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Misogyny in the Video Game Industry and Community

In the mid-1990s, marketers noticed that young girls had a severe lack of interest in video games, computer science, math, and technology. In order to get girls interested in games, companies began developing video games that were exclusively marketed towards a female audience. Barbie Fashion Designer, a game where the objective was to dress Barbie in different outfits, was one of many games that made up the "Pink Games Movement": the market saw a substantial increase of "pink games", or video games that were exclusively marketed towards young girls. Many people called the movement sexist, stating that the stereotypes in these games were based on "culturally learned behaviour, rather than biology." Even though women make up half of today's gaming population, 88 percent of game developers are male. Most video game content caters to stereotypical male interests: hyper-masculine men in the lead role, submissive over-sexualized women, and a high amount of violent and sexual content. Scholars argue that "the lack of interest among girls wasn't because they didn't want to play video games. These designers simply didn't understand women."

For many years, the image of the typical "gamer" has been fairly consistent in the media: white, either extremely overweight or underweight, socially challenged, unfit for athletic activity, and male. This stereotype has been challenged in recent years with more females openly expressing their interest in gaming and a gradual but steady increase of female programmers and developers in the gaming industry. Many male gamers, however, believe that this change is wrong and that the idea of "gamer" and the video game community are male-only spaces.

In June 2012, gaming journalist Ryan Perez lost his job at the gaming news website Destructoid over a series of negative tweets regarding actress Felicia Day. He called her a "glorified booth babe", implying that she was not a true gamer and that she only used her sex appeal to get attention at conventions. Popular MMORPG World of Warcraft was the subject of controversy over a character, named Ji Firepaw, with sexist dialogue; female gamers noticed that Ji Firepaw's dialogue changed depending on what gender the player's character is when the player interacts with him. While he praised male characters for their strength, he complimented female characters on their appearance and had nothing to say about their skills or abilities. When the issue was brought up to Blizzard, World of Warcraft's developer, Ji Firepaw's dialogue changed and it prompted negative backlash against female players within the community.

Misogyny in the gaming community received attention from the mass media with GamerGate. The GamerGate controversy is a hate campaign against females in the video game community and video game industry. GamerGate supporters claim that their objective is to keep corruption out of video games and gaming journalism; they believe that women and people with feminist ideologies are ruining video games.

While harassment towards women in video games has always been a part of gaming culture, it escalated in August 2014 when Eron Gjonji, a programmer, wrote several blog posts about his then-girlfriend Zoe Quinn allegedly sleeping with multiple individuals in the gaming industry in exchange for positive reviews for a game she developed, entitled Depression Quest.

The information, though proved to be false, spread quickly within the gaming community and was received extremely negatively: Gjionji's supporters, who were mostly young males, harassed Quinn online with death and rape threats, and her social media accounts were hacked.  American actor Adam Baldwin is credited with creating the term GamerGate after tweeting his distate towards Quinn's attacks, using the hashtag #GamerGate. 

Another notable victim of Gamergate is internet personality Anita Sarkeesian, who is known for her Feminist Frequency videos on YouTube where she critiques various forms of pop culture - including video games - from a feminist perspective. When the Game Developers Choice Awards gave Sarkeesian the Ambassador Award in March 2014, an anonymous email was sent to the organization declaring, "A bomb will be detonated at the Game Developers Choice Award ceremony tonight unless Anita Sarkeesian’s Ambassador Award is revoked. We estimate that the bomb will kill at least a dozen people and injure dozens more". Sarkeesian was faced with another incident later that year in October, when she was scheduled to speak at Utah State University. An anonymous threat was sent to the school, stating that the sender of the threat will shoot up the school. The threat explained that it would be "the deadliest school shooting in American history", and that Sarkeesian "is going to die like the craven little whore that she is" if the school allowed her to speak. Sarkeesian was forced to cancel her appearance due to safety concerns.

Brianna Wu, a game developer, is another widely known victim of the movement. After criticizing and mocking GamerGate on Twitter, she received numerous death and rape threats and was forced to leave her home. GamerGate supporters have also assumed her identity on the Internet and sent fake stories about her to news sources in an attempt to deface her reputation. She has since been in contact with the police and the FBI in order to track down her attackers.

The GamerGate controversy has since received worldwide media coverage, which helped bring more public attention to the relations between misogyny and the mass media. Major news organizations such as CNN, BBC News, and Time Magazine have reported on the issue numerous times. The popular television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit even aired an episode inspired by GamerGate - though it has received negative reception from both GamerGate supporters and victims.