Interesting Article

Since I follow Feminist Frequency (permalink in SG Links if interested) I read her post about the Kickstarter project and was pretty excited for its production and then filed it away for future viewing and went on with my web surfing day. Then the internet intersection where video games, gamers, and misogynist cross paths absolutely fucking exploded. (Who knew this was such a busy intersection?) Here is the good news and I'm still pretty excited for its production. I'm also pretty excited that this has opened up numerous discussions. I hope it lasts. These conversations need to happen.

Anyway, as I was linking around I came by this interesting article. I found it particularly interesting for its focus on why gamers can be so prickly and defensive:

The cost, sadly, is that this protracted struggle for recognition and respect for our hobby and our industry has largely robbed us of the capacity to engage in intelligent or reasonable critique of what's happening in games. Since our childhood, most of us have been leaping to the defence of videogames - defending the medium from our parents, from our media, from our politicians. It's become an automatic response. Many of us don't seem to be able to turn it off, even now that there's really very little need for it. As a result, attempts at reasonable discussion over questions like race, gender, sexuality, violence or addiction with regard to games from within the industry get treated with the same hostility that Keith Vaz or Jack Thompson's grandstanding used to (quite rightly) receive a few years ago.