Gaming, SXSW, and Women

Being a woman and belonging to a men’s club like the gaming world is no easy task. By definition, you’re like a guest in someone else’s home.

A tweet posted by Randi Lee Harper, one of the Level Up panelists, after SXSW Interactive announced her panel was cancelled

Sure, you can hang out and look pretty (hell, they prefer it) - but once you’ve put your feet on the proverbial coffee table and made yourself comfortable, well, the owners of the house start to get a little territorial. Sometimes not just a little.

I’ve been gaming since I was a kid. I played Duck Hunt so much my mom threw my Nintendo Entertainment System out the living room window. (Joke was on her, as she shortly thereafter had to buy me a new one. Thanks, ma.) In college, anchored by some of the best tech guys I know, I dipped my toes in PC building and gaming, and never really looked back. The friendships I’ve made through the medium have been some of the most satisfying of my life.

And yet, the community that so many of us have flocked to – to be proud geeks in the company of others – has a sinister, unwelcoming side that is fed by an underbelly that shrugs off civil discourse and debate in favor of threats of sexual violence, dangerous “pranks” (see SWATing), and the leaking of private information. Women with opinions on how the community could better serve its members are seen by some as co-opting a historically male-dominated scene. And in the minds of those men, these women must be harshly punished.

Anita Sarkeesian, Feminist Frequency blogger and well-known media critic, unfortunately encountered the worst of what the community has to offer three years ago, when, during a successful FF Kickstarter, hordes of men – some trolls, others deadly serious – threatened her with rape and death and leaked her personal information online. It was this controversy that birthed “Gamergate,” a hashtag that means so many different things to so many different people that it’s basically been rendered useless.

Mainstream media likes to tie up stuff like this with a neat little bow, but it’s not an issue that can be summarized in a few hundred - or even thousand - words. A big component is an angry wing of the gaming community being fed up with gaming journalism and perceived (or, let’s be honest, actual) bias in how video games are covered. The most media savvy Gamergate warriors will tell you the angry masses have simply hijacked the cause, turning it into something that it was never intended to be. Maybe it’s my own bias showing – but the terror tactics used by people sheltering under this massive umbrella of Gamergate are more troubling to me than ethics and gaming journalism. Journalism ethics are important, but they are not, especially in the case of gaming journalism, life or death.

But being silent on the issue, and asking women involved with video games – designers, journalists, or players – to stay home under the blankets isn’t going to make things better. It could make them worse. That’s why it was so disappointing when an approved SXSW Interactive 2016 panel called “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games,” a discussion of harassment online and in gaming and how developers might improve the status quo, was abruptly canceled by the Festival amid numerous violent threats made against the panelists and to SXSW directly. Perhaps seeking amped up security, the speakers communicated to the Fest the threats they were receiving, not knowing it would result in their panel being shut down.

Further complicating the situation was the existence of another panel, entitled “#SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community,” which pitched itself as belonging to an ambiguously named group called the Open Gaming Society (an empty storefront if I’ve ever seen one). Though the proposal was carefully bland, it has been seen by the Level Up folks as a direct rebuttal to their message. It doesn’t help that, except for moderator Lynn Walsh, all of the panelists have previously spoken up in favor of Gamergate.

#SavePoint has also been canceled, but that’s of very little comfort to the Level Up panelists. Sarkeesian tweeted the most concise and biting response to the situation I’ve seen. “SXSW’s ‘both sides’ rhetoric is merely the status quo of a tech industry largely ignoring systemic online harassment. … SXSW should reinstate the online harassment panel and release a statement apologizing for including the GamerGate panel in the first place.”

In response to the cancellations, both Vox Media and BuzzFeed have pulled out of SXSW Interactive. A story posted to the Vox-owned site Re/code has said an unidentified source (assumed by most to be someone within Vox) reports that SXSWi is considering hosting a day-long forum on online harassment. Earlier today, Oct. 28, the Chronicle reached out to the Fest for confirmation, but SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest said in an email there was “nothing new to announce yet – because none of this stuff is finalized yet.” A later email stated that SXSW would not be making an announcement before Monday (Nov. 2) morning.

Editor's note: SXSW was co-founded by Chronicle publisher Nick Barbaro and editor-in-chief Louis Black, who continue to serve as directors of the festival.