Yesterday, Intel made a major announcement, effectively setting a dare up for other tech companies by declaring a $300 Million dollar investment in Diversity, including the goal of a fully representative workplace by 2020. This is a pretty staggeringly ambitious goal for a large, major international company, and by at least this account, we largely have GamerGate to thank.
In October, though, Intel unwittingly became a villain in a controversy over the treatment of women in gaming, which has come to be known as GamerGate. A loose-knit brigade of Internet users lobbied the company to pull an advertising campaign on the game website Gamasutra because it had run an essay attacking the male dominance of games culture.
Intel, which was caught off guard by the ensuing controversy over its actions, eventually resumed advertising on the site. Mr. Krzanich said he used the incident as an opportunity to think more deeply about the broader issue of diversity in the tech industry. The issue resonated with him personally.
“I have two daughters of my own coming up on college age,” he said. “I want them to have a world that’s got equal opportunity for them.”
Note that this hilariously seems to not quite match Breitbart’s super secret report of Intel’s super secret GamerGate fanboyism. The remaining dregs of Gamergate were not pleased, largely because both Anita Sarkeesian and the IGDA were listed as key partners of the initiative.
Intel shows it’s opposition of #GamerGate and support for gender diversity at #CES2015. @femfreq is in there! pic.twitter.com/Qn9RaLjL1A
— (ง •̀_•́)ง (@smashtic) January 7, 2015
GamerGate adherents are already are planning a counter-email campaign, making sure, as always, to hide their GamerGate affiliation specifically to avoid getting filtered. They continue to unload on Anita as a ‘member of a hate group‘ and a ‘demagogue’ among other old, debunked crap, (as frequently noted, she’s not always right but she’s definitely enlightening, and her voice should be welcomed). As for the IGDA, GamerGate adherents have that organization on the shit list for at one point having a link to Randi’s GG Autoblocker on their website to help out game developers felt under siege (unlike ). As an amusing artifact of history, this all happened while there was a bug in the blocker, which resulted in KFC’s official twitter account being included, which is why you’ll occasionally hear a Gator cry out ‘KFC!’ in Twitter the same way Braveheart shouted ‘Freedom!’
If you pay attention to the zombie-like shuffling husk that is the GamerGate saga nowadays, this last paragraph is what you’re going to get –petty, unworthy bullshit peppered by anonymous harassment targeting individuals on both sides of the fence. Many, particularly the moderates on both sides, have backed out — there was a particularly large egress on the topic in the week when people were discussing the relative defensibility of various child-porn like substances that ultimately cost 8chan their Patreon. Reddit banned KiA from posting the email addresses of boycott targets to prevent witchhunts which caused some on KiA to declare reddit a left-wing enemy of free speech (really), and some suggesting starting their own reddit, only with blackjack and hookers.
Doxing and swatting remain hot topics, though usually sourced to theoretically unrelated 8chan boards famous for stirring shit up for the lulz. The Mens Rights Activists continue to eagerly throw their cancerous opinions into the fray. Some asshole told TotalBiscuit that he hopes he dies of the cancer he’s currently battling (anti-GG forces are being blamed, though no one knows who the fuck the tweeter is). Randi Harper pointed out that many Facebook GamerGate user groups were set improperly to be public, which caused a freakout that she ‘doxed 9000 people’.
The actual time spent discussing anything that looks like what reasonable people consider ‘ethics in journalism’ continues to approach zero. For their part, the games press continues to mostly ignore the whole nine yards, other than occasionally doing things like having fun with disclaimers.
So yeah, the whole shitstorm is still a complete and total cesspool of suck that most journalists and developers do and should avoid. For those who were smarter than me and stayed away, congratulations, and I envy you! For those who were not, perhaps this one man’s tale of dealing with Post-GamerGate Depression may aid you.
I find it surprising that Intel contribute as strongly as they do. If they were doing a purely PR stunt, they would have invested 300k, 3 million or 10 million tops. It is nice to see a corporation invest as heavily in a good cause.
I worry about that goal. If they aimed for like 10 years down the line, I could see it, but 5 years isn’t even enough to push a lot of people through the necessary education to attain the skills they’d probably need to hold good positions in the company. There are already SOME involved in the field, but unless they’re perpetually unemployed, Intel would basically have to take diversity from other companies. Realistically, it seems like a focus on longer-term goals, primarily through influencing education, would yield results for the industry as a whole instead of just helping Intel’s PR.
On a personal level, as a Latino, diversity quotas bother me anyways. I went to two universities. The first advertised their ‘diversity’ constantly, and existed in a ‘college town.’ They had to be somewhat discriminatory in the application process to maintain this claim. Many students didn’t worry over it, but many knew of the discriminatory practices, and would basically hold less respect for minorities attending the school.
The second was downtown in a city that’s economy didn’t rely on students that had parents funding their kids credit cards. This was better for people that essentially HAD to work while attending school, and due to socioeconomic disparities, that tends to work better for minorities. They didn’t tout their diversity constantly, but they didn’t have to. It emerged organically. A lot of my classmates were minorities, and at no point did I feel that people had less respect or reduced expectations because of my race.
Basically, I think there’s a difference between attempts to force diversity vs. favoring other factors that produce it organically. The first promotes a sort of hostility, but it’s what almost all of these efforts focus on. People rarely look at the existing socioeconomic conditions that promote or reduce diversity without utilizing specific quotas and timelines. They want to skip to the end, and tokenism is the outcome. It leads to a subtle hostility that’s at least somewhat justified. That isn’t a good environment for education OR work, and it’ll take more than 5 years.
Nail on head Greg…I don’t know how many people I have talked to that don’t understand this concept. The truly sad part is that gaming was becoming more diverse with each passing day but this event caused by nonsense from “journalists” caused a severe backslide in thinking. As a Black American I can’t decide if I should feel good about the fact that people want the diversity or pissed at the fact that those same people feel that I need a hand out to compete in this damn country. Or you have idiots like Leigh Alexander who scream diversity but wouldn’t know the meaning of the word if it bit her in the…you know…I look at it like this until you change the basis on which people look at their gender roles you will never quite see the “diversity” you want to see. Too often I am reminded of how easy it is to hear someone (non-gamer) say video games are for boys and that girls don’t play video games…the reasoning is because of parenting and influences around the child as they grow up. My father is a programmer, I am a gamer/programmer, and my two younger sisters ARE gamers, what they choose to do in life as a career is up to them but they have expressed interest in computer science because of the influences around them. I can’t quite understand how people still don’t understand that it is the same ideology applied when looking at men who want to be in the fashion industry…”oh that is something a woman would want to do” silly backwoods thinking. A straight man with a passion for fashion can make clothes just like the gay man next to him it makes no difference. Equality is equality not this pushing of a male power structure narrative that is barring women from getting into career fields. Never once have I been in a tech company with a man and heard them say oh there is a woman/black/Jewish/Latino who shouldn’t be here because of the fact of who they are. I HAVE heard them however complain about the fact that a person was hired for “diversity” without the proper credentials to do the job as required and that is wrong period!
Intel can hire whomever they please I don’t care as long as they continue to make great products but don’t sit there and tell me “diversity” is you only driving factor to compete in an open market! Hire based on credentials and experience not on trivial gender/racial motivated bull.
Now lets all wait for the NBA to announce a diversity campaign. 15% of the population makes up the vast majority of players, referring to black players of course.
Or maybe those players are just the most qualified for the job. I don’t like quotas, period. If a woman is better at a job then a man they deserve it but to announce that they will try to hit pre defined numbers is in my opinion unethical.
Also I would like to add that ‘Diversity’ is like the phrase ‘Comprehensive immigration reform’, it means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Because of this it is a term that is safe to use, because everyone thinks it means what they want when they hear it.