Our Long, Dark History: A Timeline of Sexism in Gaming

The following is a rough timeline of sexist incidents in the gaming sphere since the 1980s, including releases of notable (and notorious) titles, issues within and around studios, developers, and other professionals, and cultural events. It isn’t a “complete” timeline because no timeline can be complete; some incidents have been lost to the past, while others may not be reported because the culture of sexism seems so normalized that we don’t even think of them as troubling. Still other events that might have been news in earlier years have now simply become such commonplace occurrences, such as cyber-harassment and doxxing, that there are too many incidents to report. Instead, then, this is a timeline of selected incidents, meant to stitch together a loose historical look at how gaming has evolved, and how it hasn’t, over the years.

I’ve put this together today because of the responses to the special features we ran this week. Some readers are speculating on the identities on the parties involved, but the truth is it hardly matters; sexism, racism, and transphobia is not uncommon in the larger gaming sphere, and boycotting a particular developer or game seems to run counter to the end goal of a more inclusive industry and culture. We need to bring our power to bear. Recent reports have indicated that women, for instance, are a dominant force in console ownership, and that’s power we can wield. We cannot afford to go away. We need to stay and demand better treatment than we have had in this mottled past.

Timeline Part 1 by Alisha Karabinus

Timeline Part 2 by Alisha Karabinus

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