*Sigh* Less exclusive?
Let's just say I fully disagree. I think gamers as a whole have been very inclusive, the vast majority I've talked to when asked about the increased presence of women in gaming have either been like.
"Thou-est musteth be-eth joketh, there arenth nay womenth on thy net!"
Or
"Sweet"
Or they are girls, because I've been in the kind of situation that a lot of the people I've been around in my life with by pure coincidence have been girls, and most of them are gamers. All kinds of games, MMO's, social facebook stuff, shooters, Mobas... Mostly Mobas.. I've stopped playing Mobas with them, they're like preying mantis except no intimacy, just biting heads off when I misfire an ability..
It's not my fault my mouse lags.. it was mouselag i swear.
Anyway-
I've not seen anyone saying 'Wahh, Women in my games, get them out of here- boys only!'
Gaming culture has in the recent years, or recent decade been tied a lot to the online community. The Online Community has by and large prided itself on anonymity. It's been very easy for gays, transexuals, nerds, bisexuals- women and otherwise people feeling a bit outcast or dis-empowered to find equality there under a banner of anonymity.
The problems arose with the.. What can we even call them? The people who believes the whole 'your rights end where my feelings begin' an incredibly loud minority usually recently out of some humanities study who believes that we should rid ourselves of our anonymity and cater ourselves to well- them. Just them, and that they stand for an idea which is the most inclusive of all, the idea that Gaming must be reformed into something that doesn't hurt anyones feelings.
They are very authoritarian in that way and I don't want gaming to become about politics, and if we are to become something that doesn't cause offense to -anyone- that is exactly what it's going to be about, politics. To have my information streams that I relied on turned into sites whose articles can push an agenda. It's a big industry now, Hollywood became political- some say we can't prevent gaming from becoming about politics, from splitting down the sides like this.
But this is why Gaming and by extension Gamergate which consist of people who care about videogames is so inclusive, it's because we don't care about gender or politics or any of that... We care about videogames and we care about the future of videogames and we are worried that if we let these people who want to control us with an agenda get their way, our hobby will push us away and our hobby will become exclusive.
A well grounded fear considering the way they've been censoring discussion, the reach they've had within the independant gaming community and the games media- the ability to completely blackout coverage on games made by people whose opinion doesn't fall in line with theirs- the ability to destroy careers... Banning people and excluding and ignoring and blocking and removing former 'friends' after this conflict started, due to hurt feelings over what is a fact of life- that even among your best of friends you're still going to disagree on certain issues.. Being an adult is about overcoming those disagreements and finding common ground, to be mature. You can't live your whole life in some sort of hug box, that's unhealthy.
It's unhealthy for people, and it's unhealthy for gaming. We should allow games of all shapes and sizes and themes, sure some of them may hurt someones feelings- sure some of them may be developed by someone whose political opinion we may disagree with. But they should still get attention because we as gamers care about games, we as persons may care about politics but as gamers we care about 'games'.
Gamers are indeed alive, they're a growing hobby and they're not going away. Our hobby is becoming larger than film, it is time we did something to make sure we don't allow the same mistakes to happen as it did to them- or at least try.