1.	With all of the current drama over game reviewers and critics, we felt that the spectrum of this “investigation” needs to be widened a bit. Censorship, favoritism, double standards and nepotism also occur between publishers and distribution services like Steam. These biased events mainly occur over content in a game. Content being questionable or sensitive themes or scenes within the game. Take a look at the difference between the video game world and the book/television world. Of course, satire was first brought to us via written work and theater, then incorporated into theater, and eventually television. Yet, we are too afraid to incorporate this element of literature into the gaming world, for fear of public/publisher outcry. Imagine if a game included a character that held racist beliefs. Obviously these wouldn’t be the views of the writers, rather a flaw in the characters personality. Do you think the video game world would be warm to a character like Archie Bunker? Doubtful. Do people like Archie Bunker exist? Yes.
2.	Perhaps encountering an Archie Bunker NPC would intentionally cause the player to feel uncomfortable or mistrusting of the NPC leading to a significantly deeper and more immersive game experience.
3.	A prime example of this would be Morrowind, here’s a game that admittedly had terrible graphics even by 2004 standards and awful random number based combat. Yet it’s regarded by many (myself included) as one of the greatest games of all time due to its spectacularly written fantasy world that at times feels more real than modern games that are set in the “real” world. One of the primary obstacles in Morrowind isn’t a difficult boss or gauntlet of enemies but rather the xenophobic culture of the native people in the game world, having the player study to understand their culture and prove himself to them in the face of their bigotry fueled from centuries of strife in regards to engagement with the outside world (much like the natives of real world America and Japan 200 years ago) This creates one of the most uniquely written games in the medium. Now when you look at Skyrim, a lot would argue that the quality of the writing significantly decreased in this sequel. One of the reasons to this is the developer and publisher think-tanks where genuinely good ideas never saw the light of day due to someone mentioning that it may step on the toes of a vocal minority. This kind of behavior, this “worry to create” is detrimental to video games as an art. Developers that decide on this self-censorship are creating a glimpse of their potential instead of following their artistic vision.
4.	We strongly feel that gamers need to make their voices heard. These are the products they will end up buying. Do they want the best and most memorable experience possible? Then let developers create what they want to create. Making the player feel uncomfortable is not a bad thing, emotional engagement has been a staple of defining a story regardless of media, and not all stories have to have a happy ending.
5.	If we want video games to continue to grow (much like literature) we can’t be afraid to make what we want to make. Companies like Valve reserve the right to pull your game from the store if they find the content to be offensive. While games like, “No More Room in Hell” are allowed on the Steam store, one of the in-game levels features a hanging US soldier next to a sign that says, “Niggaz have taken over.” They did this to create lore with their game. “Gangs have taken over NYC” they responded with. Let’s not forget, this is the same game that allows you to put a rifle under your chin and blow your brains out, as well as kill “child” zombies. On the flipside, if your game has a photoshop’d picture of Hitler in a hot tub, Valve can say, “Nope, this isn’t going on our store…” (And yes, we know that this sort of thing isn’t allowed in parts of Europe.) The choices publishers have made vary from silly to blatant nepotism, with Valve playing favorites and allowing games like Sakura Spirit, a hentai visual novel that blatantly violates their own terms of service and stonewalling other significantly more tame games based on personal relationships with the studios. Games like doom and Wolfenstein can get away with offensive symbolism like the swastika or depictions of Hitler, while Valve absolutely denies it in other games taking place in the 1940’s, regardless of the context. The symbol today is absolutely a symbol of hate and I can’t imagine anyone who would deny that, but it obviously doesn’t reflect on the beliefs of the developers. 80 years ago this symbolism of hate represented the massive increase of quality of living, economy and zeal of the German people, the presence the symbol alone can remind the player of the moral dilemma of fighting against a conscript who truly believes his cause is correct, even though he fights for the same regime symbolized that commits the atrocities we associate with it today.
6.	These are some very small examples in an industry that is plagued with this kind of thought.
7.	Sometimes we as viewers of media need to feel uncomfortable, we need to be shocked, and we need to be taken out of our little bubbles of the past 20 years. Compare video games to television. A few years ago, there was a South Park episode where the boys debated the true cause of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The episode had a purpose, to expose something, to make the audience laugh. Now imagine if someone made a game along the same satirical lines. How do you think that would fare on Steam? I don’t think the reactions would be the same…On that same note, the video game industry lacks that surrealism the TV industry has. As developers we should not be afraid of making something way the hell out there; something bizarre and totally freak. Developers, publishers, and fans need to work together to usher in a new era of how we think about games. There’s quite a bit of untapped potential here, the stuff of dreams and ideas that have yet to see the light of day. Instead of looking at video games as a source of sheer entertainment, we need to look at them for what they REALLY are. That’s playable works of literature. We can only progress if we are willing to work together and express ourselves.