Hi I'm new to GG and trying to figure out what my twitter feed is so active over. Game Gahzi banned me, KiA sent me here

I think your first two responses are interesting, especially when it comes to this:

"My understanding of this issue is superficial, but there have been lots of good in-depth articles circulating. From what I can tell it's basically like being on the outside of a clique."

Because cliques exist that bar different people. There are political cliques as well. Indie scene is full of cliques. This, to me, feels like an issue of individual immaturity. Game development is young and attracts the young.

I find that some of the women who have been in the industry longer having a more nuanced view of things speaks to this experience factor.

When your closest experiences are high school and STEM backgrounds, you have two vastly different experiences. STEM is demanding and less inviting towards leisure time to have social groups. High School is very clique based itself. For many people, their first real job is the first time they have a social environment outside of school.

So cliques develop out of inexperience rather than any intent to harm. People argue that the GameJournosPro thing was a clique. I don't see it as a conspiracy. It's just immaturity that ends up excluding people.

However, communities are formed via exclusion and not inclusion, and I think that's important to understand. There are times where you won't fit into a group and that can be perfectly fine. Any community that accepts and adjusts for all is not a community. A thing that allows everyone is a place. Earth is the only totally inclusive area. However, Earth is not a community. It's a placed filled with communities that exist via exclusion.

Everyone else requires some sense of privacy, both individually and via the privacy of a group. One cannot expect to fit in everywhere, and to go into another established community and expect that community to make major changes just for you is not inclusivity but rather narcissism.

The aim is to make sure the exclusion is not harmful.

Like reddit, as long as you can exist within the larger sphere of gaming or reddit as a whole, but can find some sub community within in which you can feel at home (subreddit) or some space (an indie scene clique) then things are in a good place.

Personally, I feel gaming is at that place. There is room for different types of games and different views via the indie scene. This may not be so in larger, more AAA budget titles, but that is because those titles and companies are at a larger financial risk. Those games aren't just afraid of going against gender status quos, but genre status quo or doing anything other than copying what's worked before.

So AAA titles have a built-in financial exclusion that exists to protect their bottom line. If a company succeeds by doing something different, it doesn't encourage the rest to do something different. It just leads them towards copying that new idea or approach.

So is that exclusion harmful? I would say no as there's women who have worked in these fields. It is a less creatively free field of game development, but that holds true for everyone.

And people also like what AAA produces and are a part of that community.

There shouldn't be real barriers to joining in on games other than one's ability to enjoy them and one's ability to make good games.

However, there won't always be cheering of your arrival. As a male writer, I often get some discouragement for pursuing my goal because I hear how much adult women dominate book sales. I realize my stories are not the genres that sell. I realize my approach is sometimes like experimental jazz in a Top 40 Radio Station world.

In the classes I took, I see women writers propped up. The events and speaking engagements are about female voices.

I just don't feel I can blame the book world for that. I may not feel wanted, but I feel needed. You cannot assume to feel wanted.

/r/AgainstGamerGate Thread