Let's Enter 2025 With One Less Rotten Thing About Internet Gaming Culture

This year has seen its highs and lows, both in the gaming industry and the world. There are conflicts in the Middle East again, large game companies having more layoffs while a multimillion-dollar title can’t even last a month on a titan entertainment company’s storefront, and a healthcare CEO is assassinated reigniting class division in the States. However, this year’s bottom-of-the-barrel rot that the majority of the public doesn’t know about is derived from toxic internet discourse relating to recent videogames being too woke.

The internet’s gaming sphere this year has had a cavalcade of loud minorities the size of newts (the collective, not the individual people) complaining about cultural and body politics in gaming. While 2024 hasn't been the only year the pariahs of body perfection voiced their displeasure at the physique and appearance of animated characters, nearly every videogame with a significant fanbase and/or budget has been picked on by these sorts of people. It has spread so far that the nationality and race of fictional characters have been mocked, and now, the highly anticipated title The Witcher IV has copped criticism for having a returning female character as the lead.

These examples only scratch the surface of the plethora of culture war gasbagging that every gamer online has come across. And with Assassin’s Creed: Shadows releasing in less than a month, every Tom, Dick, and Harry with as many opinions as toes will flood social media with quick takes as original as the influencers they watch. But, it doesn’t even take the cake for the amount of bitching (and I mean bitching) anime avatars have done about pride flags, LGBTQIA+ people, and ‘woke’ in their videogames. These types of people should realise they’re the snowflakes in this scenario or be met with John Waters-level mockery from an opposition. To take a line from the Canadian Kanist Kermit: they are weak moralists.

Now, I’m not saying that the opinions of the anti-woke force should be removed completely, as unlike some people who place more weight on their political views than living a good life, I don’t discredit a person’s beliefs because they don’t align with mine by silencing them. I only wish that people had a life outside of the internet and videogames, in general. 

Recently, I was introduced to the term of someone being “constantly online.” It refers to an individual who is always glued to an electrical device, scrolling the internet and social media for instant gratification. These people are more likely to be aware of culture wars and “alternative views” than others who are actively living in reality with real-life issues. 

Which reminds me of one of the funniest, if not utterly ridiculous, fan-made lists of titles on Steam this year. On this list, over 1000 games have been “reviewed” and slapped with a tag: Woke, Somewhat Woke, and Not Woke, for having characters with darker skin, same-sex relationships, and say it with your chest: PRONOUNS!!! The reviews themselves are the themes the list maker didn’t like with no explainable reason why. The personal saviour complex of the creator mirrors the motivations of book banners and pearl-clutchers, with the victimhood of vegans. 

To sit behind a computer screen and tell people what they should and shouldn’t play on the basis of meaningless buzzwords only aids those who actually give a shit about discriminating from people and themes outside their echo chamber. The average gamer will buy a game they are interested in, not because it only has white characters but for its genre, or gameplay or a lead female character who kills monsters. Even the argument of ‘like art, videogames are a matter of taste’ is wrong when said taste has no substance. Merely a concept of taste. 

I could expect this level of hate from edgy teenagers letting off steam and going too far, but grown adults who fixate on left-leaning ideals and the bodily autonomy and sexuality of other people are either so well off in the world that they’ve lost touch with everyone else or, from second-hand experience, yelling slurs from within the closet. 

All the troubles in the world are not caused by transgender women using the ladies washroom or how a black samurai screws with historical accuracy in a franchise about assassins and templars fighting over alien technology. They are caused by many factors that just trying to lay them out would take another several articles to outline. So, why do these people think spreading hate and bigotry will solve their troubles?

Whether it's anonymity or insecurities that bring out the worst in people online, I hope that as this year ends, everyone miraculously becomes more aware of these people just being your basement-dwelling haters of old and spend time away from social media and video shock-jocks to better their lives in 2025. I know I am.