Not OK: Hateful Man-Babies Target Zoe Quinn. Again.

Image via shutterstock

 Zoe Quinn, the indie lead developer behind the emotionally moving interaction fiction game Depression Quest recently released for free on Steam, as well as Narrative Designer for FRAMED, is being targeted by an unruly mob of misogynist anti-feminists (both overtly and under the guise of being concerned with journalistic integrity) again.

She was first targeted last year when her attempt to get Depression Quest approved via Steam's Greenlight program was cancelled after she was the target of a harassment campaign from a message board. The harassment bled from online into her offline world when her private phone number was published, leading to harassing and obscene phone calls. 

She resubmitted Depression Quest to the Steam Greenlight program a second time, and this time, despite the harassment from reddit, twitter, 4chan, and down-voting campaigns on Steam itself, Depression Quest was approved and released on Steam last week.

Now the same brigade of angry dudebro gamers are claiming Quinn is corrupt, or corrupting Kotaku, or setting back women developers? Quinn tweeted about her parents' phone number getting obscene phone calls. The sub-reddit r/Gaming has a post from its moderator calling out the egregious, harassing behavior of its members-- only to receive nearly 2,000 down-votes.Why? Thanks to a multi-part blog series by an angry ex-boyfriend that did nothing but air out relationship problems in public. Suddenly, men that would not bat an eye over sexual behavior were it done by a fellow dude are calling for an end to her career.

Quinn herself addressed the matter as much as it deserved in a blog entry on Monday:

I am not going to link to, or address anything having to do with the validity of the specific claims made by an angry ex-boyfriend with an ax to grind and a desire to use 4chan as his own personal army. This is not a “she-said” to his “he-said”. The idea that I am required to debunk a manifesto of my sexual past written by an openly malicious ex-boyfriend in order to continue participating in this industry is horrifying, and I won’t do it. It’s a personal matter that never should have been made public, and I don’t want to delve into personal shit, mine or anyone else’s, while saying that people’s love and sex lives are no one’s business. I’m not going to talk about it. I will never talk about it. It is not your goddamned business. 

What I *am* going to say is that the proliferation of nude pictures of me, death threats, vandalization, doxxing of my trans friends for having the audacity to converse with me publicly, harassment of friends and family and my friends’ family in addition to TOTALLY UNRELATED PEOPLE, sending my home address around, rape threats, memes about me being a whore, pressures to kill myself, slurs of every variety, fucking debates over what my genitals smell like, vultures trying to make money off of youtube videos about it, all of these things are inexcusable and will continue to happen to women until this culture changes. I’m certainly not the first. I wish I could be the last. 

Because I've had a small degree of success in a specific subculture, every aspect of my life is suddenly a matter of public concern. Suddenly it’s acceptable to share pictures of my breasts on social media to threaten and punish me. Suddenly I don’t have any right to privacy or basic dignity. Suddenly I don’t get to live out normal parts of life, like going through a bad and ugly breakup in private. I have forfeited this by being a blip in a small community, while those who delight in assailing me hide behind their keyboards and a culture that permits it, beyond reproach. 

My life and my body are not public property. No one’s life and body are public property.

And that's what it boils down to-- a bunch of sexist shook gamers acting like gatekeepers and hypocritically talking about ethics and integrity while trying to bring up a women's private life as a detriment to her career. Talking about fighting corruption while harassing her via reddit and twitter. Talking out of one side of their mouth about the truth while talking gossip and character assassination with the other.

This is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to happen to Zoe Quinn. It's unacceptable to happen to any women in the games industry. This happening to even one woman is one too many, and while Zoe Quinn isn't going anywhere, a number of bright, talented women writers in the gaming scene have been targeted, harassed and hounded-- Anita Sarkeesian, Samantha Allen, Courtney Stanton, Maddy Meyers, and Brianna Wu are the most recent that come to mind. Samantha Allen actually stopped writing about games because of the daily level of constant harassment. 

I covered a bit on the difference between the harassment men and women get in the games industry in "Mythbusting Ideas About Women In Games" that excerpted from Brianna Wu's article as well as linking to an example provided by Sarkeesian, but I want to quote from the end of my post "The Status Is Not Quo: Being A Geeky Woman Online & What Med Need To Do":

Women's hurt and fear for safety and the emotional toll for being harassed online have real, chilling impact on discourse.

This is unacceptable. And the burden of speaking out shouldn't continually fall to the women being harassed. So what can we do? Guys, we have to loudly speak out against this behavior. We have to support women in our creative and media spaces. We need to let other men know that this behavior is not okay, and we need to make it socially unacceptable. We need to listen to women's experiences-- really listen, and not just wait for our chance to say "not all men". We need to realize that online harassment isn't something that just happens-- it's a choice that is made, it is a crime that is done.

As Andy Kouri says in "Fake Geek Guys: A Message to Men About Sexual Harassment":

It is wholly and rightfully and crucially up to men in this society and especially in this subculture to speak out and watch out. To end the cycle of bullying, harassment and violence. To recognize the grotesque irony of degrading women over matters of heroic fictions whose lessons about fairness and decency we've supposedly been studying since we were just little boys, and to start putting those ideas into practice as grown-ass men.

It's not just a few bad apples, guys. It's a lot of bad apples. These are guys that think they represent gamers, that they say what other men are thinking. And we have to push back on this. If you care about safety, if you care about equality, you must push back on this. Staying silent in an attempt to be neutral isn't really being neutral. It just makes dissenting voices less common, and makes the misogynists think that they have your support.

Cerebus Creator Will Only Talk To You If You Sign A Petition Saying He's Not a Misogynist

No, the above headline isn't some rejected headline from parody news outlet The Onion. It's true.

For the past decade or so, Dave Sim, Cerebus creator and publisher of one of the longest running independent comics in history, has been dogged by criticism of misogyny in his work. It started first after publication of an essay in Cerebus #186, "Reads" in which he attacked Oprah, the intelligence of women, feminism, gender differences, and something called the "Female Void" and the "Male Light". Two more out-of-left field essays popped up again in Cerebus #264 and #265.

Issue #264 printed a challenge to Bone creator Jeff Smith to a fist-fight, a gesture that that drove his longtime proofreader, Diana Schutz to resign. He followed thatup in #265 with an essay titled "Tangents," an essay-length "DEBUNKING" of feminism, abortion, the "feminist-homosexualist axis," and his thoughts on, er... spanking adult women. Carol West, his adminstrative assitant, and the last of his female employees, quit in disgust midway through typing up the essay. The Comics Journal has a rather extensive write-up on that part of Dave Sim's history with his employees.

CBR's Gail has a scathing parody of both of those essays in "Dave Sim's Guide To Getting Chicks".

Dave Sim recently published "Glamourpuss", a satirical take on women's fashion magazines, and in what is one of the oddest moves I've seen in years makes you agree to an odd terms of service agreement before he'll even talk to you.

Fellow nerdcore rapperDoc Popular had this to say:

" ...[he] decided the best way to handle such a situation was to send out a form letter requiring anyone who wished to correspond with him to fill out and return with a note saying “I don’t believe that Dave Sim is a misogynist.”. “If you aren’t willing to extend that minimal courtesy to me,” he states “then I would respectfully ask that you not attempt to contact me in the future.”
You can read a scan of the original letter on the fantastic Inkstuds Blog, or hear their recent (and relatively rant free) interview with Dave here.
...
In his letter Dave asks “What sort of friends and fans allow a friend or the person they are a fan of to be called the lowest, subhuman form of life in our society with impunity?”. The Dave Sim Misogyny Page is chock full of his quotes on gender and Heidi McDonald has an interesting piece on the subject in The Beat.
...
Although I am not willing to on the record and state that I feel Dave Sim is not a Misogynist, I will state that a terms of service of correspondence is a great idea! As a matter of fact, I have decided to enact my own Doctor Popular TOS on this very blog; by commenting, reading, hearing about, or in anyway thinking about Doctor Popular or DocPop.org, the user is hearby stating that they agree that “Doc Pop is the awesomest guy on the internet!”.

Yeah, this sounds like a great idea to me, Doc.

My take? For me, my whole sense of awe regarding Dave Sim is that he has an eye for the design elements and page layout of a comic book that have few equals in the comics industry, even today. Sadly, his views are repulsive and wrong. I do think it's worth reading Cerebus, but I would certainly say you aren't missing anything is you stop after the sixth "phone book" volume.

What, you don't want to take my word for it on the fact that he's a great artist? Alright, howzabout this post from metafilter user :
Here's an early page, showcasing some of his writing. Here you get a feel for his comedy writing and dialogue.

Over time, he started putting negative space to work really well, see here, here, and here

Here's three pages from a climate fight between major characters. The art is gorgeous, the panels and transitions great and there's several years of weight between this confrontation that give it an emotional impact.

The rest, I'm just gonna link to and let you decide on your own.

Cerebus as pope

Cerebus pisses off Red Sonya

Who has a husband?

Face off

Doorway

Boom!

Three more pages.
See?

I still don't think that invalidates Dave Sim being a messed up pile of hate and misogyny, though. He DID declare that all women are incapable of rational thought, that they want to be raped by doctors, and that "equal pay for equal work" = Communism. It's all just layer after icky, oozing layer of justification for his personal contempt and loathing for women.

Polybius Lives?

Last year, I linked to a cool project-- dedicated arcade gamer nerds took the urban-legend game "Polybius", and made it a reality, sort of.

A few days ago, a user named POLYBIUS left a comment linking to the site www.polybiuslives.com .

They're been around a few other sites, doing pretty much the same thing, sometimes adding a "Have you forgotten?".

Is this for a game? An ARG? An art project? A bored spammer?

WHoever you are, I invite you to send an email to shawn_struck at rpgx.org and we can set up an interview. Let's see what you're all about.

EA: You'll Pay Us More MOney For Less Ice Cream

Libr'ul commie puppy eating cartoonist and weblogger August Pollak is pretty hot under the collar about EA's recent plan to charge gamers for upgraded weaponry in what is supposed to be a complete game at purchase:

The short version: You have to buy a video game. Then you have to pay to play it against other people over the internet. You have to pay to download extra levels or maps for the game. And now, in this particular case, you have to pay again to buy additional weapons for your character. I am pretty sure only a few years ago this would mean someone was selling you an incomplete game. Now you're paying for "add-ons."

While gamers are up in arms about this rather skewed spin on "pay as you go" gaming, August points out it's essentially an older problem in a newer wrapping:

Basically, it's a much older concept at work here, which you can call the "less ice cream theory." It's when a company decides that the consumer will be happier with paying the same price for less of a product rather than paying more for the same product at a higher price. In other words, why ice cream now comes in "1.75 quart" containers instead of "one-half gallon" containers. The only way this isn't allowed to happen is when the consumer wildly revolts- case in point, Coca-Cola tried a few years back to reduce 2-liter bottles of soda to 1.5 liters, under the guise of a "new, easier-to-handle bottle." No, seriously. I don't know the exact details of the consumer distaste for that, but needless to say that marketing idea lasted less than a year.

My point being, video games cost about as much now as they did ten years ago. The industry is terrified of, and stubborn to, raise the price, so they take away part of the game and sell it to you later. You're paying the same amount for less ice cream.

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Polybius

An Urban Legend Comes To Life....
As the story goes, whispered in back alleys of arcades in the US, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981. The game was called Polybius, and was supposed to be incredibly popular... to the point of addiction! It was said that obsessed video game wizzes lined up to play the arcade game constantly.

Soon after, rumors abounded that smartly-dressed men in black suits began visiting these arcades that had Polybius . Instead of the expected marketing or demographic data you'd expect to be collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines.

The players themselves were said to have suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and supposedly... even death. Some of those who played Polybius stopped playing video games, while it was whispered that one hapless tester became an anti-gaming activist.

The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg, and the company named in the urban legend is Sinneslöschen (German for sense-delete), often named as either a secret government organization or a codename for Atari. The game play is said to be similar to Tempest, a shoot 'em up game with vector graphics.

Such a spooky game made for great storytelling, but no one ever could point to the real thing... until now.

Behold... Polybius!

Yes, some dedicated classic game fans and digital pranksters couldn't find Polybius.. so they created it. Not only can you download the ROM file, they also include free fake artwork and game cabinet stickers. They even wired a flickering bulb effect into the main bios... this group thought of everything. So now you can build or convert your own arcade cabinet into a Polybius cabinet and freak people right the hell out.

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