This year's rant, "Burned by Friendly Fire: Game Critics Rant," turned the mic over to game journalists instead of developers. Heather Chaplin, author of Smartbomb offered tough words for the gaming industry. "I've been covering the games industry for eight years, mainly for mainstream outlets, and I often find myself acting as a translator," Chaplin said.
Chaplin wondered how it is that videogames remain so focused on violence and zombie gore. "The excuse is that the videogame industry is only thirty-five years old," said Chaplin. "But after thirty-five years rock & roll had Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Clash. After thirty-five years film had Fritz Lang, film noire, and was a few years away from Citizen Kane." Chaplin blamed the inability of the medium to move beyond male-centric power fantasies as a direct result of developer heterogeny and immaturity.
"It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents," she said. "It's even worse because you're technically supposed to be adults." Chaplin traced the paucity of more mature content in games to four basic ideas that frighten men the most: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. She described game developers in terms of neoteny, an idea from developmental biology that describes adults of a species who have juvenile traits. This can be seen in mature Chihuahuas, which resemble infant and fetal wolves. Chaplin closed by challenging the audience, "What do you want to be, a Chihuahua or a wolf?"
