Death to the Gamer
jacobinmag.com
jacobinmag.com
Already in the first paragraph I'm not so sure about the premise of this article... I don't connect with people who play video games just because they play video games, but because of a shared experience, language, and shared understanding that comes about from playing specific video games. Part of that involves the creation of ideas external to the immediate content of the video game itself, and it's often something that the creators of the game did not at all intend to be a central identifying feature. The cultural connections with someone are stronger with immediate shared experiences, which makes them decidedly personal. I can provide plenty of examples of this phenomenon.
But even if you want to play devil's advocate and agree with the claim, it must necessarily extend to almost all "culture," be it art, news, food, music, movies. The vast majority of people in any culture are consumers of the fruits of that culture. This article makes it seem like an inherently bad thing, or a reason to belittle the culture. But the logical conclusion of the idea is ludicrous, because culture is an unambiguously good feature of human society.
This isn't to defend misogynistic gamers (who I sincerely hope are an increasingly small fraction of gamers that just happen to be extremely vocal on the internet), but just to disagree with the unreasonable train of logic used in the article.
It's in the industry, too. It's not just a vocal minority.
It does extend to a large swath of culture that has become nothing more than means for signalling. Maybe it has always been like that and art is simply more accessible now so more people engage in this affiliation by taste.
But. But. I want to draw attention to your assumption that all forms of culture are about 'consumption' -- there used to be forms of culture that did not involve money exchanging hands, and that were about shared creation, not about a presenter and an audience. Say, people getting together to play music and sing songs themselves. The fact that many of us can't anymore barely even conceive of 'culture' except as a purchased commodity is telling.
It may be true that in 21st century U.S, "the vast majority of people in any culture are consumers of the fruits of that culture," but it is simply not true that ALL culture MUST be that way. One can critisize that mode of culture without thinking 'culture' is a bad thing.
I think the basic point still stands though, that 'culture' has largely become something where it's assumed a minority produces and a majority consumes -- but this is not in fact an intrinsic aspect of culture, and it's perhaps only in the past 100 years that 'consumption' has become the dominant mode of culture at all.
I also think you can make an argument that in some cases ad ways video games are a place where this mode of culture is actually challenged _more_ than currently typical (let's talk about minecraft).
I would love to hear more examples of culture that you would claim aren't tied up with consumption. The only examples I can think of are cultures that emerge from things like suffrage and oppression.
But there are matters of degree and quality, different aspects, etc., and the passive/consumptive/based-on-purchase aspects of culture are worth critical attention. There are also interesting arguments to be made that video games (at least some of the time for some participants) may challenge the consumptive mode of cultural participation _more_ than other forms of mass culture.
What about doing something old-school like getting together with friends and playing music (folk or traditional) or telling stories around a campfire?
Co-created, shared, cultural experience without "consumption".
I make games for a living and love the art form. I regard games as trivial and a waste of time/resources however I just happen to be genuinely passionate about them and can actually manage to eke out a living making them (Unlike with music, my other passion)
Anyway I have always found references to a 'gamer culture' or other such 'cultures' to be .. nonsensical? Or, like these 'fandoms', like the my little pony fandom etc. I think these kind of fandom people will imagine some kind of 'culture' around anything and its usually really bad quality stuff, eg terrible anime, terrible derivative multiplayer games, really bad juvenile comics, crappy collectible card games etc. Basically societies slightly less mainstream cultural crap. I have no idea why this seems to be the case.
As far as I'm concerned I have always just really liked playing games, I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of the art form (As I would for most other media, music, film,comics,cartoons,) that does not make me a member of any particlar culture or sect imo. I also like to watch films but I dont consider myseld a 'filmer'
If a criticism of your favorite video game makes you angry, you have a problem. Hell criticize any game I play, any operating system I use, any hardware I use, its all good. But this is not true for all people.
Also the article rings very well with abuses seen in the video game industry. Why is it that working at a wall street firm making 200-300k a year while working ~ 10-12 hr shifts is seen as horrible, exploitative work, while working for a video game firm making 100-150k a year while working 12-14 hr shifts is seen as glorious work making stuff you love?
Hell, I can work at a "normal" development job (I do) working 8 hrs a day, and have the rest of my day dedicated to enjoying myself (which can include playing games, making games, making hardware, hacking hardware, human interaction, family life, you pick it).
> Gamer identity is tainted, root and branch, by its embrace of consumption as a way of life.
I mean, there are dud games. And cash-grab games. And misogynistic games. And misogynistic gamers. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater...
I see some possible ways that could play out, but I'm not sure how it will. Gamer could expand, or people doing other-than-traditional things could just dissociate themselves from gamers and label their stuff something else. I personally am wary of wading into gamer culture, because I see a lot of 4chan-type people with a lot of time on their hands harassing people who they find objectionable, including some people I know. So I prefer to label my game-ish stuff as something other than "games", and culturally target it at other audiences (like technologists, or interactive-art fans), so I can hopefully avoid attracting the attention of the more toxic parts of the gamer community. In that sense I'm kind of pragmatically aligned on the "end of gamer" side maybe.
Gamer culture has never been concretely defined, and the phenomenon you're describing is hardly new. The advances that easily accessible development tools and digital distribution have given us, however, has made this much easier.
One backlash that triggers is from people who feel a need to defend "gamer" as some kind of turf being invaded, with community norms that can't be violated (people who make "casual games", "games about queerness", or any range of other things outside a norm of hardcore+fun are "not real gamers"). Some people observing the turf-defenders of "gamerness" conclude those people are unsavory, and take this as an indication that gamer culture is unsavory.
I believe you're misrepresenting the views that you outline.
The question of who is a "real gamer" and who isn't, is a red herring. What people are most likely trying to say is that the people who play smartphone games occasionally, and the people who are heavily invested in gaming as a hobby, have an extensive knowledge of its history and many genres, who consume gaming media, are two different demographics. Despite both ostensibly playing games, they are different. To present them as equivalent is a falsehood.
Thus, people who play "games about queerness" are also different from the hardcore AAA gamer demographic. This is why "gamer culture" is not a monolith, it has many subcultures.
The ugly stuff happens when the different sides clash into each other ideologically, with lots of gratuitous and often childish flame warring ensuing in the process.
Ultimately, what you're doing is overloading the term "gamer". Your jab at 4chan also demonstrates that you don't really understand their culture all too much, either. There's toxic people everywhere, and your desire to strive away even from the term "game" and to target it to "technologists" and "interactive art fans" leads to me believe that you're either developing in genres like visual novels and interactive fiction, where again, the demographics and even core theses are radically different from AAA games, or you're partly pretentious.
Some of it is just a matter of what community I want to be part of. I can make something called "a game" and sell it (or give it away) without worrying too much. But do I want to cultivate the game community as my main community, i.e. write blog posts targeted at gamers, participate in gamer events, etc.? One can only do so many things, so it's nice to pick a community in which one feels comfortable. It's possible I can find a niche within gaming where I enjoy the company and don't feel defensive, but recently I haven't, so I haven't engaged much. When I look at what the people I know who are committed to gaming as a community frequently have to deal with (which is what led to my interest in this topic), I wonder if it's worth it. I went to an interactive-art meetup at a hackerspace and found that community quite welcoming, and have not heard of anyone being "doxxed" or virulently harassed in that community. They might exist, but so far things look alright. Some of what I do could also be sold as just regular old (non-game) AI, and I like the AI community as well (even the "fringe" of AI tends to be eccentric in an interesting way). We'll see how it goes; I may change my mind, but for now I'm leaning towards just saving some angst and choosing another community.
Books, on the other hand, sometimes are subject to criticism. Criticism explores, interprets, and analyzes. It asks "why" and "how" questions. The best criticism expands and changes its subject. Literature as a culture has its roots in both original work and criticism. Almost as soon as there were works to read, there was literary criticism. (The Talmud springs to mind as an early example.) Certainly, most readers and many critics are more interested in reviews than criticism, but the feedback from criticism has been fundamental to the development of literature.
This balance makes literary culture much different from gamer culture. Even with games aspire to be art, the reviews go like this:
The game explores themes of identity and abandonment. Who are we and how are we separate from each other? It might be art. The controls are a bit laggy and the game is only two hours long, which isn't great value for $10. I give it an 8 out of 10.
I've read a few game reviews that go farther but these are few and far between. Maybe the recent controversies will start us down a new path.
EDIT: I wish HN had a preview button.
For either medium, the community engaged in critical review (largely academic) is not actively followed by either most consumers or most producers of the works in question -- there's some feedback (in both literature and games), because some consumers and some producers in each medium also engage in, or at least follow, criticism and let it influence how they consume or create works.
It has to do with the way we train people to write books as opposed to how we train people to make video games. English degree programs often spend as much time on literary theory as they do on the practical aspects of composition. Most CS and video game design programs are almost entirely practical. I think this has allowed literature to move alongside and even in front of the culture at large while video games lag the rest of the culture.
Maybe this explains why we've gotten used to plenty of topics and themes in books that are still stunning in video games. Think about how shocking it was to some people that we could play a gay character in Fable or Bully. Nobody even notices when a best seller has a gay protagonist.
I don't think that's particularly true of computer games in general as compared to books; OTOH, I think it is true of of AAA games compared to books, for the same reason its true of big budget movies compared to books (but not so much of film more generally compared to books) -- the things with a big up-front cost that are funded by firms looking to make a big return on that up-front cost are going to be driven strongly by what the market wants, and less by artistic concerns that are independent of what is going to produce the returns that investors are looking for.
"Gamers are over" - Gamasutra
"The death of the 'gamers'" - Ars Technica
"Death of an identity" - Kotaku
"killing the gamer identity" - Vice
and so on
I don't want to feel guilt for being a man who likes video games.
I recently had an identical complain in another thread [0]. It turns out I'm apparently an evil hypocritical misogynist.
There's no escape for us, we're collateral damage.
It is, I believe, a growing recognition of that messed-up-edness that's leading to the rise of articles about the "death of the gamer", because normal human beings (like yourself) who may have previously said "oh, I like to play video games; I guess that makes me a gamer" are now saying "oh no actually these people are all horrible and I like to play games but I am not like them; please do not get confused!".
Toward the end of the interview, the interviewer, seeming overwhelmed, asked, "Well that's great for you rich guys, but what about us ordinary folk?" (I'm paraphrasing both sides of the conversation here.) Begley said, "You think we started with solar panels in the 1970's? We didn't have any money. I started with rolls of insulation in my attic. Saved me thousands of dollars. Start with something small and inexpensive."
You don't have to be an activist, but if you don't like the way things are, pick one thing that can help. You're right that picking fights with strangers probably won't help. Maybe you have a friend who's a dick online. You and a couple friends can ask him to tone it down. Maybe decide to only offer helpful criticism to newbies for a week and reserving taunting for friends. Pick something small and make the world a little better.
Censorship and silence didn't work, as the Streisand effect snowballed this into something far larger than it would have been otherwise. Now this is an attempt to divert attention away.
It's a curious thing, gaming journalism. It is perhaps the most puerile form of "journalism" there is. It would be insulting to even call it journalism, it's blogging, plain and simple. Video game media is also the only one I know of that insults its target demographic so frequently, in an attempt to look socially progressive.
It would be a more interesting exposé if people focused on actual corruption going on in the review/journalism scene. Things like EA's early-access review policies that unofficially hinge access to future titles on what scores a magazine gives. Or the large mount of money going to certain widely watched podcasts without disclosure. There was an exposé of that issue ~2 months ago (written by gaming journalists, no less) but barely anyone cared: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-07-16-blurred-lines-a... Or the kind of wining-and-dining, travel reimbursements, etc. that goes on around E3 and other trade shows.
I think it's mostly a culture war that is about game journalism pretty secondarily. Nobody cares about Ubisoft wining-and-dining a writer from The Escapist at E3, because that doesn't play into any preexisting culture war, and none of Ubisoft/Escapist/E3 are seen as "outsiders" to gaming culture.
Actually, the Quinn scandal was instrumental in people opening their eyes about one thing. Namely, that it's not only large corporate media behind this. Even independent media isn't safe or trustworthy, and both is corrupted, but in different ways. Independent media is more likely to foster nepotism, cronyism and lying by omission/censorship, whereas the big shots, having major access to publishers and trade shows, can obviously go further.
It has also caused a lot of people to re-analyze these people's intentions and revisit previous incidents, which in light of new information, no longer seem as clear cut. Just because one is an underdog (and that's quite relatively speaking, anyway) does not make them righteous.
Actually, many people already knew that there's lots of corruption going on at major writers. This is why so many gamers went to indie media, but then they realized that nothing is safe. The outrage is that ultimately, all of it is the same: passive clickbait supposed to milk attention. But now there's nepotism, too. It's the outrage from now knowing that there's no one who represents your side in the media, and that people who are only interested in gaming from a surface level are holding major positions.
Finally at the risk of setting a fire, it wasn't a simple matter of a "blogger's personal sex life". The implications were wider reaching into the aforementioned nepotism.
I play WoW, and the guild I play with has a relatively good mix of nationality and gender, and I've never once heard someone berate or look down upon our female players.
I think as with most things, there is a spectrum.
Were you actually paying attention?
Can I get some examples of truly misogynistic video games? I can't think of any except for "Custer's Revenge" on the Atari 2600. [1]
GTA5? Sandbox game. If you run over or beat women in that game, you should probably look in the mirror for the problem.
This is not uncommon, and the videos of Anita Sarkeesian, if nothing else, give long lists of games with these features.
I don't recall that scene, but I haven't played all the GTA games. But it seems very much connected to the feel that GTA series generally sought to convey of the lead character being immersed i, and struggling to make a way through, a world in which the worst elements of society were omnipresent.
Art depicting a world in which misogyny exists is not, ipso facto, misogynistic.
I did however end up watching one the critiques of her videos. If you haven't, I'd say you may doing yourself a disservice if you don't watch some of them before recommending anymore of her videos to others. There was a scene in Hitman which she grossly misrepresented to fit a narrative of misogyny in videogames which I found shocking.
That's the disclaimer you want me to accompany my recommendation with?
That a work depicts a world in which it is possible to commit violence against women is a pretty weak argument for the work being mysogynistic, especially when that particular example of violence is not one which the game rewards, while the game does center around, and reward, murdering all kinds of other people.
The grandparent commenter, on the other hand, tries to claim that Sarkeesian's videos might be dishonest. I don't buy it, based on the critiques I could find.
Did you watch the videos? What do you think?
Yes, is that misogynistic? The game is about a Hitman. He can assault and kill anyone on the screen. Both men and women. In that particular section of the game, assaulting a stripper will reduce the rating of the player i.e. the game discourages the player from doing so. Why? Because you're supposed to be a Hitman who only kills their target without collateral damage. If you believe I'm misrepresenting what she said I'll dig up the video for you where the critique was made and you can judge for yourself.
> The gross misrepresentation is Sarkeesian's belief that the game encourages players to do that, refuted by the fact that a number at the top left of the screen in fact decreases when you do.
What number? Are you referring to my points for my comment?
edit: Here's the video link[0]. Skip to 2:28. If you don't accept that she misrepresented Hitman than I don't believe we'll ever see eye-to-eye on this issue. It's important to stamp out misogyny. Just don't be dishonest. Fighting a good fight does not give you a free pass for doing other bad things.
Wow. And here I felt squicky for playing GTA4.
To be clear I'm referring to the "misogyny exists in the real world, so displaying misogyny in creative works is merely being realistic/accurate" argument.
This is a sound argument if made in a vacuum of no additional information. Unfortunately for gaming this argument falls apart once you consider the sheer mass of portrayals of misogyny in games but the relative lack of portrayal of other social issues.
In other words, a trope (and now we delve into the thesis of Sarkeesian's entire series of videos).
Her last video was very good and delves into this argument in specific. The gaming industry seems incapable of portraying "gritty" and "bleak" without shoving dead women in your face. Need your protagonist to realize the gravity of a situation? Show violence against women. Need to project an air of despair and injustice? Violence against women. Need to express the true evilness of the bad guy? ... You guessed it.
This suggests that portrayals of misogyny in gaming is more than an attempt to be even-handed or realistic. IMO Sarkeesian is correct in stating that portrayals of misogyny is used stereotypically and excessively for dramatic effect, and in doing so is ultimately dampening the very effect they're trying to achieve. When gamers see dead/hurt/maimed women everywhere always they cease to be truly shocking and horrifying, and instead simply become mood-setting decor.
I didn't make that argument (or one for which that is a valid generalization), and, in fact, didn't make any reference to what exists in the "real world" at all.
If you wanted to generalize the argument I made validly, it would be "the depiction in art of items or acts with a particular characteristic -- whether or not those items or acts exist in the real world, with a same or different frequency either on their own or with respect to other elements which are shared between the real world and the artistic depiction -- does not, in and of itself, make the art itself into an act or item with the characteristics of the act or item depicted."
> IMO Sarkeesian is correct in stating that portrayals of misogyny is used stereotypically and excessively for dramatic effect, and in doing so is ultimately dampening the very effect they're trying to achieve.
Overuse of misogynistic acts as an indicator of badness might be a real problem in games, but if it is, its very much not a problem of games or gamer culture being misogynistic, in the same way that if a particular medium featured wild overuse of "violence by Arabs against Jews" to show badness, it would be a problem, but the problem wouldn't be anti-Semitism in that medium.
In this case, you would have an interactive film. There's certainly room for such games, and there are already plenty of them. But to focus more on that is to miss the entire point of having video games in the first place.
Second, to objectify a person is to rob them of part of their humanity, or sometimes even of their agency. It's a casually contemptuous way to treat people. Only on a nerd message board is the connection to the concept of misogyny hard to follow.
A serial killer that targets prostitutes is a misogynist. So is a college kid that says "Kate Upton is hot".
1. No.
2. Ok, and?
3. Yes.
4. Nobody made that argument.
Worth noting: with that last sentence, you transitioned from someone arguing about semantics to someone arguing that we are too confined by the concept of misogyny; you allowed your agenda to seep through. Unsubtly.
- I'm a rock music enthusiast, I buy every CD from X band. - I really enjoy novels, I read every book by X author - I'm a cinema lover, I watch every film from X director - I'm a gaming fanatic, I get every game from X studio - I'm really into X's art, I buy all his pieces
Which one is not like the others? None. They are all forms of media consumption preference. All of them are used by people to describe and define themselves. They are all actively used and exploited by the industries for profit.
And, of course, all of them have more or less acceptable idiosyncrasies of all kinds (what outfit is acceptable for this music style, what is the proper way of interpreting this art form, what knowledge is expected from you when loving this films, you name it).
Why is someone describing himself as a "gamer" any worse than somebody describing himself to be a "romantic comedy film lover"?
Sounds like the article is conflating gamers with "internet assholes", who can come from almost any group that exists online.
What happened to the social aspect of gaming? Why have all the arcades faded away? There are a few around, I guess, but it doesn't seem the same. I have always played games WITH people and in COMPETITION with people. Playing is, for me, about sharing.
Maybe I'm not a gamer. Maybe the term "gamer" is too loaded to be redeemed at this point. But there is a culture of games and gaming that can (and does in some places, however few) exist without the baggage attached to the term.
DISCLAIMER: I admit, I'm not into the same type of games that constantly get talked about; I don't play CoD, I've never really played much GTA, and most modern AAA games don't hold my attention very long (partly because I'm terrible at FPS games and other mainstream offerings).
Of all the strands of geek culture I only dislike the social engineers like the author, who instead of focusing on technology try to analyze, criticize, categorize, and influence how other people behave.
Any article on 'gaming' that plays around with the word 'misogyny' in the first 10 lines is usually an article I don't like to read. But that is a whole 'nother story.
>But to define oneself by media consumption is not just unhealthy, it’s vacuous.
>But to define oneself by X consumption is not just unhealthy, it’s vacuous.
Don't we all define oneself by what we consume?
We consume food which shapes (defines) our bodies. We lift weights so we can shape, mold, sculpt and define our own bodies as we please. Is it unhealthy to label yourself a fashionista because you have a keen interest in fashion (consume fashion media), have a blog about it and love to buy new clothing?
Mission accomplished, congratulations. Your news outlet just got a bit richer.
The world just got a bit worse.
Oh, you don't do that? So maybe it's possible to consume something on a regular basis without letting it define your personality.
Now as a last resort all these same people are trying to paint the word "gamer" as something bad and undesirable.
I'm not really surprised if they come up with a new term that they try to define with their agenda, gamers just have to be smart enough to see through their bullshit.
[1] a bit more discussion, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8267425