Game developer Brianna Wu explains that women haven’t yet made headway in the critical landscape of game culture, a fact exposed by 2013’s Game of the Year lists.
Those life events inform my experiences and opinion. And, they inform my perspective on 2013 Tomb Raider. And, with respect, if you only have people voting on game of the year from a very singular opinion — generally white, straight and male — it’s missing so much information that it loses its validity. This doesn’t mean guys can’t have awareness of issues affecting women. And it doesn’t mean women have a singular, monolithic opinion on games or even sexism. Even among my female friends, we have vastly differing opinions about 2013 Tomb Raider. Some of us love Bioshock Infinite; some of us hate it. But more viewpoints need to be represented in discussing games. We need more female games journalists who have a more central part of the dialog.
That said, a bravo must go out to one of the more prominent contributors to the bullying tenor of game culture, Mike Krahulik, who today recognized his problem and promised to deal with it.
But publishers have a responsibility, too. Websites that let people comment on game reviews are a big part of the problem: much of this year’s nastiness was facilitated by websites which chose to publish relentless, sexist attacks on their own authors.