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School Days. It's only 12 eps!

I also started to wonder why Roger Ebert got so much backlash, when the internet of 2005 was already packed with people on gaming message boards mocking video games. He had to ask people to stop sending him copies of FF7, because SURELY he had never witnessed a love interest dying!

I think it's because those people saw him as a potential source of validation for their hobby, he was the biggest name in reviewing things, so he's the closet thing to an authority on the subject. So his approval meant something to people that didn't even read his articles.

But now there's still a degree of insecurity among many gamers about their public perception. It's not enough to personally love a pastime in isolation, other people have to like it as well. And it doesn't count if other gamers like your thing, a seal of approval has to come from whoever is a representative of Normal People. But how many cinephiles have discussions about the 'public perception' of film?

I should check

The whole part about them being dead or going away, was a weird product of the article's headline declaring them to be "over". Again, it was poor wording. Marketing games to a wider range of people is the best thing that could happen to games, but she presented the idea in the form of demanding game developers to disregard whatever she feels their existing audience is. Which is a bit redundant since games had been expanding to wider audiences about a decade prior to the article

The sad thing is that the phenomenon of people basing their identities on brands or products predates gaming by decades, having bridged over from sports marketing. To the point where it's almost expected for sports fans to riot or get into drunken fistfights over their favorite game. Somehow those hobbies remain embraced by the mainstream, while those of us in gaming hand-wring over the potential optics of mean tweets.

But to get to your point on marketing, nowadays isn't even about the products themselves anymore, modern marketing sells to you a desirable identity first and foremost, and then attaches a product to it.

@navster15: That's fine. If she only meant to refer to jerks, instead of 'gamers' in general, then she probably should have specified it at some point.

In this case, it doesn't matter that 'gamers' are lower-income and less white, because Leigh didn't know that, so she couldn't have meant to be describing them. We know that. But it's a bit of an issue of the writing itself that we have to speculate so much on who she meant to be generalizing, and disregard what we actually know

That, and it's really really tough to call people names on the internet without getting a negative reaction.

@plan6: It kind of is though. Self-described "gamers" tend to be mostly male, lower-income and less white than people who play video games but deny the label:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/survey-gamers-are-poorer-more-male-less-white-than-game-players/

Granted, nearly every demographic, age category, and hobby has been categorized, quantified, studied, and pandered to by marketers. But if the group doesn't exist, then what type of person was Leigh asking game companies to stop marketing to? Lower-income, nonwhite males?

EDIT: And just to be clear, the quality of her article in no way justifies any harassment she got afterwards

There are a ton of thoughtful articles arguing for widening gaming audiences, which generated zero controversy.

Leigh's wasn't really one of them, as she specifically called for exclusion and also referred to gamers as a series of obscenities, which is not really what you'd expect on an industry website for professionals such as Gamasutra. I don't know if there's an inclusive way to call for the death of an entire demographic, but Jason did step in at the time to tell Kotaku readers that when Leigh says "gamers" are man-babies and wailing shit-slingers, she wasn't referring to all gamers. Which is a nice point of clarity that should have probably in her piece

Regarding film, I've seen plenty of professional and amateur film critics compare certain films and books to Schindler's List without generating any backlash besides maybe eye-rolls. Maybe Jeff though he'd similarly get away with it?

But is it 'too important'? According to Activision-Blizzard's earning statements, less than 15% of their revenues come from the entire "asia" region. China's market isn't worth much to them now, but rather as a potential future source of massive revenues. Investors practically require them to have a foothold in 'emerging' markets regardless of how little blood there is to get from the stone. The biggest hit they would take would be to their stock price.

It's amazing that this happened at about the same time as South Park and the NBA hit similar scandals, which is propelling Blizzard into mainstream news articles for all the wrong reasons. Even Blizzard employees have been gagged on social media about it.

When did Google or Reddit kowtow to the CCP in the same way? Last I checked google has abstained from even releasing a censored search engine for China

@slag : There's some truth to this, the marketing of video games in Japan is almost entirely targeted at students and unemployed adult otaku. I can't speak to how accurate it is, but that's the common perception in Japan of who plays console games. And there's some data to back it up, the average Japanese adult works longer hours and spends far less time at home. Whereas its not uncommon for an adult in the west with a full-time job and family to still find 1-2 hours a week to sit in front of a console. It's gotten to the point where the Japanese government has considered implementing more regulations to limit overtime as a measure to actually boost the economy and consumer spending.

Portable gaming is another matter, everyone has a smartphone.

Someone else commented that a lot of JRPGs are "pure fantasy" and don't address modern-day socioeconomic issues like western RPGs try to. Which is false, many of them do explicitly political messages, about Japanese issues. Unsurprisingly a lot goes unnoticed by people outside of that culture. Persona 5 had a lot to say about Japan's current (nationalistic) government! And to westerners, FFXIII has the appearance of a sci-fi dystopia and not, say, a commentary about a Japanese economic system that eagerly and permanently casts out anyone that breaks from the rat race even for a second. As bad as the employment prospects for American ex-cons are, it's magnitudes worse in Japan. And people with college degrees who dare quit find their employment experience not worth much, because the biggest employers in Japan prioritize hiring fresh graduates whom are expected to serve for life.

So, you know there's been plenty of cases of American high schools and colleges ignoring or covering up widespread abuse in order to protect a coach or sports team, right?

If you change the sport then this becomes a literal description of the Penn state situation. Two dozen students and administrators knew the assistant football coach was a child rapist, none reported it, he got away with it for 20+ years. Mostly because they didn't want to hurt the head coach's reputation by proxy

In a Japanese society, the pressure to defer to seniority and avoid causing a scandal is even greater. Plus people and youths with actual criminal records are even more stigmatized. As hard as it can be for ex-cons to be accepted into mainstream American society, it's an even bigger hurdle in Japan.