The latest turn in the Gamergate sage: Zoe Quinn (previously) outed their former partner, game dev Alec Holowka as a sexual and emotional abuser, which prompted others to come forward with their own stories of abuse at Holowka's hands, which led to Holowka being kicked out of his Night in the Woods game project -- and shortly thereafter, Holowka committed suicide. Read the rest

Last weekend, Jeanette Ng won the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the 2019 Hugo Awards at the Dublin Worldcon; Ng's acceptance speech calls Campbell, one of the field's most influential editors, a "fascist" and expresses solidarity with the Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters. Read the rest

The ADL surveyed 1,045 US adult gamers (oversampling Jewish, Muslim, African American and Hispanic/Latinx individuals) and asked them about their experiences in multiplayer games: on the one hand, they found that playing these social games brought many benefits: friendship, support, fun, connection and romance; on the other hand, they found that a very high proportion of gamers experienced harassment of varying kinds, that many players had quit games because of harassment, and that some games were home to much more harassment than others. Read the rest

Anita Sarkeesian (previously) is a brilliant media theorist and critic whose Feminist Frequency/Tropes vs. Women in Video Games projects revolutionized the way we talk about gender and games -- and also made her a target for a virulent misogynist hate-machine of harassing manbabies who threatened her life, doxed her, and did everything they could to intimidate her into silence. Read the rest

Frank Wu writes, "Today Brianna Wu, progressive Democrat and cybersecurity expert, is launching her 2020 bid for US Congress in MA-8! She has a brand new video, in which she introduces herself, and talks about being disowned by her family when she came out as queer. She also talks about the alt-right hate group Gamergate, founding her software development firm, and progressive policies she supports. Simultaneously, Brianna has re-designed her website, which outlines her platform, accepts donations, and allows supporters to volunteer. 'It’s time to be bold,' Brianna says." Read the rest

Counter the creeping resurgence of genuine, non-metaphorical Naziism in gamer culture with Fernando Reza's kick-ass WWII style Zelda propaganda posters! $40 each, 18" x 24", printed on archival paper. Read the rest

Mike from the Useless Duck Company simply wanted to make a dancing and talking banana robot. For his troubles, he got banned from Twitch due to racist and sexist content. Read the rest

Swatting is the practice of tricking police SWAT teams into storming your victim's home by phoning in fake hostage situations; it's especially prominent among cybercriminals, gamers and was a favored tactic of Gamergater trolls. Read the rest

Frank Wu writes, "US Congressional candidate (MA-8) Brianna Wu (previously) will be killing virtual Nazis today. Brianna will be doing a playthrough of the new video game Wolfenstein II, whose tagline is 'Make America Nazi-free again.' The playthrough starts today at 5 pm Eastern." Read the rest

Zoë Quinn, creator of punk games, knows more than most about the sharp end of online harassment. But she also knows what it takes to fight back, an important skill now that the same playbook used against her is wielded broadly by abusive reactionaries of all stripes.

So I can't wait to read her book, Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate, which is finally available for preorder. The release date: September 5, 2017.

Update: Quinn stresses that it's not just about that one particular campaign:

I want to mention the book isn't about GamerGate. GamerGate is more of a lens. I talk about the systems of online abuse & my time with Crash https://t.co/7EXvOGyDKL

— zoë “bi fieri” quinn (@UnburntWitch) April 4, 2017

The entire 2nd half of the book is all about trying to fix the structural issues with online abuse, and what we can do as individuals too

— zoë “bi fieri” quinn (@UnburntWitch) April 4, 2017

I could've written a book about GG in particular, but that wasn't the one I wanted to write. I wanted to write something more useful.

— zoë “bi fieri” quinn (@UnburntWitch) April 4, 2017

Here's the blurb, from Amazon:

You've heard the stories about the dark side of the internet-hackers, anonymous hoards attacking an unlucky target, and revenge porn-but they remain just that: stories. Surely these things would never happen to you.

Zoe Quinn used to feel the same way.

The FBI has released a heavily redacted 173-page PDF of GamerGate documents under FOIA. Much of the material has any identifying information stripped out, but it's clear that many of them are explicit threats and other harassment. Read the rest

Technologists have a dismal pattern: when it comes to engineering challenges ("build a global-scale comms platform") they rub their hands together with excitement; when it comes to the social challenges implied by the engineering ones ("do something about trolls") they throw their hands up and declare the problem to be too hard to solve. Read the rest

Frank Wu writes, "The long-awaited Special Edition of our videogame 'Revolution 60' has just been released for iOS and PC!" Read the rest

Gamergate bogeywoman Zoe Quinn is making a new punk game, in collaboration with Amazon deep weird porn-writer (and table-turning, MRA-confounding Hugo nominee Chuck Tingle, and It. Looks. Awesome. Read the rest

For the second year in a row, a bunch of disgruntled "conservative" sf readers and writers are attempting to destroy science fiction's Hugo Awards by nominating slates of works that are, variously: rabid racist tracts; works by their ideological opponents; tepid military sf; works by bystanders; and weird porn by Chuck Tingle, a master of the form, who has nothing to do with any of this. Read the rest

Lawyer and journalist Sarah Jeong is one of the net's best writers, and her new ebook, The Internet Of Garbage, grapples with misogynist harassment and threats online. Read the rest

When a prick on Twitter attacked Gamergate arch-nemesis Brianna Wu's game dev credentials, sneering that her latest game looked "like something that would've been shitcanned on the ps1," Wu proceeded to shred the fool with a masterclass in the technical capabilities of the PS1 and their relationship to Revolution 60, Wu's new game.

Female Video Game Developer Snaps at Twitter Troll, Results Are Fantastic [Mike Dever/Vice] Read the rest