"Gamer Words": A Prime Example of Excused Racial Hostility in Gaming Culture

 The gaming atmosphere gives many gamers of privilege an avenue to extend institutional prejudices and marginalization. Issues regarding racial prejudices are no exception. In many game-centric platforms, from video games themselves to avenues in which gaming is integral such as Twitch, racial marginalization is found to be extremely prevalent. This causes the identity of “gamer” to be exclusive to the “default” of the straight white male and hostile to any “deviant” identification. This is demonstrated in the more recently popularized term “gamer word” and the frequent usage of such words and defense of their usage in gaming culture.

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The term “gamer word” is a phrase used solely to describe hateful or discriminatory language in the context of gaming environments. The precise dictionary of “gamer words” is comprised primarily of slurs, exhibiting hostility towards marginalized groups of all sorts. Most commonly, the sole “gamer word” is the n-word. By baking these slurs holistically into the dialect of those who identify as gamer, the title of gamer itself is blatantly made exclusive to those not harmed by such words and not welcome to those who it does harm.

Although the use of these “gamer words” may seem very blatant and discriminatory to most individuals, especially those to whom these slurs are directed, an article by Kishonna L. Gray demonstratess how privileged individuals justify this for themselves. In the article, Kishonna categorizes similar practices as  “new racism”, a more “subtle” form of racism that disguises blatant marginalization as an excusable norm. As Gray writes, “It’s a way to talk about racial minorities without sounding like a racist.” This attitude shows marginalized individuals that the environment they have full right to occupy and flourish in is not friendly to them, as hostility is fully baked into the culture and can be simply excused as such.

Even considering this, it would reasonably be surprising to some that directly using racial slurs in a derogatory and hostile way could in any way be “subtle” or come off as sounding not racist in any way. Kishonna writes about an example of this phenomenon in citing the “PewDiePie” incident in which he used the n-word on stream. I believe this scenario dispels all doubt to the fact that individuals will utilize this “new racism” in extreme ways. While many reprimanded his actions, many equally excused them. One twitter user wrote, “Not like Pewds [PewDiePie] ACTUALLY did anything wrong except say a gamer word once during a video game.” The prior quote perfectly encapsulates exactly the extent to which the tag “gamer word” on extremely hurtful language is used to excuse such acts as the norm, allowing for the further punishment of all marginalized and “deviant” individuals within the gaming community.

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    While the case with PewDiePie is well documented, well known, and debatably atoned for to my knowledge, many similar cases go undocumented, unapologetically. As much as marginalized individuals may continue to make their way into and hold higher positions gaming atmospheres such as content creation and game development, and representations of minority figures become more common in video games themselves, it continues to be extremely difficult to completely iradicate the discrimination that seems so integral to gaming as a whole.

Sources:

Daniels, Jessie, et al., editors. Digital Sociologies. 1st ed., Bristol University Press, 2017. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1t89cfr. Accessed 28 Mar. 2023.

Gray, Kishonna L. “19. Black Gamers’ Resistance.” Race and Media, 2020, pp. 241–251., https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479823222.003.0023.