When I first heard that Law & Order SVU was doing a “ripped from the headlines” episode where a female video game developer is harassed by a “group of misogynistic cyber terrorists," I was optimistic. The idea of Olivia Benson and her crew kicking in the door of trolls hellbent on terrorizing people through the back channels of the internet was appealing. I anticipated the hokey gamer slang, the roll-your-eyes comments about gaming, and the poorly diverse presentation of gamers themselves, but there was one thing I failed to foresee: the grossly mishandled depiction of cyber harassment experienced by women in the gaming and tech industries.
The episode entitled “Intimidation Game” focuses on Raina Punjabi, a game developer who has been dubbed the face of women in games. Most of her primary cyber harassers accuse her of sleeping her way to the top because her financier is her fiancé who also works in the gaming industry. She manages her small game company and also has a pronounced public image. Sound familiar to anyone? Well it should, because essentially what the writers have done is create a composite character using three of the most high profile cases of women who have been harassed in the gaming/tech industry.
Raina has the public image and oratory presence of Anita Sarkeesian, the shameful scarlet lettering of Zoe Quinn, and a game developing background, which is similar to Quinn as well as Brianna Wu. I realize it would be difficult to accurately portray the degrees to which the harassment of these individuals has unfolded over the past few years in a 44-minute episode of a high profile cop drama, it’s not easy. By creating a composite character in this case, the writers turned Raina into a permanent plot device, whose sole purpose is to serve the hyperbole of the show and therefore betraying everything the character is supposed to stand for in real life.
In the beginning of the episode, Raina is a force to be reckoned with. Despite a barrage of rape threats and death threats, she is determined to go along with the “roll out” launch of her newest game. When challenged by SVU about going through with her game's release instead of canceling the event, she says that she’d “rather be known as a bitch than a coward.” That is the high point of her dialogue the entire episode. That statement truly reflects the reality of women and men who face cyber harassment in gaming and tech. That’s right, men can also be victims of cyber harassment regarding issues of feminism and inclusiveness, one of the many truths missing from this SVU storyline.
The story takes its steep and abrupt nosedive into awfulness at the launch of Raina’s game. As she makes her introduction, several men throughout the crowd direct laser pointers at her and the SVU team proceeds to escort each individual out of the auditorium where the game is being debuted. This is bullshit. While these douchebags are pointing laser pointers at Raina, the gamers around them in the audience are doing nothing. I’m not sure about any of you, but if I went to a gaming event and someone was disrespecting the keynote speaker in such a manner, I would not sit there and ignore it.
To make the long, horrible story short, Raina is kidnapped by a group of lanky white men at her game’s launch event. They then proceed to live broadcast her torture online. They also record and distribute videos of themselves raping her and a subsequent video where Raina is shown severely beaten and forced to read a letter echoing their misogynistic propaganda about her.
SVU finally finds Raina who has been bound to a table with a shotgun by her captors, in the hopes that the police would shoot her on sight. Ice-T’s character then proceeds to kill one of the two primary torturers in a rooftop shootout. In the end Raina decides to quit the game industry because although at least one of the perpetrators will face justice, she says, “They've already won”. This too is bullshit.
Ironically the only thing they managed to get 100% correct is the headline of this episode. The cyber harassment of women and those who champion for more inclusiveness in the gaming and tech industries is an “Intimidation Game." Crimes such as doxxing and swatting are real-world attacks with every intention of causing emotional and physical harm to their victims. I know gamers are not all a part of this cyber cesspool, but we cannot deny the severity of the situation. If the state of harassment within our community was not as awful as it has been over the past few years, then this episode of Law and Order: SVU would never have existed.
