Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reports that Intel have pulled their adverts from Gamasutra in a new round of nonsense in the ever mounting pile of cack that is #GamerGate. Hamlet also suggests that this is an anti feminist campaign, which I don’t actually agree with because there’s far more to this than misogyny. Unfortunately too much of this issue is buried so deeply in that pile of cack that it’s hardly likely to see the light of day.
Intel, a company known for its processing power, don’t seem to have applied much processing power to their decision. Intel will now be faced with another angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, criticising their decision. The central issue of this latest round of dispute is Leigh Alexander’s Gamasutra article : ‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over. Intel should have shown some backbone here and let their adverts stay and I say this as someone who thinks that Leigh Alexander’s article was bloody awful, but I’ll most definitely defend her right to post the article.
The problem I have with Leigh’s article is that she goes at the subject matter with a ten ton hammer, swinging wildly and mostly missing the target whilst upsetting a lot of innocent bystanders. This is at the very least unhelpful and in many ways it’s adding more cack to the ever mounting pile of cack.
Leigh does make some good comments and amongst them is this one :
When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum.
However what Leigh’s article also does is go some way to creating something monstrous. There’s nothing wrong with the term ‘Gamer’. I’m a gamer, I’ve been playing games going back to the days of Manic Miner, Horace goers Skiing and Sabre Wulf. This reminds me, Elite passed its 30th birthday in September, which is rather scary. Where was I? Oh yes, the creation of the gamer golem. This needs to stop, for the good of everyone.
Continue reading “Intel Give In To The Baying Mob But Don’t Make Gamer A Dirty Word”