The Battle for Videogame Culture Isn’t Playstation vs Xbox

November is a big month for the millions of people who devote their time and money to computer games. Within a two-day period Sony will be releasing its fifth-generation Playstation, and its main competitor, Microsoft’s newest Xbox, comes out as well. So it’s a good month to look at the culture of gaming and how it reflects the broader culture; how it reinforces it; and how it could potentially be a force for freeing us from some of the worse angels of our nature—or for trapping us further into them. Is there anyone better to ask than Megan Condis? She a professor at Texas Tech University and is the author of the 2018 book, Gaming Masculinity: Trolls, Fake Geeks, and the Gendered Battle for Online Culture.