At E3, video gaming's bigots have lost
UBISOFT
Four years ago a row hit the games industry like an atomic bomb.
The treatment of women, within both the industry and the games themselves, was being scrutinised like never before. And, as journalists predicted that “gamers are over”, an angry, and at times vicious, movement emerged: Gamergate.
Supporters of Gamergate would say it was about “ethics in games journalism”. But it was quite openly more often than not about something else: women, minorities and hatred of so-called “social justice warriors” - the “SJWs” - as if social justice was something to be avoided.
It was a row that would go on to consume lives and careers, creating celebrities of likes of Milo Yiannopoulos as it went. In many respects, Gamergate was a dress rehearsal for what we refer to today as the alt-right.
I'd been at E3 in June 2014, just before Gamergate really took hold. And in summing up that year's show, I concluded that the industry still had a problem with women, despite a new momentum and demands for progress. The show's lowest moment was in learning that that year's new Assassin's Creed game would have four playable characters - all of them male.
The following year - 2015 - I went back to E3. I was curious to see how the industry would react. Yet despite the fire and fury online, it felt as if absolutely nothing had changed.
I wondered - what were the games companies doing? Were they afraid? Were they conflicted?
Had they even been listening?
A friend in the gaming industry took issue with my view. “Games take time,” he told me. “Let’s see where we are in a few years.”
'Setting a benchmark'
E3 2018, and I’m standing in a makeshift wooden town hall, erected by Sony for its bombastic PlayStation showcase event.
Sony’s biggest franchise is The Last of Us, a PlayStation exclusive, and a title that many consider to be the finest video game ever made.
In the original you play Joel. He’s escorting Ellie, a teenage girl, through the game.
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