It’s not exactly common for a games/technology company to throw its founder under the bus. Quite the opposite, in fact. Nor is it common for such a company to respond so promptly and one-sidedly to such accusations. It’s not as if the internet is one-sided on behalf of supporting women.
For the Twitter-averse, they’ve cut ties with Holowka, and they’re canceling/postponing the projects he was working on.
No specific details, but Night In The Woods is a small team (~3 people, I believe), so this isn’t a knee-jerk corporate ass-covering, so presumably the other 2/3 found the accusations credible.
Given the circles the indie games scene tend to run in, and the beliefs that crowd tends to have, it isn’t surprising, but it is gratifying that they’re walking the walk when it comes into their own houses.
Enidigm
4274
I’m surprised the company is set up in such a way that they can cut ties. I guess they’re all co-owners?
I will say i do find it strange that Zoe Quinn keeps associating with these kinds of people, and it makes me a little wary.
This one is tough for me too. On the one hand, let’s absolutely give whistleblower types the benefit of the doubt in terms of investigating conduct while hopefully not internet-mobbing anyone to death on the strength of a tweet.
On the other hand, is there anyone in the indie game scene who hasn’t sexually assaulted Ms. Quinn at this point?
kerzain
4276
I need to re-read her posts. I thought she was retweeting something somebody emailed her privately. There’s a lot of stories going around in the last few days, so I’m probably getting two or more stories mixed up.
Its clear from her account that the Holowka relationship would have pre-dated Gamergate (she mentions she posted about it around the start of Gamergate, and people reached out at the time).
I mean, indie games are actually a pretty small scene, it doesn’t surprise me that there would be a lot of relationships within it.
Re: Quinn. The situation pre-dates Gamergate, and someone else has already confirmed that they were told about the incident at the time from her, so it’s not something she’s suddenly decided to dream up, if that’s what you’re getting at. She deserves to be believed - even if others have not already stepped forward to tell their own stories about Holowka.
As for why “her again”; I don’t find that particularly surprising. Predators of this type tend to be both charming (i.e., but he’s such a nice guy!), and good at sensing vulnerability - if they weren’t they wouldn’t be serial abusers. And a victim who has been assaulted/abused once, has a much higher chance of being assaulted/abused again. There are many different theories as to why the latter happens, but it is a well-known psychological phenomena that has been documented in multiple studies.
See also revictimization. Interestingly, it is not a phenomena isolated to abuse/sexual assault - e.g., being robbed once, for instance, significantly increases the likelihood that you’ll be robbed in future.
I never heard of Holowka before this, but disappointing to find out that Alexis Kennedy is one of the bad ones.
That is super interesting and new information to me, thank you!
LMN8R
4281
This seems like a strange take, since the Holowka stuff happened years before GamerGate, and GamerGate itself was started by one sad dude.
And…that’s it?
Doesn’t seem surprising at all that a woman involved in game development happened to date one shitty person in games and another shitty person who’s not a game developer but is in “gamer culture”, especially when it seems like shitty guys are everywhere in gaming and gaming-adjacent places.
Really, shitty guys are everywhere.
But I think the gaming community has a few extra shitty guys. And extra-shitty guys.
Nesrie
4284
Which is why in such a culture, it’s not at all surprising it could happen more than once.
Scuzz
4285
Speak for yourself. :)
But probably whatever it is that attracts her to one type guy may lead to an attraction to “shitty” type guys. I don’t think all men are weasels and sexual abusers who need to be neutered, but yes, they are out there.
Enidigm
4287
I wasn’t aware that this was in the past, i thought it was something new.
Anyway, i wasn’t arguing she was lying or false, just that it made me “wary”, which i think was merited. But I don’t want to align myself with or give credence to whatever the “other side” is up to. The post above regarding repeat victimization seems to be most most apropos explanation.
I know from perusing places Medium, the MySpace of the modern age, many women have a dreary time with abusive relationships which they can’t help but seem to gravitate to; one woman was relating how she left her abusive husband for a married man who was also abusive, then leaving him for a boyfriend that was abusive.
That “unknown” factor of being pulled towards those kinds of men without being conscious of it seems to be the best explanation.
Yeah, it can start to sound like victim-blaming, but people can often be attracted to the types of folks that are “bad,” and very specifically bad for that particular person. People with abusive families/parents can tend to gravitate to partners who will be abusive too.
One of my best friends came from a family with an abusive, very overbearing, very controlling mother. He managed to extricate himself from that situation and build a great life for himself with (eventually) a great partner.
BUT, he always was drawn to jealous, over-protective women. One ex-girlfriend stalks him to this day… over 30 years after their breakup. Another tried to stab him with a knife when he broke up with her. Another one he had to time his break-up with the lease on his apartment running out so that he could could get away from her… while also claiming that his company was moving him to their European office. Most maddening to me is that on the couple occasions when I’d try to set him up with some non-psychotic women, it never worked out; “There’s just no spark there,” he’d say.
I suspect everyone reading this knows someone similar; someone who always goes for the wrong romantic partner regardless of friends’ warnings or past experiences.
But of course it’s important to separate the victim’s unfortunate inability to see abusive tendencies as forgiving the abuser. “He should have known she was the type to come after him with a knife,” may be a true statement, but it doesn’t make the whole knife-attack thing OK.
The entire history of Rock n Roll would seem to bear this out, though I suppose that’s a pretty shallow take.
Banzai
4290
John Lovett had a great bit on Lovett of Leave it after trump stormed out of a meeting a few months back, that people are either the type who storm out of rooms (daily stormers, if you will), or the type who say ‘did he just storm out of the room?’. Relationships between two stormers seem likely to be very good when good, and thrown plates level when not, and maybe both in the same 10 minutes.
