Gamer Wars

Like with everything else, video games discussion have become a miserable place with 2 warring factions declaring themselves as the true gamers. In the past it was just the simple flame wars of which console was better, now the septic culture war has seeped in and infected people with madness and stupidity. A fun hobby being fought over by loud and insuffereable twats.

The answer to this schizm of these 2 warring sides should be obvious, so I'll put it simply. People will have different opinions on things, some opinions more valid and substantive than others. When something is availible for people to see, hear and experience, people will make valuations on them, and some may voice their thoughts in the form of opinions. When people notice or experience things they see as flaws in something, they will critisize those things. People can also have opinions on other people's opinions, this is generally how the discussions of things go. If someone disagrees with someone's take on something, nothing's stopping them making counter-points, and sometimes they will.

Like I said, the solution is simple, but with how people are acting, you'd think it wasn't. Not to sound like an "enlightened centrist", but both these vocally loud sides are the problem and are as bad as each other. When you see people covering things to do with video games, whether it's critising people in the industry, or poor games, many of them fall into one of these extreme sides. You have people that cover major issues in the industry and calling out bad behaviour and arrogance of people in gaming who take advantage of their positions and being obnoxious to people who critisize their games, but they also are sympathetic to people like Donald Trump, Elon Musk and con artists like Mark Kern. Many people on this side are just as annoying and fragile as they think the other side of the war is, the people they call "the woke". They act like hard-asses but bitch and cry over minor bullshit like pronouns in a game, or people deciding to have a female protagonist for a game's sequel. They have a meltdown over the political views of a voice actress saying that she shouldn't be allowed to work on games, yet if the other side did the same thing to a voice actress that was a Trump supporter, they would be saying "FREE SPEECH! WHY FIRE HER FOR BEING RIGHT-WING? IT'S HER POLITICAL OPINION! IT'S CANCEL CULTURE! 1984!" These people are massive babies that milk the fuck out of anything they dislike and make 10+ minute videos talking about it trying to spread a narrative that they're the REAL gamers and they're under threat as they freak out over nothingburgers.

The other side of the war isn't much better. Even though the former side has valid criticisms, they are extremely dismissive of them. They pretend that the problems don't exist and would be more than happy to make excuses for them. They would excuse things like DEI and bullshit like "the wheel of privellege". No, we should not be supporting this. We should not want every game to feel like they had to go through HR to make the games safe for the public, we should not want creativity to be restrained to the sensibilities of middle class liberals who are mostly white women. Things like DEI are made for the purpose of impressing shareholders with ESG scores, not for making better products. We should not be defending people being obnoxious or cheering for 3rd party groups not related to games injecting their bad writing or ideas. And we should not want games or any media to lecture us by being preachy and directly tell us how we should think. There is a difference games making a statement, games with political themes, and games beating you over the head with what they want you to think. This side of the war does not know how to engage with valid critisisms of the industry at all and will just throw any of the -isms at them and disregard everything else. It's lazy, dumb, and arrogant.

Both of these sides are beyond repair, form your own opinions. We do not need loud people forming opinions for us and telling us what to think. We don't need their trash shit politics and their narratives. Play what you like, don't play what you dislike, share opinions why you like or don't like a thing and move on, it's not that hard.