Ok, gamer community, it’s time we had a little chat. It’s time to grow up a little. Right now there is a debate going on in this country about violent video games, and as we can expect, someone from Newgrounds decides to take video revenge on the NRA for pointing the finger (unjustly) at us. But there are two problems with this… the first being the obvious that one idiot online is NOT the entire community, but it is one idiot giving ammo to the argument against violent games.
But at the same time, the other is something in our own community we need to look at… gamers, reviewers, and article writers alike.
I'm sure you all remember the Feminist Frequency debacle last year. For those who don’t the woman behind the site started a kickstarter to make a series of videos about how women are stereotyped in video games. She then advertised this kickstarter on youtube, cherry-picking the worst of the worst comments she could to show why this series was needed.
The results were staggering. Everyone was talking about it, and the guys who felt they had to make up for the behavior of YouTube came in droves to give her basically a mint and she has now been interviewed by many “major” gaming websites as well as called on to advise in the development of a few games!
But the community was not full of support… and sadly, some of her opponents are the kind who make flash games on sites like Newgrounds. (I refuse to link to the site on principle.) As a result, we had a game where the whole goal was to beat the shit out of this woman. The uproar from the “guilty guys” was amazing and quickly took the game offline, but not before the game was pointed out by these same websites of the immaturity gamers have at best, and outright hatred of women in gaming or worse in other places.
And this is why I bring this up. We are at this point again where someone has angered a denizen of the web and to vent, they vented via a stupid game to beat (or in this case, kill) the person in question. The difference, however, is that no one on the gaming websites cares enough to talk about it… well almost. I found out about it because Kotaku brought it up to attack the guy’s response to it.
Look, guys, we can’t have this double standard. The fact that the NRA is the target this time doesn’t change that this is just as immature and a bad reflection on the community as when someone who happens to have tits and stands up in some fashion gets the same treatment. We can be better then this.
I should not have just heard this from Kotaku trying to claim the NRA guy should have just shut up. I honestly don’t believe I should have heard this at all anymore then I should have heard about the events around Feminist Frequency. They are right in saying this is one idiot online… but so was that… and if we expect to be respected, we can not have such double standards based on who we like who we don’t like. Who’s politically correct to stand up for and who we are supposed to shit on. It can’t fly.
Think about it….
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