Bomb Threat Targeted Anita Sarkeesian, Game Developers Choice Awards Last March

Yes, I won't make a statement such as "such an embarrassment to the gaming community" when I can't really prove it. Sure she plays games and does a video series about tropes in videogames, but isn't that just a small part of her work? Whoever made the threat could have easily been an anti-feminist madman who follows her every move.
So a gamergater?
 
What the flying fuck. Seriously this is insane. If you disagree with someone why can't you just have a civil discussion with their followers. Hell, go ahead and have a heated debate if you need, but a bomb threat and death threats? I have no words, what an embarrassment to our community.

Let's say that you don't like what she's saying and wants her to stop. Is it easier to listen to her arguments and try to debate them or to threaten her and try to stop the argument? For many, it's actually the latter.
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

If she has that much power, its only because gamers gave it to her. Without the hate surrounding and amplifying her every example of sexism in the industry, she’s just some chick with a youtube account, like countless others. No one even knew her name when she was yammering about how Star Trek: TNG and Elizabethtown was sexist.

Also: she doesn’t have that much power. So there’s that.
 
She doesn't deverve this award, but to make a bomb threat is too much.

Police, FBI must investigate it. I'm 100% sure nobody is going to put a bomb, but they must stop it. Both if is a self made false threat as argued in other cases with credible reasons or if it's a dumb idiot who just made this for the lulz.
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

LOL. Fuck outta here with that. You think if Anita hated Destiny it wouldn't have sold?

Let's clear the air here: Anita is a woman with an opinion. She critiques games. That is a thing that she does. Am I interested in her critiques? No, but then I rarely care about anyone's critiques to begin with. Just because I'm not interested doesn't mean other people can't be. Just because you're not interested doesn't mean you have to watch. If anyone isn't interested, they can NOT watch. Death threats, rape threats, and fucking BOMB threats aren't just out of line, they're illegal and these people should be chucked in the nearest jail cell immediately.
 
She doesn't deverve this award, but to make a bomb threat is too much.

Police, FBI must investigate it. I'm 100% sure nobody is going to put a bomb, but they must stop it. Both if is a self made false threat as argued in other cases with credible reasons or if it's a dumb idiot who just made this for the lulz.

Try reading the article. It's about a past event and has the police already involved.
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

You're aware she just makes a web series right?
 
I cover conventions and political events. Almost every tea party or planned parenthood event I have covered gets a dozen bomb threats. It's the internet. An email or two gets the benefit of the doubt in the eyes of the police. Good that it was nothing. Good that it was investigated. Interesting that it was not reported in a timely manner. It should have been mentioned at least four months ago. In the news cycle, this is a dropped story picked up for the sensationalist headline and discussion that it now can garner. But, at least, we now know about it.

Most likely, it was held back because it is embarrassing to the organizers of the event or there was an active case. Kotaku is hurting the event by publicizing this.

But it is good to know that the event is safe... Unless this causes a drop in attendance.. If I were on the event board, I would be pissed. Kind of like the reports out of SDCC this year.
 
I apologize for my earlier post, which was quite rash and flawed.

Now can literally everybody stop quoting it?
 
Couldn't care less about this girl or her opinions.

People who care only make her a favour... ignore her and nobody will care about her.
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

She turned me into a newt!

...I got better...
 
I would not be surprised if the people making these online threats were Gamestop employees or the type of patron that likes to hang out inside of one for more than 20 minutes.
 
I cover conventions and political events. Almost every tea party or planned parenthood event I have covered gets a dozen bomb threats. It's the internet. An email or two gets the benefit of the doubt in the eyes of the police. Good that it was nothing. Good that it was investigated.
Angry people other than gamers make threats to those who disagree with them? :o
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

At this entire post:

Nah.

Anita is a big deal when it comes to some game communities, not gaming as a whole. Game developers en masse don't seek her out to consult their game, game journalists and writers don't cite her as a gamechanger when it comes to delivering opinions. Her views don't influence game reviews, at all. She'll probably never have the same influence as actual game developers and games.

Devout levels of devotion? Not at all. Most Gaf threads are constant back and forth affairs about her arguments and points. I personally agree with her sentiment and goals, but really don't dig her arguments and the context behind those arguments. Plenty of Gaffers and people in general feel the same way.
 
Couldn't care less about this girl or her opinions.

People who care only make her a favour... ignore her and nobody will care about her.

Pardon, but it really sounded like you were phrasing it to mean "she's causing shit and making people threaten her. If you just ignore her she'll go away"

It just kind of sounds like victim blaming is all
 
She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.
What. Like, (I eneded up not playing this game but) srsly all I heard about Red Dead's misogyny was when I watched AS's video describing the use of whores in videogames.

Now can literally everybody stop quoting it?
sry bro
 
Angry people other than gamers make threats to those who disagree with them? :o

If you had to pick a motive for why this person chose Anita as the reason why he or she (probably he lol) was going to bomb GDC over, what would it be?

Do note that Anita KIND of has a history of being threatened with murder from the gaming community.
 
I'm glad this got revealed simply for the PR shitstorm that keeps rolling in on these assholes. Haters gonna hate. Females need more and better representation and less harassment no matter the person behind the podium. End of the story. Go gurls.
 
I'm just going to abort mission on this thread because what I almost typed in will definitely not conform to what the masses actually want to hear.

For some reason, I found that post hilarious.
 
The association is there. You don't see bomb threats when a woman receives an award for novelists, but you do for games.

Outsiders have to wonder, what the fuck is wrong with games? What's wrong with the games industry? What's wrong with gamers?
There's some truth on that.

At the same time, there's the assumption that the "gamers" making this threats are american, white, male, single and play console games mostly...when for all intents and purposes noone knows. Heck, could be from Europe, could be married...even women; noone knows.

What sucks is that we're close to finish 2014 and some things just never change.
 
Do people actually believe this? It's the same stuff with Zoe Quinn, that she apparently had some amazing control over people which is just silly.



J1JiTS4.jpg
 
What. Like, (I eneded up not playing this game but) srsly all I heard about Red Dead's misogyny was when I watched AS's video describing the use of whores in videogames.

A couple of reviews of some games have mentioned things regarding the representation of women in said games, but it's largely been in cases where such criticism is quite warranted and it's not like it's happening in every single review.

Manchildren have taken this to mean that a plague of the dreaded social justice crusade is sweeping up the precious vidja games that they just want to play and the mean women shut and sleep with them instead because they are nice guys and are so much better than those jerky jocks.
 
If she has that much power, its only because gamers gave it to her. Without the hate surrounding and amplifying her every example of sexism in the industry, she’s just some chick with a youtube account, like countless others. No one even knew her name when she was yammering about how Star Trek: TNG and Elizabethtown was sexist.

Also: she doesn’t have that much power. So there’s that.


I agree entirely with Peach here.
 
I'm glad this got revealed simply for the PR shitstorm that keeps rolling in on these assholes. Haters gonna hate. Females need more and better representation and less harassment no matter the person behind the podium. End of the story. Go gurls.
This can't be said enough. I'm not a fan of Anita, but at the very least I think she'll help pave the way for someone more informed/familiar with video games to speak about similar topics.
 
Well, don't recall anything about a bomb going off at the event.

Open question: Why does an empty threat from a single anonymous person from the Internet make you "feel sick to be associated with the 'community'?"

I'm glad the threat was taken seriously, whoever made it was clearly in the wrong, but his actions are in no way indicative of ANY community.

She has a hella lot of followers with religious levels of devotion, and game journalists subscribe to her views as gospel as well. Kotaku and friends have a lot of influence on what games get popular and well-known, so if Anita doesn't like a game, that's basically a death sentence. She kind of has some power.
At the very least, reviews will include a paragraph about misogyny, and scores will he knocked down a point or two.

I like your narrative. From "in no indicative of any community" to the unfounded claim of "religious Sarkeesian devotees". Just wondering, why do you have the need to critize Sarkeesian in such a thread? Which is about her receiving a bomb threat? With baseless claims on top of that.
 
Try reading the article. It's about a past event and has the police already involved.
Ah ok. In any case, they should investigate who sent the mail (they can do it for cases like that). I highly doubt somebody will ever put a bomb for a reason like that, but they must stop it.

In the video interview with the SFPD spokeperson where they say Anita didn't contact them this August, when she claimed that had to move due to threats, they mentioned that they only registered that she contacted from March. So it should be this one.
 
At the same time, there's the assumption that the "gamers" making this threats are american, white, male, single and play console games mostly...when for all intents and purposes noone knows. Heck, could be from Europe, could be married...even women; noone knows.

You say that like it's equivalent to receiving death and bomb threats.
 
I'd venture to say most people who would issue bomb threats ARE white. Aren't most bomb threats made by white people?

EDIT: Also, I think a good thing to look at is Egoraptor. A lot of people hate his views in Sequelitis, especially OoT, and find them somewhat unfounded. Yet, the celebrity he received for them hasn't caused nearly as much ire as a feminist viewpoint. Why don't the people who threaten to kill Sarkeesian for her quote-unquote incorrect viewpoints also threaten Ego, who many I'm sure feel that he's completely incorrect on the subject of OoT's quality (or lack thereof)? Likely because he's male, and he's way harder to intimidate than Anita. Plus he's like 6'2.
 
I'm glad this got revealed simply for the PR shitstorm that keeps rolling in on these assholes. Haters gonna hate. Females need more and better representation and less harassment no matter the person behind the podium. End of the story. Go gurls.
So...developers should stop making games that appeal to the people who largely buy games?

I can agree with less harassment. But mean tweets are harmless. How many times has Anita actually been raped or killed? Cowards from the Internet will always exist. Ignoring and reporting is the best way of dealing with them. Not retweeting them for sympathy points.
 
In the video interview with the SFPD spokeperson where they say Anita didn't contact them this August, when she claimed that had to move due to threats, they mentioned that they only registered that she contacted from March. So it should be this one.
The article mentions that Anita did in fact contact the SFPD in August.
But one of the people behind a planned anti-Sarkeesian documentary called the SFPD and recorded a representative there saying they had no record of this. In the days that followed, the SFPD corrected themselves and stated that Sarkeesian had indeed reported threats to them. Officer Esparza confirmed as much to me yesterday saying "our department was notified and forwarded [the threats] to the FBI," which he said is handling the harassment against Sarkeesian.
 
So...developers should stop making games that appeal to the people who largely buy games?

I can agree with less harassment. But mean tweets are harmless. How many times has Anita actually been raped or killed? Cowards from the Internet will always exist. Ignoring and reporting is the best way of dealing with them. Not retweeting them for sympathy points.

How does making games with better female representation equal stopping making games that appeal to people that buy games? Are they going to stop buying games if there's less boob physics and panty shots?

Not even going to tough the second half. Sheesh.
 
So...developers should stop making games that appeal to the people who largely buy games?

I can agree with less harassment. But mean tweets are harmless. How many times has Anita actually been raped or killed? Cowards from the Internet will always exist. Ignoring and reporting is the best way of dealing with them. Not retweeting them for sympathy points.

Are you serious? Threats of violence and rape are harmless? The waves of shit that gets sent her way on a daily basis is completely disgusting
 
Quick question: did the bomb squad actually find any ordinance? I can't read the article, it's blocked on my military school's wonderful internet.
 
I like your narrative. From "in no indicative of any community" to the unfounded claim of "religious Sarkeesian devotees". Just wondering, why do you have the need to critize Sarkeesian in such a thread? Which is about her receiving a bomb threat? With baseless claims on top of that.
Sorry about my baseless claims. I redacted them from the post and I feel quite stupid for making them.

But you should see her Twitter followers. They're crazy.
 
Why don't the people who threaten to kill Sarkeesian for her quote-unquote incorrect viewpoints also threaten Ego, who many I'm sure feel that he's completely incorrect on the subject of OoT's quality (or lack thereof)? Likely because he's male, and he's way harder to intimidate than Anita. Plus he's like 6'2.

Jack Thompson was an activist against game violence, much like Sarkeesian, and he had WAAAY more death threats than her (Which people didn't seem to have a problem with). So it's not really a gender thing. Anyone can get death threats.
 
Top Bottom