This month, the Ace Community Survey published a report on sexual violence.
The real story of Gamergate 2 (conspiracy theories, crybullying, and a consumer revolt) | NeverKnowsBest (video, 1:38 hours) – I’ve been loosely following the story of antiwoke backlash currently going on in the gaming community, but it’s pretty hard to take seriously when it’s founded on something so ridiculous and petty. NeverKnowsBest clearly explains the sequence of events and issues of concern, and persuaded me to take it more seriously. After all, the Gamergate of a decade ago also started with something silly and petty, but it snowballed into something bigger by galvanizing the alt-right presence within gaming communities. Also, the media environment is very different from how it was a decade ago, with traditional games journalism being far less influential.
What these neo-gamergaters want is games that cater more to their political tastes, i.e. centering straight white men, dropping black & queer characters, making women sex objects again, etc. That’s already hard enough to sympathize with, but then they add all these conspiratorial claims involving a tiny consulting company, and ESG investment. When it comes to progressive politics in games, they can’t accept the more basic explanation that some game devs are pretty progressive, so instead they believe that investors of all people, are the ones pushing the progressive agenda. This is so obviously wrong, just look at all the indie games, which are less beholden to investors and publishers than ever.
How Does Fiction Affect Reality? | Thing of Things – Ozy discusses the evidence regarding the real world impact of fiction. There’s surprisingly little, although fiction can impact social norms such as norms around family size. As a critic, when I criticize a work of fiction, the purpose is rarely to say “this work of fiction is causing harm and should not exist”. Often, criticism is just an intrinsically fun and valuable activity, in the same way that fiction itself is just an intrinsically fun and valuable activity, independent of whether it has an impact on society. Yes, there is criticism, such as feminist criticism, that wants to push towards positive social change. But I think it’s more important for people to engage with criticism than to avoid engaging in the material being criticized.
