Back in August 2014 sexism in the male dominated world of video gaming found a focal point in what is now considered Gamergate. It all started with the aftermath of a relationship gone bad between game developer Zoë Quinn and her former journalist boyfriend. The ex posted to a blog that led others to believe that Quinn entered into the relationship only to leverage positive coverage for her product. This led to harassment of Quinn and other women in the industry like fellow developer Brianna Wu and critic Anita Sarkeesian which, in turn, led to a backlash of said harassment. On Twitter the Gamergate hashtag was born and the war of words spread everywhere from Reddit to 4chan.
So let’s make a movie out of it.
Deadline reports that the bidding war for rights to produce Quinn’s memoir to be released in September of next year called ‘Crash Override: How to Save the Internet from Itself’ has been won by former Sony exec Amy Pascal. Here is the description from the proposal of Quinn’s book:
Gaming and internet message boards used to be niche interests, mostly for young men. In the past few years, however, they’ve gone mainstream. Millions of people — including women and other marginalized people — have taken an interest in the platforms, image boards, and discussion forums that once belonged by default to a much smaller population. Most gamers give zero fu*ks about this. Like the rest of us, they’re just here to play games. But a vocal minority are clinging onto the brand of Cheetos-and-Mountain-Dew exclusionary identity ‘hardcore gamer,’ muttering ‘fu*kin casuals’ under their breath.
Quinn isn’t backing down from the message boards that are a large source of her harassment and instead is making a stand against what she considers sexism and misogyny in gaming culture. Although it is still early days for any adaptation of her book, there is some talk that Scarlett Johansson will stand with her by staring in the movie. It’s an interesting proposal considering that Amy Pascal is still based at Sony, a company that has deep ties to the video game industry as the manufacturer of PlayStation.
