A Moment of Clarity
*deep breath*
This isn’t what I wanted to write about, and I definitely never would have expected to even have to pen some kind of response to a literal coup for the sake of a goddamn reality show host but I learned a long time that you have to play the cards you draw, so here we are.
You know what happened on Wednesday - but in the interest of posterity: Wednesday afternoon, spurred by conspiracy theories, a thick as steel media bubble, and the kind of brand loyalty that would make even an American company flinch, supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump stormed the US Capital with clear intention to somehow force lawmakers to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential Election in which Trump lost. As this is a gaming newsletter/blog, I’m incredibly unequipped to parse the implications or political implications of everything that’s happened over the past 48 hours as of this writing, but also as a gaming newsletter/blog, I’d like to dwell on what does tie directly to gaming.
In a shocking performance of competency, Twitch removed the global PogChamp emote after the face it depicted continued to tweet further incitement to violence in the capital within hours of him doing so. To an even more shocking result, for the most part the community seems to have welcomed this action - though that’s probably more about PogChamp being more a joke at Ryan Gutierrez’s expense and Twitch’s commitment to find a replacement image in the future. Later the next day, Twitch locked an account tied to Trump’s campaign, similar to actions taken by other social media platforms. During this time, this Tweet exchange began to spread:
Beyond the surface level hilarity of mistaking a game tattoo for an “anarchy” symbol, this particular tweet kept making its way into my feed, each time with new replies indicating a certain level of discomfort in seeing a franchise people genuinely like get inadvertently associated with the kind of people who would storm the US Capital on the behalf of Donald Trump. For the first time in what feels like never, the gaming community seems to have not missed what was right in front of them - Dishonored’s protagonist has the same mark on the same hand, the man depicted in this picture thinks he’s the hero overthrowing a corrupt government, never mind the reality that the people he thinks are the corrupt ones haven’t had any power for 4 years.
Between the pretty high positive reaction to Twitch’s actions and the disgust at the behavior of these men, I’ve seen a huge swath of influencers and content creators in this space cut through the truly horrifying imagery of the week’s events to call them exactly what they were. Many of these were those already exhausted by fighting the good fight - the POC, women, LGBTQIA+ creators and players in our community that have constantly sounded the alarm about what streamer Dj Muel called the “gaming to fascism” pipeline. More seemed to finally wake up and notice, even going so far to call out other creators for not speaking up. For crying out loud, universal fence sitter Steven “Boogie2988” Williams couldn’t find a way to both sides the actions of the mob besieging the capital.
While the troubles in the US have origins that run deeper and older than any of us at this point, to pretend that the online gaming community doesn’t have the aforementioned pipeline to the same kind of bizarre conspiracies that led your uncle to try liberate America from maybe getting more than $600 in relief money is just as purposefully harmful. We see it happen every time a major game’s review embargo - the mentality going around about games journalists being corrupt or having an agenda (all while not playing the game in question) is the exact same one that drives the viewership of Newsmax and Fox News. Every moment a woman or a POC is revealed to be playable - heaven forbid if they’re gay - half the internet screams until their eyes bleed about “virtue signaling.” Should a creator that doesn’t fall into the white and cis categories get a chance like a creator that is would, there’s always some perceived conspiracy created around them. We cannot allow this to continue. For years, we’ve ignored the trolls in an earnest attempt to starve them, but you cannot starve those who have access to a buffet. It’s time to kick them out of the restaurant.
The trick is this work does not end with your Twitch chat and your Discord servers. This behavior must also be curbed at the level of the games industry, which has been cowardly and exploitative in its desire to profit off of the ultra-right wing segments of gaming at the cost of the safety of anyone who doesn’t fit that mold. Cyberpunk 2077, a game that guest-starred several influencers tweeting against the insurrection, had a marketing campaign run entirely on dudebro gamer blood, leveraging each controversy to shore up its most faithful, right up until that audience turned on them. No, I don’t think 2077 itself is fascist, but it’s marketing didn’t mind attracting fascists. The latest Call of Duty centers Ronald Reagan’s presidency uncritically, weakly shielding itself behind the title of historical fiction while releasing in a time that could be seen as the fully evolved form of the conservative base he cultivated. Ubisoft, in addition to being run by a man who at the very least is sympathetic to sex pests, released a Tom Clancy mobile game that reinforced the same conspiracy theories that motivated this week’s events. Just this past week, an indie developer appears to have attempted to hype up its game’s Switch release by activating right-leaning gamers via claims of a campaign to censor their game en masse, though the truth seems to be a bit more muddy.
It is long past the time to not roll our eyes at this behavior, both from the corporate and enthusiast wings of this medium, and start doing something about it. Maybe that means you play one less game, or find a new play group. Influencers, content creators, media - the grind is hard, but it may be time to consider what your sponsorships endorse. The only way we stop heading in the direction we are going is if we actually course-correct; and while everything this week confirms we live in hell, for the first time in ages I feel like we just might be able to.