It would be nice if more people in gaming could avoid a double standard of assuming games deserve to be taken seriously but rushing to say something is "just a game" when "mainstream" critics or journalists look askance at content.
But it's fair to say it would also be nice if people who don't partake of the medium- and even some who do, and should know better- would stop treating video games as if any serious subject they brush is trivialized by the very nature of the medium.
I'm getting to a point where I'm starting to feel a near-reflexive desire to tell anyone who suggests a creator doesn't have the right to address something, or hasn't shown proper respect or sensitivity in doing so, to f#@$ right off. I'm not happy about this in myself; I recognize that it isn't exactly the kindest angel of my nature, so to speak. It scares me, sometimes; I tend to think I'm a reasonably empathetic and compassionate person, and I have to wonder what wading through these waters might be doing to people who are more closed-minded and reactionary by nature.
(I suppose I don't need to wonder; Twitter accounts of people who have managed to say the "wrong things" are backlogged with vitriol from people just like that.)
...
Getting off on a tangent, here; feel free to abandon ship as I get long-winded and rambling, I don't mean to waste your time.
Spider Robinson has written several novels and short stories with the underlying premise that if humanity was massively telepathic, if we all knew what each and every one of us was thinking, we'd become so much more loving and compassionate, a harmonious, consensual group mind capable of achieving a utopian existence.
Even when I was younger and perhaps more idealistic, I thought that was nonsense. Given access to all of each others' secrets, I've felt we would become tyrannical, quick to judge others' faults and absolve our own, eager to destroy the different, insular and paranoid and constantly angry. We're social creatures, and we need each other, but we also need space from one another to stay sane. We need privacy and secrets, we need to be able to keep ideas and fantasies we know might not be acceptable to others without tearing ourselves apart deluding ourselves that those ideas and fantasies aren't there at all.
Sometimes the Internet seems like Robinson's idea and my conclusion as to its actual result.
Sometimes I think I'd be happier if I just logged off and walked away.
How can being exposed to so many other people's ideas make you feel more alone, more angry, more afraid? Instead of acceptance, we reach out and find that there's always someone ready to take a jab at you. Some who are ready to take a jab at anyone, just because they think it's fun.
My baseline instinct is to defend a game like Ground Zeroes, even though I have only a vague knowledge of the content that might be offending other people. I'd be inclined to trivialize their complaints, to accuse them of stifling ideas that make them uncomfortable, to say that they're overstating things to bring exposure to their issues. This, knowing little about them or how these things actually make them feel, if it keeps them up nights or seems like something they can't get away from at every turn. They, in turn, knowing next to nothing about me, would probably lump me in with the worst kinds of online trolls, part of some "boys club" that wants to keep others out.
And another part of me says, "Look, can we just skip it...? The game is going to get released. Maybe they'll omit the scene that offends you, maybe they won't; in either case, someone's going to be up in arms, and the camps on each side will circle the wagons a little tighter, and everyone gets a little more insular and a little more cruel.
Can we just... not do this, once in a while? Please?"
But we can't. Ever. That's not what gets you the pageviews.
And this is why there are so many heartburn drugs on the market.
