There are plenty of actual game developers in support of SKG that could get spearheaded but don't
This is where the EA dicksuckers problem comes in. To shorthand it, the majority of the people at the intersection of talented game dev and gifted speakers are already busy with much bigger projects of their own, and have a general tendency of not being known outside their indie space. The competing pressures involved in game dev vs what is effectively political activism always goes poorly for the game dev side, look at the entirety of 'woke indie' trash where their politics and beliefs took primacy over the product, and they made shit. Those who are known to a wider audience are generally not known as a universal positive. Most of the higher profile, outspoken devs in the space have raving critics as much as fans, and their leading of any initiative would directly incentivize the other side of their space to try and tear it down for the made up internet points.
The only people who are really outside of this system are the corporate drones who've made it their entire careers to talk circles around people while pretending to be big srs game devs and hoping nobody looks much at the fact that all their roles are corporate politics, like Marketing and HR. Unfortunately, those people also have a nasty habit to recognize everything I said in the previous paragraph, and capitalize on it. Its extremely difficult for a gaming movement to grow large without accumulating controversial figures, and then these slimy fucks weasel their way to the top of it by being the least controversial of the options and knowing how to play the politics game - and inevitably sell out or cave or otherwise fuck it all up because they don't actually understand, or deliberately take the chance to cash out.
Ross, however, is an outsider. His work has just enough renown to be able to be brought up in conversation, "The Freemans Mind Guy" doing X, without being a particularly controversial or disliked media. I don't think I've ever seen a truly hateful take of his work. You either don't care about it, or you liked it, he doesn't really have a standing opposition. He's clean in a way people deeper into the space really can't be anymore, with everything degrading into hateful tribal fighting. He's no groomer, or gooner, or seething anti-faction warrior, he doesn't insist on inserting himself into dumb internet fights. The biggest controversy he's had was Mald maliciously misunderstanding him, and he came out perfectly fucking clean. Ross also lacks a direct financial stake in the space the way a gamedev would have it. He doesn't have any competition this could be impacting. He doesn't have any of his own products that this might benefit. His game dungeon doesn't focus on live service or newer games, just kinda whatever he wants to talk about, usually older games because there's more interesting things to say. His years of content creation have left him fairly well spoken to boot, and really show he's actually passionate about old games and not just running a quick bag. If anything, his lack of technical know-how for development is of benefit, not detrimental, to his situation. He's not proposing a technical solution, just an expectation. And his knowledge of older games means he can point to the fact that it wasn't always this way, and his knowledge of smaller and odd communities like the ones that homebrew servers for already dead games means he knows what to point to when it comes to proving that it can be done today already. He's got just enough knowledge to answer politicians without boring them, and just enough knowledge to deflect industry shills without letting them rabbit hole him.
So Ross is a bipartisan-acceptable, well spoken figure completely disconnected from the usual cruft and corruption of the spaces in question, with a simple and clear goal in mind and just enough reputation and fame to have gotten his message spread, and to have kept his cool when it was shit on and struggling, without being so well known as to have inherent opposition. He's just knowledgeable enough to inform without overwhelming. And he's just a nice dude.
So yea, I stand by what I said, I can't think of a game developer I'd rather have up over him, he's got this on lock. I'd take Ross over John Carmack, even.
