Extending Your Protests to Media Consumption

Gamasutra is carrying a well-written article by Christian Nutt about Shadow Complex, a highly-acclaimed new Xbox Live game. Nutt, who is openly gay, questions whether or not it is proper to boycott the game because it is set in a world created by Orson Scott Card, who is a noted science-fiction author and a man who is opposed to gay marriage.

In the comments section, Peter David, who wrote the game's dialogue, joins the discussion and it gets a little heated. However, the entire discussion raises some good questions about the role of boycotts in media consumption. How much involvement is sufficient to boycott a product? Don't you just hurt everyone else who worked on it? Is mere discussion enough, as Peter David claims it is? Or is that one of our duties in capitalism to try and express our opinions with (or without) our wallets?