Over the last few months, there’s been quite the stir in one part of gaming and it’s mostly focused around the hashtag #GamerGate on Twitter. You may have heard of it as people who want journalistic ethics in games media or as people who want woman out of gaming. Whatever you may think of the hashtag and the people who use it, I want to make this post because I feel some honesty about where I stand on the #GamerGate issue should be made in a somewhat official capacity.

Where I stand
Now hear me out. I wholly support the notion that games journalism should be more transparent by disclosing relationships and to not collude with each other. When I saw the 10+ articles all talking about the same thing, I firmly believed it was an attack on the identity “gamer” and it seems to be a backlash to claims to conflicts of interest against certain individuals. Also, I shouldn’t have to make this clear but I will anyway. I condemn all acts of abuse, harassment, doxxing and threats of any kind. I feel that the strong focus on these types of threats not only make other potential attackers more tempted but also it ruins any possible discussion and distracts completely from the very likely claims of corruption and collusion and in the case of the articles, well it’s pretty blatant collusion.

Double Jump development
So now that I lost some of you let me discuss You can Double JUMP a bit. Development on DJ has been slow this year and I have to be honest that after nearly 2 years in development I’m tired and need a proper break from DJ, at least for now. The laser focus I had in the first year has wavered a bit and I’m struggling to think of new and original level mechanics that feel great to play.

New game
The reason I mentioned #GamerGate and DJ in the same post is because I’m going to use my time away from DJ to design a small game based on my experience of #GamerGate. I’ll be revealing the game in more detail tomorrow. Some say it’s suicidal for a gamedev to support this idea but I’m not making games to make millions. I just want enough to keep making games and to put food in my family’s tummies.

Thank you for reading my ramblings and tweet me @MariosKalogerou if you want to discuss anything about #GamerGate with me. We could discuss it here but a public forum is more ideal for that kind of discourse.

Cheers,
Marios