Entitlement to All!

The controversy surrounding Jennifer Hepler's interview allowed for some in the gaming industry to express, vilely and maliciously, a part of gaming world that has always been seen as a major downside - a sense of entitlement. When reading the responses and obscene laced responses it is clear that what Hepler said in a 2006 interview (yet this controversy didn't start till 2012) struck a nerve within the gamer community. Hepler made the ultimate mistake of admitting she doesn't like playing games as part of her job in gaming industry and caused further hoopla when she stated she would like an option to forward through game fighting as one can do now with dialogue. Now as a fellow gamer I can understand the issue taken by gamers because of Hepler stating she does not playing the playing of games because what consumer would like to know that someone writing for some of my favorite games doesn't play their own creations. It is disheartening but also understandable when her statement is taken with the context of the entire interview; Hepler was making a statement about how little time she has to play games with her being a new mother. While this is a valid excuse for anyone - certain games can be very time intensive - but where she lost ground was in her comment about the fast forward option of game combat. This is not because of the removal of content within a game, everyone has particular preferences when playing games, but due to the fact that in the interview she states that most women don't like the violent aspects of games and would prefer an option to skip over it and focus on the storyline aspect of the game. As a female gamer it was a bit insulting to be lump into a group simply because of my sex (I personally enjoy combat in game play) but I do understand what Hepler was stating when she made that comment; having the OPTION to move past certain aspects of games that may not be appealing to some gamers is not a bad idea.

While what Hepler states in her interview was not the smartest choice of word, the public response (6 years later) showed even poorer chooses made by gamers en masse. There was vile tweets, horrible pictures created, and obscene comments made all attacking Hepler personally and when Hepler and another from Bioware dared to counterattack the true real problem emerged: gamer entitlement. Once a retort was issued, personally attacking an attacker/gaming consumer, everything changed and these same attackers went on the defensive with the consumer entitlement ideology that "We are the consumer therefore we must always be respected no matter what we do!' This entitlement leads gamers to think that they can say what ever they want, no matter how disgusting, and expect no repercussion for their actions because they are the consumers. With the overall freedom of the Internet, the ability to be anonymous, and the fact that this is a highly capitalist society, consumers feel entitled to provide their opinion no matter if what they are saying is actually constructive or just a personal attack. In this case, this entitlement did nothing but provide a vibrant example to gaming naysayers of one of the major problems with the gaming industry. This problem is less likely to end because more and more people have taken to using the internet as a way to influence consumerism and with that kind of overreaching power the Internet provides, entitlement will just keep getting inflated.