I had one more experience at the XOXO Festival that I wanted to mention. I really enjoyed Anita Sarkeesian’s talk. You can watch it here:

Sarkeesian explained her experience with humor and grace, and that really resonated with me. I don’t want to join the tone police–passionate voices have a role in this discussion too, and passion may work well for others. But I know it can be hard to take abuse while making your case with civility, and I admired Sarkeesian’s ability to rise above the fray.

As part of my job, I’ve unfortunately become somewhat of a connoisseur of vitriol and threats. My first death threat was over a decade ago in a situation involving the DMCA and the Church of Scientology (before you jump to assumptions, the death threat came from the anti-Scientology side). I got a threat at a 2002 search conference that I considered credible enough that I started carrying a cell phone with me after that. I got an open-ended threat against my family just a couple weeks or so ago, even though I haven’t been working on webspam for months.

But here’s the thing: I’ve never received threats as pointed, menacing, or explicit as Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and others discussing GamerGate have. No one should face threats of physical harm for expressing their opinions. No one should be doxxed or have their personal information posted just for expressing their opinions. That should be the starting point and the bare minimum for any discussion. If you disagree with someone, win them over with your ideas, not with threats.

I should mention that I’m a big fan of clear disclosure of potential conflicts of interest, and I’ve posted my own disclosure page at the top of my blog for over five years. I’ve also been playing computer games since Pong in the 1970s. As a kid, I wrote a script to solve Colossal Cave Adventure on a local university’s PRIMOS system. I subscribed to Electronic Games magazine back when people called them “coin-op” games. By the way, check out that Electronic Games link to see how Nintendo tried to avoid sexist language in games back in 1993. Hell, I feel bad for people who never got to play Raiders of the Lost Ark on an Atari 2600, or Infocom games on a Commodore 64, or marvel the first time they saw the parallax effect in Moon Patrol:

The gaming world is changing, and in my opinion for the better. We’ve got browser-based games like Kingdom of Loathing or Candybox2. We’ve got absurdist wonders like Progress Quest and games you play outside like Ingress. Playing Depression Quest was important for me, because I have friends who are deeply affected by depression. I can’t wait to see where gaming goes next–how about we make virtual and augmented reality work this time around! I hope that gaming can be even more welcoming to new ideas and experiences than it was when I was a kid. I also hope everyone can agree that doxxing and threats aren’t ever welcome.