This rings so true and is seen in a lot of other industries as well. I believe the world of gaming is among the worst for this where hordes of customers ardently defend the clearly abusive practices of multinational companies that do not give the slightest shit about them except their influence on their bottom line.
Gamers find it easier to be up in arms about journalists being bad at video games and women having too many opinions on their hobby than the fact that they are getting actively screwed over by the hyper-predatory monetisation tactics of the game publishers and the fact that a company like Activision let go of more than a hundred employees on the same week as they gave Bobby Kotick a $200 million bonus.
Sure but you are being disingenuous if you think that the outrage on Activision is even remotely comparable to the backlash against feminism in gaming.
There is also no actual objective problem that feminism has caused to gaming that gamers can point to and I would argue that the vehement backlash against it is as driven by the "invasion of political activists into the hobby" as Anita Sarkeesean and other feminist pundits.
Bobby Kotick has a PR department, strong incentives not to antagonise the community he sells to, and enough power within his company to fire anyone who does.
Activists have an incentive to be as incendiary as possible to gain media attention, smaller PR departments if any, and little to no control over what other activists say.
It's an unfortunate reality that if my local supermarket fires a bunch of workers for trying to unionise, but my neighbour gets in a screaming match with me because he thinks I scratched his car's paint, then I'll be mildly disappointed by the supermarket but frothing mad about my neighbour. It doesn't even matter what the confrontation is about: I'll be frothing mad about any topic that my neighbour brings up if he's screaming it at me, the medium is the message.
I mostly agree except for the fact that I don't really think the gaming community are that dangerous to antagonise for a company at all considering that Activision and EA together are some of the most hated companies in both the gaming community and the world in general yet sell the most games.
It's not about the medium or even the message here. It's all about the product. As long as you control the product, it doesn't matter how much grumbling gamers do under their breath, they will still fork over their cash.
Activists on the other hand do not have a product to offer. Instead they make you think uncomfortable thoughts and try to get you to reconsider or reflect on your viewpoints or biases. That's a lot harder than buy and consume product. That's a difference that even god-tier PR is not going to easily be able to overcome.
Gamers don't care about women having opinions on their hobby.
Gamer care about opportunistic women's study majors who know nothing about gaming insulting their favorite pastime to try and justify their wasted lives.
Probably because the actual influence of "official" video game journalists has waned significantly compared to individual critics on Youtube and other platforms.
Yes, it's pretty pathetic that somebody who's job involves playing video games got stuck on the tutorial of Cuphead but then again, who cares? I don't consider it a real concern simply because outlets like IGN are waning in influence anyway.
A far more insidious concern that bears barely no attention is the fact that publishers practice shady shit like deliberately withholding review copies to overly critical reviewers or how journalists are incentivised to prioritise officially mandated press releases over reports of abuse. Notice how the very recent case of the rampant sexual and racial abuse in Ubisoft has been nearly forgotten by video game journalism.
Movements like Gamergate failed because aside from the rampant sexism within their ranks, their focus was narrowly on individual bad actors in video game journalism when the real problem is more systematic than that.
Well considering the sheer extent and breadth of influence that Amazon has, I'm not sure how narrow it really is to write on Amazon's abuses.
Besides, you're comparing apples and oranges. It would be a better comparison if there were loads of attack articles on specific employees of Amazon instead of a giant multi-national company engaging in aggressive union busting behavior that is one of the largest employers in the world.
Gamers find it easier to be up in arms about journalists being bad at video games and women having too many opinions on their hobby than the fact that they are getting actively screwed over by the hyper-predatory monetisation tactics of the game publishers and the fact that a company like Activision let go of more than a hundred employees on the same week as they gave Bobby Kotick a $200 million bonus.