SAN FRANCISCO: The trend of video game is increasing among the games lover. It has been unveiled in a report at Game Developers Conference which was held at San Francisco. In the conference it was also told that gaming industry is shaking due to boy only image and portraying woman negatively in the games.
At the Game Developers Conference that ends here on Friday, a hot-button topic was the treatment of women in the industry, with female game makers facing frequent vitriol by anonymous attackers.
“If you are marginalized in any way; if you speak up in defense of marginalized people or progressive representation… it is taken as a given that you probably have been harassed,” game designer Elizabeth Sampat said during a GDC session on dealing with harassment in the industry.
Horrific misogynistic abuse of females within the sector has ignited a long-running debate over whether women are being accepted as equal partners in the industry.
During an ugly two-month saga last year that has become known as “GamerGate,” threats of rape, murder and mutilation forced some women to flee their homes.
The touchpaper was lit when independent game developer Zoe Quinn’s romance with a video game journalist became the subject of an angry online rant by her ex-boyfriend.
What appeared to begin as a campaign for better ethics in video game journalism, however, evolved into a fierce debate regarding sexism and racism in video games and the male-dominated industry that makes them.
Quinn became a target for hateful and threatening comments in online forums, ultimately prompting her to flee her home in fear for her life.
“If GamerGate was an atomic bomb, I was the person the bomb landed on,” Quinn said as she took part in the session with Sampat.
