Barbarians at the Gate: Games and Culture
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This is a presentation discussing the recent #GamerGate phenomenon prepared for a guest lecture in Sonora Jha's Media Study course at Seattle University.
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Barbarians at the Gate: Games and Culture
- 1. SHAWN RIDER BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: GAMES AND CUL TURE
- 3. HT TP: / /GAMESF IRST .COM
- 4. HT TP: / /WWW.SQUEAKY.ORG/SQUEALER
- 5. HT TP: / /WWW.MARKSFRIGGIN.COM/REVIEWS/SYNC.HTM
- 6. VIOLAT ION: RAPE IN GAMING
- 7. PLEASE BE AWARE: This presentation will discuss topics involving graphic language about race, sexuality, sexual violence and generally hateful, awful things. (But most of the content is not at all terrifying.)
- 8. B U T F I R S T … BY GAURAV PANDI T (OWN WORK) [CC -BY- 3 . 0 (HT T P: / /CREAT IVECOMMONS.ORG/ L ICENSES/BY/ 3 . 0 ) ] , VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
- 11. THESE ARE HUGE TRIUMPHS
- 12. B U T T H E N …
- 13. #GAMERGATE
- 14. Disgruntled Boyfriend Posts Rant Against Ex-Girlfriend Makes claims later proven to be false. Nonetheless sets off a series of accusations about corruption in game journalism.
- 15. THE ACTOR ADAM BALDWIN TWEETS ABOUT #GAMERGATE IN R E F E R E N C E T O G J O N I ’ S B L O G POST .
- 16. OPPORTUNIST IC INDIVIDUALS SEI ZE ON THIS AS A WAY TO FOSTER THE LARGEST SUSTAINED HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN T A R G E T E D T O W A R D S W O M E N T H A T W E ’ V E EVER SEEN IN GAMING.
- 19. How #GamerGate presents itself in viral images.
- 22. Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian were both driven from their homes by specific, violent threats in the same week.
- 23. THREATS BECOME WIDESPREAD The threats against women continue. Harassment continues. It is pervasive. At right: Threats sent the night game developer Brianna Wu was driven from her home.
- 24. I HAVE AL LOWED A HANDFUL OF ANONYMOUS PEOPLE CENSOR ME. THEY HAVE FORCED ME, OUT OF FEAR, INTO SEEING MYSEL F A POTENT IAL VICT IM. AND THAT MAKES ME LOATHE NOT THEM, BUT MYSEL F . SO I WRI TE THIS TO URGE ANY PERSON, MALE OR FEMALE, WHO NOW HAS THE IMPULSE TO DO WHAT I DID, TO WALK AWAY FROM SOMETHING THEY LOVED BEFORE, TO NOT . D O N ’ T L E T O T H E R P E O P L E DRIVE YOU AWAY FROM GAMING. FEL ICIA DAY HT T P: / / FEL ICIADAY.COM/BLOG/CROSSING- THE- STREET /
- 26. “I think it’s just adorable how absolutely no girls are any good at video games, just like how no woman has ever written a good novel. They are nothing but talk and no action, probably because girls are such emotional creatures and base everything they do on their current feelings and then try to rationalize their actions later. How pathetic.” - BENDI L IN SPURR, CREATOR OF BEAT UP ANI TA SARKEESIAN
- 27. Individuals plotting action against Zoe Quinn and plotting #GamerGate in an IRC chatroom HT TPS: / /STORI FY.COM/STRICTMACHINE/GAMEOVERGATE
- 28. “Twitter users have tweeted at Quinn using the #GamerGate hashtag 10,400 times since September 1. Grayson has received 732 tweets with the same hashtag during the same period. If GamerGate is about ethics among journalists, why is the female developer receiving 14 times as many outraged tweets as the male journalist?” – TAYLOR WOF FORD, NEWSWEEK http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736
- 30. EVERYONE IS LEF T SCRATCHING THEIR HEADS
- 31. WHY?
- 32. “Please keep in mind that it’s entirely possible to be critical of some aspects of a piece of media while still finding other parts valuable or enjoyable.” –ANI TA SARKEESIAN, TROPES VS. WOMEN IN GAMES
- 35. BY XXXBALOOOXXX (OWN WORK) [CC -BY-SA- 3 . 0 (HT T P: / /CREAT IVECOMMONS.ORG/ L ICENSES/BY - SA/ 3 . 0 ) ] , VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS HT T PS: / /WWW. THET APESTRYHOUSE.COM/MEDI A/ TRANSFER/ IMG/ME1 7 6 . J PG
- 36. I D O N ’ T K N O W
- 38. THIS IS A GAME OF L I FE AND DEATH BY LEVENT E FULOP FROM BRNO, CZECH REPUBL IC ( THE KING'S GAME) [CC -BY- 2 . 0 (HT T P: / /CREAT IVECOMMONS.ORG/ L ICENSES/BY/ 2 . 0 ) ] , VIA WIKIM EDIA COMMONS
- 39. PRINCE OF PERSIA ( 1 9 8 9 ) PRINCE OF PERSIA ( 2 0 0 8 ) “Evolving” presentations of Persia in videogames. CAL L OF DUT Y: MODERN WARFARE 4
- 40. B U T I T ’ S J U S T A G A M E .
- 41. “On one day, everybody would eat, and on the next day, everybody would play games.” JANE MCGONIGAL REAL I TY IS BROKEN HT T P: / /VIALOGUE.WORDPRESS.COM/ 2 0 1 2 / 0 7 / 0 9 / T ED - J ANE-MCGONIGAL - GAMING-CAN-MAKE- A- BET T ER-WORLD/
- 42. JEUX D'AWALE AFRIQUE JE SUIS L 'AUT EUR DE L ' IMAGE (ANDRE PERRON HT T P: / /WWW.PBASE.COM/PERRONA )
- 43. The Landlord’s Game EL I ZABETH MAGIE 1904 PARKER BROTHERS BOUGHT THE PATENT AND BEGAN SEL L ING MONOPOLY IN 1 9 3 5
- 44. SEPTEMBER 1 2 TH BY NEWSGAMING HT TP: / /WWW.NEWSGAMING.COM/
- 45. SO WE MAKE VIDEOGAMES TO CHANGE THE WORLD?
- 46. HT T P: / /WWW.M-E-G-A.ORG/WP-CONT ENT /UPLOADS/ T 4 2 _ 0 4 . JPG
- 51. WWW. F L IPPERS.COM Sega was formed in 1965 through the merger of two established game manufacturers. Their 1968 classic, Periscope, helped cement them as a major player in the future gaming industry. THIS IS THE F IRST ARCADE GAME THAT COST 2 5 CENTS TO PLAY!
- 57. GAMING IS EXTREMELY POPULAR
- 58. GAMING IS BIG BUSINESS • $21.3 Billion spent in 2013 • 59% of Americans play games • 48% of gamers are women • The average gamer is 31 and has been playing for over 14 years https://www.flickr.com/photos/zizzy/89696604/
- 59. 2 7 MI L L ION PEOPLE PLAY THIS GAME EVERY DAY
- 60. 100 million people have played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare since 2007
- 62. JOHN ROMERO JOHN CARMACK
- 65. GAMES ARE TOO POPULAR TO BE DOMINATED BY ONE STYLE, SUBCUL TURE, TECHNOLOGY, GENRE, OR SUBJECT .
- 66. PAPERS, PLEASE MINECRAF T JOURNEY
- 67. A GAME ABOUT BURNING THINGS IN THE F IREPLACE.
- 68. POPULARI TY HAS BROUGHT SCRUT INY WI TH I T
- 69. HT T P: / /BOGOST .COM/WRI T ING/VIDEOGAMES_ARE_A_MESS/ HT T PS: / /DEPT S.WASHINGTON.EDU/CRI TGAME/WORDPRESS/ 2 0 1 0 / 1 2 / FRONT IERVI L LE -A-CASUAL -QUEER-READING/ HT T P: / /ENGL ISHATWAT ERLOO.WORDPRESS.COM/ 2 0 1 3 / 0 7 / 2 4 /GRADUAT E - STUDENT S-AND-GAME -STUDIES- F IRST -PERSON- SCHOLAR/
- 70. “A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art. But I guess the way of providing service with that videogame is an artistic style, a form of art.” –HIDEO KOJ IMA, GAME DEVELOPER HT TP: / /WWW.EUROGAMER.NET /ARTICLES/NEWS2 4 0 1 0 6KOJ IMAART
- 71. “I'm not here for the visual spectacle. What am I here for? I'm here to think about what I'm doing and why the designer created this particular set of interactions and what they might mean.” – JASON ROHRER Rohrer’s game Passage
- 72. NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY WI TH THE IDEA OF GAMES CHANGING
- 73. THIS MAKES A CONF L ICT
- 74. GRIEFERS
- 75. MY T INY L I FE JUL IAN DIBBEL L 1998
- 76. “So strong, indeed, is the sense of convivial common ground invested in the living room that a cruel mind could hardly imagine a better place in which to stage a violation of LambdaMOO’s communal spirit. And there was cruelty enough lurking in the appearance Mr. Bungle presented to the virtual world — he was at the time a fat, oleaginous, Bisquick-faced clown dressed in cum-stained harlequin garb and girdled with a mistletoe-and-hemlock belt whose buckle bore the quaint inscription KISS ME UNDER THIS, BITCH! But whether cruelty motivated his choice of crime scene is not among the established facts of the case. It is a fact only that he did choose the living room.” – JUL IAN DIBBEL L “ A R A P E I N C Y B E R S P A C E ” ( 1 9 9 3 ) http://www.juliandibbell.com/articles/a-rape-in-cyberspace/
- 77. "Bow, nigger." he typed. I kind of hunched uncomfortably over the keyboard at that point. Not that I should’ve taken offence, really. For one thing, my screen name has nothing to do with my ethnicity and for another, it’s only a game and the fascist doing the typing is probably hundreds of miles away and far beyond anything you could call an actual influence on my life. But still… It’s not very nice is it? What to do? – IAN SHANAHAN “ B O W , N I G G E R ” ( 2 0 0 4 ) ALWAYSBLACK.COM This essay is currently mirrored at: http://phocks.tumblr.com/post/2976413342/bow-nigger
- 78. AND WHAT ABOUT ETHICS IN JOURNAL ISM?
- 86. ADDI T IONAL GAMERGATE OPPORTUNISTS Milo Yiannopoulos: Breitbart contributor, anti-feminist men’s rights activist, token conservative gay representative. Brandon Morse: Young Republican, contributor to rare.us, MisfitPolitics.com and creator of the web-only series, ‘Merica. Matt Forney: Writer and men’s rights activist. Author of guides such as “How to Beat Your Girlfriend or Wife and Get Away with It” and “How to Crush a Girl’s Self Esteem”. E A M I N G , A C T I N G L I K E T H E I R L I V E S W E R E O V E R B E C A U S E O F A F U C
- 88. “ ‘Game culture’ as we know it is kind of embarrassing -- it’s not even culture. It’s buying things, spackling over memes and in-jokes repeatedly, and it’s getting mad on the internet. ” – LEIGH ALEXANDER, GAMASUTRA.COM
- 89. THE INDUSTRY AND CRI T ICS WI L L BE SORT ING THIS OUT FOR AWHI LE
- 92. UNT I L WE END THE BROADER CUL TURE WAR
- 97. Protests at Utah State University after Sarkeesian’s cancelled talk.
- 100. THANK YOU YOU CAN F IND THIS PRESENTAT ION ON SL IDE SHARE: HT TP: / /WWW.SL IDESHARE.NET /SHAWNRIDER SHAWNRIDER.COM 1 0 . 2 7 . 2 0 1 4
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi, my name is Shawn. I’m a developer, writer, artist, and gamer. I’m currently running the Web, Application and Technology Studies program at Seattle University. Previously I ran the technology group for PBS Education at the Public Broadcasting Service.
- I used to write about videogames. For 10 years I ran one of the original indie gaming websites, GamesFirst!
- I’ve written for places I’m very proud of, like The Squealer, a media arts and criticism periodical published by Squeaky Wheel, a non-profit media arts center in Buffalo, NY.
- And places that I’m not very proud of (like Sync Magazine, a techno-gadgety “lad mag” published for about 18 issues by Ziff-Davis).
- I’ve been interested in the intersections between games and culture, and especially the way games mirror, deconstruct and reconstruct objects, behaviors and identity. This has often led to some unpleasant areas (but not always). My most recent game culture publication is an essay in this collection.
- Before we dive into current events, let’s remember some triumphs.
- Anita Sarkeesian’s project “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games” goes viral and receives overwhelming support, receiving over 26x the goal amount from almost 7 thousand backers. The series is a sequel to her ongoing, and popular, media criticism series, “Tropes vs. Women,” which was initially commissioned by Bitch Magazine.
- In 2013, Zoe Quinn, an independent game developer, gets her game, Depression Quest, voted into the Steam Greenlight program. This is a program created by Valve, one of the largest game developers/publishers in the US, in order to help independent and small developers find an audience. Greenlight games are voted on by the community, and Depression Quest received a large number of votes to bring the interactive fiction to Steam.
- These two examples show serious support for both critical studies of videogames (which indicates a greater level of mainstream acceptance and recognition than so far known in games) and independent games dealing with commercially unpopular topics (using commercially unpopular game mechanics, too).
- In spite of the fact that both of these products (Sarkeesian’s videos and Quinn’s game) were crowdfunded only by people who wanted to see them made, and in spite of the fact that both of them are FREE, there was a backlash.
- We will discuss #Gamergate, but it’s important to remember that these problems did not start, and they won’t end, with #Gamergate. What has happened with #Gamergate has been an intensification of harassment and threats that have reached new levels. So what happened?
- Eron Gjoni posted a tell-all screed against his ex-girlfriend, the developer, Zoe Quinn. He claimed she had affairs during their relationship with individuals in the videogame industry. Included is an individual who, he claimed, later wrote positive reviews of Depression Quest. This was proven false.
- Adam Baldwin is that guy from Firefly, Serenity, other stuff. He is no relation to Alec Baldwin and the Baldwin Brothers.
- The #Gamergate hashtag proliferated on social media, accompanied by a huge output of viral images, videos, blog posts, etc. Please don’t take this image to be official. It shows “sides” as somebody defines them.
- #GamerGate claimed to be about ethics in game journalism, and many adherents continue to wave that banner. But the hashtag has been used in conjunction with extreme harassment (both online and off), which has tainted any honest notion of what #GamerGate can be beyond outrageous attacks on women.
- GamerGate makes claims to represent diversity and ethics, but they are actually intolerant of any discussion of games that criticizes or does not conform to a very specific, frankly dated, notion of gaming that doesn’t allow for discussion of violence, gender, and much more.
- It’s no wonder that many people who have legitimate issues with the way games are discussed would gravitate towards some of the rhetoric here. There are ongoing discussions in the industry about these topics. But there is also nonsense here. Note the highlighted paragraph. The last clause insinuates that they oppose exactly the kind of preferential consumerism they are exercising to make their points. (“As if they are consumers who don’t understand they can choose not to buy.” as one commenter put it.) They exhibit total naïveté, which seems odd and infuriating, and inspires argument. But this is because, ultimately, this statement is an illusion. It is made-up nonsense, like the twitter account they created for their fictional mascot girl in the lower left.
- #GamerGate is not targeting journalists or lobbying effectively for better games journalism. They are primarily concerned with harassing a few noted women in the games industry, and they are deeply aligned with far-right movements against feminism and equality. In the uniquely #GamerGate flavor of this cultural war on women they are obsessed with Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. But eventually the #GamerGate mobs go after any woman who will speak out, and some men who advocate for their female colleagues.
- Violent threats have escalated to previously unseen levels.
- Brianna Wu isn’t the only other woman who has been attacked, too. Many women have been targeted, although higher profile women associated with gaming have taken the brunt of this specific attack.
- Although I’m only mentioning a few of the women who have suffered the onslaught of #GamerGaters, many others have been harassed or silenced to varying degrees. Many women in technology bridge between the worlds of open source development, web development and game development, so many of them face harassment from more than just the #GamerGate crowd.
- Comments left on the Depression Quest community page show ongoing, active harassment. But if you scroll back through more than 1200 comments, you will discover the first attacks on Zoe Quinn began shortly after gamers voted her game into the Steam Greenlight program.
- And Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian was created by Bendilin Spurr almost as soon as Sarkeesian’s successful Kickstarter finished. It was initially uploaded to a mainstream games site which has since removed it. The quote above is from Spurr’s Steam community profile. Needless to say, Spurr is a #GamerGate supporter. http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2012/07/08/the-wit-and-wisdom-of-the-guy-who-created-that-beat-up-anita-sarkeesian-game/
- The movement was not spontaneous. It was a planned effort to take down Zoe Quinn and others whom this community view as “Social Justice Warriors” and feminists. Quinn captured chat logs from individuals plotting harassment and violence against her and others. Some of these individuals have been linked to #GamerGaters. https://storify.com/strictmachine/gameovergate
- In the article, “Is #GamerGate About Media Ethics or Harassing Women? Harassment, the Data Shows”, Newsweek’s Taylor Wofford shows that, statistically, #GamerGate is really about harassing women.
- On October 14, Utah State University received an explicit terrorist threat against the school threatening the talk that Anita Sarkeesian was planning for the following day. This is probably the most outrageous threat that has been made as a part of the #GamerGate campaign.
- Where did all this stuff come from? Who is behind this? Are games and gamers really so messed up?
- The most important question is: Why? Why are people so bent out of shape over a media critic and some games they don’t have to play? Why are people so threatened by a vision of gaming or gamers that doesn’t totally match their own experience?
- It’s important to remember that at no point in time does Anita Sarkeesian tell anyone not to play a specific game. She repeats over and over that her goal is to point out the lack of variety in how women are presented in games, and she’s calling for developers to explore more ways to make fully-rounded women characters in their games. Anita Sarkeesian’s is being punished for having an opinion and expressing it.
- After all, we live in a world where Berkeley teaches a course in philosophy based on The Simpsons.
- And where we regularly crowdsource, crowdedit, and crowdfund all sorts of niche programming (such as Skateboard Cop).
- How is it possible that there are such disparate takes on what games should be? Who should be allowed to make games? And what the appropriate response to media criticism should be? How is it that reality and perception have become so disconnected? And how did the fantasy of the game come to mean so much to the players?
- In the end, I don’t know. But I think that what’s missing from most discussions of #GamerGate is the way that these events are connected to multiple strands of games culture and descendent of archetypes and actions that reach far into the history of gaming.
- Games are innately conceptual, and like any conceptual framework they often use shorthand symbols, metaphors and stereotypes to represent bigger concepts. This gives games a sense of something being at stake.
- Many classic board games take war and battle strategy as their dominant metaphor, and the narrative that is both used as justification for the game (naming the pieces, moves, etc.) and the gameplay itself (the story of what the players do) is defined largely by a power struggle for domination, often by a ruthlessness within the bounds of perceived “honor”, and typically lasts until the “death” of the opponent.
- In modern videogames, we see these themes carried out over and over again. Fairytale adventures give way to blockbuster fantasies and gritty fantasy realism, often imbued with military subject matter. As with all forms of media, current events, cultural fears, and prejudices all inform what goes into a game.
- The argument for not paying attention to the content, presentation or reception of games goes something like this: “What harm can games do? We play them to escape, to fantasize, and to work through our psychological baggage. It’s GOOD to face down our fears. And stereotypes make characters more relatable, jokes funnier, and if you get upset by these sorts of things then you’re just too thin-skinned.”
- To focus on a positive example of how games might change the world, let’s look back 2500 years to the ancient Lydians, who lived where Turkey is today. Jane McGonigal, in her TED talk and her book Reality is Broken, tells the story of the 18-year Lydian famine, and how the kingdom passed it by immersing themselves in games on alternating schedules. Ultimately, the gaming strategy was so effective that the Lydians had confidence to split their kingdom to two halves: Those who would remain could subsist on their limited resources, and those who ventured off would seek to settle new lands and spread their culture. As McGonigal recounts, recent DNA research implies that the Lydians were in fact successful in settling the Etruscan lands that eventually became Rome.
- And there have always been games that draw from other parts of life and which play out with a guiding metaphor not based on power/dominance. Here, we see the African game, Mancala (aka Awale), which is a strategy game based on the work of sowing seeds.
- Another attempt to change the culture through games happened in 1904 with Elizabeth Magie’s patent for The Landlord’s Game. She created the game to spread the economic ideas of Henry George, who taught that rents unfairly enrich landlords. Magie hoped that children who played the game would grow up to be naturally skeptical of unfairness, and for her the grinding nature of the endgame was designed to reinforce how awful unfair economic systems are for people subject to them. Magie was less successful at changing the culture with her game than the Lydians were. After independently selling her game for years, she sold her patent to Parker Brothers, who re-packaged the game as Monopoly (based on an unauthorized version being sold that used Atlantic City, NJ as the source for the names). Although many people have experienced the pain of actually finishing a game of Monopoly, not so many seem to associate that pain with uneven power balances between landowners and workers. This game is also noteworthy because it is the first game known to be created by a woman.
- In the world of videogames, we could look at a game like September 12th (released in 2003) by Gonzalo Frasca and the team at Newsgaming. The game was made as a commentary on the US Iraq War policy in order to point out the futility of stamping out violence with violence. This game asks the player to bomb terrorists in a small “middle eastern” town in order to eradicate terrorism. In fact, the weapon is too clumsy for any precision, and killing innocent people creates more terrorists. The game mechanics are set up so that it is impossible to win. The point is definitely not to create enjoyment in the player; rather, the goal is to convey the understanding that one cannot stop violence with violence. It is a direct commentary on the events of the day.
- So are videogames made to change the world? No. Yes. Maybe. When we talk about games we’re talking about a lot of things. And in order to understand “games” we need to look at more than just games themselves.
- Electronic games of the type that would become videogames literally started as tech demos. Tennis for Two was created by William Higinbotham in 1958 at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (NY) to entertain visitors. Ever since, videogames have been a balance of tech demo and artful expression, often leaning noticeably in one direction or another. And ever since, videogames have tended to serve an industry. At first they served the general tech industry, providing an incentive to invest in technology such as personal computers and additional televisions. Eventually they were an industry in and of themselves.
- Modern arcades and the game industry generally grow out of the 19th century mechanical games industry. (Nintendo was founded in 1848 to manufacture Hanafuda cards, which were used for gambling.) Here, former New York City Mayor Laguardia is show toppling a pachinko machine (which he apparently thought was a pinball machine).
- Pinball was illegal in most major US cities from 1942 until the mid-1970s because it was seen as dangerous to the youth. The NYPD conducted prohibition-style raids on arcades and locations housing pinball machines. Games were accused of encouraging gambling, immoral behavior, delinquency, and more. (Ironically, the steel balls used in the games were melted down to contribute to the war effort.)
- Pinball games were often constructed around lurid premises, and the paintings on the backglass were sensationalistic and stereotypical. In the early 20th Century, pinball machines often operated in a way similar to pachinko or slot machines, and they would occasionally pay out money. But as the art and presentation of the games became more advanced, the games themselves were reward enough for players, and by the time the pinball ban went into effect, the vast majority of machines were not payout-style pinball games. This created the odd situation where pinball as an industry was able to grow and change in rural America, but it was totally absent from the culture of large cities.
- Of course, this meant that arcades and gaming were relegated to the kinds of games that were OK for kids to play in the boardwalks and fairs of the country, and the seedy locations where professional gamers would gather for legal and illegal entertainment. Advances in electromechanical gaming technology contributed to the rise of gambling centers like Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and also brought the associated organized crime issues of the era in close proximity to gaming.
- Nonetheless, family and youth entertainment continued to develop as an industry, and some companies were having great success combining well-established mechanical techniques with new computing technologies. Sega, originally a Hawaiian company that relocated headquarters to Tokyo, had huge international success with Periscope in 1968.
- By the 1980s the videogame arcade was born. The new games were much more popular, and the industry was able to grow everywhere since these computerized machines were not restricted to, or encumbered by, the rules governing previous gaming devices. The increased popularity and more industry-friendly form factors also meant that videogames showed up in more places than previous electromechanical games, so they showed up in pizza parlors and waiting areas everywhere.
- And as the industry honed it’s production boxes to maximize efficiencies in creating arcade games, a few companies began making home consoles that could run licensed software. This part of the business became huge, especially for companies like Nintendo and Sega and Sony, all of whom had a well-established presence in electronics manufacturing.
- Alongside home consoles, personal computers increased in power and capability, and the games industry has also utilized that platform to its fullest.
- PC Gaming has gone from this…
- to this.
- Some games are incredibly popular. League of Legends, an online multiplayer “battle arena” game, sees 27 million players every day; 67 million each month. The third world championship drew 32 million viewers watching the tournament. For comparison, 15 million viewers tuned in for the American Idol premiere this season (2014).
- This is what passes for “maturity” in games.
- There are lots of reasons for how we end up where we are. Take, for example, the story of one of the largest-selling genres of videogames: The First Person Shooter. A huge part of what made games grow in popularity was the breakthrough in real-time 3D graphics made by these two developers, who created ID. Their personalities, especially the brash, loud personality of John Romero, informed a whole generation of gamers, and together they established the basic rules and guidelines that would govern most gaming experiences for the next 20 years.
- The games created by Romero and Carmack in the 1990s defined an entire genre (First Person Shooters), introduced action-based multiplayer (read: deathmatches), formed an entire vocabulary for talking about the game experience (giblets, headshots), and set up the tenor and presentation of content that still remains dominant in the industry, especially among games released for PC. These games established the persona of the “hardcore gamer”. Hardcore games had amazing graphics, fast gameplay, and featured loads of massive weaponry, military fantasy, and opportunity for reflex-based dominance. This is the genre that would give birth to “electronic sports” and professional videogaming.
- These two individuals, alongside their four or five other 20-something-year-old male teammates, defined one of the incredibly pervasive forms. Not only that, but they literally licensed the template for these games so that hundreds of other games could be stamped from the same mold. This is a common process in the industry, and has been a cornerstone of how the industry has been able to consistently amp technical complexity, content generation and multiplatform compatibility. It also insured that all of these other games, so similar in structure, dynamics and rhetorical capability, could partake of the popularity of the culture growing around hardcore gamers.
- The games industry milked the hardcore gamers for as much as it could, and they grew the core audience as large as possible. But ultimately expansion beyond the core audience was inevitable. It’s important to remember how significant contributions to games and game culture were, but it’s also important to uphold a diversity of influence. There are many other creators who have influenced games, and in recent years we’ve seen more and more diversity of games being made by people who have diverse interests and goals, some of which are not really at all concerned with the “mainstream gaming industry”.
- It is now possible to be an independent developer/artist/creator and put out something that matches your unique vision and interest for a small audience. We have seen many of these kinds of games find much larger-than-anticipated audiences, too. Their success proves that just because we know some formulas that work, we haven’t yet even thought of all the things we could possibly do with the form.
- The whole concept of games and play are up for grabs these days, and “game thinking” has become something that permeates our world.
- And scrutiny is often uncomfortable.
- We’ve invented a whole discipline, game studies, in order to help sort out all the different threads of everything that is involved with games. Game studies scholars can be concerned with everything from economic analysis of the industry and game worlds themselves, ludologic analysis of the systems and structures of games, narratological analysis of how stories are conveyed and constructed, cultural analysis of game reception and culture, gamification of existing tasks and processes, and much more.
- People have wildly different views about games. Some scholars and developers do not believe that games should be studied in the same way as art and literature.
- However, there are many other scholars and developers who see games as an art form, on par with visual arts, music and literature. And as technology advances, more and more individuals are able to create products of sufficient ambition to support themselves and maybe a few partners. This has led to a lot more indie games coming out.
- There are some who view the shelf space of gaming to be very limited. They see threats in the existence of anything that doesn’t conform to their self-image as a gamer.
- Games encounter the same tension that we see in film, music and publishing industries, which is a pull between “highbrow” and “lowbrow” content. Games can also be “pop” or “prurient” just like other forms of media. Right now, the success of alternative forms of gaming is huge, due in part to the rise of new technologies such as camera and voice interfaces as well as mobile devices. The mixture, in gaming discussion forums and social media, of different audiences for gaming has also highlighted another archetype in game culture:
- Whenever you have a conflict in games, you have a griefer. Griefers are individuals who purposefully spoil a game to get a reaction. Players can be dedicated to the idea of griefing, or they might be inspired to begin griefing because they are doing poorly in a match or for other reasons. Sometimes we call them Trolls or Bullies. Spoilsports.
- Julian Dibbell write a first-person ethnographic exploration of an online game world called LambdaMOO. His book is a classic piece of writing about games.
- The essay that led to My Tiny Life was “A Rape in Cyberspace”, which is probably the first published account of in-game griefing. In the essay, Dibbell describes the actions of Mr. Bungle, a character who uses advanced techniques to simulate a horrific mass rape scene in front of the inhabitants of LambdaMOO, choosing a populated location in the world to maximize the impact. This action is completely disturbing to the players involved, and brings up many interesting issues. But the point here is that there is a subculture in gaming of players who enjoy ruining everyone else’s fun.
- In 2004, Ian Shanahan documented his experience with a griefer in Jedi Knight II online multiplayer. This article became representative of a trend called “New Games Journalism”, which was a movement of writers who tried to write about games with more meaning in order to better highlight their cultural relevance. This was the first real change in how games journalism happened since game magazines were first created.
- Well, not exactly. But since we’re on the topic of games journalism, let’s examine that quickly.
- Game magazines generally come out of industry sponsors. Even more modern websites such as The Escapist (founded by EA Games) are still supported by major industry players. In this screen we see Nintendo Power, Game Informer (owned by the largest games retailer, Gamespot) and EGM (founded by a former games champion and member of the US Videogames Team — also an industry insider). Games journalism is generally considered “enthusiast press”. Game journalists are granted access to new products and expected to write about them. This is not exactly how “regular” journalism works. Nonetheless, there is a precedent for handling review work and many game magazines have stepped up to support better ethical standards. (But they were generally already doing this before #GamerGate came about.)
- And games journalism has come a long way. Jamin Warren and a group of established games journalists started Kill Screen as a culture and design magazine focused on videogames. It features no reviews and no market-timely coverage of games.
- And more and more mainstream media outlets are treating games not just as a market and industry, but as cultural objects to discuss and investigate. This most recent debacle is being covered everywhere from Mother Jones to Wall Street Journal. The world
- Polygon posted a response to the calls for better ethics in games journalism. But they hit on the real motivation behind #GamerGate: The broader radical conservative movement against feminism, diversity and anything perceived as “progressive” politics.
- Polygon’s editorial, and numerous other reporters, have hit on the real motive behind GamerGate: anti-“Social Justice Warrior” action, and that really takes the movement out of videogames.
- Quinn was able to document all of this in the IRC channel that #GamerGaters were using to plan their action.
- Mike Cernovich is a bodybuilder, lawyer, and men’s rights activist who sells himself as a motivational speaker among other things. He is known for creating the hashtag #FatShamingWeek in order to “help” people. He has recently become much more interested in games thanks to #GamerGate.
- Other radical conservatives, anti-feminists, men’s rights activists and more have jumped on the GamerGate bandwagon. Of course, these men are not even gamers. Yiannopoulos wrote recently about gamers sitting in their “yellowed underwear” in their parents basements. And Forney wrote about researching Mass Effect in forums: “Seeing all these people crying, fuming, screaming, acting like their lives were over because of a fucking video game… it made me want to drink.” (Since joining up with #GamerGate he has said that nerds deserve to be left alone and shouldn’t be bullied. Which, apparently, makes up for his transgressions.)
- In fact, these individuals with an agenda to push conservative, anti-progressive politics in the culture have simply identified and exploited an existing population of insecure gaming enthusiasts. Based on everything we’ve talked about throughout this presentation, we can see how gamer culture can create a predisposition towards the actions of #GamerGate, and this has been leveraged by right-wing pundits to further their much more general war on feminism, progressive policies, and thoughtful discourse.
- The population of people who play games (especially all those indie games) is actually far too diverse at this point to lump into one concept of “game culture” or “gamers”. The vocal “hardcore gamer” contingent is a shrinking demographic, while casual gamers, adult gamers, art gamers, indie gamers, and many more demographic groups are on the rise. When 59% of the American population plays games, then it cannot be possible for them all to be grouped under one banner. Shelf space in games is infinite; there is not need to restrict what games can or should be.
- There are articles about GamerGate coming out every day. All kinds of outlets are trying to come to terms with what all this means. Many people are working hard to stop the threats and abuse, too.
- For the moment, mainstream media seems to have seen through the #GamerGate attempts at deluding them to side “with the biggest actor”. Mainstream publications have enlisted noted games journalists (and #GG targets) like Leigh Alexander to write pieces for them. The NY Times put coverage of Sarkeesian on the front page. The PBS Newshour featured an interview with Brenda Wu. Depression Quest and Quinn saw a favorable write-up in the the New Yorker. (If #GamerGate is truly trying to silence discussion about the work these women do, they are completely ineffectual.)
- But the bad things will likely continue…
- The proliferation of anti-feminism, misogyny, and in appropriate intimidation and argumentative tactics has been rampant across many industries.
- But things can change. People can change. Even John Carmack changed his ways. He gave his Ferrari away to the Quake Champion in 1997.
- Carmack stayed with id until 2013, when he joined the team at Oculus making VR displays and continuing to pioneer great graphics.
- (But Romero married Penthouse model Stevie Case and never cut his hair.)
- But as much as people do terrible things, people respond by doing some pretty amazing things. Over the years, as harassment, sexism, and discrimination in the technology industry has become an issue, we have seen organizations adopt codes of conduct, conferences adopt inclusion policies, and lots of opportunities arise for diversifying the tech world. Similarly, Sarkeesian is now doing presentations at numerous game developers, and there are even more motions afoot to support better diversity within gaming.
- More and more organizations are growing to help increase diversity.
- Regardless, the fact that we are seeing such negative reactions and such factionalism could possibly point to the fact that those who wish to squash social progress, who revile the idea of a just and humane society, are unlikely to make enough friends to win the day. We can only hope this is the fight.