| Other art forms have been subject to feminist and other criticism for a long time. Only recently has attention been turned to video games, as the genre is so new. The reaction from a minority in the video games community seems to view this criticism as an extraordinary attack, even some kind of corruption or conspiracy if you listen to some people on reddit. These recent controversies (#GamerGate included) look pretty transparent from people with no stakes in the game. A lot of really violent backlash against an industry that is growing up. If a book is published, it is allowed for journalists or other writers to say that this book is abhorrent for x, y, and z. It is also allowed for them to criticize and chastise the author for writing such an abhorrent book. This is not the same as censorship. When a large part of society condemns something for whatever reason, or if a certain segment wishes to use their arguments to try convince enough people that something should be condemned, this is a natural, largely unpredictable, and unrelenting process that happens all the time to reflect shifting social values and morals. It's folly to fight that, and the trick is predicting where it will go. In my opinion, that is how companies and institutions survive. A few years ago it might have been in (any random abstract) company's best interest to fire a gay employee. Regardless of the views of the decision maker at that company, for the sake of PR, this is the way it goes. These days, that decision goes the other way, particularly on the national scale. The game studios are subject to these kinds of effects too, and that is what what will hurt the status quo of games in the long run (although there are arguments to be made that the desired status quo is already long gone, I dunno, it's been a while since I was attached to the games industry). |