
This conversation has been coming for a long time. Back in 2008, when the term “Glorious PC Gaming Master Race” was coined during a Zero Punctuation video, it was perhaps never intended to stick quite as well as it did. Now, six years and a console generation later, there’s a three hundred thousand strong reddit subgroup bearing the name. The in-joke scuttling under the radar has at last broken cover and now, inevitably, people are giving it something of a hard stare.
Obviously, it’s not surprising that the name has attracted some heat. Bunch of people calling themselves the Master Race, calling outsiders “peasants” – it was inevitable that there would be a response as the term caught on. The kneejerk reaction was always going to be to cry elitism, or, worse, imply there’s a racist or classist element to it all. But on closer examination this is largely not the case.