers “being insulted in popular online gaming forums on Facebook”, where they have faced ridicule or so-called “harmless” and “friendly” jokes targeted at women. She has also faced accusations of having stolen someone’s game idea followed by “sly comments” about her being a woman game developer. She goes on to say that “protests against such behaviour will incur the wrath of the entire forum, irrespective of who’s right or wrong.”
Whether in this country or the world over, the problems thrown into the limelight by #Gamergate pose a serious threat to people’s rights to work and even to life. Gaming might be a new entrant in the cultural scenario, but it has already shown that it can be employed in the cause of addressing problems and issues in society. And now, it has shown that it’s not cut off from the larger problems of humanity. A tweet with #Gamergate threatens: “If Gamer is a race, why should we not have a Holocaust?” If such feelings are being expressed so cavalierly, then we as a world will have a very dire game to play. One for which there is no “reload” button.
(The writer is an avid gamer and game theorist who teaches English at Presidency University)