Incels and Gaming

Incel and anti-woke culture still dominate the gaming industry and its audience, so how to fix it?

At Sony’s State of Play on 24 September last year, Sucker Punch Productions unveiled Ghost of Yōtei, a sequel set more than 300 years after Ghost of Tsushima and Jin Sakai’s rebellion against the Mongol invasion of Feudal Japan. As a result, the series clearly needed a new protagonist. Enter Atsu. Not much is currently known about our new hero, but that’s rather the point. Soon after the livestream ended, the worst elements of the gaming audience came out of the woodwork, such as this charmer: “They can’t help themselves until every franchise that was built on masculinity is replaced by women […] So sick of the forced girlboss narrative”. Beloved ex-Sony Executive, Shawn Layden, weighed in on the manufactured drama: “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it”. Perhaps that is the path forward, but I think it’s valuable to interrogate these damaging ideas and attempt to locate their source. Maybe, then, we can limit their influence over male audiences.

Atsu in Ghost of Yōtei

Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Shadows stars dual protagonists, one of which, Yasüke, is broadly based on a real historical figure who rose from servitude to the Portuguese Jesuits to become the first foreign-born samurai in Japan’s history. So-called fans were still left wanting, reductively referring to Yasüke as a ‘Black samurai’ and threatening to boycott the game under the guise of concern for the representation of Japanese culture. The reality of Yasüke’s history within that culture didn’t matter. This kind of anger is not just directed at perceived gender or race ‘swaps’ but also over a far broader suite of offensive ideas. Stellar Blade stars a female protagonist, Eve, and even features a badass cabal of girlboss assassins slicing and dicing tentacled aliens by the dozen. Should be enough to satisfy those pesky feminoids, right, boys? Well, no, because Eve and her mates were decked out in the skimpiest, most impractical outfits imaginable, seemingly prioritising sex over safety. Street Fighter V’s Chun-Li comes to mind, another hyper-sexualised character. In both cases, the games were subject to backlash and drooling alike. Even characters viewed as empowering in the wider cultural landscape are complicated by hyper-sexualisation. Lara Croft, for example, was originally designed to appeal to young men. Male audiences clearly don’t mind a female protagonist when it sexually gratifies them; what other use could they possibly have?

Left: Lara Croft in Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) | Right: Lara Croft in Tomb Raider (1996)

I find it difficult to remove these fleeting social media spats from the wider context of the industry. In fact, a litany of class-action lawsuits has rocked several large-scale publishers and developers over the last decade. Riot Games settled a case in 2021 that alleged a ‘bro culture’ where women were sexually objectified and exploited; soon after Activision Blizzard paid a settlement of $54m to California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) over allegations that female employees were subjected to sexual harassment, paid less for equal work, and denied promotions. And that’s to say nothing of the notorious Gamergate, a harassment campaign targeting specific female journalists and critics in order to combat the perceived control that feminism and political correctness held over the industry. The campaign grew from a single 4chan post falsely claiming that the poster’s ex-girlfriend had traded sexual favours for positive reviews; and resulted in thousands of rape and death threats, instances of revenge porn, and online harassment. These kinds of systemic behaviour, I believe, demonstrate a problem that runs from top to bottom, from boardroom to basement.

Game Designer Zoe Quinn received hundreds of rape and death threats from 4chan, 8chan and Reddit forums after her ex-boyfriend made unfounded accusations that she had traded sex for positive reviews.

One of the core arguments against diversity in video-game titles is that developers ‘pander’ to a minority of gamers to avoid public backlash, and as a result ignore their general audience of young men. However, this doesn’t bear out in the data: the proportion of the female gaming audience in the U.S. grew from 38% in 2006 to 47% almost two decades later. Parity between male and female gaming audiences has never been closer, and so we have to ask why incel, or more generally male, audiences hold this belief. If the source of such thinking is not based in reason and evidence, then it must lie in feeling.

The exclusion of diverse voices from gaming spaces has often been mischaracterised as some form of protection, from what I remain unsure. The role of the nerd in popular culture has historically been one of victimhood. Take a look at Revenge of the Nerds (1984) in which the pair of eponymous outcasts commit heinous, unforgivable crimes against the female cast under the guise of victimhood — in that they deserve sexual gratification because of their low social status relative to their victims. Within such a morally dubious framework, it becomes shockingly easy to view any step towards diversity as a threat to that victimhood. Of course, female nerds have always existed, they just haven’t been allowed to adequately participate until recently. And as these groups grow in size and spending power, it becomes exponentially more profitable to cater to them. Let me put it in layman’s terms: the video-game industry caters to an international, diverse set of consumers, so from a purely financial standpoint, developers crafting player-characters across their titles that appeal to the widest portion of their audience is just smart business.

And if you just have to play as another grizzled, often-bearded dude then there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in the future: Gears of War, Batman, Resident Evil 4, Call of Duty, Warhammer 40K, Dead Rising, DOOM, Mafia: The Old Country, Metal Gear Solid Delta — oh my god, there’s so many.

Have fun. You’ll be missing out.