A few months ago I wrote about a consulting agency, Sweet Baby Inc, that found itself at the centre of a conspiracy theory: aggrieved gamers on a Steam forum had erroneously concluded that this small agency was somehow mandating the inclusion of more diverse characters in games. Depressingly but unsurprisingly, the result was a tremendous amount of targeted harassment towards the people who work at Sweet Baby and every journalist who reported on it (particularly the women). It was a disturbing echo of Gamergate, an online harassment campaign 10 years ago that initially sprung from the wild accusations of a game developer’s vindictive ex-boyfriend.
The language has changed a bit in the past decade: they used to be upset about “SJWs”, or social justice warriors, and now they’ve taken issue with a different acronym, DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion), or just good ol’ “woke”. But the sentiment from this group is the same: games are for us, and for us only, and if you want games to change, or to tell stories outside the straightforward male-oriented power fantasies that we grew up with, then, well, that’s not allowed. We won’t stand for it. In fact, we will try to aggressively harass you out of this space entirely.
