This is the culmination of an interesting recent trend in the game culture – a xenophobic, white, male American backlash against East Asian game producers, a.k.a. neo-con rage. I’ve seen this on game forums galore – deep anxieties over the collapsing Empire, the collapsing real estate bubble, and the collapsing US middle class are being displaced onto Sony’s console. Interestingly, there’s no positive referent to this rage, no “Buy American” message, just a free-floating nastiness and penchant for violence, combined with contempt for intellectuals or dissidents.
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Dennis, you and I are probably the only two active list members who're interested in and involved with computer gaming so I'm afraid this will seem of very limited utility to most.
Still, I'm compelled to speak up and more or less agree with you. Gamer xenophobia is an interesting development, worthy of study as a sub-species of the main thing.
Almost from the start, Microsoft's XBox seemed to attract some of the most er, opinionated and yet, paradoxically (though perhaps not) least technical game enthusiasts. Someone, a UK-based tech journo as I recall, once described the XBox as the "American frat boy console" and visits to game sites such as Kokatu where there's lots and lots of high spirited keyboard shouting inspire me to agree.
Internet discussions seem to accelerate the balkanization process: what used to be considered merely a purchase has become, for many, a kind of consumerist religion separated into Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft camps. "Fan boy" is the universally applied insult, used on gaming sites to dismiss a debating opponent's comment in much the same way "pomo", "conspiracy nut" or "fascist" might be freely mis-used around here.
.d.
>From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.
Raymond Chandler
...................... http://monroelab.net/blog/