Gamers like PewDiePie are why I don’t play online
At a certain point, it’s just not worth it anymore
By
Mike SholarsSeptember 21, 2017 11:23 am
I wasn’t surprised
by PewDiePie’s latest racist slip of the tongue. I was surprised at the number of people who were shocked by it.
We had the same conversation about the Face of YouTube and the limits of “jokes” half a year ago. We’re still pretending “outbursts” like his are a momentary lapse of judgment and not an accepted use of slurs in online voice chat.
Kjellberg’s mistake wasn’t his language, it was the fact he accidentally showed his audience the reality of online games. The ease with which Felix Kjellberg dropped a racial slur, mixed with the exasperated “I shouldn’t swear in front of my parents” way he quickly apologized for it, made perfect sense. That’s how a large number of people act online; they just learn to hide it while streaming.
That word, that very particular and targeted racial slur, has been thrown at me in online games since I was 12 years old. It has never left my side.
You never forget your first
Diablo 2 was the first game I ever played online. I chose to play as a Paladin because he had dark skin, like me, and Thorns seemed like an effective ability.I was soon heading off to fight Blood Sparrow with a player-controlled Barbarian leaping at my side. Things were good. Playing online was both more thrilling and less predictable than the couch multiplayer I had enjoyed through my consoles.
I wandered off from my partner and left them to fight and struggle on their own during the fight with Blood Sparrow. I was new to PC gaming, and kind of spooked by the gothic violence of Diablo. My chat box was suddenly filled with strange symbols from the Barbarian. I didn’t know what it meant, but they kept coming.
“hey @#%%^&”“dumb @#%%^&”
“black @#%%^&”
It was honestly kind of funny and strange at first. I didn’t have much online experience at 12 years old. Eventually, either out of rage-filled creativity or because he knew about Blizzard’s profanity filter, the other player threw this at me:
“n@ggur”
growing amount of annual market share. The workers at Barnes & Noble can sell you a product without making you feel like you don’t belong, while your local specialty comic shop may struggle with this basic level of human decency.
Not all of them do, of course. But this is a common enough problem that it’s an issue, and those stores turn what should be sanctuaries for fantasy and escape into hostile, even threatening, environments for anyone who may seem like they don’t belong. And that often means anyone who isn’t a straight white guy.
The industry has to decide whether pushing so many people offline is a loss it can accept. It has to look at how many people may not feel welcome online at all, and whether it’s worth trying to get those people back as customers.
I’m not holding my breath.
Mike Sholars has been writing professionally for a decade as a journalist, copywriter, screenwriter and everything in between. He eagerly awaits an
ActRaiser
reboot.
