Wait, gaming has a light side?

I’ve never been a fan of how video games have been covered outside of the medium itself. Barring the rare exceptions of Wreck-It-Ralph and episodes of South Park - which seem to be made by people with a genuine love of video games - gaming has long been depicted in an unidentifiable and laughable way to me.

This tradition of ignorance of gamer culture from media looking inside has only been exacerbated by the deluge of articles portraying gamers as a sexist mob, many of which coincided with the rise of #GamerGate, which in turn has led to trash like this. To make matters worse, these clueless publications have been encouraged by certain figures who, like it or not, have genuine pull in the gaming industry.

And what is the result? Sensationalist bullcrap like this Youtube video by BBC3, whose previous documentaries I am now ashamed to admit I enjoyed (namely the ones on the death penalty and police brutality). But this? This really takes the biscuit, forgoing any semblance of neutrality to focus solely on the harassment of women in online gaming. Of course this harassment is awful, and while it is not exclusive to women, the abuse they receive is likely more extreme as trolls will always use gender as their first means of attack.

Having said that, I’m sure plenty of women have positive experiences in gaming communities as well (at least I honestly hope so), and if you look at the comments section of the BBC3 video, you will find the same women who appeared in the video expressing dismay at their views being misrepresented by only focusing on the negatives.

A common side effect of this exaggeration of sexist harassment in gaming is that when anyone, including women, talks about their positive experiences, they are completely drowned out. Female developers are valued by the media according to the extent of the sexist harassment they receive, thus putting their victimhood on a pedestal and ignoring their actual achievements (or lack thereof). This image of gaming concocted by the media is incredibly harmful, deterring women and girls from taking up gaming and disheartening women in the industry who have neither the time nor energy for the PR circus that is the fight against online sexism. Paradoxically, the media’s single-minded focus on sexism in gaming, while offering no practical solutions, serves only to alienate those trying to move past it and frustrate the majority of gamers that are not abusive.

The funny thing is that the BBC has already shown that they can take a reasonably balanced and nuanced approach to something as contentious as violence in video games, heck, they even did a half-decent piece recently about the online abuse received by a man(!), Totalbiscuit: but as seems to be the case with all mainstream media these days, as soon as gender comes into the equation, neutrality flies out the window.