Leveling Up the Rhetoric

As she exits the bathroom stall, clothes disheveled and blood running down her lip, she stumbles towards the mirror, muttering something about how guys do not want women in gaming. She pushes back her hair from her face, corrects her glasses, barely hearing the female SVU detective ask her what they did. And with this slightly dead stare and the straightest of faces, the woman responds with:

“They leveled up.”

Welcome back to the 90’s moral panic gamers have spent the last twenty years trying to leave behind. Of course, the story only gets more depressing and cringe-worthy after that. Because then, well, the true underbelly of gaming comes to light as this self-professed misogynistic-believing gamer known as “Acid Rain”, who frequently posts on the vile Redchannit through the untraceable Darknet, successfully kidnaps high-profile game designer and developer Raina Punjabi and hacks a giant billboard in Time’s Square, egging the police to come get them. Of course after that it only gets even more asinine intense after the group posts their sexual assault of Punjabi and forces her to go on camera…. I’m sorry I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. Who the flying fuck wrote this drivel?

Oh. That explains a lot then. Someone who’s not a gamer, surrounded by people who only hear about gaming through Twitter and Kotaku (who thought that Punjabi’s Amazonian Warriors was better than Civ V with the Brave New World expansion pack). We can agree that these are the people responsible for writing an episode about gamers with no real experience beyond social media. Right? We’re all on the same page, yes? I mean, at least it’s only a work of fiction (almost science fiction now that I think about it) and not this unresearched shlock news piece about how gamers are these hateful mobs of “Boys Only” club that–

Ah, fuck me.

OK. At least the one consolation is that both gamers and level-headed, well-meaning people the world over have let ABC know just how ill-informed they are and just how slanted this hit-piece really was. We can all agree on that right? After all, it’s pretty uplifting to know that at least 44,116 people (vs. 1,316) held ABC accountable for that misstep. And all I can say is that at least there are some places free from that slanted, hateful narrative. I mean, at least this misguided, non-factual agenda hasn’t seized its greasy, grimy, hate-mongering fingers on the one last bastion of good old action entertainment. That’s right. Comics. God forbid that should ever hap-

……That’s it, put a fork in me I’m done. Fuck it. I’m not writing anything anymore. Nope. Shut it down.

Shut it all down.

*Five minutes later…..*

Right, according to my editor (thanks Vernon), I can’t do that since I am contractually obligated to finish this article or be sued for a million dollars (yeah, I can’t understand why I agreed to that either).

So let’s get back to talking about this episode.

Pretty much, this episode has every last stereotype about gamers you can imagine in it. Basement dwelling thugs? Ding! Can’t tell reality from fantasy? Ding! Hates women, Doxxing, “No Reset Button”, Have their own “Rape Dungeons”, Camping, and Deets? Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding!! All of that is in there. All of that. And all of this “buzzy wordeded” gamer dialogue said from these serious-faced, steely-jawed detectives hell-bent on bringing the “gaming perp” down hard. Even back in the 90’s when this shit was supposedly more relevant, I’d of still been ashamed to have my name associated with the writing team. Was there not even one fucking person in the room who said, “Can we at least sleep on this before we go to print? This just doesn’t seem to make sense at all. Especially about an industry that’s making billions of dollars a year in sales. More than the Movie, DVD and Music industries combined. Do we really want to smack that hornet’s nest with outdated information and laughable dialogue?”

Apparently that poor bastard was outvoted. Because that’s exactly what happened here.

I make light of this whole farce of a media smear attempt because that’s exactly what ‘Intimidation Game’ represents. A non-factual farce. Nothing that happens in the course of this episode has actually happened in the real world. Not once have I read where any female developer out there has been either physically or sexually assaulted. Not once has a female developer been kidnapped, tortured, and forced to post a faux letter of confession to gamers. Not once has a female developer been subjugated to this supposed level of real world harassment. A small slice of really nasty words from a very nasty but ultimately small number of hateful people, all of which I do not personally agree with? Yes. I want that to be made clear. Those wrecked and wretched individuals who HAVE posted and said some pretty vile shit, (people on both side of this argument mind you) have no place in modern gaming.

But the majority of this supposed “harassment” isn’t harassment. It’s criticism; most of which are from honest and well spoken individuals (like TotalBiscuit) who are tired of having someone’s agenda-driven opinions thrust in their faces as hard-lined, indisputable fact. Anyone who quite literally goes out of their way to cherry pick and disable commentary on their own bodies of work is trying to con the world into thinking that A: They’re the victim and B: Gamers as a whole are so subhuman in their commentary that they’re H.G. Wells-level morlocks unworthy to voice their opinions on anything. That’s not being brave in the face of adversity.

That’s cowardice in all its yellow-bellied, sobbing-and-blubbering-on-the-floor glory.

People like this skew and warp the narrative to suit their own egotistical ends. And when gamers the world over rise up; and honestly let’s make that clear, this isn’t just some local “American-only” or “European-only” debate, when they stand up to people like this and say “enough”, what’s the first thing they do in response? They hide or wallow on the floor screaming harassment like a child throwing a temper tantrum. I’ve known three year-old children who are more emotionally stable than these grown-up women. People like Anita Sarkeesian and Brianna Wu and Zoey Quinn who were, ultimately, challenged by the gaming world. And failed that challenge.

They failed.

Secretly, part of me actually thinks that this show WAS a parody of some kind; that the directors and writers of SVU are all secretly trolling us – not a parody against gamers, mind you. Rather, a parody of the whole Social Justice, third-wave feminist movement exclusive to the idea of equality for all gamers. That in some way, we’re shown what they see in their own little fantasy world every day. Danger and rape around every corner. All men are pigs and want to do nothing but kill, maim and destroy. And now, days later, we’re seeing what kind of impact that’s having on the narrative, aren’t we?

Developers, who are finally coming out in defense of the gamer, are being met with derision, hate, and condemnation. It’s like all the negative shit you saw on the episode about gamers and gaming was exactly what the Social Justice Warriors have been fighting FOR for the last six months. It’s the average gamer who’s been fighting the dragon in knight’s armor.

So in a way, thank you SVU. Thank you Social Justice narrative-spewers. Thank you. You’ve become the biggest recruitment tool gamers and #GamerGate could’ve ever utilized to combat your own stupidity, debauchery, malevolence, and hate-mongering. And if this is the case, if this is the message Dick Wolf and co. wanted to make, then SVU gets 5 stars. But if what was in the episode is exactly what the director and the writers of the series believe about gamers and gaming culture, then it’s officially the new Reefer Madness of our generation. It’s that bad. Zero stars.

Before I go though. I want to ask the Social Justice Media out there one simple question. I know the difference between fantasy and reality. The vast majority of gamers the world over knows the difference between fantasy and reality.

Do you?