Depression Quest | Polygamer

In January 2015, Zoë Quinn and Alex Lifschitz debuted Crash Override, an online anti-harassment task force. The organization provides crisis center support, ongoing assistance to victims, and community outreach and activism. The network is staffed by online abuse survivors such as Lifschitz and Quinn, the latter being the developer of Depression Quest and the original target of GamerGate.

In this interview, Quinn and Lifschitz discuss how Crash Override was designed to combat this new movement of hate, how to be proactive without being victim-blaming, the ways in which Crash Override will grow and be funded, and why the video game industry allowed GamerGate to happen.

Download the audio edition of this interview below or from iTunes, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spoke, Overcast, Pandora, Pocket Casts, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, RadioPublic, or the Internet Archive. Click past the jump for links to resources mentioned in this episode.

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Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:38 — 26.3MB) | Embed

GamerGate, feminism, Anita Sarkeesian, and gamer identity: these topics dominated online conversations throughout the latter half of 2014 — but how many people actually care? Is it a just vocal minority that are engaged in these debates, leaving most gamers to play their games in peace, isolated from gaming’s larger context, culture, and community?

In a recent episode of Less Than or Equal, I posited that most consumers in the gaming industry have no awareness of these issues and movements. To test that theory, I found four gamers who are not on Twitter and, despite enjoying such games as Call of Duty, Smash Bros., and Xenosaga, had never heard of GamerGate or Feminist Frequency. I asked each guest in turn the same four questions: what is a gamer; who is Anita Sarkeesian; what is a feminist; and what is GamerGate? After having the honor of introducing them to these concepts, I recorded their reactions.

These four guests represent a cross-section of gaming, coming from different ages (22–36), genders, ethnicities, marital and parental status, geographies, professions, political/religious/sexual orientations, and gaming platforms. All four are personal friends of mine and are identified in this episode’s audio by first name only.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:38:39 — 51.5MB) | Embed

Tag Archives: Depression Quest

Polygamer #15: Zoë Quinn & Alex Lifschitz of Crash Override

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