The Game Awards’ Future Class members demand awards show recognize Gaza crisis

polygon.com:

Dozens of members of The Game Awards’ Future Class — a program that honors the “bright, bold, and inclusive future” of the video game industry, according to The Game Awards’ website — have signed an open letter to host Geoff Keighley and TGA Future Class director Emily Bouchoc asking for recognition of the Gaza humanitarian crisis during December’s live event.

“In the past years, you’ve selected us to represent the future of the game industry,” wrote the group, which includes 59 members of Future Class at the time of writing, in the open letter. (So far, there are 150 members in the Future Class — 50 for each year since the program began in 2020.) “You didn’t choose us as symbols of what the game industry currently is, but of what it could be: a diverse, inclusive and caring workplace. A positive force in the world that can influence billions of people. We want to sincerely thank you for the trust you extended when nominating us. Today, we’d like to honor that trust. You gave us the role of ambassadors of a better future — as such, our duty towards you and all the players world-wide compels us to speak up.”

The group is urging the Game Awards staff to use the award show platform to support Palestinian human rights, call for a cease-fire, and to ask the industry to invest resources to end the “systemic dehumanization of people from South-West Asia and Northern Africa.” The open letter calls out that the video game industry is complacent in the dehumanization and vilification of “Muslims, Arabs, and the many brown and black people living in the regions of South-West Asia and Northern Africa”; it’s common for military shooters and other genres to portray Arabs — or people in traditional Arab clothing — as villains or