Should Sensible Topics be Out of Video Games?

A Little Thought:

As people are aware, the USA is going through some hardships related to the reproductive rights of women, and as I reported on the news post PlayStation had some controversy over how it's leader Jim Ryan dealt with the situation. What I propose to talk today is not so much about whether we should respect people's opinions or not, but rather the various reactions I have seen from the public regarding the outlets reporting this news, and the companies who are voicing their opinions. 

For many years now, I have followed the Portuguese version of the popular site Eurogamer, a place where one can read multiple news regarding video games, as well as some reviews. The site by itself is amazing, and I don't have any critics to it, however its community can be a bit harsh from time to time, especially when it comes to talk about the more sensible issues. The latest occurrence of this phenomenon, was yesterday - 17/5/2022 - when it was reported that Sony and Insomniac are planning to donate 50,000 dollars to a Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. 

As one would expect the comments we're filled with various discussions whether abortion should be legalized or not, and even though I do believe every individual should have the right to abortion in accordance to the respective rules, what I found curious in their debates was that for some reason some individuals we're really upset over the fact that this was being reported and discussed in the first place. One user got to the trouble of commenting that he supports ending this type of discussions in games sites because it's a boring and disgusting topic. If one looks into the tweet where Bungie made its voice heard, we can also see some users asking them to focus only on the games. Now, is it right to think that such topic should be out of video games discussions?

To me, at least, the answer is quite obvious. Even if the topic isn't entirely related to the games themselves, the truth is that it affects deeply the staff that makes these games. Both newsrooms and gaming studios have thousands of people that can reproduce and whose rights are on the line, obviously this is an issue that is important to them. How does one expect neutrality or ignorance when their rights are on the line? It's easier to demand the topic to be out of sight when it doesn't affect you, but to this people, it's something serious that indirectly will end up affecting the games. 

This message serves to other issues too, even though we are addressing the reproductive rights right now, the truth is that this behavior is also seen when we talk about other subjects. Last year, during the BLM movement, comments saying how companies and news sites shouldn't cover the subject and be apolitical were very common, not realizing that it's impossible to truly be apolitical, especially when the subject is human rights. People make games, and these people are from all kinds of backgrounds and will have opinions about how their companies and countries will handle certain laws and behaviors. 

For that, I think it is important and crucial that we keep having these discussions on the sites, because people are the main ingredient to a successful game and deserve to be respected as people with life's and beliefs, not just as beings whose only purpose is to create a shiny new thing. I really hope all the people who can reproduce keep having their rights and that we as gamers start understanding that behind the games there are thousands of individuals who are humans too, humans who have way more value than what they create. 

PS: I wanted to take a print of the comment but by the time I ended writing the moderators of the website already had taken it down, good on them and bad on me who should have printed it sooner. Oh, and I put a controller in the cover because it's a games topic and I didn't know what image to use. Love you, bye bye...