Adult Computer Games and the Ethics of Imaginary Violence: Responding to Gamergate from Japan

Abstract

Introduction The threat was real and had to be taken seriously. She had received and read hundreds of similar messages and posts on the internet and social media, but this one included her home address. With the address redacted, it read: “I’m going to go to your apartment at **** and rape you to death. After I’m done, I’ll ram a tire iron up your cunt.”1 The sender also promised to harm family and friends but reserved an especially imaginative and graphic brutality for her. So it was that Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist critic of sexism in computer/console gaming in North America, was forced to call the police and leave her home in August 2014. Sarkeesian was neither the first nor the last victim of backlash from gamers to perceived attacks on their community and culture, which began with organized campaigns against female game developers Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu and came to a head with threats to bomb and shoot up venues hosting advocates of change in computer/ console gaming. Having risen to prominence with her crowdfunded video series “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” Sarkeesian was a high-profile target, and news of attacks such as the one in August 2014 served to galvanize a counter movement against the gamers harassing her and others. Events were such that the moment was deemed “Gamergate,” a