So I saw this posted about Cosmic Star Heroine (the new classic RPG-inspired game on Steam and PlayStation 4 I've been playing) recently:
CSH 29.jpg
Yep, it's an adventure game. With a female lead. Who wears pants and everything. Heaven forbid.
Branding such a title "an SJW game" to me is kind of like saying that Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, and Carly Fiorina were feminists because they ran for public office while female. I mean maybe relative to those few people who still believe that women are emotionally unqualified to hold public office perhaps they were, but by no higher standard could you brand them as feminists. Same basic principle applies here. When I think of "SJW games", I think of titles like Gone Home, the Portal games, Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor, Never Alone, and Night in the Woods (all outstanding games IMO, btw!): games that thematically revolve around issues like gender oppression, same-sex relationships, economic exploitation, that sort of thing, not just any game that happens to have a female lead. The latter might have passed for political and specifically left wing 20 or 30 years ago, but today it is no longer truly a novelty just for a game to have a female hero. The feminist and "social justice" monikers typically imply something more specific than that these days in my mind, and I suspect in most people's as well. You see what I'm saying?
This (the above) really seems to be the typical use of the "SJW" label. When the typical use is an abuse, I think that says something about those who throw it around. And it has become perhaps the most common 'insult' that gamers use against other gamers, developers, publishers, writers, etc. in recent years. In this context, can we not say that it is the most abused term in circulation in the gaming community writ large?