Video games don't make people violent, but the process of creating them can have dire health impacts. Hasan Minhaj gets it.
For much of the weekend, all eyes were on the tragic shootings in El Paso and Dayton. The inevitable flood of "thoughts and prayers" well wishes that followed quickly gave way to punditry, and to one of the favorite talking points for conservatives who don't want to blame guns: video games promote violence.
While the links between violent video games and violent behavior are tenuous at best, there are genuine issues in the industry that need addressing. And in the latest episode of his weekly Netflix series, Patriot Act (taped prior to this weekend's shootings), Minhaj delivered a broad overview of problems the industry can address to an audience that isn't necessarily in the know.
This is an important episode of Patriot Act. You don't see a lot of mainstream voices talking about development crunch or the release cycle-dependent workforce reductions. You definitely don't see much about gender inequality issues in gamedev, or the specifics on what that looks like.
Minhaj distills all of this into a fast-moving 25 minutes. He gets into the unique employment fears in a deadline-dependent industry that staffs up as a release draws near and then lays off not-insignificant portions of the workforce post-release. He talks about crunch, and the physical strain creators contend with as they overwork themselves to hit the strict deadlines they face.
You don't see a lot of mainstream voices talking about video game development crunch.
He also got a pair of really great guests who could speak personally to all of this. Emily Grace Buck, a former Telltale Games developer and outspoken supporter of workers' rights on Twitter, talked about how the Telltale CEO kicked off the studio's big mass layoffs meeting in 2018 with a bunch of jokes.
Later, Minhaj sits down with Kotaku's Cecilia D'Anastasio to talk about her investigative report on League of Legends developer Riot Games. That story cast a light on the company's astonishing gender imbalances and "bro" culture, and it led to real (still ongoing) changes. D'Anastasio gets into a number of eye-opening specifics in her chat with Minhaj.
Of course, with only 25 minutes to lay everything out the whole episode feels more like an intro to video game industry issues than a thorough accounting. Minhaj also burns a few minutes at the beginning and end of the episode cracking jokes about Fortnite.
It makes sense; he's an entertainer, and Patriot Act's whole schtick is presenting important and under-discussed topics in an easily digestible format. I wanted to see more because years of experience have filled me with all kinds of knowledge on these issues. But for most of the people watching at home, this will be new — and hopefully at least somewhat shocking — information.
If the episode piqued your interest and you don't know where to look for more, Kotaku is actually a great place to start, along with Eurogamer, gamesindustry.biz, GameDaily.biz, Polygon, and of course our friends at IGN. They're all doing great, vital work in reporting on and critiquing games and the industry that creates them.
You should also take the time to learn more about efforts to organize game industry workers into unions. Game Workers Unite, which Minhaj discusses during the episode, is perhaps the leading group behind these unionization efforts. You can find a number of helpful resources on their website.
Moving beyond the topics directly explored in Patriot Act, I'd also strongly recommend paying a visit to Take This. It's a non-profit that works to eliminate the stigma around mental health in the games enthusiast and industry spaces. If you've ever attended a PAX convention and wandered past (or taken advantage of!) an "AFK Room" where people go to chill out away from the crowds, know that that's a Take This-sponsored endeavor.
The video game industry is still relatively young, but it's faced a bunch of major growing pains in recent years as the world around it has grown up. There are still miles to go before the problems plaguing the industry disappear, but examples like this Patriot Act episode do so much to ignite a more mainstream interest in these fixable issues.
It's also a hell of a lot more helpful than whining about the tenuous links between games and real world violence after every new mass shooting.
