If a video game advocacy group cropped up that was explicitly against hate and harassment, that educated companies and individuals on how these hate campaigns work and how to protect people and present a united front, would you support it? Would you join? What would you want from it?
I’d want to know if there’s any way I can contribute either industry experience (20 years in tech, about half in gaming including building Pokemon infosec) or video production effort to something like that for sure
id join!! this is so important and not talked about enough, as well as the wild misconception of painting any individuals who face this behavior as "problematic" or "controversial". educating people on how to support and at scale would be amazing.
or even coordinated efforts to show love and support to those people/studios facing harassment to counter the bs
+1 for community education and coordinated support!
Lol
I share Zoë's concerns about approaching companies, and I haven't gone through evem 1/1000th of what some of you have, but I'm down to help if I can.
Sign me up big dog
i would want them to very clearly define "hate and harassment" and then take concrete steps (not just advice) to help any individual in the field who could prove they were experiencing it, without bias. If members were proved to be harassers, I would want that to be grounds to expel them.
Hi, I'd love to work at a place like that tbh. More companies need to learn even outside of gaming how to protect employees when being the target of harassment, especially when it's unwarranted.
I think I would personally have no choice but to join it and I feel like the onus is on us to ensure there is a platform that focuses on exactly that.
Yes, join and support. We've internalized this idea that harassment is just something you have to accept on the internet, which is bullshit. A solidarity network of people combating that idea is a great idea.
I would support it, and would hope that they explicitly make clear how their cause is not censorship and that they are not at all aligned with the payment processor/itch/Steam scandal going on: Make it clear the movement would be about changing gamer behavior, not targeting content in games.
I want a white paper of best practices to mitigate harm in online social spaces: both real-time in-game chat (League of Legends, Rocket League, etc.) and marketboard-style posts external to but vital to the game (Diablo IV / Path of Exile trading, etc.) Give me evidence-based studies on this stuff.
More work in this area is sorely needed, for sure. There's very little about evidence-based best practices out there, and what does exist is limited to "hide and they will leave you alone eventually" afaik. As Alyssa has pointed out, that's a very short-term "solution" that backfires in the long run
(and yes I'm in 100% on this, both as academic researcher and as a parent of two preteens 12 and 10. Happy to pass this around my whole department if it's useful, Alyssa, DMs open or email in profile.)
as someone well outside the games space (consumer) would appreciate a resource like this and would look to the group on awareness of existing harassment and education on what we without a platform (social media presence, games media group etc.) can do to provide valuable and impactful support.
Maybe broader internet safety advocacy? Maybe like the ACLU but for supporting people and supplying resources. I don't know how much companies care (especially in 2025) but individuals certainly would.
I see further down the thread that you and Zoe will touch base, a good read in the lead-up would be their book Crash Override if you haven't read it already (I realize you may have). The book isn't just a memoir, it speaks to their exp running their advocacy group.
Haaaa I would probably try to support the people working there because educating companies did nothing the time I started an advocacy group and did all that. They know. Getting them to do anything about it is the challenge. Companies are risk averse and full of people who agree with the hate
My first thought on reading Alyssa’s post was “I think Zoë Quinn tried something similar during the initial GG shit.” :(
They will happily partner with you and use you for PR or to placate the people in the company pushing for change though. They’re very good at pretending to care. They probably even believe the shit they say. But they won’t move when the time comes where someone actually has to do something.
Also they will 100% trigger the shit out of anyone in the advocacy group and mishandle them pretty much constantly so if you go through with this, you have to look into a TON of psych support for your own people.
Hopefully this is not too much of a downer but having done this exact thing and burning out of the advocacy space because of how much of a nightmare it was to interface with companies, I can’t possibly recommend this as a tactic. It’s a meat grinder and companies will not move.
The thing I’ve been noodling on the last few days is how do we find some sort of financial incentive/blowback. Been having these fights internally a long time and the only thing I’ve ever seen work is demonstrating financial incentive or significant reputational damage
Then that becomes a real question of tactics that is worth considering - is the idea to punish bad actors or to support targets? Is there a way to do both without exhausting your resources? What do you have better tools to accomplish? Starting with a specific goal and working backwards is critical
Financial blowback is challenging in the gaming space though, the worst people are willing to throw money at hatred and gamer boycotts struggle to not just be overrun by scabs.
If you're up for it, I'd love to pick your brain at some point
I’d be down, probably not this week though if that’s ok. I’m going through some stuff and feel like if my emotional immune system is lower than usual, it’d be too easy for this to turn into a trauma dump and I don’t wanna do that to either of us lol
I totally get it. I shot you a DM, let's chat there whenever to set something up <3
I can in the meantime though see if I can dig up a pdf of my book since the second half of the entire thing is basically me just debriefing on what did and didn’t work so I could leave that particular advocacy space and try to have a life I didn’t hate
I mean I'm sure I don't need to tell you that your lawyers had some legal success with harassment so you could also potentially look into advocacy in that area. Trying to get better harassment laws past that encompass some of the stochastic threats that come up in gaming spaces.
No it's an honest take and one I need. I'm just trying to fight this feeling of helplessness, you know? How do we let it keep happening?
Oh believe me, I get that. The thing I did find that WAS successful was peer to peer support. But that also comes with a HUGE need to set up infrastructure of care to the aforementioned peers that can be really hard to actually set up if that’s not like the only thing you do.
It’s not impossible to do things about it, I just think less “awareness” or nonprofit-ish solutions tend to be as effective as a bug bouncing off a windshield. The issue isn’t really about education atp HOWEVER, ways to offer support more directly to people suffering it does make a difference
Gonna second this, I straight up don't believe a lot of companies would be interested, and I think many companies enjoy having what is essentially an industry attack dog that they're not affiliated with in an official capacity, but acts in their interests. Saw this the first time around, for example
when Bethesda was practicing retaliatory blacklisting of outlets, that so called "consumer revolt" celebrated it. The harassment mobs always act very in line with corporate interests, they're extremely anti-union, they'll target marginalized employees, and corporations enjoy these unpaid Pinkertons
They'll go after individual reviewers for supposedly messing up a metacritic rank. When a studio known for making singlerplayer games gets railroaded into making a life service, they'll pin the disaster on someone other than management; Suicide Squad and Sweet Baby It's always corporate interests