The Game Developers Conference: Getting to Know Our Betters

Video Games

Video games are fun. We LOVE games, darn it! But do video games love us back?

Let me tell you something you may already know: The world ain’t sunshine and rainbows.

This industry is infected with haters, cowards, bullies, and activists, and they will beat us down and cancel us for eternity if we let them.

What the hell happened to gaming?

Looking through GDC posts on Twitter is like some sort of dystopian, subversive dating app where you read about modern “game developers’” favorite post-modern interests and pastimes and how proud they are to be gobbling up all the positions of power in this industry and replacing standards of hard work and talent with current-day virtues of self-aggrandizement and appeasement to the technocratic machine of decadent moralists. Do ANY of these people work on the game? Years back, when you thought of GDC, you’d think about Sonic the Hedgehog, the new Nintendo console being showcased, new graphical technologies. Now, the first thing that pops into your head is, “Boy, I hope I don’t get canceled for making a microaggression.”

Gaming wasn’t always like this. It was brutal, terrible, and incompetent in many ways, but it’s never been full of so many social landmines and individuals salivating to destroy you for ideological reasons. There is a legion of identity-obsessed moralists in lockstep, manhandling this enterprise with an iron sickle. And they’re petty about it. They destroy lives with a shyte-eating grin. Every HR department hiring, every judging panel choosing game of the year, every mainstream news agency deciding which game gets mainstream coverage, they ALL share the same activism, they all despise the paying customer, and they are all 110% certain that they are in the right, and they need to save humanity be ANY means possible from YOU.

Can you imagine being at this conference? Do ANY of these people look like they’re looking out for the consumer, looking to fight for better pipelines and technology? Does this industry look like it’s healthy anymore? Or does it look as though it’s become infested by grown children who care only for easily rummaged good-person points, backpats and cookies for doing a good job spreading the message?

Cowardice is the driving force of gamedev in 2024. When you look into the sea of developers at GDC, you will see what used to be perfectly harmless dweebs excited to be out in the open, sharing an interest that many consider nerdy. 

The room smells of BO, the awkward conversations are off the charts, and everyone agrees with one another, afraid to offend anyone because they all share the same delicate personalities that keep them relegated to a cave where they do what they do best: nerdy stuff. But these were once GOOD people trying to make others happy, trying to make games and communities that welcomed others and sought to instill acceptance. Among them are their handlers, those who spend their time dying their hair while everyone else is having the whip cracked on them to get decent work done. They keep everyone in lockstep, remind them of their privileges and the severe social consequences for not toeing the line, forever questioning anything at all, ever.

This scene has become a terrifying, Twilight Zone-esque nightmare of underhanded bullies suppressing and manipulating the most fragile and impressionable individuals among us: the dweebs.

This won’t come as a shocker to you, but these harmless, fun, down-on-their-luck geeks and gamers have been weaponized by billionaire, faceless corporations. They now think you’re subhuman users full of viruses who are going to get them killed or bigots who sit in the shadows and plot to overthrow the US government. They think you’re stupid, uneducated, evil, and you need to be fixed so you can maybe someday reintegrate with “polite” society.

Cancel Pigs are running a class tomorrow at #GDC where you can learn to apologize better after they are done cancelling you.

Of course it’s run by Feminist Frequency. pic.twitter.com/TQvlURJNJr

— Grummz (@Grummz) March 19, 2024

It’s sad to see what’s festered in their echo chambers. These “developers” have gone so far up their own arseholes they no longer know how to push themselves to do their jobs anymore. They’re worried about microaggressions and looking like jerks among all their hip new friends who enjoy sitting around the artificial campfire singing “Kumbaya,” drinking soy lattes, and eating their bug-infused tofu cakes. You are love-bombed if you think like them!

It’s a damned cult.

Stabbing your fellow man in the back and subverting them is what gets you elevated in today’s modern gamedev sphere.

What makes their cowardice so dangerous is that they are unwilling to face the pain of being able to see what they have truly become. The number of lives they have ruined, the progress they have burned, the net joy they have ejected out the airlock to protect their precious statures is immeasurable.

It’s also been supremely profitable. When every storefront is owned by a digital behemoth like Steam, Microsoft, Apple, or Google, so long as you share their ideological views, you will fall into funding and algorithmic boosts one way or another.

Are our tin foil hats on too tight? Is it crazy to think that ideological gatekeeping isn’t destroying the professional lives of countless individuals trying to put food on the table for their families?

Imagine two developers posting their game on Twitter, or Reddit, or the App Store. One has pronouns and the Ukraine flag in bio and salutes to BLM in every other social media post. The other has a cryptically silent social presence… what could they be hiding?

Who gets boosted by the legions of smarmy millions rallying for their cause? Who will do any underhanded trick in the book to suppress, bully, and other all opposition that they consider naughty in their sight?

For all their talk of acceptance and building a better tomorrow and inclusion, game developers today have become the absolute pinnacle of exclusionary, judgemental, and dangerous subversives TERRIFIED of having to face the music, of having to open their minds to the notion that THEY have become the bigots, THEY have become the lynch mob, THEY have become the ones sitting high in the tower, looking down at all those beneath them, hoarding all the resources for themselves from this once vibrant, fun, and wondrous community that once just wanted to make fun stuff for one another.

It’s not all bad; there are still those who fly the flag of fun and not ideology. Helldivers 2 is taking the world by storm. Palworld doesn’t give a damn who you voted for in 2020 and isn’t about to lecture you about the moral quandary of working Pikachu to the bone in a digital world.

But we now live in a world were people OBSESS about the identity of this industry, not the fun.

Was this ever a thing before?

What happened to the good old days when nerds were more focused on their work than subtly forcing their ideology down people’s throats? 

Now, we need to make some sort of political stand to get acceptance on Twitter, to get any eyes on us and our projects? Disgusting. 

Underneath ALL the external messages of acceptance, it’s clear to everyone what’s really going on with these bullies.

This is what a gamedev looks like, and if you don’t look like us and outwardly present your political ideology, YOU ARE NOT ACCEPTED HERE. They engage in all the divisive and self-serving behaviors from their position of privilege that they pretend to decry. And they’ve put a spell on all those around them to convince them that they are on the same team as they sit in their office and shitpost about their subversive nothings on Twitter all day long; meanwhile, their co-workers are ground to dust trying to produce worthwhile games in this very demanding industry. 

This industry used to stand for something: Making games. Those developers have been canceled and replaced by activists who are more worried about directing the mob at their enemies than they are rolling up their sleeves and getting any damned work done. And that shows in every single disappointing game these man-children put out these days.

We’re only beginning to wake from this nightmare. We’re only beginning to see the extent of long-term damage this self-congratulatory activism has inflicted on us as a people and a geekdom. It’s not a good time to be a geek; it’s a time that demands action, coming to terms with harsh truths, and facing the slings and arrows of those who pretend to be us but secretly loathe us. We must do this so that future generations of geeks may game in the shade of the trees we plant today.