In a post simply titled, “Please,” Tauriq Moosa has asked for something that a lot of people (including myself) seem to have forgotten: that we listen to and celebrate minority voices instead of simply remembering them. As he and writer Leigh Alexander point out, it’s incredibly important to remember that this resistance to talking about diversity in games isn’t necessarily the result of some hashtag. It’s the result of an insidious problem that plagues the games industry.
Moosa writes:
Instead of the collective being one that shouts down marginalised folk, let the default collective be one that raises us up and doesn’t let us be drowned out by bizarrely angry and dismissive others. The status quo is broken and solidarity for marginalised voices should be a constant for progress, for looking and moving forward; solidarity shouldn’t only exist for when things dissolve. Things are already broken and supporting one another is how we continue.
Bringing up the status quo reminds us that this problem—these abusers and harassers—they’ve always been around. This inability to talk about hopes for diversity in games has existed long before now. To suggest otherwise would be reductive. It would take everything they’ve been working towards throughout their careers and place it squarely back in the shadow of something that really doesn’t deserve our time anymore.
As Alexander points out in a series of tweets (condensed here in a quote):
I just heard about Tauriq. I understand very well the stress that taking a stand on social media can induce — But attributing it to ‘GamerGate’, as if we were ‘fighting’ some organized ‘group’, is not constructive — This is the same hate that we’ve always gotten in this field, just organized under a banner. And it could also happen in other fields.
Even talking about ‘GamerGate’ or whatever lends erroneous legitimacy to the idea they have a special distinction. Nah, just shit bigots. Stop talking about ‘GamerGate’, seriously — fuck yr panels, yr documentaries, all that shit. Pay attention to the real issues. The reason Tauriq and many others can’t talk about diversity in games safely is not ‘GamerGate’. Don’t disrespect us by forgetting that.
If you’ll remember, during the #1ReasonToBe panel at this year’s Game Developer Conference, women didn’t just share their difficult moments, they spoke about what makes them stay, the positive things they do and celebrate and want to see in the future. We have to remember that problems aren’t solved just by looking at them. It is important to see things for what they are, but what is becoming increasingly more critical is that we look forward.
We must, we must, we must keep going forward, and we do that by celebrating those very voices we’re supposed to be standing with. We can start to show our appreciation of them by making them heard, recognized, or hired. Visit Offworld.com, donate to a Patreon, check out itch.io, do something to keep these voices employed.
By taking away the day-to-day worries of life, we enable these voices to create and do the things they do. There’s so much potential with all this energy we pour into calling folks out. It’s long been time to start creating something better.
(image via racorn/Shutterstock)
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