Depression Quest's' tone is one of hope. Many players have told me they've tried to take steps in their life to get their illness under control. I tear up while reading my e-mail on subways a lot.
Zoe Quinn
It's very alienating to become a target, and it can be really difficult to try and explain to people, to family members.
Game development combines all this disparate art stuff I'd been doing into one single thing that I could use to say very specific stuff.
I was diagnosed with depression at fourteen, but I couldn't find any medication that did anything for me other than making things worse.
It sucks to not have any privacy.
There have been a number of film, TV, and - actually - theater productions that have been based off of me. Pretty much none of them have ever actually spoken to me, and I die in most of them.
The bulk of my work is comedy and I wanted to use the gaming world as a vehicle to deliver comedy.
When you really boil it down, what comedy does is you expect one thing, and you get a totally different thing that's humorous, and we all laugh. That's generally how, just mechanically - super-distilled - comedy works.
I get apologies from Gamergaters pretty regularly saying: 'I didn't think you were a real person.'
In terms of client & press requests, I operate under the assumption that anything I say will be blasted out in public, so I measure my words incredibly carefully because of the scrutiny I'm under.
I have countless fake accounts on social media sending me hate and it's hard to discern how many people are actually involved.
We need to discuss what our own standards are for games writing that falls outside of journalism, and support experimental formats and routes of production that may be more tailored to them than the status quo, because the public at large seems to still think that the only games writing that exists are reviews and news.
Vertigo's always been a label that experiments with new stuff and forms of subversion.
Whether you need technology in your body for medical reasons, or just want it to augment your senses or for experimentation, there are numerous fronts that open-source advocates are working on to make implantable technology safer, cheaper, and available to everyone.
The reason I namecheck restorative justice so much is because that, to me, is the utopia.
A friend of the family gave me a Game Boy when I was very little, and it was amazing.
The No. 1 thing I've seen actually help with online abuse is when the person has a good community or a strong support network that's savvy and that can help them.
It always makes me super nervous how many tech companies don't have data ethicists.
Games are awesome. Stop letting jerks hijack them.
GamerGate-promoted outlets fail at grown-up journalistic ethics, and they also fail at the cheap knockoff brand of GamerGate brand ethics, too.
I was the funny-looking one who wore a trench coat and played hacky sack with the other greasy kids.
I like the idea of using cool cyberpunk stuff to tell really stupid jokes.
It's weird when you stop being a person to a lot of folks and just become a weird talking point. It's like you become a meme, and you're not a person anymore, and people don't mind stealing your life.
One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.
I used to be a part-time enthusiast press games writer when I was starting to get into making indie games.
Everyone who has felt alienated by the games industry, both would-be players and creators, needs to rally together and support one another as we create a space for those of us who don't fit in traditional spaces.
Anyone can have depression. The illness doesn't care how much you do or don't have.
Being able to work in comics at all - I know I came into it from a different medium, but I'd like to stay here. It's not like a weird touristy thing for me.
For me, I don't think there's anything more human than technology. That's a big thing separating us from other animals: we make things, we build things, we create machines.
Sailor Moon' was the first time I could say I was a super-duper-fan of something. I remember watching before school, at like 6 A.M. along with 'Dragonball Z' or 'Beast Wars,' depending on the months.
I've been trying to reassert myself as a human and not just a current events story. I should not be the face of online harassment.
Mistakes, once owned, apologized for, and buried, need to be an accepted part of life.
A cool thing about enthusiast press is the low barrier to entry. Anyone can decide they want to set out on this path and start publishing immediately.
It only makes sense that as our society becomes more and more integrated with technology, we'll start to see more cyborgs, grinders, biohackers - whatever you want to call us - thriving at the intersection of tech and body modification.
What people don't realize is that when you start making things outside of the convention of what is normal or good or 'best practices,' you're also shedding some of the baggage that comes with the concept of what a game 'should' be.
Ultimately, I love everything about making games, but I've come to hate everything about conventional sustainability, and I know I'm not alone.
Making accessible games opens up the world of digital play to people living with disability, or even simply people who lack the literacy of an intimidating twin-stick controller.
The first week of Gamergate, I didn't sleep or eat at all.
I'm a weird goofy dork.
People look to me for guidance or responsibility. People put a lot of stuff on me as a symbol of something, which is nothing I opted into, but it's a responsibility I take seriously regardless.
I still strongly feel that a lot of people who participated in Gamergate, who participated in this sort of thing, are doing so because they go into it with - they'll believe the version of events that fits their world view.
The majority of my work in games, outside of 'Depression Quest,' has been experimental pushes into comedy games. I think there are a lot of intersections there.
I know the first time I see a 'Goddess Mode' cosplayer I'm going to cry in such a loud, obnoxious way that it'll be audible from space.
I really, really, really love writing comics.
I think as an author every character ends up low-key being some kind of self-insert.
Monster Hearts is pretty cool!
I used to go to games events and feel like I was going home.
I still really love the Internet.
I still love gaming and the gaming community.
The bigger your platform gets - it kind of feels like being Godzilla sometimes. You make a slight move and you can accidentally knock over a building. It's a tough thing to navigate.
