COLUMN
Pippa Tshabalala
On Exclusion
By Pippa Tshabalala.
Picture courtesy of Adriaan Louw from
we-are-awesome.com
A
great deal has been written about
#GamerGate, the current controversy
raging in the videogame community.
I don’t have the space to go into great detail
about how it all started, but in a nutshell
#GamerGate touches on two major points: the
treatment of women in the gaming industry and
the ethics of videogame journalism.
As is always the case on the internet, people
are completely calm and rational in discussing
this sensitive topic. Ok, we all know that’s not
true. Or at least anyone who has any experience
with the internet and social media knows
better. Of course there has been a storm of
epic proportions, primarily centering on the
harassment of women in the gaming industry
and the idea that the only way indie developers
are getting good scores are through bribing (via
a variety of ways) corrupt journalists.
Whether that’s true or not, the integrity of
videogame journalism has been called into
question, and coupled with the misogyny that
has persistently plagued the gaming industry in
both gaming development as well as journalism,
we find prominent female journalists such as
Jenn Frank removing themselves from the
industry because they can no longer deal with
the constant harassment.
WE SHOULD BE UNITED IN OUR
LOVE OF VIDEOGAMES, NOT
EXCLUDE OTHERS BASED ON
THEIR RACE OR GENDER.
This is sad because no one should have to fear
for their life or their livelihood. We can, of course,
immediately place this in a South African context
which on so many levels is still an emerging
market in the gaming arena.
Not only are we in a space that has an almost
exclusively male gaming media contingent (I’m
pretty sure I can count the number of South
African female gaming journalists on one hand),
but the gaming media is almost exclusively part
of the white demographic.
And while I’ve written about the representation
of colour and gender before, and while many
tell us that we’re being overly sensitive, it’s a
46
PIPPA
BELIEVES IT’S
TIME TO PUT AN END
TO EXCLUSION
problem that we close our eyes to because
honestly we love videogames and we all want
to keep playing them.
This can’t continue however, if we simply
pretend that it will go away. You
might think that black people don’t
play games, but even after The
Verge has been off air for two
years, I still get messages on
social media from teenager