The horror of Law & Order's women and gaming episode

Ice-T pretending to play a first-person shooter and loudly explaining what "campers" are. Ice-T spending an entire episode of a crime drama series telling people what an FPS is, or name-dropping Kotaku.

Those are just a few of the extraordinary things which took place in a recent episode of US TV's crime drama series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Its story sees a female developer named Rayna Punjabi attempt to launch AmaZonian Warriors, a game where "You can choose how you want to play. You can choose peace or war, have a patriarchy or a matriarchy, be eco-conscious or industrialised."

"I know," replies detective and games expert Odafin Tutuola (Ice-T). "I read on Kotakuthat it's better than Civ V with the Brave New World expansion pack."

If you thought that sounded horribly awkward and unintentionally funny, like a grandparent reading passages from Fifty Shades Of Grey at a christening, everything described so far took place in the opening credits. Things become even more toe-curling once the story gets going.

A group of harcore, all-male gamers take exception to the presence of a woman in the games industry and mount what is essentially a terrorist campaign ("In their world, a developer's like god," Ice helpfully explains; "some guys aren't ready to give over that kind of power"). The gamers make creepy videos and put them on the web, and send various threats to Punjabi in an attempt to drive her out of the industry - swatting, doxxing, that kind of thing. I won't explain what swatting and doxxing are, otherwise I'll probably end up sounding like Ice-T.

When none of that works, the gamers pull off a raid in the middle of a press event ("No more social justice in gaming!" a voice thunders) and take Punjabi hostage. Fortunately, Ice-T has a gun.

Clearly, Law & Order's producers had been keeping a close eye on the whole Gamergate affair from last year, and decided to create a story ripped straight from the headlines. The result is so wrong-headed as to be spectacular.

Still, while the episode is largely ill-informed and crass (a sexual assault is capped with a dreadful one-liner we won't repeat here), at least we have Ice-T on hand to liven things up with his helpful plot explanations.

"See, I know the difference between videogames and reality," Ice says, sagely. "Those guys didn't."

Thanks, Ice.

You can get a taste of what the full episode looked like in the following preview:

Law & Order trailer via Eurogamer.