. A cursory glance at gaming Twitter accounts or message boards will reveal a number of similar stories about other people and companies, from formereditors who mentally and emotionally tormented their employees, to streamers, publicists, and developers acting and speaking inappropriately towards others—including alleged incidences of physical assault and rape.
The core issue here stretches back decades. The western games industry largely fell apart in the early ‘80s as the Atari crashed. The PC gaming market wasn’t hit as hard, but it remained primarily a niche sidebar until home computers became more widespread in the ‘90s. When the western industry started to revive itself in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, it developed a boy’s club mentality that sidelined women and injected a deep, overt strain of toxic masculinity into the heart of the business.
So let’s tear it all down. Scrap all the parties and other events that encourage people to drink. E3 itself has become utterly redundant, as this year’s round of virtual conferences have shown; dump the whole damn convention and never speak of it again. Limit GDC to official, professional daytime events for designers and developers, without the promotional component that has become increasingly dominant.