In the past couple of years there has been a lot of talk of sexism in the gaming industry. In light of current events (The Zoe Quinn scandal), I’d like to write my thoughts on the matter. Rather than focus on the corruption of gaming journalism, I’d like to focus on another cancer spreading through the games media…

On a daily basis I read politically charged articles from gaming publications, training their crosshairs on me because I’m a straight white man. I’m talking about social justice warriors – Radical feminists and white knights presenting biased misinformation, emotional arguments devoid of facts and guilt shaming anyone that disagrees with their views.

The SJW culture in gaming

Here’s a popular example of such an article that was cross linked from Polygon and many other websites: Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

Yes, thank you John Scalzi for telling me how easy it is to be a male…

Here’s some actual facts about “male privilege”:

• There are four male suicides for every female suicide – Source
• Men make up more than 90% of workplace fatalities – Source
• Men make up more than 60% of the homeless population – Source

Come on, at least try to pretend you’re unbiased and interested in hearing the other side of the story. There are definitely issues affecting women in gaming, but to pretend only women are trash talked online and that men have life so much easier is bullshit.

There seems to be an invasion of the social justice warrior crowd into all forms of online media but gaming in particular seems to be severely affected. Sites like Kotaku, Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun frequently post “news” and editorials about the latest way in which the “patriarchy” is oppressing women. Their articles are nothing more than click bait: Sensationalist headlines and emotional content designed to create outrage on social media. Research and facts only get in the way of pushing their political agenda.

Sensationalism > Logic and facts

One thing SJW’s are very good at is making something out of nothing. Take this for example:

No female playable characters in the latest Assassin’s Creed? Must be sexism! Never mind that Ubisoft have done their research and found that including a playable female character wouldn’t have a large enough impact on their game to justify the costs.

A playable female character means completely new models and animations as well as every single line of dialogue spoken by the protagonist in the game needs to be recorded again with a female voice actor. Sound plausible? Ok, now keep in mind that the game is going to ship all over the world with many countries requiring voice actors in other languages. Still sound plausible?

But nearly half of all gamers are female! So? As I explained in a previous article – Just because half of “gamers” are female, doesn’t mean half of Assassin’s Creed players are female. If Ubisoft was guaranteed to get better sales by including a female protagonist in Assassin’s Creed you can bet your ass they would be doing it.

When I go to gaming websites it’s because I want to read about games and the games industry. When I read a review I want to know how good the game is. I couldn’t care less if the game doesn’t cater to you because “gender queer otherkin” isn’t an available player customisation choice.

The last thing I want from gaming websites is articles with a clear political agenda shoved down my throat. Here’s an example from Kotaku’s writer Patricia Hernandez: The Gay Joke In Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon Is Harmless. Or Is It?

Apparently the line “And you want to be with men, yeah, I got it”, is worthy of an entire article attempting to accuse the developers of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon as being homophobic. What. The. Fuck.

Lets step back a second here and pretend you’re the most sensitive, precious little snow flake to have ever existed. Even if you somehow found this offensive, that doesn’t make the person who said it homophobic. Insensitive? Maybe. Homophobic? Absolutely not. To take words like misogynist and homophobic and dilute them like this not only hurts the authors credibility (of which there already is none), but hurts the fight for equality. Good job Patricia.

The same author wrote an article titled: A Different Way To Respond To A Rape Accusation. In this article Max Temkin is crucified for having the audacity to defend himself from a false rape accusation. If you’d prefer not to click the link above, I’ll save you the effort and highlight the juicy bit for you:

There is of course no right way to respond to being accused of raping someone. I don’t fault Temkin for not getting something like this completely right. Still, he handles it badly. He spends too much time trying to defend himself—which I understand as an impulse, given the gravity of the situation—and not enough time contemplating the idea that he might’ve messed up. Or, more importantly than either of these, taking the discussion in a useful direction.

I’m sorry, but there’s only one way to respond to a false rape accusation and that is to defend yourself.

This is the kind of shit that counts as games “journalism” these days. Social justice warriors using games media as their platform to regurgitate their ridiculous ideologies. There is zero journalistic integrity behind their articles. They use statistics taken out of context to lie and deceive their readers and unfortunately many readers take their word as gospel without a second thought.

Professional victims

SJW’s are parasites, latching onto gaming and leeching it for all the money they can while they pretend to be victims.

It’s probably not surprising to hear that E3 heavily featured men this year — that is, unfortunately, normal — but still, after watching every dude one after the other in a supercut, everyone sort of starts blurring together as a blob of Stern Angry (And Probably White) Dude.

It’s not as bad as when every protagonist ever started looking like Vin Diesel, but it’s still not a great situation if you ask me. – Source

I’ll bet the E3 floor was filled with dudes too! Funny that. Game developers are marketing their games at their target demographic. Who would have thought? I find it funny that SJW’s will happily bitch that there aren’t enough women featured in gaming but turn a blind eye when they’re underrepresented in an industry that’s not so appealing, such as garbage collection.

Someone trash talking you online? Must be because you’re a women. Never mind that gamers are notorious for spewing crap online regardless of your race or sex. If you’re not being told to get in the kitchen and make a sandwich you’re being called a faggot or how good your mother is in bed. Trust me, women aren’t special in this regard.

Most protagonists in games are men? Must be because game developers hate women and want to oppress them! Or, maybe, it’s because men make up the larger audience of AAA titles? Maybe it’s because until the mid 2000’s gaming was predominantly comprised of young men who were often bullied and labelled as nerds until it was considered “cool” to play Call of Duty and naturally it’s going to take a while for the demographic to shift.

A game features prostitutes? Degrading to women! Never mind if perhaps sex workers fit with the games setting and theme, lets just jump to conclusions for a juicy headline.

Unfortunately, it’s too easy for people to sympathise with the victim, especially when it’s exaggerated, twisted or only one side of the story is told.

Alienating your audience

One would think that attacking your main demographic and constantly guilt tripping them would be a bad business decision.

Rock Paper Shotgun went so far as to boycott PAX. That’s right, they refused do their job of covering video games for their audience because apparently Penny Arcade’s ideals don’t line up with RPS. Why? Apparently the over sensitive snow flakes at RPS were offended by the following comic, as well as a few Tweets made from Penny Arcade.

RPS will no longer be covering PAX events. We believe that the values of the company operating those events conflict with ours, and as such we can no longer endorse their actions by providing coverage of PAX events.

…

We believe that Penny Arcade and its creators are doing harm to the gaming community, and RPS wishes not to endorse that which does harm. So, as is our right, we are choosing not to endorse them. As they have the freedom to express their views, we do too. That’s all this is. – Source

Let me make this clear: Based upon the above evidence we can conclude that Rock Paper Shotgun isn’t truly a gaming website. It is a website designed to push SJW ideologies onto gamers and nothing more. Gaming takes a backseat to pushing their political agenda. Last time I checked gaming websites were expected to cover major gaming conventions.

My values don’t line up with John “I hate men” Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun, but I’m still going to visit his shitty website in order to research this article.

Why is this a problem?

The biggest problem with the social justice movement is that there’s no counter movement. Yes, there are small communities such as /v/ on 4chan and some subreddits that are aware of the SJW cancer spreading through gaming media, but discussing the issues there is just preaching to the choir and many of the larger communities do not take them seriously.

Sites like RPS will disable comments on articles to prevent any real discussion taking place and other websites will censor their comments if you post anything that disagrees with the author. Anyone that speaks out against the social justice movement is labelled as a misogynist.

The other issue is how fast and far the information spreads. People are more likely to read and share emotional fluff pieces than well researched articles. Many of the largest gaming websites are already full steam ahead on their social justice crusade.

I’m getting tired of watching game developers defend themselves for every creative decision they make and I really wish some of them would stand up for themselves.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out issues with sexism in the gaming industry. There is a problem with creating sexism in the gaming industry. Every author pouring their heart out over “Dickwolves” is distracting their readers from actual issues.