Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone for remaining civil. I have a few points of clarification:
1) I don’t know Brenna Wu. I’ve never met her, and I don’t really know her story. Bringing up her name was probably a bad idea since I am not very informed on the subject. However, I do feel like even if she kicked a hornets nest or baited trolls or even said nasty things, she shouldn’t have to fear for her safety. Can we all agree that death threats or threats of sexual assault aren’t cool – no matter what she said online?
2) The friend of mine is someone totally not controversial and doesn’t speak out for women representation. It is not my place to speak about her experience other than to say that the way she was treated unfairly for being a woman made me really think about the game industry and how it can be for people who aren’t male…
3) Depending on how you collect statistics, you can use them to prove anything (as was the complaint in the biased cyberhate blog post) To my knowledge, none of the links address the severity or the emotional toll of threats. I don’t think Phil Fish was threatened with sexual violence for example. That would upset me more than curse words. “Commenter” agreed that women get more harassment of the sexual variety, which I would say is worse.
In the end, all I am trying to say is that everyone should be treated decently regardless of their opinion, gender, ethnicity, and background. I suppose I muddled the issue by stating my opinion on Devastated Dreams’ reaction (or lack there of), but that wasn’t really the main point I was trying to make. Why should we make people feel unwelcome to make games because of opinions they have? For example, if people we unwelcoming to Scott Cawthorn for his Christian opinions and games, and he gave up (and in reading interviews with him, it sounds like he almost did), then we wouldn’t have Five Nights at Freddy’s. Whether you like that game or not, I think it has brought joy and scares to millions. My concern is that negativity/harassment will push people out of the industry and the medium will be worse for it, and I suppose that doesn’t just apply to women. The opinions of the developer doesn’t mean the game can’t be great. Phil Fish is pretty abrasive on twitter, but Fez is still an amazing work of art. Notch made it pretty clear that he sold Mojang because he didn’t want to be the public face of Minecraft (and the scrutiny that entails). Do we gain anything by pushing developers away? I think we lose a lot. I feel that women are being scared away more, but that doesn’t really matter. We should treat everyone online as people – because they are.
I think this comment is a much better post than my original one, so thank you for pointing out the holes in what I wrote.
