I don't remember when video gaming became scandalous.
lizzard Entertainment was certainly hoist by its own petard. When the developer announced that Battle.net, in its new capacity as a social network, would mandate subscribers be identified by their legal names on forums for Blizzard's products, a tiny fraction of those 11 million World of Warcraft subscribers assembled and petitioned, while they still could, anonymously. Two thousand pages of remonstrance, ululation, and sundry discourse later, the software giant renounced its plan.
Me: I am ambivalent. Is anonymity — in the course of daily internet use and frequent monetary transactions — an impossible standard? No. Would Blizzard have supplied the matrix for a personal investigation, a first and last name, by anyone with an online computer? Yes. Is the scavenging and cataloging of addresses, places of work, and relationships the province of Blizzard? No. Is it the fault of Blizzard? No. Have social networks from MySpace to Facebook to 1Up and their dozen clones — especially those loose with information — caused an epidemic of stalking, abduction and murder among young men and women? No.
What struck me most about the substance of objections was the presumed impropriety of video gaming. Hundreds of complainants adduced, in the words of one, "a position where playing video games as a hobby could possibly lose a client/customer," or a job, or whatever.
Really? Who are these people? How old are they? Where do they live? What do they do? We aren't talking about gaming on the job, or to the exclusion of responsibilities; just gaming. Unless one repudiates the entirety of industry marketing, these people cannot resemble the men and women who step forward to promote any form of broadly demographic gaming. Or, for that matter, the men and women who really do play games. Is there no recorded introduction of a Wii at a family reunion or work party? Are these activities frowned upon in certain parts of the Western world? Are employers or clients or customers as intolerant of other activities, like, say, drinking to excess on the weekend as they are of using a computer to manipulate an animated character?
Blizzard's public relations folly aggravated emotions, and very strange claims emerged. Have the Big Three and their partners been selling us a bill of goods? Or is it simply the loss of privacy, not the incrimination in gaming, which so many found so worrisome?
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