Ice-T, the rap artist and professional actor best known for his role as Fin in the Law & Order TV shows, traded some words with the gaming community last week. He spoke to gamers regarding his role in an episode of Law & Order SVU, one which took on the GamerGate controversy and gave it a spin that painted the gaming community in a bad light.
Ice-T, who goes by @FINALLEVEL on Twitter, is a big time gamer himself and often talks openly about the games that he's playing. He's reached level 100 in Payday (he's presumably referring to the more recent Payday 2), which should say something about how much of a gamer he really is.
While trading replies with gamers, his words were taken out of context in an article on The Daily Beast, which said he "schooled" GamerGate "punks", telling all of them to "eat a dick." A closer reading of his tweets reveals that he was simply responding to someone who said that he was losing his credibility as a gamer for reading lines from a script. Or for basically doing his job as a professional actor.
It's a stretch to say that Ice-T was speaking out against the gaming community or the GamerGate hashtag, especially when his response was clearly intended to address a single individual.
Ice-T released a new podcast today, in which he voiced support for the gaming community and clarified his position as a pro-gamer.
You can listen to his comments at the 19:25 mark.
Ice-T explained why the role he plays as a cop on TV has no bearing whatsoever on who he is as a person, and that Law & Order always rips stories from the headlines without delving too much into the actual subject matter. To cite an example, he talked about how the recent rape allegations of Bill Cosby turned into a story about a serial rapist teacher. No real research is conducted into the subject, and as soon as an episode is wrapped up, the writers of the show simply move on to the next episode.
He also admitted that he didn't know anything about the GamerGate controversy when the episode was aired, and that as a gamer, he's always been more focused on playing the games and not being involved with the politics. Ice-T had a few words for gamers listening to the podcast.
"Don't worry about the press. The press is always going to attack you," he said. "That's just part of the game."
Reiterating a number of tweets that he made, Ice-T said that the press has a bad habit of attacking people and starting controversies, citing their attacks on rap artists as an example.
"For the gaming community, I am a gamer. Don't ever think I'm going against the gaming community. I'm riding with you all until I die."
Ice-T said he's looking forward to playing Black Ops 3 and the new InFamous. He also revealed that he was recently contacted by someone big in the game industry and that he has plans to play a role in a new game.
It wouldn't be Ice-T's first dance with the industry. He's been in five games. He starred in a few Def Jam games, Scarface, GTA San Andreas, and he played Griffin in Gears of War 3. He also played the protagonist in the little-known Sanity: Aiken's Artifact, which was pretty good for its time.
Ending the segment, Ice-T left listeners with some parting words: "Listen, gamers. Stay down. Fuck the press. Do whatever the fuck you're going to do."
