Gamer-at-Arms at EGXP ’12 – Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud

As soon as I left Earl’s Court for the last time on the last Sunday of September, I felt like I had just evicted myself from the most loving home a gamer could ever ask for. It was the weekend of the Eurogamer Expo, it was the very first major gaming event I’d ever been to and by fuck was it not the most beautiful thing ever.

If you’ve never been to the Eurogamer Expo then you should know that it’s sort of like getting a giant hug. Except you’re getting a giant hug from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Assassin’s Creed 3 and boatload of other games. All around you, like-minded individuals are clamouring to get their hands on games that aren’t even out yet – if you were to convert all that raw passion into dynamite, the resulting explosion would have easily knocked us out of the Sun’s orbit.

Never before in my life have I ever felt so involved with a community, and never before have I been more certain about where I want my future to lie. But never before have I been so incandescent with rage at the thought that someone might be spoiling that same feeling for others.

Dare I ask how any of my female friends got on at the Eurogamer Expo? I can only imagine how uncomfortable it must have been to see those infamous Virgin Media girls with QR tags on their arses – I know they made me feel uncomfortable, and I’m their target audience. What’s worse is that there were grown men going round the show floor sexually harassing not only female staff but female members of the public as well. I’m not going to name names; the less exposure that vile man gets now, the better.

This has to stop. And on that occasion it did, because thankfully I’m not the only person who recognises that it has to stop. Shortly after a video showcasing that disgusting display of sexual harassment went viral, organisers of the Eurogamer Expo quickly stepped in and the culprit was subsequently banned from the event for the rest of his life. Up with this sort of thing!

Unfortunately however, it doesn’t end there, because this case of sexual harassment isn’t a one off. The games industry is still rife with it and unless we continue to stand against it, it’ll stay that way. I implore you: let’s stamp out sexual harassment everywhere it rears its ugly head. See somebody being harassed on the show floor at an event? Call the harasser out on it or better yet, notify security or one of the event organisers. The same applies to the likes of Xbox Live and elsewhere too – if someone is being harassed or bullied, notify those with the power to do something about it.

If you already do this then good; keep doing it. Maybe next year I’ll go to the Eurogamer Expo and have an excellent time, then come home and read nothing but endless tweets about how everyone got along, everybody played excellent games and everybody got drunk and started kissing each other because they had the same colour of shoes. What a thing of beauty that would be.