This week we discussed Social Justice in video games, as well as Feminist and Queer spaces in the gaming industry. This week touched on several topics we have discussed before, such as the feminist and queer movements in gaming, but also discussed the hacking scene, as well as social justice as a whole in the industry. To begin, social justice has become a topic that has been widely shunned by the gaming community. Like I have discussed before, the majority of the gaming community is seen as a “boys club” of sorts, seemingly made up by predominantly white males, and the thought of social justice in video games sickens the extremists of the community.  These thoughts have been reinforced due to many factors, such as marketing strategies of the 90’s, stereotyping of genders and races, antaginization of difference, among other things we as a class have looked at in the past weeks of the semester. However, as the video game industry expands, so does its audience. Finding a happy medium that can appeal to everyone is incredibly difficult when it comes to gameplay, but designing characters and crafting stories can be much more complex. Fighting for social justice through video games can be like walking through a mine field when it comes to the internet. Like I stated before, extremists of the gaming community are incredibly negative in reception when it comes to social justice in “their” video games. For example, when designing the new character “Neeko” for “League of Legends”, the designers at Riot Games decided they would try something a bit different when writing her character. “Neeko” became the first character in the game’s history to be originally written as an LGBTQ character. While other characters, such as “Varus”, were rewritten over the game’s history, changing their origins, “Neeko” was released with the message of acceptance of sexuality. Her in game voice lines allude to this part of her character, but never explicitly state “this character is LGBTQ”. However, a small group of fans of the game were furious that “Riot ruined their game” by adding the character. Forum posts on 4chan stated things such as “I didn’t pay for a game to get sappy messages of tolerance shoved down my throat.” (Reminder: “League of Legends” is a free game which never requires payment, unless the player chooses to buy exclusive event passes or cosmetics.) It always seems that on the internet, the negative messages of hate outweigh the positive messages of approval or praise. However, the gaming industry is becoming more tolerant as a whole, with audiences broadening, female and queer game designers showing the world their breakthrough titles, and the gaming workspace diversifying. As social justice evolves, so does the gaming industry.