Esports and video games are a great thing, and their communities have the potential to reflect that even more. However, they demonstrate with particular clarity the systemic factors that facilitate an epidemic of sexual assault. They are the same factors that plague our world outside of gaming, including our own lives as Boston University students.
If Animal Crossing: New Horizons’ reputation for posterity is going to be “the pandemic game” — which seems to be the case, if 2020 year-in-review articles are any indication — I hope people remember more than just its obvious utility as an escapist fantasy.
Gatekeeping, misogyny and sexism are prevalent within science-fiction communities and fanbases. Refusing to acknowledge a character’s power is just a symptom of these sexist behaviors.
Infighting happens in part because we encourage it. When our politicians never receive real punishments, is it any surprise that we love to see them in subculture?
Our real world is too much to bear, so we escape into the fantasy worlds of gacha games — where the underlying pain comes from loss of money, not lives.
