You'll note, of course, that I never used the word "censorship." To the extent I mentioned anything of the sort, it was to suggest that the Tipper Gore-style censorship of the "moral majority" is less of a worry than ever. But the heavy hand of government censorship isn't the only way that games can change, in a way that will mean many gamers don't get the entertainment that they now enjoy.Noelveiga said:I really like Bob's observation elsewhere about how our ongoing need to defend the medium against politicians seeking to censor it hadn't created this unwarranted paranoia about criticism altering what is permissible on the medium. The truth is that the criticism being taken to task actually has a damn good point, and only recently have different perspectives snuck into the industry.
And hell yes, that will have an impact, an effect. Tomodachi Life being criticised for its treatment of gay couples will likely make it deal with the subject differently in the future. But here's the thing, it's not a government forcing them to do it. We are just wired to be triggered against criticism because that sword of censorship was looming over our heads for so long.
Bob often likes to compare "gamer" culture to movie culture, but there's a huge difference both between its customer base, its fan base, and those who work in the industry. Check out political affiliation surveys: gaming companies trend much more libertarian than movie studios or production companies. (They also trend more conservative, but that isn't saying much, because any random 20 people you choose out of a phone book that isn't from central Manhattan or the Harvard faculty will be more conservative than a movie studio.) That has allowed games, for better or worse, to offer entertainment that would be verboten in film. For all that Bob hates Call of Duty--and I'm not a big fan myself, but simply because I don't like FPS--it presents its topic in a way that not even Michael Bay, in his most military-fetishistic mode, would be permitted to direct. (There is a reason that, for all of Hollywood's fondness of remakes, we get the diversity-safe Expendables rather than a straight-up remake of Rambo.)
Gamer culture hasn't become the monoculture present in movies and academia because, until recently, the long march of the progressives through gaming as an institution hadn't begun. There is good reason to fear it, whether or not one fears "censorship." Certainly, America's universities aren't "censored," but they've become such a stultifying monoculture that censorship isn't necessary: the only conservatives who are "out" in academia are those who need to fight, while anyone else (say, a chemistry professor whose atoms combine the same whether Republican or Democratic) just keeps his head beneath the parapet.
Actually, yes, I'm old enough to remember the Comics Code. Again, given the weakness of the moral majority at present, raising the phantasm of a renewed Comics Code isn't particularly realistic.In fact, I'd argue that the introspection of critics of the medium actually protects us from that potential for censorship. Remember the Comics Code? The reason it passed wasn't that comics were criticised by culture analysts, the reason it passed was that it became defensible that comics were a product exclusively for children, and thus subject to being regulated as if only children would consume them.
Again, the rational worry isn't government censorship. It's the stultifying force of "rightthink." I hate the term "social justice warrior," and wish there were a better term for people who don't merely disagree, but wish to ensure that the object of their disagreement is drummed out of society.GTA is a reasonable thing to censor for a 12 year old, in a medium just for 12 year olds... but if it's just a point in a continuum that also includes Cart Life and Papers, Please it becomes much, much harder to control. Why would the nudity or sex or violence make sense in one place and not the other? How would a democratic government articulate a prohibition of what is clearly a work of art?
Again, I simply disagree that Sarkeesian's work is helping to prevent any form of realistic censorship. That's simply not how this process works. Instead, the point is to isolate factions with which one disagrees, and to make certain ideas unacceptable for "the right" company. Have you noticed that the closest you get to a right-wing viewpoint on The Escapist is Yahtzee's "Should Every Game Allow You to Choose Your Gender?" No doubt he'd be offended by that suggestion, but that's the point: it's not very right-wing at all, it's just as close as you get. That's to say nothing of Gawker/Kotaku, whose editorial posture is so far to the left it's amazing they have a right side of their monitor.So yeah, Sarkeesian may complain about the accumulation of sexist tropes in the industry and disapprove of it, but in doing that, she's not encouraging censorship, she's helping prevent it.
Also, she continues to be super-easy to ignore.
As I said, I'd love to see the "Gamergate" folks be more civil in their opposition, but Sarkeesian is not "super-easy" to ignore. Or rather, smokers standing outside in the cold and rain, or bakers who find themselves unable to turn down clients even if they disapprove of a wedding might suggest that ignoring the long march through an institution seems perfectly harmless... until it's too late.