BRIANNA WU

A lot of people don't know this about me but actually I started in politics.

When I was a teenager, the most valuable American companies were in finance and manufacturing.

GamerGate has had an almost indescribable toll on my family.

For me, especially running for office, being on Twitter is a fundamental part of my job.

I work in the tech industry and my husband works in biotech. He's head of IP for a company listed on the NASDAQ. And we have a lot of discussions in tech and biotech about the role of unionization in our industries.

The video game industry traditionally has been a very male-dominated field. You know, with the advent of the iPhone, the number of women gamers exploded.

I am a programmer. If I write code, I don't evaluate the results by what I hope the code will be. I evaluate it by what happens when I compile it. I evaluate it by results.

The truth is, you cannot run a political campaign like a tech startup. Technology is a field that fetishizes disruption. The old ways are suspect, and we place an almost irrational trust on new tools. That's fine for developing games, but it was a failing playbook for politics.

I think there is a war on women in technology.

My capacity to feel fear has worn out, as if it's a muscle that can do no more.

The tech industry has a strong bias towards technical solutions to social problems.

Prosecuting Gamergate is not about justice for me or the women of Giant Spacekat. It's about introducing consequences into the equation for men that treat harassing women like a game.

I think what a lot of women in the game industry saw with Gamergate is they saw if they came forward, help was not going to come.

The first game I remember being ridiculously passionate about was Super Mario Bros. 2. It was the first game where you could play as Princess Peach. It wasn't just a game where the boys had their adventure. Peach was in the game and she was so powerful there.

Gamergate was the proto-alt right.

Before I ran for office, I ran a game studio.

I am the head of development at Giant Spacekat, a Boston-based studio that's an industry leader in making games for women. We are passionate about creating narrative games for the avalanche of new consumers who don't fit the old gamer stereotype.

In software engineering, we have the term 'technical debt.' When you don't do a job correctly, unaddressed problems become harder and harder to solve.

Gamergate gave birth to a new kind of celebrity troll, men who made money and built their careers by destroying women's reputations.

I've spent a career working in tech as a software engineer. And I believe regulated markets are the best way to build and deliver innovative products.

There are some men that are very threatened by the fact that women play games nowadays.

The cost of speaking out is so high for women, I understand why most decide not to.

Without competition, Silicon Valley will stop taking risks and will stop innovating.

It is not a secret that I am a feminist and I have more liberal views and a lot of these GamerGaters have more right-wing views.

Competition in the American tech sector is being gobbled up by the largest players, and it's threatening our entire industry.