Screencap From the February 1999 EGM Issue. Makes you wonder what changed.
(media.kotakuinaction2.win)
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We all look back at the '90s and 2000s era of gaming with fondness, but apparently some people were already what one would consider woke back in 1999.
Here are some virtue signalling SJWs being put in their place by far more level headed staff members from EGM at that time. The gist of EGM's response was that there was no reason to look for meanings about patriarchies and harmful stereotypes because developers simply didn't intend for games to be big, poetic social commentary.
The polar opposite of gaming media today. It makes you wonder what changed so suddenly.
I'd say readership numbers. I had a subscription to EGM back in the day. Online sites show up and eat up the readers.
Sure, it's probably a bit of money laundering, but websites are cheaper money laundering.
I can also point out the hard push for "art" in the mid 00's. It was really weird having people say GTAIV was great art. Then a claim that Gears of War was just a game, but this other game was art. It got tedious, especially when Animal Crossing is probably the highest form of art of that era.
This is the key. People forget that GamerGate was the response by a dying media format to preserve it's reader base through political division, that they hoped would create ideological loyalists, and future-proof them as more radically left generations of consumers were born.
The exact opposite has happened, not because Gamers defeated the media, but because economics favored the gamers more than the media.
I don't reject games as art, but there's clearly games that are not art, and that's okay.