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Gaming With the Wrong Controller

TRIGGER WARNING

The “Dickwolves Debacle” as its being known on the interwebs is certainly that, a debacle. More colorful language might be used to describe it, but we’ll try to keep the language civil, at least for the moment. For those who aren’t in the know, a good, pretty neutral breakdown can be found here. As both a feminist and a PA fan, it’s gonna be hard for me to stay neutral while I talk about it. However, I feel it is something the Feministing community should be made aware of.

The difficulty I think in understanding this whole debacle is coming from the incongruity for whatever reason between feminists and gamers. As if the two were somehow separate groups with no overlap. Anyway, this false dichotomy is making it hard for the two sides of the issue to understand each other.

On the one hand, one has to understand the history of video games, Penny Arcade, and censorship. Censorship is a big issue in video games. Like, huge. Probably the main issue that every gamer agrees on, as in, games are art, and should be protected as such, i.e. freedom of speech. So when objections or flack gets thrown at the ‘gamer community’, whether it be Kotaku, Penny Arcade, or Zero Punctuation, it goes almost instantly into ‘defense mode.’ Censorship, of any kind, is the enemy. And, whatever one’s stance on video games, violence, and the propagation of violence, one has to understand that ...