Breaking down GamerGate’s “I don’t want developers to have to fulfill some kind of diversity quota!”

INTRODUCTION: I withhold the right, which is mine and not yours to begin with, to ignore comments or disable comments altogether, on any platform in which this article may appear, should I find that the comments are less about providing other perspectives in a civil manner, and more about vitriolic disagreement — or worse. This should go without saying, but the apparently controversial topics I may discuss often feature participants in the debate who mistake this as being “censorship.” It’s not. You don’t have a right to an author’s time, or to benefit from their platform; that’s true here, that’s true everywhere. Being able to comment is a courtesy. Now, let’s begin.

A small, but vocal, subset of gamers have long been making this argument, but in the recent and, at time of writing ongoing, #GamerGate situation, this argument has come somewhat front and center, and goes as follows:

“I don’t want developers to have to fulfill some kind of diversity quota”

Let’s break it down.

First of all, the positive: by itself this is a perfectly understandable position to have, especially when you feel that certain political perspectives have gained more widespread adoption in society, your hobby or industry, or your community. Change — any kind of change, really — can be hard to accept, and an initial reaction of reluctance or dislike towards change is understandable, and not necessarily a bad thing. It’s important to try and properly evaluate change when you encounter it, because change can mean both good and bad things. Leveling up in a skill is change, but you don’t feel bad about it. Sometimes, change is not as straightforward as honing your skills, and can take some time to understand properly.

This argument is a good embodiment of that kind of reluctance to a certain type of change that is particularly not-straightforward. It’s understandable if it even seems like a negative or ‘bad’ change to you, at first.

Now, however, we get to the negative, and I want to caution you: some of this might make you get defensive initially, especially if you often or fervently make this argument yourself, but please bear with me. None of what I’m writing next is meant as an attack or criticism of you for holding this view, I’m solely trying to pick apart the flaws in the argument itself, and I leave it up to you to either refine it, or abandon it if you no longer see any validity in it.

If you’re an adult, this argument is condescending, disingenuous, and backwards / counter-productive for anyone who supports capitalism and the free market, to whatever degree they may. If you’re a teenager uttering this, you may get away with just being incredibly naïve and lacking perspective through inexperience. Adults don’t get a pass, however.

We will go through each of these three items in detail.

Here is what’s condescending about this statement: you object to people criticizing games from a social [justice] or progressive perspective, because you want to let the creators of games simply go about cultivating their own artistic vision. That’s a valid viewpoint to have, perhaps, but you’re making your argument from an authoritarian point of view: you take it upon yourself to “protect game developers” from, what, merely being exposed to these progressive views? From “buying into them”? Shouldn’t that be their decision to make? When you make this argument, you disregard the perspective of game developers themselves!

Have you asked every single game developer on the planet if they want you to “protect” them from these social or progressive criticisms? No, you obviously haven’t. Yet you assume that because you don’t agree with these views, every game developer does not agree with them either (or, that they shouldn’t — which is just more authoritarianism).

You’re acting not in the interests of the game developers, but on their behalf without their consent, agreement or universal support. You’re simply acting in your own interests, catering to a belief you hold true, but not in theirs — sure, there will be some number of game developers who totally share your views on this, but quite clearly, most of them do not. The number of game developers who follow, support, link to and RT Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes Vs. Women In Video Games series far outnumbers the number of game developers within #GamerGate.

Next, let’s examine what’s disingenuous about this argument, in two parts. First the “diversity quotas” part. This is a strawman argument through and through, and anyone who cares enough to listen with a cool head and who does not have a persecution complex will see that absolutely no one is arguing for “diversity quotas” in games. What social commentary, like Sarkeesian’s videos, talks about is the representation of women and minorities in games, and yes, sometimes the complete lack thereof. But it’s not simply about adding diverse characters in every situation or game; rather, if you want to make a game with all white male characters, have a valid reason for it that justifies it, and which shows that you made a conscious decision about it. Don’t do it out of sheer laziness or because you simply didn’t think about people who are different from the one you see in the mirror every day.

If you’re making a game about Allied infiltrators in Nazi Germany, you have a very valid and defensible reason for most every character to be white and male. The problem is, that argument does not apply to just any other game. Assassin’s Creed: Unity is a perfect example of the kind of lazy, ignorant and casually indifferent to non-white-men attitude that this social criticism is all about. It’s a game about an assassin during the French Revolution. Guess who’s the most famous assassin during the French Revolution: a woman.

To explicitly create four male assassins and zero female ones, when your entire game premise is based on a historical setting which a female assassin is most famous for, is definitely worthy of criticism, and that still does not mean people are demanding “diversity quotas.”

The second disingenuous thing is the “to have to” part of the argument. No one is forcing game devs to do anything with this type of criticism. There is no gun to anyone’s head, there are no secret bribes being paid (about this, anyway — can’t speak for the entirety of the games industry on that, of course). Game developers are free to heed this kind of criticism or ignore it. Yes, there may be consequences to casually ignoring the criticism of your would-be customers, but those are consequences under your own control: not ignoring the criticism is within your control, and would bear different consequences. But this really brings us to item three on the breakdown list…

It is backwards and counter-productive to capitalist and free market ideas to try and silence any kind of criticism regarding the industry and its products. If a game developer wishes to ignore social or progressive commentary, fine, that’s their freedom of choice in the matter. If, as a result of that decision, however, the market responds by boycotting or simply not being interested in their product, then that’s the free market in action. That’s precisely what the free market is supposed to do: respond to things it doesn’t like by not financially supporting them.

So what you’re doing when you make this kind of argument is saying you don’t want the free market to figure itself out, or decide for itself what it wants to be, how it wants to look like, and what it wants to finance. You actively work against a free market when you make this kind of argument, because you’re trying to prevent the free market from exploring its own opinions and its freedom.

If there is a giant uproar from free market patrons, a.k.a. consumers, about not buying a certain game because it has sexist aspects to it, then the market is saying, loudly and clearly, that it wants less sexist games. That’s how a free market works, and is supposed to work. If the Tropes Vs. Women videos do not appeal to consumers, or do not appeal to game developers, or only appeal to an insignificantly small subset of each, then they will not have any effect on the games industry. Developers will ignore the criticism, and not enough consumers will change their buying behavior to encourage any change in the market. And then that is the free market in action.

However, we can see that that’s not the case. The free market has shown an interest in these new perspectives; indie developers or pop culture critics do not have magical powers forcing anyone to listen to them. People will pay attention to them if they’re saying something that interests them. The number of game developers who have come out and said that Sarkeesian’s videos have made them reassess their game, and that this reassessment made their game better, is constantly increasing. Not better at some cost to you, dear GamerGater, but better in favor of everyone. Unless, of course, you find that “fewer needlessly sexualized female characters in games” is somehow a cost to you — in which case, well, you have internalized misogyny and entitlements that you should probably examine sometime.

But that’s not an attack on you! Our society as a whole is full of signals that subconsciously try and instill internalized misogyny in all of us, and which give (primarily) straight white men certain entitlements that often come back to bite them in the ass at some later point in life.

This isn’t about you being a bad person for liking a game that people are calling out for having sexist components to them, it is simply what it says on the face of it: this game has sexist components to it, and here’s why and how that affects real people. Do with that what you want. You can like games for the things they do well while still criticizing them for the parts they get wrong. You still want to buy and play this game that got called out? No problem, you have that freedom, and we don’t judge you for doing that. But! If you attack us in defense of the game — whose feelings, I might remind you, cannot be hurt by our criticism, and whose developers are hopefully adult people who can handle criticism of their work like adults — and say it doesn’t have sexist components? (I’m leaving aside here the manner in which these attacks are generally carried out) Then yes, we will call you out for not understanding or recognizing sexism, and for defending or upholding a sexist media culture that continues to perpetuate these sexist subconscious messages that give us all internalized misogyny. It’s a cyclical problem, and I hope you can see that it harms everyone (albeit in different degrees). We’re not expressing criticism of games to blame you, the gamer, for enjoying them; we’re expressing criticism of games in hopes of changing the broader culture that’s instilling harmful ideas in us all.

We’re trying to remove harmful ideas from the culture you and I both live in.

That’s basically what I have to say about the “I don’t want developers to have to fulfill some kind of diversity quota” argument, although I of course reserve the right to change my mind and say more things in the future.

If you’re interested in more of these perspectives or breakdowns of arguments, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to me on Medium. There’s lots more to come.