AAA video game releases are a bubble big enough to blot out the sun. The headline-grabbing midnight launches of all the latest and iterate-est shooters are aimed squarely at the
Halo-frat demographic that made billion-dollar games possible. But that aggressive niche is so noxious that games now have ratings to keep them from playing with children. That's why so many developers claim it's
impossible to render a female model in games that already have dozens of models. They're not scared of the challenge. They're scared of what their own fanbase will screenshot.
In
Splatoon your first choice is whether you want to play as a girl or a boy. The second is your skin color. That's exactly as hard as it ever should be.
The fact that every game doesn't offer this is terrifying. Unless racial purity is a big part of your game's narrative, in which case
WHAT THE HELL? The idea that the narrative of games like
Gears Of Warcouldn't tolerate a change of protagonist is laughable. That game would work the same if you glued a gun and a Speak & Spell to a fridge carried by a forklift.
It's also inclusive across the age gap. For a long time I almost lived in
Team Fortress 2, one of the most fun and friendly shooters, and I still can't share it with my friend's family because my favorite thing is setting fire to spies and hitting them with an ax wrapped in barbed wire.
Splatoon lets parents play with their kids. It's introducing the next generation to online shooters.
Mario introduced almost an entire generation to video games. Now Nintendo is widening the market again. It's the perfect shooter for a post-gamer world.
Because
everyone games now. The people who clutch games to their chests as an entire identity are seen the same way as people who wait around train stations to take down the locomotive numbers. They can be a bit creepy, but it's OK as long as they're not attacking anyone. And we're not going to change our destination to suit their tastes.
