High Scores Source: Entertainment Software Association, 2015
Age
of Game Players
Video games are ingrained in our culture. —Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO, Entertainment Software Association
26% under 18 30% 18-35 17% 36-49 27% 50+
The average game player is
35 42% years old
Gender of Game Players
56% male 44% female
of Americans play video games regularly (3 hours or more per week)
155 million Americans play video games
Allaway was lucky — although she had to secure her online accounts to protect them from possible cyber attacks, contact police and warn her family, she never received any other harassment. She used the data from the attack to write another article arguing that, by academic definition, Gamergate classified as a hate group. The article, published on the widely read feminist blog Jezebel, earned her even more interview invitations. Throughout all of her publishing and presenting, Allaway continually heard from other women in the industry who shared stories of experiencing sexism — and they often thanked her for raising the issue. “There was a really big dearth of dialogue about this issue — it was like a wound that was leaking but wasn’t being attended to,” she says. “Then people started opening it and everything came out. Now we know we have this problem, and people are having a larger conversation [about it]. That’s progress.” Still, Allaway says the industry has a long way to go to solve the issue. Even though many of the high-profile Gamergate attacks happened a year ago, Allaway notes that the controversy still continues — as evidenced by the hoopla surrounding this spring’s South by Southwest festival in Austin (organizers canceled several panels relating to harassment in gaming after receiving threats of violence; later, they announced a day-long summit on harassment). “We need to show people that this is still happening with women and people of color and transgendered people in the industry 32
SPRING 2016
— they are still being harassed every day,” Allaway says. “It’s important that the industry take it seriously.”
Change from Within
As more women speak out, the industry seems to be listening. Peter Moore, the chief operating officer of Electronic Arts — one of the world’s largest video game publishers — told Fortune magazine in September that “if there’s any benefit to Gamergate, whatever Gamergate is, I think it just makes us think twice at times. … We all need to step back sometimes and think about the environments we create for our people … and equally importantly how you bring new blood into the company. It can’t all be white males.” In January 2015, Intel — which at one point temporarily withdrew its ads from Gamasutra in response to an email campaign it did not realize originated from Gamergaters — announced a $300 million Diversity in Technology Initiative to help increase representation of minorities and women at its company and in the tech industry in general. Several of its investments specifically support women in gaming, including a new scholarship to send promising young women to GDC — Allaway was one of the first recipients. Numerous programs are popping up nationwide that, like ChickTech, work to encourage and empower high school girls to enter the fields of computer programming and tech — Google’s Made with Code initiative is another example.