I realized something the other day. All my life, I have self-identified first and foremost as a reader. I took an obscure pride in being the kid from whom the teachers always had to confiscate books in class, and even after I stopped doing that, I still majored in English in large part because that's what someone who loves to read ought to do. So it was disconcerting to realize that I spend considerably more time and energy playing video games, reading about video games and thinking about video games than I do reading (even counting reading news stories online, which I do), thinking about reading or following the publishing industry.
On its own, that's a little sad. While there definitely are video games of such richness and artistry to elevate the player's perception of the world in the same way that a good book will do, they are few and far between in the game industry, and the vast majority of my gaming time is spent on games with much lower culture capital to offer: MMOs, match-based multiplayer games and single player games with stories that exist to get you to the next gameplay objective. These games have their own sort of value - in particular, the social aspect of these online games is a big part of my life these days - but it's not the same value I'd be getting from intentionally seeking out and exposing myself to the best stories told by the best thinkers.
So that's a cause for regret, but a relatively small one. A bigger issue is that if there was ever a time not to want to think of oneself as a gamer, this is it.
(Unhappy words about GamerGate after the jump.)
If you're not familiar with the ongoing internet clusterfuck that is #Gamergate, the Wikipedia article about it is as good as any place to get an overview. A quick summary: Woman makes small indie video games. Woman dates Man (or Boy in Man-shaped body). Relationship goes sour. Man/Boy denounces her on the internet for various failings, including alleging she pursued a relationship with a games journalist to secure better game reviews. Large section of the gaming community rises up in outrage, even though claim is subsequently proved false (the journalist in question never ever reviewed her game), including doxing death/rape/etc. threats to developer. Somewhere along the line, an actor who doesn't play games but who has strong opinions about 'Social Justice Warriors' labels it GamerGate, which sticks. Other women associated with game industry express dismay/disapproval/solidarity, also doxed and threatened. Several writers/publications suggest that the traditional video game audience - young white males - is diversifying, which is provoking backlash from said traditional audience. This of course provokes more backlash, up to and including getting several sponsors (including heavyweights like Intel and BMW) to pull ads from particular sites. Further bad behavior ensues from both sides.
At this point, the protest from many GamerGaters that they're not the ones issuing death and rape threats, that 'it's actually about ethics in journalism', is rapidly becoming a punchline. While I'm sure there are people legitimately concerned about journalism ethics caught up in this mess, the vast majority of the ire has been directed at non-journalists, and specifically women who make or talk about video games. Honestly, the majority of the GG communication that I've seen this past week or two is defensive, people either protesting that they are being lumped in with those responsible for the rape threats, etc., or lashing out at those critical of GG. And in their defense, a lot of the pushback against GG, however much I might agree with in principle, has been supremely counterproductive.
I was crafting this post in my head when I saw that Ken at Popehat had already written it better than I ever could, so I highly recommend that post (although it's worth noting that Clark at Popehat had a very different take on it a few days earlier). Since it's already been written, I've only a few things to add, but there are a few things I think need to be said about all this mess.
1) Being an ethical watchdog means watching everyone's ethics
Is there opportunity for unethical practice in video game journalism? Certainly. Are there likely examples of writers or companies whose coverage or review scores have been dictated by financial or personal rather than artistic constraints? Absolutely. But it's telling that all of the ire so far is focused on the interactions between said journalists and small (and female) indie developers, rather than the monster corporations willing to spend 500 million dollars on marketing for a tentpole game release. The amount of power that indie developer has to manipulate the media is pretty minute (unless they hit it big, like Notch or Phil Fish, who are the exceptions that prove the rule). If anyone has the resources, the motive and the amoral worldview it would take to create a significant conflict of interest for games journalists, it's Activision, not Brianna Wu.
By focusing so resolutely on supposed transgressions by such tiny fish in such a large pond, GG has pretty clearly telegraphed that factors other than - or at least in addition to - journalism ethics are at play, and so far, what all the primary targets have in common is that they are female. The only reasonable conclusion is that these attacks are motivated by the victims' gender, which is a disgrace.
2) Only video game fans react in this way
People have been talking about the gender imbalance in cinema for decades, whether it be in the casting (the Bechdel test) or in the representation of women among directors or producers (the celluloid ceiling). People write about how this-or-that movie is misogynist or chauvanist all the time. Do movie fans grumble about SJWs? Of course they do. But you don't see the sustained campaign of threats and harassment and internet outrage that crop up whenever Anita Sarkeesian releases a new video. Only gamers react in this way to criticism of their preferred medium.
Or look at comic books, which have been a bastion of sexism since before video games existed even in science fiction. Is there still sexism in comic books? Good lord, yes. And yet sites like The Mary Sue criticize this crap all the time, and the pushback is limited to trolling in the comments sections. Hell, there's an entire website devoted to mocking DC Comics for sexist or otherwise insensitive actions and statements. Are there comics fans who complain about this stuff? Yes, but not in a way that involves forcing people to flee their homes to protect their families.
I don't know why it is that video game fans are so much more inclined to this bullshit. It might be that it's the growing pains of a young medium, that comics and movie lovers got used to their toys being subject to cultural criticism decades ago. It might be that gaming rose to prominence together with the internet, and that gaming culture, such as it is, has never had to learn to deal with criticism without the ceaseless echo chamber that can be found online. But it's not a new or isolated development (there's an entire website, fatuglyorslutty, devoted to misogynist abuse directed at other gamers, and they have an entire section reserved for death threats). And I have to seriously wonder why it is so goddamn normal for people who appear to enjoy the same activities I do to be such utter assholes to each other.
3) Bad behavior goes both ways
In recent days, Popehat (again) has retweeted at least two examples of people complaining to the employers or even local law enforcement against people who speak up in support of GG. Gawker has gotten in hot water after one of its journalists publicly encouraged and glorified the bullying of nerdy people, and has covered itself in no kind of glory in its response. I've written before about the inclination toward witchhunts and outraged overreactions by supporters of socially progressive causes, and those tendencies certainly have not gone away. I mentioned above that most of GG these days seems to be fighting back against accusations that GG is inherently sexist, etc., and while I happen to believe those accusations are true, the way many of them are expressed, and the lengths to which some GG opponents are going to win their point, are at times nearly as reprehensible as the tactics that GG has used to silence critics in the first place.
4) In a perverse way, GGers might get their wish
There's a prevailing narrative that I think has more than a little truth to it to explain GG. The reason GGers are so filled with rage, it would seem, is that their nice, safe haven from a multicultural, multifaceted, multigendered world many of them struggle to understand is being invaded by those exact same not-like-them people they were (subconsciously) avoiding in the first place. As more and more non-traditional gamers are drawn in by live-TV broadcasts of eSports tournaments and ever-more-engaging smartphone and tablet games, these new gamers are coming in contact with an insular world that grew during the decades when gaming was socially suspect. Unfortunately, that insular culture does have a strong tendency toward misogyny and other forms of dickishness, and these new gamers are quite rightly pointing out that a game like Bayonetta is built on the appeal of absurdly sexualized women in outfits that would make classic Marvel artists blush. It is unfortunate but not surprising that the previous generation of gamers are not pleased to have the shortcomings of their escapist universe pointed out to them and are more prone to lash out at these critics rather than engage in self-reflection and improvement.
For the last few years, it's been looking more and more like gamers won. eSports are generating huge amounts of money; video game movies, while still usually awful, are big-budget affairs with wide market appeal; cultural references to video games have become less a code among misfits and more a marker of cultural capital; everyone mock the silly kid who doesn't even know who Mario is! But the cultural success of video games seems to have outrun the ability of many gamers to deal with that success. When gaming was a niche hobby, the only people who cared enough about games to criticize them were wackjobs like Jack Thompson, whose self-aggrandizing crusades were easily dismissed. Now that gaming is big business and has real cultural weight, gaming is (rightly) exposed to criticism from all sorts of directions, just like every other form of mass-market media. And so gamers who for decades complained about the misfit status of their hobby are now unhappy to learn that their hobby has been normalized, but because of many of the sexist habits that became normalized during their long isolation, they're still misfits anyway.
And so we get GG, and good lord, the whole world is watching our petty little shit-flinging contest with eyes wide open. Anyone with misgivings about gaming, or anyone who might have been a possible convert if approached the right way, now has a crystal-clear picture of the sort of people one is likely to encounter while playing video games. While I don't think GG or any other factor can entirely roll back the progress gaming has made in the last decade, it's safe to say that even if GG ended tomorrow (and it won't; approaching three months and still going strong), the stigma of this paroxysm of awfulness will stick with us for years to come. And the sad thing is that many gamers will probably be happier that way, able to cloak themselves again in the comfortable cloak of the misunderstood and aggrieved minority. And the rest of us will just get dragged along for the ride.
So, yeah. By every reasonable metric, I'm a gamer. I just wish I'd made that realization some other time, because right now, being a gamer just makes me feel grimy.
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