I wrote this post on my private blog but it was about games and Giant Bomb came up so I thought I'd just repost it here.
After reading @botherer on twitter mock a blog post from Sean Malstrom which attempted to critique his post on Rock Paper Shotgun I decided that I too shall write about this topic. There has been a steady rise among the enthusiasts press in games to write and talk about the plight of women depicted in games and women working in the industry itself. Good for @botherer, the blog in question sounds as though it was written by a lunatic, but the recent rise of dedication to this one topic for the past year or so has worn thin. I don't know if it exactly started during the #1reasonwhy campaign or when Anita Sarkeesian got her kickstarter funding, but since about a year ago gaming enthusiasts have been writing and talking up a storm about this great injustice. I mean that without an ounce of insincerity, but it's exhausting.
I never knew Machinima was hosting a video on their site of scantly clad women slapping each other on stage until @botherer wrote about it. As an aside, I would love to find out how many people are actually consuming, or even have knowledge of such media before it's added to such a piece. The vast majority of the time I've never heard about something in gaming which is considered sexist until it's plastered on every front page of a gaming enthusiast website. From the number of people in the comments section who write of their support of such articles I assume that I am not the only one who doesn't enjoy consuming such media. The continued coverage on this one topic is really exhausting, and making me wish more outlets would cover other worthwhile topics. Such as accessibility in games. Something @botherer covered earlier this year but very few have. Probably my favorite website to consume gaming content is Giant Bomb, which has two gaming enthusiasts which are color blind but have run no stories on accessibility in games.
As a member of the Giant Bomb community since it's conception, and as such I've had to now endure the comments section Patrick Klepek's #1reasonwhy pieces and let me tell you, it's exhausting. It's exhausting to have something which you love be torn apart by certifiable idiots who deny the existence of sexism and misogyny in every instance. Oddly enough, it's actually more exhausting having to read the torrent of comments telling the idiots why they're wrong and why such things are important. As someone who loves Giant Bomb and just loves reading/playing video games, the most exhausting is having to see the chat section explode whenever Carolyn Petit talks about a game on the Giant Bomb/Gamespot livestream. It's what I described in Patrick's post but worse, and it's a travesty. As worthwhile as it is to read @botherer's enthusiasm in tearing apart the problems of gender present in games, I actually enjoyed much more his writings on Experimental Game Workshop earlier last year and was disappointed there was no such in depth equivalent for GDC. Same goes for Carolyn, the only thing I can think of when I see the chat section explode when Carolyn appears on the livestream "Can all you idiots just shut up and listen to her talk about Luigi's Mansion, she's quite meticulous?!". As wonderful as it would be to engage in the chat with the legion of defenders of Carolyn, I can't help but think that's more destructive than the trolls because it detours the conversation away from the games and it feeds the trolls. At the end of the day I just want to talk about video games the internet, and watch intelligent people who can be funny do the same. The rest is secondary.
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