Yes actually

“The new X thing isn’t meant for YOU!111”

Is a common line the media pulls out when the product is failing or have poor reception. Don’t take responsibiliy for the company fucking up, that implies the company is capable of doing wrong. Just shame fans for liking a property and wanted to see it respected. Call them bigots and say the problem is the thing they like is bigoted!

It’s… absolute bullshit.

Sadly it works, people who aren’t well-informed think of the fans of X are just assholes and the new thing is good actually…

It also doesn’t work because the people who aren’t well informed weren’t fans of X, so they’re not seeing/playing the new X thing…

Meaning I guess the The New X thing wasn’t really for anybody… “Literally no one” is a strange demographic to market it to.

See: Skullgirls censoring their game in order to “appeal to a wider demographic”, outlets claiming Skullgirl fans who hate the changes are “secretly pedophiles”, aaaaand… Now the game has a dwindling player count, the Steam forums are reduced to asking when the game will be fixed, and the original creator who was not involved with the censorship has a defamation lawsuit going because a lot of people called him a diddler…

It also works the other way around, when something the big corporations DON’T want to be popular is, just slander it as bigoted

See Also: That time Cuphead fans shat on a game journalist for not being able to clear an overly easy tutorial, so the oulet he worked for tried to save his street cred by… claiming Cuphead was racist and a front for antisemitism… Which the Cuphead fanbase just kinda laughed at because it’s an asinine claim.

It really sucks because as somewhat of a social justice activist and a gamer, well… “Clowns to the right of me, Jokers to the left of me…”

Sidenote: Can we stop the trend of neutering female characters? Seriously bought a fucking Avengers comic the other day (I mostly read Sonic, but I’ll pick up the occasional Marvel from time to time if I think the story looks interst) and I didn’t realize till after I paid for it that the “Thor” on the cover was actually Captain Marvel… all I saw at first was “Blonde, Masculine Face, Masculine Build. I guess that’s a new Thor costume? I dunno, don’t keep up with it.”

Got to reading it in the car and realized “Oh shit, that’s actually Captain Marvel. Sorry about that Carol.”, this didn’t impede my enjoyment of the book mind you. I like Captain Marvel and Thor, so it’s all good…

Look she doesn’t need to pull a Power Girl and have tits the size of her head hanging out of her costume, but I feel like the de-sexualization of female characters has gone far beyond combatting the male gaze and is now reaching the “Dear God, can’t let people see her ankles!” stage, which is actually more sexist than keeping the ridiculous chain mail bikinis in the first place, as it implies that traits we consider feminine are inherently sinful and should be hidden from view.

I mean, I know the example I used was a comic, but this shit is happening in games too. I’m a woman and a gamer, games are my power fantasy, me being highly attractive is PART of my power fantasy. Stop making me not hot damn it!

Sorry it’s just… Kotaku’s complacent for creating the environment this happened in, and we’re talking about Kotaku so I felt like airing a grievance of mine.