Today's odious offering from the "Keinen Pixel den Faschisten" ("No Pixels For Fascists") blog seems to largely be a German translation of Keza MacDonald's 2018 article "The video games industry isn’t yet ready for its #MeToo moment" that making the following direct or implied claims:

• that GamerGate was a harassment campaign targeting women (no surprise there)
• that the video game enthusiast press largely ignored GamerGate for as long as possible or fond some pretense to avoid discussion of it
• that the accusations of improper conduct levied against Alex Holowka and Nolan Bushnell had merit to them

That last one really makes my blood boil. Here, read this mess for yourselves:

BY TEAM - AUGUST 4, 2020 BLOG/RECOMMENDED READING

Abuse in the Gaming Industry: More Than a "MeToo Moment"

In the last few weeks, a jolt has once again gone through the gaming industry. On social media, particularly on Twitter, reports from developers surfaced, especially from women and non-binary people, reporting on encroaching behavior and abuse in the industry. The accusations ranged from unprofessional behavior such as unwanted compliments or flirting to sexual violence.

From the discussion that spun out of this, it was Ubisoft in particular that emerged at the center of it, where, apparently, perpetrators were protected for years and decades. But to reduce the current wave of accusations to one studio or individual developers is not enough. Because none of this is new.

The current cases of disclosures took place less than a full year after the last ones. Back then, it was names like Alexis Kennedy, Jeremy Soule, or Alec Holowka that were mentioned particularly often. This time, it is names like Chris Avellone, Maxime Béland, or Ashraf Ismail. Basically, the names are interchangeable, because there is a system behind them.

The Result of a Long Tradition

Calling the current wave of accusations the "MeToo Moment" of the industry is wrong. Within the span of a year, the long awaited MeToo Moment was proclaimed multiple times in this manner, individual persons were publicly accused multiple times and, in some cases, also dismissed. But if the system behind it remains the same, then something cannot be right with this proclamation of a healing MeToo Moment. MeToo is not a snapshot of a moment in time. A moment passes, but MeToo, on the contrary, does not. MeToo, as has been shown time and time again, is a whole movement that goes far beyond the headline-grabbing tweets of 2017. The gaming industry, on the other hand, has a very obvious and, above all, structural problem with abuse. There is a system to the individual cases here.

Already in January 2018, a few months after the hashtag for the MeToo movement exploded, journalist Keza MacDonald wrote a detailed commentary about why the MeToo movement seemed to almost be rolling past the games industry at that point. She wrote: "It is not, funnily enough, because there is no workplace harassment in the video games industry. It's because women don't want to publicly relive painful things that have happened to them."

Even then, the criticism of sexist working environments in the games industry was nothing new. Quite the opposite: Attempts and activist efforts to point out systemic problems have been around for a long time. They are even older than the GamerGate campaign, which, since 2014, has often been seen as a decisive moment of escalation in the discussion about sexism, harassment, and sexual violence in the gaming industry and its communities. "Women in the games industry have been talking about sexist working culture for a very long time," explains Keza MacDonald in her 2018 article. "The #1reasonwhy movement back in 2012 is one of many, many examples of moments where women from all over the games industry have shared their experiences of discrimination, and their reasons for persisting nonetheless. Though it is encouraging that people are finally starting to listen, it is more than a little galling that they are only doing so now." For example, she continues to accuse the public of not paying enough attention to women and marginalized individuals during Gamergate in 2014. Instead, a "dispiriting proportion" of the press back then decided to either ignore the matter for as long as possible or tried to use excuses to withdraw from the affair. "Is it any wonder that women do not trust reporters with their stories now? Why does it feel like the games industry is only interested in what women have to say when it's about their trauma?"

In addition, the encroaching behavior patterns and tolerance of them have also had a direct influence on the composition of the industry. Like other technically-oriented professions, game development is also still male dominated. Not simply because women would not be interested in it, but because, in many cases, the industry cannot manage to retain them.

While the working conditions for developers are often not particularly good, for women, structural sexism and encroachment are added to it. Until such time as some of them finally simply leave the industry.

Even if the current talk about cases of abuse lies with Ubisoft in particular, it has long been clear that the problems behind it are structural. Sexism is deeply rooted in the industry. That was just as true in the 70s as it is today: The gaming industry cannot fix its abuse problem one person at a time.

Mentioned Articles, etc.

Megan Farokhmanesh: "Ubisoft's toxic culture problems allegedly span more than a decade of abuse", https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/21/21332534/ubisoft-serge-hascoet-harassment-sexism-racism-metoo

Megan Farokhmanesh: "Gaming can't fix its abuse problem one person at a time", https://www.theverge.com/21307560/gaming-abuse-harassment-systemic-ubisoft-chris-avellone

Keza MacDonald: "The video games industry isn’t yet ready for its #MeToo moment", https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/video-games-industry-metoo

Daniel Ziegener: "Gaming Industry Seeks Developers (m/f/d)", https://www.golem.de/news/jobs-spielebranche-sucht-entwickler-m-w-d-1912–144709.html

Dennis Kogel: "Female Video Game Developers Fight Back Against Sexism", https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/metoo-in-der-gamingbranche-spieleentwicklerinnen-wehren.1264.de.html?dram:article_id=480809

Cecilia D'Anastasio: "Sex, Pong, And Pioneers: What Atari Was Really Like, According To Women Who Were There", https://kotaku.com/sex-pong-and-pioneers-what-atari-was-really-like-ac-1822930057

Cecilia D'Anastasio: "Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games", https://kotaku.com/inside-the-culture-of-sexism-at-riot-games-1828165483/amp

Original Article: http://keinenpixeldenfaschisten.de/2020/08/04/missbrauch-in-der-gaming-branche-mehr-als-ein-metoo-moment/

Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20200811063247/http://keinenpixeldenfaschisten.de/2020/08/04/missbrauch-in-der-gaming-branche-mehr-als-ein-metoo-moment/

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