I had a teacher once that said every situation can be analogised by comparing it to an ice-cream shop. So here goes?
Whilst I get your overall point, I actually think Ice Cream is a bad choice considering Ice Cream has always had universal appeal. I think its kind of a bad choice, even if I do get the overall point your making.
Now the ice cream lovers are worried, because things have changed - adults have discovered the joys of strange new flavours at a restaurant one time, and now they want ice-cream almost as much as the original affcionados. And because they didn't really eat much ice-cream for a while, they want different flavours. Rum raisin, or cookie dough, or coffee ice cream, they say. Mango sorbet. Macadamia with a caramel swirl!
The afficionados are panicking now. What if introducing cookie dough means no more vanilla?
I'm probably going to go off on a tangent with this so forgive me in advance...
I think its kind of over simplifying. I don't think its that gamers are necessarily afraid of inclusion rather their sick and tired of being told what they are and what they're not.
Look, I don't support Gamergate, if anything, I think Gamergate is the headless chicken running around the paddock with no idea as to why it still exists. But there are things about this whole situation that deeply annoy me and one of which is the political hyperbole that has taken over almost ever facet of it.
I've seen too many gross hyperbolic statements thrown around. My favourite one of which being that Gators are trying to keep women out by keeping it a boys club. Never mind the fact that there are women inside that movement trying to get their voices heard and instead are being told how they are nothing more than sock puppets. If the situation were reversed they would be "the oppressed" but because they hold differing opinions, then they're automatically sock puppets. Granted, I know, not everyone holds that view, before people jump on me.
Never mind the fact that gaming is a free market open to everyone, regardless of gender. Never mind the fact that when I walk into gaming stores I see plenty of girls happily going about their business and no one ever feels threatened to tell them to leave the store and that they're not wanted.
If anything, from the women I've talked too, it seems to me that they're kind of tired being told what they are and what they aren't by people who think that they have the right to speak for women. I can sympathise with that and that's why I look at this whole situation and realise just how grossly political it has become.
It's the left vs. the right and if you don't agree with every last thing the left has to say then you're automatically right (on Twitter, at least), apparently. At least that seems to be the environment from what I've seen. Too much of this has become a shouting match where political agendas lie at the heart of it. I think that is what annoys me so much about it, its too much of a "you must pick a side" issue and I kind of refuse to pick a side. I'm neutral to this whole thing. I think there are too many hyperbole statements being made on all sides.
I don't think its necessarily that people are afraid of change, rather I think its that you can't tell someone what they supposedly are without expecting them to bite back. This has become more about politics than it has anything else and in some ways this has been building for years, I think this would have happened regardless as to whether Zoe Quinn was the catalyst or not because that was the direction it was going in for so long.
Sorry for the off tangent ramblings, I'll go back to just living my life...besides I don't want to get pulled into a shouting match...I just want to live my life in peace and enjoy the games I buy and play.
