Has Zoe Quinn finally been checkmated by her own indolence?
She still has a foot in the door of the indie gaming community, but she is not there on talent and eventually opportunities for this kind of work are likely to dry up.
As far as her own projects go, crowdfunding will be iffy, given the Chuck Tingle debacle. It is clear that she can neither manage a project, nor be trusted with large sums of money. We will likely never know how much of the $85,448 raised on Kickstarter, was used to bankroll her lifestyle and how much of it actually went into the game. If there was ever a pie chart that showed these relative figures, then Zoe probably ate it. The money raised for her Game Jam similarly vanished without trace (right into her personal PayPal if I recall correctly). The minority of backers who continue to doggedly post messages of support on the Chuck Tingle page are likely to lose faith if she begins another project without finishing the game first. Furthermore, I would imagine that there would be some degree of nervousness among Zoe's peers about working with her in the future, given the negligible benefits and her reputation for throwing her former affiliates under the bus.
She has wheedled her way into mainstream comics, but again she is not there on ability or sales. She has clearly been hired by editors within DC and Marvel because her presence within the industry upsets a certain demographic who these people deem undesirable as customers. The ground was crumbling underfoot in the mainstream comics long before Zoe began jumping up and down on it, and it cannot support her weight for very long.
A likely future where the big two publishers downsize significantly, resulting in a dwindling pool of employees and closer scrutiny on the bottom line, is not going to be a Zoe friendly environment. She could attempt to pivot into indie comics, perhaps with an eye to securing a Netflix deal, but I wonder whether she could raise the money to bankroll such a project, or summon the motivation to see it through. I think she might have missed the boat there anyway. The kind of storytelling that Zoe trades in is failing to connect with audiences and studios and production companies are waking up to this. At this point, her name alone is probably considered toxic to any brand that she associates with.
Further #Metoo accusations are likely to shift unwanted focus onto her past and a mounting pool of evidence that undermines her claims. She's cried wolf too many times, the last time with calamitous results. While her supporters in the media have invested too much in her harassment narrative to openly call her out, they no longer seem to be pushing her to the fore-front as a brave martyr who stood up to internet trolling . Whatever people are saying in public, behind the scenes I think there is an awareness of what Zoe is really about. Her current flailing on social media isn't really gaining the traction that it would have a few years ago.
In regards to her next move, my money is still on some kind of health scare (breast cancer?) followed-up, perhaps, by the establishment of an online support network that pulls in donations but delivers little, if anything, in return (the classic Zoe grift). It seems plausible given her despicable nature, plus it insulates her from criticism – you would have to be a villain to call out a cancer survivor.
Beyond that possibility, I don't see anywhere else she can go. She is past the point where she could have ensnared some wealthy sugar daddy. Russell Greer has shown no interest. She is several decades too old for Jonathan Yaniv, who probably wouldn't even ask to borrow one of her tampons.
Anita Sarkeesian can parlay her experience running Feminist Frequency into a some kind of bullshit position within a charity, a political think tank, or the human resources department of some gormless corporation. Brianna Wu has her husband to bankroll her demented and entertaining political ambitions. Even the loathsome Randi Harper had the good sense to walk away from the tables when the odds turned against her.
Zoe kept gambling and losing with other people's money and now it is running out.
