Two panels about Gamergate have been removed from the agenda of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference following “numerous threats of on-site violence”, according to the festival’s organisers.
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SXSW canceled two panel discussions that were ironically focused on the harassment and diversity issues on the gaming community due to threats of on-site violence.
Most notably, numerous individuals threatened rape, violence and death against feminist Sarkeesian in response to her analysis of sexist tropes in video games.
The second cancelled panel, ‘SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community’, was to feature Perry Jones of the Open Gaming Society, game developer Nick Robalik, adult film actress Mercedes Carrera, and journalist Lynn Walsh. After describing SXSW as a home for “diverse ideas”, Forrest also described a desire to maintain “civil and respectful” dialogue.
In his blog post, SXSW Interactives Forrest said that the festival organizers sought to promote an exchange of ideas, and that the threat of harassment compromised the atmosphere needed to foster a marketplace of ideas. SXSW Interactive Director Hugh Forrest said in a statement that if the debate could not remain “civil and respectful”, no group would have its time on a SXSW stage.
BuzzFeed’s letter is fairly conciliatory toward SXSW.
The two panels in question, “SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community” and “Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games”, were both related to the #GamerGate controversy in a few way. The gathering has a looser reputation than bigger tech conferences like the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but it has become bigger and more corporate in recent years. We wanted to discuss the wider problem and solutions thereto.
South By Southwest 2016 will take place in Austin, Texas from March 11-20, with the Interactive portion being the first week of the festival.
Meanwhile, a panel that plans to discuss “the past year of Gamergate related idiocy” hasn’t been affected at all. “There are a lot of people who are angry that women are invading their online spaces and, you know, demanding that the threats stop”. Vox said it “will work to find an alternative forum for this conversation and invite others who feel the same to join us”.
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“We did not mention GG in the proposal nor in the actual text of the panel description”, Cross said. With SXSW still a good five months away, it will be interesting to see what happens now that the festival has been sucked into the middle of the Gamergate saga. In fact, it sounds like it would have been an interesting and fascinating talk about how games could be created to combat online harassment. “Level Up” panelist Katherine Cross tweeted that her panel had no explicit aim to address or critique GamerGate. Harper shared the depressing reality that all of the panelists had received threats at a few point, so any safety concerns that were raised would have just been sad par for the sexist course.
