The Gaming Press’s Diversity Warriors Are All Talk and No Trousers

This week the gaming press and technology blogs have put out more than twenty articles about the controversy surrounding the 2016 SXSW Interactive festival. I can hear them slapping each other on the back for their incredible bravery all the way over here in London.

The cold hard truth is that the social justice warriors the media props up as champions of diversity in the industry will never accomplish great things in gaming. They uniformly lack the skill and dedication to create great games, which makes their choice to focus all of their energy on diversity, authoritarianism, and third-wave intersectional feminism logical, albeit odious.

But what the games press doesn’t discuss is actually much more interesting and important than what they do. Several weeks ago the Entertainment Software Association Foundation announced scholarships for thirty women and minority students interested in entering the games industry. It boggles the mind that the gaming industry itself devoting $90,000 to kick-start the careers of thirty young women and men would not be newsworthy to writers that are seemingly obsessed with diversity.

If you were a blogger with a focus on diversity, would you report on the fact that ESA has provided $700,000 in scholarships to 230 female and minority students since 2007, or the fact that the usual pierced and dyed hair brigade got locked out of what is essentially a hipster carnival?

The ESA is encouraging diversity in the industry by assisting future game developers. These students aren’t attending programs some feel are dodgy, such as at Full Sail University. They are attending well-known schools such as MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, and the very prestigious Savannah College of Art and Design. These students will attend rigorous programs and expand their mind with challenging concepts. They frankly will not have the time to attend gender studies classes in order to learn the patriarchy is holding them down.

Take a moment and watch a few YouTube videos uploaded by scholarship recipients. I was personally touched by the message from Umama Ahmed, who is attending Rutgers University. Her video betrays an obvious, deep love of gaming and a sincere interest in creating wonderful games in the future.

I was also pleased to note the poster behind her is for the massive gaming hit League of Legends, instead of SJW favourites Depression Quest or Gone Home. Compare the enthusiasm with which she speaks about the industry to the listless, teleprompted speeches given by Anita Sarkeesian.

Even more recently, the ESA partnered with the Hispanic Heritage Foundation to bring twenty minority youths to show off their games at the White House as part of the ESA LOFT programme. Perhaps Hispanics are too far back in the progressive stack to make the news cut at blogs like Kotaku and Polygon as, once again, there was no coverage. 

Because it’s not really about helping people at all, you see: it’s about punching down to communities the social justice warriors don’t like. Sites such as GamePolitics.com and VentureBeat occasionally catch these stories, but you’ll find nothing on Polygon or Kotaku.

The fact is women and minorities are currently working in the games industry in large numbers and are celebrated by gamers of all sorts for their talent and creativity. The ESA is taking the right actions to assist inspired people to achieve their dreams. It is just a shame the gaming press is more interested in saving mendacious, self-styled white middle-class damsels and propping up their own personal political hobbyhorses, instead of reporting on the real diversity stories.