Rare News Desk
I set out to write an article that ridiculed the latest mountain the social justice crowd was trying to make of a mole hill within the video game industry.
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It should have been a simple article, but in the back of my mind, I knew many wouldn’t understand why it mattered.
I first needed to explain why it’s a concern, not just to gamers, but to everyone.
The latest controversy is more than just cultural Marxism infiltrating a niche hobby. Rather it was an attempt to insert an intellectually stunted ideology into the future of our nation via a vastly popular cultural medium — video games.
I’m going to explain why this matters to this country, you, and most of all your children. This is necessary because the video game industry goes largely ignored in a lot of circles.
Gamer culture is hardly brought up in the news until a story breaks about a shooting, and there’s a knee-jerk reaction to check to see what video games the shooter has sitting in his living room.
Non-violent gamers have been typecast as the fat, nerdy looking social nobody whose sexual history begins and ends with “made eye contact with a girl once.”
Not only have these stereotype been proven wholly wrong and laughably silly, over the past few months gamers have really stepped up as cultural force to be reckoned with.
Since #GamerGate and #NotYourShield broke, we’ve seen a host of individuals come forward from every walk of life to fight for integrity in journalism and freedom of thought in the industry as a whole.
It’s not just video games that are important to these people, it’s the love of unobstructed, out-of-the-box thinking.
Much like the beleaguered right in this country, gamers are so plagued stereotype that their foes have recently attempted to use against them in order to win an argument.
Gamers have fought not to be controlled by a group of people who believe they know what’s best for everyone, which the right should also understand.
Their biggest mistake was underestimating the size and fight of the dog that is the gaming community. In short, it’s big.
The video game industry is a massive, multi-billion dollar industry that habitually outperforms Hollywood as the top cultural medium. Currently, the most watched person on YouTube is a guy who records himself playing and commentating on video games.
The video gaming community has its own professional leagues with sponsors. It has generated charities that have raised millions of dollars. Games are even being used more and more in schools as a teaching tool.
This is all due in part to the fact that video games have become more than just getting Mario to the princess or shooting your friends online. Video games have become the great story teller of our time.
You’ve probably heard the opinion, and most likely agree, that Hollywood has run out of ideas. Well, the gaming industry hasn’t. Fascinating and original tales have come in the form of a video game for years.
Games like Bioshock and the Last of Us are just recent examples, but I personally can remember the epic Final Fantasy 7 that changed everything back in 1997. These aren’t just games, these are amazing fables that you participate in and drive forward.
As you read this, the gaming industry has been largely unburdened by the political correctness that plagues Hollywood and mainstream news. In fact, I’d venture to say that gaming is one of the true last bastions of free thought. The stories they tell don’t limit themselves to an ideology. They don’t conform to many social standards. They cross seas and borders and mix cultures.
At the same time, as you read this, there are individuals that have weaseled their way into the industry who want to force it to conform to the same politically correct standards you’ve seen forced on Hollywood.
These are people like Anita Sarkeesian, a radical feminist and social justice documentarian who paints falsehoods about the industry, and uses her self appointed victim status as a tool to get journalists and celebrities alike to back her agenda. She uses her platform to secure speaking engagements at universities and schools to sway young minds.
So why is this important to you if you aren’t a gamer?
It’s important because these people want to control the stories. Through political, social, and financial pressure, thought police like Sarkeesian, and social justice obsessed websites like Kotaku and Polygon are attempting to see to it that the narratives being put forth come from their perspective only.
These are the stories that will become more and more prevalent to our culture as time goes on. These are the stories your children will play and remember.
If your child doesn’t play, there’s a strong chance his friends do. If you don’t play, there’s a high probability some of your co-workers game. There are gamers at your church. Your community is filled with them. There’s probably a member of your family playing one in the next room as you read this.
In a sea of sub-cultures, gaming is a blue whale. With so many minds attuned to the stories being told at the end of a controller, the affects these would be cultural dictators would have on us as a whole would be devastating.
All the grand epics would have to fit into an ideological box, so no more games like Assassin’s Creed that promotes freedom and resistance to control.
Only characters of certain political and social leanings will be viewed as the good guy, so characters like Faith Connors from Mirror’s Edge will need to be re-socialized – the very thing her character fights against.
There will be no exploration of different political views. Bioshock is right out.
Only games made by the right people will get promoted or receive awards. Fun will have to be pre-approved.
Like Hollywood, detractors will be chastised, ridiculed, and pushed into the shadows.
If you truly value free thought and its existence in this country, then you better hope that video gamers manage to resist these modern barbarians, battering the gates with their grievances.
