Brianna Wu

Sometimes I speak out on women in tech issues.

Even when the nation's leaders acknowledge tech issues, details are lacking.

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.

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

In politics, I am facing a lot of structural sexism.

It doesn't matter how many women we get into game production. If the only people evaluating the work we do continue to be men, women's voices will never be heard.

In 1999, I was running my first tech start-up and learning the Unreal Engine, the tool that would define my career as a game developer, when news of Columbine ground all work to a standstill.

The truth is, the game industry is a really incredibly difficult place for women to work.

To stand up to GamerGate, that's my choice. I can't make that choice for the women I work with.

The main lesson I took from Gamergate is that asking the status quo to do the right thing doesn't work.

What's the fundamental problem that VR solves better than anything? To me it's straightforward. It's story. VR tells stories better than any medium.

My big lesson from Gamergate is asking the men in charge to do the right thing does not work. So we need women, we need people of color in positions of power not just in the game industry but at social media and tech companies and in Congress.