Controversies Continue. For better or for worse, the internet drives controversies and there were a few of particular note in 2014. They started with the publication of the 5E Starter Set and the reveal that two persons who are widely viewed as internet bullies were consultants for the game. This poisoned a lot of the early discussion of the newest version of our industry’s top game, and unfortunately caused some loss of faith in the 5E design team15. Some fans may well have abandoned 5E because of the controversy, but beyond that it now seems to have blown over.
Meanwhile, problems with misogyny that have been bubbling up across the hobbyist industries for years reappeared in the video game field in 2014 as part of a rather grotesquely woman-hating movement called “GamerGate” (and on Twitter as #GamerGate), which extensively harassed and threatened female video game designers. It detoured into the tabletop field when James Desborough got involved. Desborough has had troubles with being called a misogynist in the past, as I detailed back in 2012. He revisited this problem in 2014 by strongly backing the GamerGate movement. As part and parcel of this, he created a GamerGate card game and uploaded it to DriveThruRPG. For the first time in 13 years, DriveThru banned a title, removing the game entirely from its catalog.
Though the consultant and GamerGate controversies both suggest some darkness underlying the roleplaying community on the internet, I actually think the GamerGate problems point toward a long-term positive. In my opinion, we’re seeing so much adolescent sociopathy about women because of that fact that women are becoming an increasingly important part of the gaming community. It’s an action-reaction that I believe to be the last dying gasp of a culture that most of us will happily see gone. Meanwhile, publishers and websites are becoming increasingly opposed to misogyny — such as when Posthuman Studios fired its MRA (men’s rights activism) fans. I think an increasing acceptance of sexual identity is going hand-in-hand with this, and it also saw notable growth in 2014, when Wizards of the Coast made a strong statement about accepting different gender and sexual identities in D&D 5E. Mind you, that’s been part of a long process, with Paizo already doing so for several years now.