So I started a new project a couple of days ago (big shock, right? when am I not starting a new project?). I've been listening/reading a lot of mystery books lately. Books about people from unlikely situations who are put into the role of detective. There are a lot of books about mystery authors who solve crimes, so much so that there are TV shows about it. A couple of films. I've seen some things about actors, some about people who work in TV, movies, radio. It's all out there.
It seems to me that the next logical step from that would be games developers solving crimes. Games Designers in general have to have a lot of logical and critical thinking. They have to learn all about all sorts of things (especially if they're involved in lots of different types of games). It makes sense to me that someone with the experience of a games designer should be able to do this just as well as someone with the experience of a writer.
However I felt it was a little self-aggrandising. Like I'm writing a book about myself solving crimes. Which bothers me. Yes I named my magic detective after myself, but that bothered me for a long time as well and at first it was just a placeholder name.
To combat this I thought maybe make it a female games Designer, which led me to the idea of using Gamergate as a major plot point.
For those of you unaware of Gamergate, you can read more here; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamergate_controversy
the basics of it was that a group of people verbally assaulted female members of the games industry for varying degrees of feminism and varying opinions. the verbal assault was not limited to insults there were genuine threats and credible threats (some of which the police and security ignored for whatever reason, such as Anita Sarkeesian's Utah University speaking event, which was threatened with a mass shooting and the authorities, both police and university security, refused to assure that there were no guns present in the speaking hall). The threats were both personal and impersonal, and whether you agreed with the victims (and that is what they were in the end) opinions, no normal person can believe that they deserved such heinous attacks on their lives.
Anyway. I liked the idea and making the main character female let me use the gamergate fiasco as a source of contention for the whole thing. I'm going to start writing it and see where it goes. But this has been the first idea I've been genuinely happy with in a long time.
Oliver-Tube
- James
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