Did Xbox Just Attack White Men?

Raise your hands if you are not a white male gamer. That is what an Xbox global marketer has asked her followers to do. In a tweet, she asked, “raise your hand if you are not a white man and you buy video games.” She followed it up by stating, “No hate to white dudes, it is just another day in the gaming industry that minorities have to fight to prove they exist.” As you can imagine, people did not take this tweet kindly. It is intentionally divisive and does nothing to tackle any issues she might think exist in video games. We know none white and women gamers exist.

Japan and China have one of the largest game markets in the world. However, apparently, that does not count either. The community manager at Compulsion Games, a studio under Xbox, says Asians do not count because they are white adjacent. She also made a statement saying that she hates gamers. This begs the question, why work in the industry.

Of course, all of this forms part of a larger issue that gamers have been talking about for years. Studios have been infiltrated by people who do not play games. They also have no respect for gamers. They are political activists who only care about sharing their social opinions. However, it is important that we review how we got to this point.

The State Of Gaming

Developers carry a large part of the blame when it comes to these types of people in the video game industry. They are ultimately the ones who hire them. There is also a simple reason why large publishers such as Xbox do this. It comes down to the never-ending profit cycle. Large companies like Microsoft are expected to make bigger profits every year. This means they cannot simply make a lot of money. They need to make all of it.

Once you have tapped out the gaming market, it is logical that you would want to expand. It means that you want to reach a new audience who might have never thought about playing games. This is a prime opportunity for activists to stick their claws into publishers with false data. These activists and diversity and inclusion managers will approach a publisher or developer and tell them, look how many people are currently playing your game.

However, your fan base is filled with white men because of your character arcs, stories, and designs. If you change your political and social messaging and some character designs, you can attract even more gamers, such as women and none white people. If you hire us, we will create stories and designs for you that will include these other groups. This is, of course, nothing but lies. However, it is also a snowball effect.

Once you have hired one of these people into a prominent position of power and authority, what do you think they will do? They start hiring more people who think like them. Before you know it, there is this infiltration of activists who do not play video games.

Conclusion

I am not saying that the gaming industry is perfect. Online lobbies can become a toxic hell hole. One Call of Duty game in an Xbox Live lobby can be enough to turn you into a complete Socialist communist with blue hair who identifies as they/them. Now, obviously, I am joking, but the point is that dividing people into these groups does nothing. It just angers gamers and causes more division. It is an additional topic when this type of talk comes from global marketers and community managers.

It is additionally frustrating because it does have real-world effects on people. When the community manager of Compulsion says she hates gamers, it makes people not buy the games. When people do not buy games, the studio loses money. Who do you think loses their jobs when this happens? It is not the crazy managers on twitter but the developers who had nothing to do with any of this. It is selfish, and dividing people like this does nothing good for anyone.