Not a gamer, but it's always seemed so weird the way the entire industry expresses such open contempt for their core customers. It feels so ass-backwards to me.
To call it "entitlement" to expect to like the product you're expected to drop a significant chunk of cash on, and to not be preached at during your escapist hobby; talk about over-expectations!
Everyone who has worked a customer facing job has vented about asshole customers at home or on break, but few paper the shop walls with screeds of contempt. These people aren't even at the coalface, it'd be like back office taking out a full page ad in the local paper decrying and demonising their primary demographic.
...and then another Concord happens, and somehow people still blame the consumer as opposed to market forces.
It's projection. It's the same thing that happened in comics, is happening in tabletop, is happening in vidya. The radical leftist progressive sect showed up and attempted to perform cultural engineering by reverse engineering media representation theory. This makes several core flawed assumptions that the left always makes:
- They treated the complex system like they treat all complex systems:
- Complex systems (like industries or hobbies or fandoms) are static, they cannot change unless acted upon.
- Only the left can enact change, neutral parties or righties are not allowed to change things.
- Changes only go one direction, progress can never be undone.
- No second order knock on effects can ever occur, they pulled the "more progress" lever not the "less sales" button, so sales cannot go down.
- They continue to believe that media representation theory is real (it's not) and demand reality continue as if it is:
- This discredited bullshit is translated effectively to "You are the media you consume."
- This includes the sub-thought that "you need to see yourself and identify with the characters on screen to enjoy media." The foundational work in this theory is Adrianne Bell at DIGRA, an amorphic blob of adipose, homosexuality, and daddy issues who did a study and wrote two contradictory papers on it. (She is the ultimate source of the "Gamers are dead" articles that sparked GamerGate.)
- "Violent games make children violent" is the common version we see, every ~6-18 months a progressive "scientist" tries to push this with a new research paper, only to be torn apart because it is not true, no matter how much they want it to be true.
- Logical conclusion: If "Violent media makes children violent" then if you want children to be violent, expose them to violent media.
- Secret unstated goal: "Woke games make children woke."
- They do not believe in, and actively deny, market segmentation:
- You are not allowed to have a hobby, industry, fandom, or product that does not appeal to everyone. This would be non-inclusive, which is a sin.
- In particular, your hobby, industry, fandom, product, et cetera must appeal to THEM, because THEY have the correct beliefs on everything, and thus if you're not appealing to them, you must be wrong.
- Conversely, if you don't like something THEY like, you simply must be wrong.
- Or, to phrase this another way, even if they change the thing you like, they're owed your business because "it's the thing you like."
This happened very rapidly in comics, as at it's heart the industry was VERY small and puts out product very very rapidly. It occurred somewhat slower in tabletop, as the development time on various versions of D&D is on the order of years. It's happening to Vidya very very slowly, as a AAA game takes 5-7 years to be made. Concord, Failguard, etc were all started at the height of this, 2017-2020. That means we have another oh, 5-10 years of flopbusters to come out before this all completely collapses.
But once you keep those core, flawed, beliefs in mind -- That complex systems aren't allowed to change unless the left changes them, and only in the ways the left changes. That media representation theory is real and thus if they can just make you eat Woke goyslop you (or at least, your kids) will become woke. That there is only one market and it's the market that panders to theythem, and if you don't like what theythem like, you are by definition wrong -- you see the very, very retarded faggots behind the curtain.
They have no idea why Concord flopped. They have no idea why people are laughing at Failguard. To them, it's a moral failing to not enjoy these products, because they were created for the only market in the world that exists -- theythem, the oversocialized freaks in California. It's a sin against theythem to not enjoy it!
Fortunately for us, it's not the 1950s USSR, and economics has a well known conservative bias. (And as an aside, if you remember the USSR's stance on art and creative endeavors, it matches the above 100%.)
But to bring it all back around, Alyssa and her like, the games journoactivists, are 100% true believers in all of the above, although thanks to various forms of indoctrination -- specifically repressive tolerance, which is an entire other rant -- theythem could never articulate it. But theythem get so pissed off at the "chuds" because theythem know, in their heart of hearts, that theythem are correct, always, by definition. And the "chuds" disagreeing with theythem despite this being so, so obvious to theythem drives theythem fucking insane, especially since, despite theythem being obviously correct,
reality keeps siding with the chuds.
