Video games used to be a bit of a niche—a large and popular niche, but a niche nonetheless.  Sure, our mom loved playing Dr. Mario on our old Nintendo, but that was about the extent of it.  Video games were largely for boys, who grew up into men.  Those men rebought the classics when they became available digitally, and continued to fuel the development of new games with their hard-earned dollars.

Of course, video game companies sensibly sought to expand their market share.  They developed more casual games to attract older gamers and more women.  The Nintendo Wii marked a major shift, as the kinetic style of the console made it popular among many demographics, most notably the elderly.  Nary a retirement home or assisted living facility lacked a Wii, with which geriatrics could play virtual tennis and bowling.

All of that is wonderful.  More gamers means more games, and it means broader acceptance of video games as a fun, harmless pastime (in spite of the ludicrous stories that insist on linking video games to violence—malarkey!).

Lately, however, video game developers have followed in the footsteps of film and television, making a mad push towards increasing “representation” in games.  This development is premised upon a number of false premises, such as “women are objectified damsels-in-distress in games,” which ignores Princess Peach, Princess Zelda/Sheikh, Lara Croft, and many other “strong female” protagonists or supporting characters in game.

That obsession is linked to another false premise:  that in order to enjoy a video game (or movie, or book, or other work), we must see carbon-copies of ourselves in them.  According to this reasoning, a black kid can’t enjoy a Mario game because Mario is an Italian-American plumber, not an African-American one.

As Ponty so eloquently points out, video games are frequently a form of escapism.  We don’t want to be ourselves; we want to be a burly barbarian, or a sneaky thief.  When I play roleplaying games, I don’t play a six-foot-one, two-hundred-fifty-plus pound nerd with bad eyesight; I typically play a short rogue or bard character, pilfering loot from NPCs’ homes.  I’d never burgle a home in real life, and the game doesn’t make me want to do so; rather, it gives the thrill of being a second-story man without any of the terrible consequences for either myself or the victim.

Regardless, gaming, too, has been a major front in the Culture Wars, going back to Gamergate in 2014.  Nearly ten years on, we’re still fighting similar battles.

With that, here is Ponty’s essay “The BBC’s Newfound Interest in the Gaming Industry”:

American readers may not know too much about our state broadcaster, the BBC. To sum it up in a few short words, it’s like your CNN except that residents of this country who want to watch live television on any channel must pay the BBC £159 per year for the trouble, whether they watch the Beeb or not.

After years of bias—whether in campaign or political leanings or flat out omission—and nonsense from this broadcaster, Tina and I finally decided to stop paying it and have not watched a live programme for the best part of 3 years. In fact, I’d been badgering Tina for years about quitting the license and after their gushing over the career criminal George Floyd, she decided that the time was right. We just couldn’t do it anymore and there are many who think the same, thousands per year ditching their license fee.

However, on occasion, we do pop onto their website to see what their daily gripes are and recently, I’ve noticed a growing trend. The BBC are starting to write gaming articles.

The chances of seeing a gaming review or even an article based on forthcoming games on the BBC was, at one point, as likely as seeing a real conservative given 5 minutes of air time without challenge but in the last month alone, they have released 3 pieces. Why this sudden interest, you may ask?

I won’t insult your intelligence by asking you to guess. On subjects the BBC know little about (which, granted, is a lot), they only tend to go overboard when one of their favourite boxes is ticked and in these pieces, the games contain just the sort of aspects that make our broadcaster go weak at the knees. I will admit to seeing one or two gaming related articles in the past, but The Last of Us 2 and Hogwarts Legacy have just enough juice for the BBC to squeeze, each containing what the Left refer to as diversity, but which I tend to view as cheap social and political means to indoctrinate an audience the alphabet brigade had not previously thought about. Until now, that is.

Following on from the success of The Last of Us 2 (which only sold well because of its much better predecessor), the Left are beginning to infiltrate gaming in order to sell their wares to an audience which is more interested in immersion and entertainment than seeing ‘people who look like them’ represented on the screen. In fact, as we know, the tickbox groups, certainly the LGBTQXYZWhatever brigade, make up such a small percentage of our populations and in gaming, their numbers are even smaller, so it makes one wonder who exactly the Left are aiming their message at.

As we’ve seen with film and television, cramming diversity into a story just because does not an audience create, with The Rings of Power getting universally panned, and companies like Disney and Netflix losing billions, plus God knows how many subscriptions. The oft quoted line ‘go Woke, go broke’ hasn’t yet resonated in the thick skulls of those diehards willing to foist the message onto their audience, but when their companies are on their last legs, maybe it will finally get through.

Anyway, back onto the BBC and their newfound interest in gaming.

From the 6th to the 22nd June, they put out these 3 articles:

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65960249
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65919624
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-65820043

Whilst the BBC admit, in their Final Fantasy piece, that ‘most games stay clear of overt messaging on social or political issues so they don’t alienate potential players who may hold differing opinions,’ they are happy to know that some developers are keen on educating their audience to think about issues like, in this case, climate change. Or, in the case of Diablo 4, diversity and inclusion, where character customisation allows a player to create an avatar that looks like them. However, it seems the game didn’t go far enough and one streamer in particular complained that the game (and future games) could do more to properly reflect black and LGBTQ gamers. Which they will because companies are always keen to pander to their minority customers. The BBC are also at pains to explain why black, ethnic minority, and LGBTQ gamers are keen on horror as a film and gaming genre without explaining why exactly horror as a genre is a particular niche for these groups. Why horror and not any other genre, like fantasy [I suspect it’s because horror is typically transgressive—and horror films are cheap to make. —TPP]?

Why does it matter that developers are succumbing to altering a product that has worked without all of this for decades? Should it really bother me whether LGBTQ relationships and ethnic minority characters are represented better in games or that social and political issues are starting to become key themes in new titles? If the Woke weren’t so keen to race bait on a daily basis or maybe Pride remained one of the seven deadly sins rather than an event to be pushed and sold, I don’t think it would be a pervading issue. But they do, and rather than a game taking the time to broaden its audience, it becomes a matter of tokenism, the character or story taking on whatever social issue the writers are keen on selling.

And what is this strange perception of playing a character who looks like the gamer? Surely the idea of playing a strapping warrior or a slim but powerful elf would feel quite empowering to a 16 stone beach ball or a weedy nerd. In the film Jumanji: The Next Level (2019), the scrawny geek Spencer admits to his friends that he went back into the game because he ‘wanted to feel like that again,’ (he took on the avatar of The Rock – Dwayne Johnson – in the game) meaning he wanted to feel strong and powerful and confident. We don’t play games to see ourselves represented in pixels, we play to become immersed in not only a different environment but within a different person. Why on earth would we want to be us all of the time and especially within an entertainment construct? The idea of playing an elf or a samurai or a warrior from time to time is rather intoxicating. Plus, and I’m just spitballing here, wouldn’t we play the game differently if the avatar was us rather than, for example, Trevor Phillips (GTA5), a socially maladjusted psychopath who has zero problem taking out half of Los Santos? Wouldn’t it dull your experience as your choices become limited? Personally, I’d much rather play as someone else than myself. I like the scope and in an open world arena, I want that to be as broad as possible.

You also have to ask, as Tina pointed out to me, that if developers are so keen to have every person represented in their games, whether the game itself will be left behind, the actual gameplay becoming a soft second to the visual representation of the characters and the background, what will happen to our options in terms of puzzles, exploration, and challenges, while writers and developers are climbing over one another to see who can impress that marginal community better?

While the BBC celebrate the inclusion of race and sexuality in games, they never seem to bother about the history, with the regards to the context in games. For instance, in Hogwarts Legacy, set a century before the events of Harry Potter, we are expected to believe that the UK was more ethnically and sexually diverse than it was at the back end of the 20th century. That the landscape in 19th-century Scotland wasn’t 90%+ Scottish white as it is now but 50-50. That transgender pupils and townfolk were celebrated and revered. Maybe if this was a stand alone game, far away from the environment created by JK Rowling, it’d make more sense but when a historical context comes into it, it makes none at all. Just like Ghost of Tsushima, where we are asked to believe that a samurai lord would be fully accepting of his people and friends being involved in homosexual relationships in 13th century Japan. It creates the illusion to new and much younger gamers that the world has always been this accepting and that those who question the constant plugging of minority interests are intolerant troglodytes, centuries away from the understanding of the more modern and educated crowd. And when I say modern, I mean, in their terms, the last 700 years! It really is bizarre.

What I will say is that the BBC is in cloud cuckoo land, as it usually is. It believes, wrongly, that the gaming industry won’t suffer because of its newfound interest in all things diversity. Unfortunately, it will, and gamers, as well as developers, will lose out, but the BBC will get the opportunity to whine about the bigots who downed a progressing industry. What’s new?