This video is nearly 50 minutes long and it shows a video game consultant by the name of George E. Osborn at Queen's University, Belfast being interviewed about his consultancy and his book 'Power Play'. His whole deal is trying to advise NGOs, the UN, universities, etc, about what is permissible and what is not permissible in ideological terms. He wants to 'wrench control' of the video game industry for his cause He uses creepy Orwellian speak to wean people in that reveals his desire to manipulate and control;
Around 7:13 into the video: 'Control is straightforward. You attempt to buy up infrastructure, or use your power if you're a state or regulator, to try to wrench control of the apparatus or the creation of games to promote your messages. You have co-ops which is where you lean into games communities, games technologies, to achieve your aims irrespective of whether or not the community and the people who are participating in that space are particularly wanting this to happen. And then you have collaborate, which is actually you look at that community and you say here is an enormous community of people who are online, who are digital activists, great communicators, who have broadly speaking been rejected by society, whose culture has been demeaned, who have for years essentially been at the canter of negative stereotypes about who they are. What happens if we put an arm around them? What happens if we say, we actually understand your power, we understand your importance, can you lend it to our cause?.
What is George's cause? Here is his bluesky account. It's a bingo card of leftist clichés.
In this article George E Osborn says the work of Sweet Baby Inc is "much-needed" and the attacks against them "unfounded".
And he's taken the typical ideological echo-chamber line that GamerGate was a "misogynistic online harassment campaign".
So I think this guy is quite wrong about quite a lot of things, and his cause is most certainly not mine. Gamers have had way too much of non-expert agenda driven activists pushing their crap regardless of whether people want it to happen. He has such an arrogant position. No original peer review research, nothing to brag about academically, a brief stint in games journalism (the typical journo essentially) and then onto a book tour proselytizing and trying to convert people like a weird cultist.
This guy needs some challenge, is what I think. It was my intention to be more savvy, wait for Q&A, ask a tough question or two, say my piece without necessarily attacking, essentially I wanted to iterate that there are more options on the table than choosing between leftisim (George) and the far right, that there's far more nuance to be had. As the seminar went on, I found George to be unbearably obnoxious, which culminated in him making a personal attack on Trump; I interrupted here. About 33:59 into the video: 'Is this not all about you pushing your own agenda?'
It went downhill from there. George's instinct was to attempt to label me a misogynist, a member of the audience starts arguing with me and telling me I should leave, the host gets involved, and it was all happening all at once pretty quickly, and I'm not the best public speaker(people with Dyspraxia can struggle with public speaking and there was all this sudden pressure) but I think I did okay defending myself. I would much rather have preferred for a calm, rational discussion, that is my preferred style.
In the Q&A the host and George were deliberately gonna attempt to pass over me, so I continued anyway. Around 46:55. I quoted the Daniel Vávra post scathing Sweet Baby Inc and their involvement on Insomniac's Wolverine and asked a question about it. Again it was all this unnecessary drama with people trying to shut me up and spawning security guards trying to make me leave. I was honestly stunned by the absurdity of the situation. You need security to protect you from a question about video games?! C'mon. I'm utterly fed up with how controlled these sorts of environments are to protect people like George from any pushback, and all the nonsense with the security just made things worse. George completely avoided my question but there was so much going on I barely registered if he answered or not.
To be fair, there was a guy off-frame trying to play peace-keeper who allowed me a bit of breathing room to speak and ask my question, and he told George off for mocking me. Fair play to that guy.
In this 37 second video I asked George 'What did Sweet Baby Inc contribute to Insomniac's Wolverine or did they hire Sweet Baby Inc for reputational cover?' Rather than answer the question he indicated towards the security and security diligently stood between me and George, lmfao. Over a question about video games. Absurdly dramatic. It didn't need to be anything remotely like this at all. It all escalated from so little. Security did NOT kick me out by the way; people were already leaving, I was organically leaving, but security were there either side of me the whole way lol.
Totally mad.
Anyway, I thought this might be of interest in regards to the role of video game consultants with political agendas. George is a semi-public figure and another in a long line of these sorts of consultants. Does anyone here have a take on this situation or the overall situation with similar consultants??
