Reddit reviews Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate

Honestly, Wikipedia is actually a great place to start with this topic. Their page on sexism in video gaming has a lot of great sources. To learn more about how sexism has affected the gaming industry, I'd highly recommend looking into Gamergate as well.

As /u/Tnznn pointed out, despite the fact that gaming now tries to market products in a more gender neutral fashion, the content of the games themselves is explicitly more appealing to male fantasies than female fantasies and doesn't often take into account what women would enjoy playing. This brings us to the topic of the portrayal of women in video games which is, unsurprisingly, also incredibly misogynistic.

This study talks about that with more detail: An Examination of Violence and Gender Role Portrayals in Video Games: Implications for Gender Socialization and Aggressive Behavior

Despite seeming slightly off topic, the portrayal of women in video games is a huge factor in the mistreatment of women in the gaming community. Their sexualization in games, as well as the disproportion between the amount of important/useful male characters and important/useful female characters, is only the tip of the iceberg. It doesn't even go into the prevalence of violence against women in video games. Some studies seem to indicate that these portrayals can reduce male gamers' compassion towards women in real life.

A study that discusses this representation in more detail: Sex, Lies, and Video Games: The Portrayal of Male and Female Characters on Video Game Covers

EDIT: The book Crash Override: How Gamergate (Nearly) Destroyed My Life, and How We Can Win the Fight Against Online Hate by video game developer Zoe Quinn is a good read if you're looking for a woman gamer's personal perspective on harassment in the community. I should point out, however, that being the main target of Gamergate means that Zoe's experiences, although shared by some others, is atypical in that it's much more extreme than the norm.

Her book on Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

-#792 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

-#1 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Computers & Technology

-#1 in Books > Computers & Technology > History & Culture

-#1 in Books > Computers & Technology > Security & Encryption > Privacy & Online

The number one hardcover book in Books > Computer & Technology is currently #164 in overall books. While her book is #792 overall. So that gives you an idea how easy being #1 in subcategory are. I remember some guy got #1 from some obscure genre just to prove this point about an year ago.

I don't know if that gives you an idea of how well it is doing :=\

And I'm not certain this is accurate but here ya go.

I found about it through this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlsiStPp_OA

Honestly, I don't even know how people manage to go through these kind of mental gymnastics. The video is literally just about slut shaming Zoe, but he somehow manages to convince himself that he's "not really interested in the sex" and than rants about the disappearance of boob plate in Divinity: Original Sin. I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who was completely puzzled by GamerGate and didn't understand why people didn't realize Internet Aristocrat was a sexist asshole.

BTW, Zoe has a book. It was recently nominated for the Hugo Award.

> As they documented in their book Crash Override, Quinn received a deluge of death threats, their online accounts were hacked, and family members were also targeted. The message to women in games was clear. Don’t make games that challenge patriarchal preconceptions of how games should be.

So I wonder if /u/Alex__V would call this a "conspiracy theory", because there's no direct evidence that these death threats were primarily from GamerGate.

Also, to be avoid being deliberately misinterpreted, I am not personally calling this a conspiracy theory, as I consider it a reasonable conclusion, much the same way I consider it reasonable to conclude that the Gamers are Dead articles that all happened to drop on the same way were coordinated.

For those who are curious, Milo's "Dangerous" has around 25K sales between hardcover and kindle editions.

Zoe Quinn's "Crash Override" has around 1500 sales between hardcover and kindle.

Grim Jim's "Inside GamerGate" has around 230 sales between paperback and kindle.

All of these numbers taken from novelrank, which pretty much only cares about Amazon sales (ignoring all brick and mortar sales, sales direct from the publisher, and kickstarter/patreon/whatever preorders).

Get your copy here or check out the FICTION shelves of your local Library.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crash-Override-Gamergate-Destroyed-Against/dp/1610398084/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493279868&sr=1-1&keywords=zoe+quinn

Honestly, I recommend her book, Crash Override which details the whole thing pretty well. It's kind of a sad read, but it's also inspiring.