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

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.

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

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

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.

I love video games dearly.

Growing up as a queer child in Mississippi, I got my Nintendo in 1985, and I've been lost in this world ever since. When I was scared because my church said people like me were going to burn in hell, 'Final Fantasy,' 'Dragon Warrior' and 'Super Mario' offered a lifeboat.

I say this as an engineer: We are profoundly bad at asking ourselves how the things we build could be misused.

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.

Even in the '80s and '90s, many white Southerners were still bitter about court decisions that required racial integration of the schools. It wasn't that they were outwardly opposed to white and black people attending school together, it was that the rulings threatened their proud identity as independent Southerners.

It's see no evil, hear no evil with toxic male gamers - whose every whim and adolescent fantasy has been catered to for decades.

I think Gamergate is just a symptom of a disease: a $90 billion global industry that was built by men for men.

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

Gamergate should have been a time of reckoning for the gaming community, which had long been rife with sexism and misogyny. It wasn't.

Since Gamergate, many women I know are reluctant to speak publicly on gender issues, because they fear - rightly - that they will be targeted and harassed.

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

Gamergate is ostensibly about journalistic ethics. Supporters say they want to address conflicts of interest between the people that make games and the people that support them. In reality, Gamergate is a group of gamers that are willing to destroy the women who have invaded their clubhouse.

In stopping Gamergate, the men who dominate it - not just women - must address the culture that created Gamergate.

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.

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

Crises like the Mirai botnet can't be prevented by vague calls to protect our cybernetworks or platitudes about working with private industry. We need to be able to force recalls on consumer devices with massive security vulnerabilities.

We need to invest in telecommunication infrastructure with redundancies to combat denial of service attacks.

We need to introduce civil liability for companies that ship products with reckless security vulnerabilities.

There's a common misconception about running for office. People think it's dreadful, morally compromising work. But I've found the opposite is true. It made a better person and a better feminist. It forced me to take a hard look at my shortcomings.

There's a common personality type to software developers - one I certainly fall into. We're more comfortable staring at a screen than staring into someone's eyes. Engineers can be brilliant in the workplace, and something less-than-brilliant everywhere else.

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

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.

Justice for all does not apply when women use the Internet.

Gamergate has grown into a hate group that threatens the stability of the $60 billion a year game industry.

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.

It's sad when 'Grand Theft Auto' has more consequences for criminal behavior than real life.

The BBC called me 'defiant' in a caption. I plan to frame and put it on my wall.

Ordinarily, I develop videogames with female characters that aren't girlfriends, bimbos and sidekicks.

I am a software engineer, a popular public speaker, and an expert in the Unreal engine.

If you don't know what Gamergate is, my God, do I envy you.

Sometimes I speak out on women in tech issues.

Facebook, Apple, Tinder, Snapchat, and Google create our social realities - how we make friends, how we get jobs, and how mankind interacts. And the truth is, women don't truly have a seat at the table.

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

Software increasingly defines the world around us.

If you're fortunate enough not to know, Gamergate is the misogynist hate group of the video game world.

For a hate group originally focused on video games, anger over a comedy movie for starring women might seem ridiculous. But at its core, Gamergate is about a toxic male sense of ownership over geek culture.

Any reasonable person can look at video games and see that we don't represent women well.

With major films costing hundreds of millions of dollars to make, Hollywood is an industry that tends to repeat patterns when they make money.

Walking is great, I guess.

Most members of Gamergate, the alt-right movement best known for harassing women in the game industry, operate under a veil of anonymity.

I have an unfortunate history with Ethan Ralph. Like many women in the game industry, I've been doxed by him multiple times.

For any prosecutor, a decision to show leniency in sentencing must be weighed against multiple factors. Do they show remorse for their actions? Are they a threat to the public and law enforcement? Do they intend to contribute to society?

Gamergate was the proto-alt right.

For most of 2016 and 2017, I would say probably 90% of my Twitter feed was automated bots sending repetitive messages at me. Someone would basically pay bots to send me messages over and over and over again. It made Twitter nearly unusable.

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