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- The gaming industry is a multi-billion-dollar, male-dominated industry that has a decade-long track record of shutting down legitimate criticism about under-representation of people of colour, sexualisation of women, appeasement of authoritarian governments and an occasional glorification of violence.
- Studios have been serving players with politically-charged material for decades: The critique of runaway capitalism in Bioshock, resisting oppression through violence in StarCraft, religious dogmatism in Halo.
- Politics are already deeply intertwined with gaming. When professional players get suspended for using their platform to take a political stance; when games are routinely edited or banned to please a local authority prior to a release; when studios fail their diversity efforts — or pretend that they don’t need them — all of this is politics at play.
- But the industry claims that they don’t want real-life politics.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-06-18-too-little-too-shy-the-gaming-industrys-response-to-blm-opinion
- Most statements made by the makers and publishers of games are boilerplate: companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo decry racism, affirm the need for inclusion and equality, and often directly address “the black community.”
- In a piece for Vice, Gita Jackson writes about how these statements aren’t just the bare minimum. They’re clueless and hollow, unwilling to confront their complicity and center the conversation on anti-black racism.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/5/21281726/video-game-companies-george-floyd-protests-blm-support
