There’s some drama between IGF and judge Mattie Brice. Should people be upset?

When it comes to indie games, I play the ones that are passed along from word of mouth. If my friends discover one that is great, I’ll give it a shot. Between that and Steam, my strategy for playing indie games has worked so far.

There’s also something called the Independent Games Festival (IGF), which was established in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development, and to recognize the best indie game developers. There are multiple monetary awards for winners, with the largest sum being the Grand Prize of $30,000 — so for a small indie team, a lot is at stake. Some names that you might recognize are Fez, Castle Crashers and Braid.

The movement known as #Gamergate has been critical of IGF in the past few months due to allegations of collusion. So when an IGF judge tweets — even in jest — that she’s going to “nuke” any game involving men in the IGF, I understand that both IGF and Gamergaters might be concerned.

Judge — make that former judge — Mattie Brice took to Twitter with some very choice words, and she’s been the topic of much discussion and harassment because of it. The tweets in question are being called a joke or trolling by many of her fellow judges. One can understand how the pressures of harassment can lead to being fed up and unloading some trolling tweets, but there are consequences for everything you tweet — joke or not. Here are the tweets that caused the controversy (some language is NSFW):

And these:

In response, IGF tweeted that they asked Mattie not to reference them in her tweets of this nature. So, she supposedly told them she didn’t want to be a judge anymore. It’s worth noting that people did contact IGF with Mattie’s tweets, and that’s what caused the concern.

In response to this, Mattie Brice tweeted:

Like any organization that wants to be taken seriously, it doesn’t help if one of the judges is tweeting about unfair and biased judging — even as a joke. And having it be a joke doesn’t clear you from any backlash. Also, it’s not too much for IGF to ask to not be mentioned in these tweets. It’s the internet, and even jokes are going to be taken out of context. As an author of these jokes, you have to deal with any of the backlash that might come with it. We’ve seen this be the case with comedians, athletes and actors in the past.

I’m a New York Mets fan — I know… it sucks. My favorite pitcher on the team, young and rising star Matt Harvey, has a huge personality and ego to back it up. On his Twitter account back in April, he tweeted “I can’t believe it’s been 6 months already. #tommyjohn” in reference to his ongoing recovery from surgery. Included in the tweet was a photo of himself from his hospital bed in October, with his middle finger raised. It’s his twitter account, so he can do what he wants. Soon after, the tweet was deleted, as was the entire twitter account. It comes out that his employees, the New York Mets, requested that he delete the tweet because it contained a potentially offensive gesture. Harvey, afterwards, made the decision to delete the entire account. Harvey isn’t the first athlete to have his tweets monitored and censored at the request of the organization, nor will he be the last. If what you’re tweeting hurts the brand that you associate with, it’s a reasonable request that often gets made. Actor Jason Biggs has made poorly timed jokes about deaths and plane disappearances. Jokes. He got crucified — and rightfully so. And he apologized.

So why the backlash against IGF from other judges standing up for Mattie Brice? She chose to write those tweets. Joke or not, of course it was going to offend some people and bring unwanted attention to IGF. Just because it’s Gamergate that brought it to IGF’s attention doesn’t mean there’s no validity to the criticism.

After the backlash and requests for an apology from IGF to Mattie Brice, IGF had the following post on their website titled, “An apology and a statement on IGF inclusivity.” In it, they explain their reasoning and apologize to any juror who has felt unsupported or unsafe because of their statements, and even welcomes Mattie to return to judging. The meat of it is here:

As we have stated above and elsewhere, the content of the original tweet in question was clearly — to anyone that has ever been involved in the festival — meant in jest, even on its face. To be clear, there is no concept of "downvoting" in IGF judging — judges are able to either state that they would like to see a game nominated for a particular award, or express no judgment on it entirely. […] The impact of the statement, though — and what caused us concern — was that it raised suspicions that judgment would be made on games without due diligence. We also take seriously the impact of our judges making public statements about the process of on-going proceedings, including which games a particular judge is assigned, impressions on unreleased games in the festival, or how any of our judges intend to vote in the festival.

This latter concern is what the IGF reacted to early in the day. At no point was the IGF's intent to silence any particular judge's point of view or personal beliefs, and the idea that any of our statements made today could be construed to be in support of or a capitulation to a harassment campaign — which itself has worked to to silence the exact kind of diversity we intend to celebrate with the IGF — is enormously troubling.

I make the connection to sports again, but analysts and critics have been suspended for things they’ve said on their podcast or twitter accounts. Just because something is meant in jest or obviously a joke doesn’t excuse the person from any backlash. I won’t attempt to say I can understand the amount of harassment Mattie Brice receives. And I’m not saying she should apologize for what she said. All I say is look at how IGF might want to protect their brand. These tweets don’t protect it; they tarnish it.

Twitter Source: Mattie Brice