Sometime towards the end of last week, a trailer for a new FMV adventure game called Gamer Girl was dropped by publisher Wales Interactive. Developed by FMV Future, the game actually had a pretty interesting premise: You play as the chat moderator for an up and coming Twitch streamer, Abicake99, and your job is to filter out all those trolls and toxic hooligans in the chat. Yet things escalate and before long Abicake99 is on the trail of some kind of…murderer? Stalker, maybe? And she’s asking for her moderators help to…answer potentially dangerous phone calls? Whatever, it seems dumb in a totally not self-aware manner. Yet that doesn’t mean it’s good. In fact, the trailer made it seem like the whole experience was less than that, maybe even bad. So much so that Wales Interactive has de-announced Gamer Girl.
The launch of Gamer Girl probably didn’t come at the best of times, with all the allegations surrounding several high-profile Twitch streamers. If anything, it felt like the game was trying to capitalise on that drama which is more than a little shifty if you ask me. Publisher Wales Interactive got out there on Twitter and initially tried to defend the game.
“Gamer Girl is about the impact user comments and actions have on a streamer’s mental health and wellbeing. The reason why FMV Future created the game was to raise the issue of the toxic environment which can often appear online behind the anonymity of a username…”, reads one of the tweets published by the company’s official Twitter account.
Online abuse is real and is still happening every day — Gamer Girl seeks to raise awareness of this issue.
Yet after this string of tweets, Gamer Girl didn’t survive for much longer. A few hours after it was published, the trailer for the game was removed from YouTube, the announcement post on Wales Interactive’s blog has been taken down and according to PC Gamer, the presskit for the game, which wasn’t publicly available, has been deleted off of Google Drive. That’s some serious damage control right there. The defence from Wales Interactive, while seemingly thought through, definitely clashes with the tone and presentation of the trailer which comes across more like a silly horror movie than an actual attempt to say something significant about online abuse.
Whether or not we’ll ever see Gamer Girl actually happen has yet to be seen. The game was initially due out in September but I very much doubt that’s happening now.
Last Updated: July 20, 2020
MechMachine
July 20, 2020 at 14:04
They should re-name it Simp Simulator.
MechMachine
July 20, 2020 at 14:04
They should re-name it Simp Simulator.
Seeker
July 20, 2020 at 14:13
Hahaha! Now that’s a million dollar idea right there.
MaSeKind
July 20, 2020 at 14:28
Beat me too it. SimpSim 2020 would be an excellent name
Llama In The Rift
July 20, 2020 at 14:42
https://media2.giphy.com/media/64agTijLAGgifRbF9r/giphy.gif
Llama In The Rift
July 20, 2020 at 14:13
If you play games your a “Gamer”, male or female, naming it “Gamer Girl” seems to target a specific audience who are surely gonna be disappointed when playing this.
Metal Rabbit
July 20, 2020 at 15:30
I think they were trying to cash in on #metoo and it failed big-time. Perpetuating this narrative of basement-dwellers vs. regular ‘gamer girls’ on Twitch is ridiculous. Nobody mentions the cognitive dissonance those poor simps feel. While it’s obvious you do get pathetic weebs, this doesn’t help or alleviate the problems in my view, so they come across as disingenuous and transparent to me.
Son of Banana Jim
July 20, 2020 at 15:48
It’s a really weird dynamic, I mean did you read about the guy who basically bankrupted himself, and then ended up homeless, purely to give Pokimane more money?
Son of Banana Jim
July 20, 2020 at 15:48
lol, this would have been the greatest Simp simulator ever created, and I hope it gets released.
CrAiGiSh
July 20, 2020 at 16:19
Couldn’t raise my bible fast enough …
FlaviusFire
July 20, 2020 at 23:31
Ngl I hate the stereotypical streamer girl stereotypes and all that come with them, but this doesn’t look like it would suck entirely… I’m probably totally wrong tho, likely as not it ends as stupidly as it looks like it starts.
I like stories though, especially choose your own adventure stuff, and I have to say I am somewhat intrigued.