The story of the Fine Young Capitalists is kind of a side story to the whole Game Gate controversy exploding on the internet right now, but it’s a large and very relevant side story. I’m sure we have all heard the story by now, but to summarize, they started up this campaign some time ago and certain people within the indie community didn’t agree with their overall ideologies.
These people then proceeded to harass the creators and eventually succeeded it getting the project shut down which cost the creator, not only a co-worker, but also 10,000 dollars. You can read a lot more about the trouble they went through and the harassment they received from an interview they did for apgnation.
Despite this, the campaign was restarted and unlikely sources such as 4chan, who were fighting against the corruption, decided to back their cause since they were victims of the very corruption Gamer Gate is fighting against.
Final Total from the referal link is $23,601 from /v/ and 4chan.
— TFYC (@TFYCapitalists) September 11, 2014
The campaign involves helping women get into game design by pitching ideas to TFYC and having designers make that very game a reality. They were asking for 65,000 dollars and a portion of that would go to the winner of the contest (a separate vote to decide which of the five pitched games gets made) and the majority would go to charity. On September 11th, the campaign was funded.
On Reaching Goals – The Fine Young Capitalists have reached our goal of $65,000. Thank you everyone for… http://t.co/1E2kwan8Cw
— TFYC (@TFYCapitalists) September 11, 2014
The fact that this was funded, despite all the trouble they had to go through says a lot about Gamer Gate as a movement. Certain people may try to brush it off as a movement of hate and misogyny but this is one of the things I look to that makes me forget about the loudmouth idiots (of which there are plenty) and realize that Gamer Gate really does have the good of the industry in mind and that most people involved are fine level headed people.
TFYC are a feminist organization which is relevant to this story because feminism is the very thing that Gamer Gates enemies are hiding behind. TFYC got noticed by 4chan and Gamer Gate because they were trying to get more women into game design not by standing on the soapbox that is twitter shouting social justice platitudes, but, and I know this sounds crazy, by actually making games. This is why 4chan and the overall Game Gate movement funded them and I feel it shows that nobody has a problem with women in gaming at all, it’s the people who are in it to do little more than push political agendas that we want out.
Despite being funded, the campaign still has 15 days left at which time I’m sure they will announce the winning game which you can still vote for here.
