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GamerGate - A Guide To Ending "Gamers" By Devin Wilson

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A Guide to Ending "Gamers" by Devin Wlson on 08/28/14 07:57:00 pm The following blog post The thou ghts andopinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. Whether it's in the condluding chapter of lan B End of Gamers'), Dan Golding's more recent blog on the subject (with the same title, oddly enough), or the hundreds of tweets being written about it, we're seeing calls to do away with the gamers a to Celebrating that uncertain victory now is premature, hubristic, and an insult to the people who As such, I'd like to postpone our back-patting and think about solutions for bringing this change IS We can't just Twitter-block the problem away. Even a video series critical of the medium is only a partial solution. Games culture needs to change at a grassroots level, and each of us have a part to play in that revolution if we want it to happen. It's not only the worst of us who need to change None of us are outside of this system. None of us are completely above its effects. None of us are entirely innocent We all need to work to make our role in games culture more positive (which absolutely does not mean " So here are some preliminary tactics I propose for transforming games (feel free to propose your 1. We don't wait. We don't wait until after that big, exciting sequel is out We don't wait until after E3, GDC, or PAX We don't wait until we finish this game we've been investing hours into, or until after we unlock that new assault rifle. We don't wait for other people to fix this There's just going to be another E3 and another newly-announced game and another excuse to not look at the present state of games culture. This industry has been distracting us with carrots-on-sticks since its inception, repeatedly pulling the rug out from under us before we could even get oriented in the first place. There's always been a promise of something better around the comer, so we don't bother examining or acting-on what's right in front of us. But we must examine ourselves and act, right now. We've been doing far too much waiting in games. We need to raise our expectations and stop waiting for the medium to mature. Its 2014. The first generation of consoles was decades ago. The only reason for games to be immature is if its consumers and producers are allowing them to be that way The people who have decided to terrorize this medium aren't waiting around, so we 2. We listen to those who are less privileged than we are, and we don't adopt a default stance of skepticism towards their views and daims. We support them when we have the power to, we involve them when we have the power to, and we don't ignore it when institutions fail to do these things. We each proudly claim the label of social justice warrior (if only to subvert its use as a pejorative). We do whatever we can to learn about the ne what we can do to change things for the er 3. We display broader interests as individuals who make and play games. We spend about the world beyond this industry. We put more e games about things other than what we've already seen in games. Apparent sources of inspiration for likely to ignore al of the things outside of their window when they decide to make a game. There's a lot of fascinating, beautiful, and homifying stuff going on out there, and it's more important to understand that than indulge in yet another r isolating games, i ne medium is designed for people to stay secluded for dozens of hours while having their egos stroked, then we reap what we sow in terms of the kinds of people who emerge from this pastime. We need to consider the very real possibility that the offensive behavior displayed by gamers in recent weeks is not unrelated to the artifacts they rally around (which I doubt are especially obscure). These people didn't come from nowhere to fight about nothing. s to y're organic results of the m all played a role in cultivating, and they won't go away if the medium doesn't change nificantly 5. We become far more mindful of the games we make and play. Sexism in games is s pervasive and toxic. Racism in games is pervasive and toxic. Violence in pervasive and toxic. Despite the skepticism really looks like violent games "do* make us more aggressive and less empathetic. If researchers are repeatedly suggesting this and then we complain that the vilest people in our communities are too aggressive and not empathetic enough, aren't we partially to blame for our general eagerness to make and play games that have these overall effects on people? If you think you're not affected, you're sorely mistaken and you sound no less people who claim t doesn't work on them (By the way, k 6. We maintain a critical eye towards the e-sports scene and its accompanying machismo. We've been trying to make careers out of playing what seem like the videogame equivalents of American football (MOBAs) and mixed martial arts (fighting games), in a warped attempt at gaining legitimacy for our pastime. Back when the genre of choice for the e-sports hopeful was first-person shooters, I had an intimate view of what these intensely competitive videogames of Let me assure you that it's very sad and ugly, and it doesn't seem like that's changed obsessing the internet (in hopes of eventually doing it professionally) is scary and I deeply mistrust it 7. We change to be less about buying and rating games, and instead develop a paradigm that is more about playing and thoroughly investigating games. The reason this is so vital is because to be a-gamer" is not merely to At its core, to be a perceived value of their investments. We can subvert that by making and playing more free games, changing the ways we evaluate and discuss games, and finding new ways to fund 8. We jettison the hardcore/casual dichotomy. It's utter garbage that's only used for three reasons 1) to feel superior to others, 2) to tragically submit to unjust hierarchies of play, or 3) to sell products (and effectively reinforce the other two). Besides, what's more casual or the latest murder simulator that you bved you were 9. We let the industry's tentpoles fall to the ground more often. We stop allowing ourselves to be told which games we need to play. We're smarter than that. We abandon any skepticism any of us have towards underrepresented people's deep concerns about the medium, and we are instead skeptical of game publishers' interests in our well-being their customers to have fun too 10. We always remember that we don't need to buy new things in order to legitimately appreciate games. We play od games until they've revealed all of their secrets, and then we play them some more. We stop implicitly accepting the idea that games are meant to be disposable. We dissect gaming's recent and ancient past (and everything in between) instead of just perpetually flailing around in its cacophonous, slippery, and overwhelming 11. We stop upholding "fun" as the universal, ultimate criterion for a game's relevance s ideal at best and a y of categorically unhealthy things are fun". Let's try of the altenatives will have similarly fuzzy definitions, but let's aspire to qualities like your own altematives to "fun" in games (while avoiding terms like "cool" and "awesome" and any other word that simply caters to existing, unexamined biases) 12. We don't afford any credence to the idea that games are "just for fun". Games are not neutral. Anita Sarkeesian is not imposing her feminist values onto games, she's dentifying the misogynistic values that incorporated into games. You don't have to think her efforts are perfect, but what she's t game developers have (sometimes unwittingly) ng is not ina xpressed by gamesi to regularly compare our we games' expressed values to our own real values conclusions about what different games mean, but we need to stop asserting that they're 13. We make and play fewer linear games about one person saving the world Take a look at the people terrorizing games culture lately: they're almost all tyrannical brats with messianic delusions. Where do you think they're learning this behavior from? seeing lately is not merely a mob of odd hobbyists frustrated by change, but an army of what games need to be (a theological approach, to be sure) and they express a devotion to 14. We make gaming more like recreation or reading than it is like religion. What we're to be a holy crusade. These people have dogmatic the game industry that makes Mitt Romney's tithing look stingy. Forget The Beatles, Mario us now, and an is going to be by some as blasphemy. This is partly because we tend to treat gaming like it is a special club. But playing games isn't s 15. We get serious about inclusivity, which means understanding that game" is a very loose asses an astonishing range categoryt activities. This means that we should associate less strongly around such a vague term. Being interested in games doesn't mean you need to play every game that comes out and have an opinion on it. It doesn't mean that every game is for you. The games press creates an illusion that every big game needs to be played by everyone who likes games Games as a medium (or-more accurately to my mind, lately-a plurality of media) are more diverse than all of film, radio, television, print, etc. Compare two random works of one of those other media forms. Then compare two random games (digital or non-digital) There's no contest the breadth of games is staggering, and we need to cool it on the and exposure-to all 16. We do not assume that the harassment we've seen lately is a complete aberration. We understand that there is a link between this medium that terrorists see 17. We agree that caring about the world and its inhabitants is more important than 18. We all grow up (starting this very instant), and we bring games along with us. This doesn't mean making·grittier" or "darker" games Rather, we make and play games that we have no reason to be ashamed of importantly-we're honest about t may very well be shameful about games

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