Zoë Quinn is a video game designer, Anita Sarkeesian is a feminist videographer and media critic. If not for the sexist turmoil these two women were thrust into in the summer of 2014, their names would probably never have found their way into newspapers around the globe. But at the time, scandals marred the journalistic treatment of video games, players were wary.
Also, when the developer Eron Gjoni comes to accuse his ex, Zoë Quinn, of sleeping with a journalist from the specialized magazine Kotaku to get positive reviews on his game, there is no time to go and verify the untruthfulness of the facts. A flood of insults and threats of rape and death falls on the young woman, on Anita Sarkeesian who defends her publicly, and on others, who support them.
Started on Reddit and 4chan forums, the campaign soon spread to the more mainstream networks of Twitter and YouTube. This is where she finds a name, that of the rallying hashtag: #GamerGate. More and more Internet users unrelated to the breakup of Gjoni and Quinn are joining the movement, overwhelming the developer with insults and judgments, on her private life as well as on a hypothetical lack of professional ethics. Are we worried about this crowd of sexist comments? The participants retort that they defend their leisure and the right information. The personal addresses of Quinn and those close to her as well as nude photos are soon disclosed, dissected, commented on. For several months, Zoë Quinn will not find peace.
Between the mutation of video games and far-right opportunism
While one in four Americans played regularly in 2013, a constantly rising proportion, video games remained relatively despised by the mainstream media at the time. However, in the specialized press, “there were real problems of cronyism, recalls Anna Bressan, artistic director of RedStudio. Journalists highlighted their developer buddies, prizes were awarded to the organizers’ friend games”, a product placement affair dubbed Doritos Gate hits the video game chronicle…
At the same time, the debate on the place of women in the video game industry is growing. In 2009, Anita Sarkeesian launched the American channel FeministFrequencywith which she point the sexist clichés that populate the most popular titles. In 2012, in France, @Mar_Lard critical “the apology of rape and the culture of machismo” visible in an article in the magazine joystick, which earned him a campaign of harassment. “Whether they come from 4chan, Reddit, Twitter or YouTube, the hard core of #GamerGate had grown up with games from the 1990s cut out for them, analyzes Anne Bressan. They didn’t want to see that change. »
But the movement goes beyond disputes over video games. All the mechanics of moral panic are then put in place to denounce the growing place of women in the industry which would destroy the world of video games… against feminists and those they call SJW (Social Justice Warrior), activists for social justice. A specialist blogger note thus the role of the youtubeur “InternetAristocrat” in the expansion of the wave, while this one was normally illustrated by videos in favor of the National Front or the British party UKIP.
future figure of thealt right American, future supporter of Donald Trump, Milo Yannopoulos splits his side of a volley of misogynistic articles on the ultra-conservative site Breitbart. If masculinist ideas and harassment pre-existed at GamerGate, researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue Cécile Simmons believes that this case holds a special place in recent history: “It marked the starting point for the generalization of harassment and online bullying as a political tactic, especially against women”.
Digital Discord Techniques
This is also where the GamerGate is interesting: behind the controversy over video games, it concentrated a large part of the issues that still plague digital discourse. All it took was for actor Adam Baldwin to post a message with the hashtag #GamerGate for it to spread like wildfire, illustrating the power of influence of the most prominent accounts. As criticism mounted against the purely misogynistic aspect of the affair, a second hashtag emerged, #NotYourShield, supposedly proving that the debate was centered on media ethics.
This second wave was in fact assembled from scratch by the same actors as GamerGate, each active behind a series of social accounts that they passed off as legitimate. It was a campaign ofastroturfing very similar to those now organized by activists, brands or politicians, to give the impression of popular enthusiasm and attract the attention of Internet users and the traditional media.
Above all, numerical analyzes have confirmed from October 2014 that the majority of the messages had been used for gender harassment rather than debate. At the time, however, the platforms did nothing to protect the victims or to suspend the attackers, leaving the latter to act and organize. Of the sociologistsof the linguists underlined how the very architecture of the networks had allowed the violence to intensify.
Researchers from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki have show that Gamergate actors were less likely to be suspended by Twitter than its average user. Result, in 2016 after the election of Donald Trump, then in 2021 after the attack on the American Capitol, the surveys and the studies have succeeded, which point to the links between the most radical militants of the alt-right and the horde of players theoretically worried about the ethics of specialized journalism.
Behind the video game panic, the lack of reaction to masculinist violence
In France, 73% of the population played there at least occasionally in 2021. The previous year, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, FIFA 21 and Mario Kart 8 found themselves at the top of the best-selling cultural goods in France. Whether the most rigorous gamers like it or not, for art and video game curator Isabelle Arvers, “this massification has made it possible to bring in new characters, new stories, and to show that there was an audience for this diversity. of titles”. Evidenced by the warm welcome extended since 2015 to Life is Strangeor the success of wholesome games in full lockdown.
In the industry, continues the expert, “things are also changing a bit. #MeToo and the scandals that have affected Riot Games or Ubisoft have helped to cause changes: the CNC conditions its aid to follow training on sexist and sexual violence, for example. » From 10% in 2014, women have now moved to 22% of studio employees in 2021. That said, if they count for 45% of American players and 51% of French people, “women are only 7% in e-sport competitions, announces Anne Bressan, also a member of the Women In Games association. The more issues there are, the fewer they are, which proves that there are still efforts to be made. »
In terms of digital conversation, Cécile Simmons for her part underlines the persistence of tactics tested during GamerGate, and how much its actors have “co-opted the cultural references of the gaming to fuel resentment towards women and people from ethnic minorities”. When in 2017 the journalist Nadia Daam was harassed by users of the jeuxvideo.com forum, the same mechanics were at work as in 2014 in the United States. Used by Republican Spring as by the Supporters of Eric Zemmour, astroturfing has also become a common practice of information manipulation. If it has not been read in this way since 2014, continues Cécile Simmons, the GamerGate has demonstrated over time “the intersection between misogyny, right-wing extremist mobilization and the ability of extremist communities to recruit on different platforms on line. He also showed the impact that online mobilizations have offline. »
So many phenomena that still exist, eight years later, despite the moderation measures taken over the years by the platforms. This is why the researcher calls for the creation of “platform regulation policies that do not focus solely on the removal of content, but which take into account the actors, tactics and modes of dissemination of this content”.