Maybe The People Who Criticize Violent Games Should Play Them. Maybe The People Who Make Them Should Say Something.

2) The people who make violent video games seldom speak up about them. Maybe they should, like, once a year at least? Once a decade, even?

Casey had asked: “Where do we go from here?”

I replied: “I don’t consider the games media as part of the games industry. If the “we” you’re asking about is the games media, I’d say we should continue to report about violent video games as clearly and honestly as possible. We should strive to report not just the goings on of people attacking or defending violent games but we should share the insights of people who have played them and encourage open discussion about the amount of violence in games and the way playing games makes players feel.

“If the ‘we’ is the industry, I don’t consider myself a part of the gaming industry, but I would ask the industry to ponder who it is who sat at the table with Biden and who it is that speaks up for video games. Who defended Mass Effect on Fox News a few years ago? The game’s publisher? The game’s developer? No, it was someone in the games media.

“How many times did you see the makers of Doom, Mortal Kombat, or Grand Theft Auto defend or celebrate their creations in the face of recurring criticism about those games? It’s rare. The lobbyists and the CEOs are the people who meet with Vice Presidents, but where are the game creators who will loudly stick up for video games? No game company that was meeting with Biden last week would even admit it publicly. Their PR reps either declined to comment when asked or referred reporters to the ESA, gaming’s lobbyist group. For how many years now has this been the default position?

“At what point will game creators ever speak up for their work? When will they find the opportunity to? When will they MAKE that opportunity? Often I hear the excuse that to engage those who say your work compels people to commit murder is to immediately lose the argument. Entertaining that concept is legitimizing it, the theory goes. Fair enough. But there comes a time when the silence seems deafening. There comes a time when the idea that violent video games are made by fathers and mothers and not CEOs and monsters seems implausible, because almost none of these fathers and mothers—not even the ones with Hollywood agents—has tried hard to put a face to it. Everyone wants the lobbyists to speak for them or just wish it all away. This many decades into video games’ existence, that seems bizarre and a bit sad.

“Maybe it’s time for the people who actually make video games to come out of the shadows, speak up and introduce themselves to the large part of America that doesn’t understand them or, worse, is scared by what they create.”

Play the games, critics. Talk about what you made, creators.