Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Tear Down the Gamergate



 



 In response to John Ellement's article, I am honestly appalled. The entire Gamergate issue is truly saddening and angering. Being a female gamer myself, I know that prejudices against female gamers do exist and I honestly do not understand why. Gender has not ever, and WILL NOT ever matter when it comes to playing video games or designing video games. For some reason though, some of the male population (not all of them!) believe that video game culture is like this holy grail and female's are not worthy of possessing it. Really? It is very discouraging for female's who develop an interest in video games to see issues like Gamergate when they decide to immerse themselves into the culture. There is no logic behind out-casting females, why wouldn't you want more people participating in games, and bringing new game ideas into the community? 

Aside from the Gamergate issue pointing out the obvious problems of gender in the gaming community, it also points out issues of cyber bullying. The article talks about how the male who was harassing his ex-girlfriend argued that his First Amendment right's were being violated. Nice try. I did not realize that harassing someone online, and getting a whole community of people to join in as well could be considered free speech, obviously he thought so. I think the moral of the story here is, just be a decent human being and don't be a cyber bully. 

Video games are a lot of fun, share love in the community not hate. Instead of building gates, let's tear them down.












2 comments:

  1. The issue of GamerGate is seriously upsetting. Especially during its height, it was easier to keep quiet and pretend to be nobody and keep your head down online to protect yourself from the massive witch hunt that was ensuing. Women make up at least half the population so why is it so wrong to some that women want their voices to be heard in the industry? Hopefully, this awful event will lead to actual reforms.

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  2. I don't think Trump would agree with your last statement :)

    On a more serious note, we all need to stop feeding the trolls. Gamergate is only a controversy because people are paying attention to the blowhards and giving them a platform to rant on. I'm not saying that ignoring the problem will make it go away, but nobody wants to give a speech to an empty room.

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