Gamergate Critic Leigh Alexander to Found New Website for Women and Minority Gamers

Leigh Alexander, the Gamasutra editor-at-large whose editorial opposing the online gamer movement Gamergate prompted a months-long imbroglio with Intel, is leaving Gamasutra to found a new site with BoingBoing called Offworld.

Alexander’s essay, published in August 2014, urged game developers to stop catering to the culture of sexist fans who had harassed and threatened the independent developer Zoe Quinn and feminist game critic Anita Sarkeesian. After those fans targeted Gamasutra’s advertisers, Intel pulled an advertising campaign from the site, in the process giving the movement a seeming endorsement from a multinational corporation.

Intel quietly restored its advertising on Gamasutra months later, and at CES this year announced a $300 million campaign to invest in workplace diversity. Gaming companies, meanwhile, have largely remained silent about sexism in their industry.

Alexander will be joined by Wired and BoingBoing contributor Laura Hudson, who will be the senior editor of the site. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Alexander said the site will focus on gaming interviews and criticism written primarily by women and minorities.

In her announcement, given during a now-annual GDC panel of female game developers called #1ReasonToBe, Alexander thanked her readers and the editors of Gamasutra for their support after the “endless August.” She also made a point of asking the audience to not let Gamergate supporters dictate her narrative and that of her peers.

“We are not primarily victims of an unreasonable circumstance for men to thank and to be sorry for,” she said. “I’d like to ask folks to think about our work, ideas and our goals, and not the things that have been visited upon us.”

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.