Gaming Has Taken On More Cultist Personas in the Name of "Community"
By: Bryce L. Jackson
As the Game Awards approach for another year, this year’s Game of the Year candidates has sparked more “lively discussions” than usual. I look at the discourse in the gaming bubble and see nothing but heated arguments about the legitimacy of the candidates. Doom Eternal, Hades, Final Fantasy VII REMAKE (FFVIIR), Animal Crossing: New Horizons, The Last of Us: Part 2 (TLOU2), and Ghost of Tsushima are all up for the community’s top honor. The larger press outlets and notable industry influencers have already cast their votes (which carry more weight), leaving each game’s fans to debate amongst themselves. Or rather, fight. With swords and pickaxes. These arguments usually devolve picking apart the legitimacy of each candidate, mostly judging by the amount of controversy the game has had with some healthy helping of insults along the way.
Doom Eternal had a major dustup between the developer id Software and the game’s music composer Mick Gordon. FFVIIR’s inclusion as Game of the Year is called into question because it’s a remake and reimagining of an old game, with issues also sprouting from said reimagining while being only a small percentage of the original game’s sprawling narrative. TLOU2 is an entire shopping list of issues from poor working conditions and crunch (weeks of overtime and pressure to meet a deadline) at developer Naughty Dog, major story leaks, and controversial storytelling decisions leading to threats against actors, the lead writer, and director Neil Druckmann and personalized slights towards dissenters by said director.
If the opinion of fan voters were really based on having the least amount of drama attached, Ghost of Tsushima and Hades would be running a two-horse race. Even then, the aggressive atmosphere around defending and propping up their favorite heading into the Awards also leads fans of those games into the pit of toxicity towards other games they’ve deemed lesser.
My theory behind the general upheaval lies in the compounding issues that is the year 2020. Gaming has become a solace to many more people and each game represents a beacon of light to them in this hellscape. May it be a long-awaited release that kept them going or seeing a sense of self portrayed in a game, or something that allowed a person a deeper connection to other people in these times, games mean more now. With the contentious battleground that social media has become, everyone is defensive of their game. Any criticism of their game is met with over-the-top resistance, even if it is valid. We don’t want our Precious sullied, and that has lead gaming communities to look and feel more like cults. We shower the figureheads of our preferred with praise and love and respond with disgusting levels of vitriol when an opposing view or troll riles us up. It makes the whole fandom look bad to anyone new or peeping in because of a news article or a catchy, salacious tweet.
The worst of the offending fandoms recently have been fans of CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077. As of writing, press reviews and reactions are being released before the game finally releases. The lead-up to release has been rife with issues including claims of crunch after executives promised none, multiple delays, claims of transphobia, and issues with accessibility where game sequences almost guarantee seizures in individuals with epilepsy. With every criticism, fans of this game have been terrible to game journalists and marginalized groups that call it out. In my opinion, the piling on by the public ranging from faceless edgelord troll accounts to larger influencers that are also super hyped for the release has adversely affected how reviewers score the game pre-release. Currently sitting at a Metacritic score of 91 despite the aforementioned complaints including being a buggy mess pre-Day 1 patch, that score feels like an appeasement to the fans so that they don’t attack the writers and creators. Then there’s the pressure of developers that have incentives for a good Metacritic score. One Cyberpunk 2077 delay was explicitly because of concerns over Metacritic scores. In an industry that has become more sympathetic to hard-working devs, no one publication wants to burden that shame or the abuse that will follow. Anyone that has scored the game anything less than an 8/10 has already been met with anger and threats.
I recently jumped to the defense of two Black Women content creators that were being harassed and racially abused by another creator’s community. I enjoy shutting down racist rhetoric in the gaming fandom. I don’t enjoy fighting. Every criticism or complaint in gaming devolves into a meaningless fight. I would like to interact with the game communities I’m interested in and not have to deal with people that only exist to ruffle feathers. The “dead game lol”, unnecessary snide remarks, the attacks on people that you disagree with just for a reasonably dissenting opinion. It needs to stop. Gaming has done so much good in terms of community and charity. We need to be better to each other as well.
The reactions to this year’s GOTY winner are going to be horrid regardless of winners and Gaming Twitter will be a warzone. I’ve already punted on this year. But in the next year, let’s be kinder to one another in the gaming community. Diffuse heated arguments do not engage in bad faith “devil’s advocate” arguments, listen to reasonable criticisms, and learn from each other. It takes too much energy to hate.