Don’t forget bashing Captain Marvel before it was even released; simply because its the first MCU film with a solo female lead.
What I said earlier about escapism in moderation has an opposite end of the spectrum; when the means of escapism becomes more important to the participating fandom than real life factors, like respect for others, civility and physical safety.
Some people immerse themselves so fully into their chosen fandom, that their behavior becomes first fanatical and then toxic.
And please note that when I say “fandom,” I’m not just talking about video games and comic books; I mean any aspect of society that large groups of people feed their time, energy and money into consistently.
That totally includes politics and religion too, for all practical purposes.
Yes, I’ve also seen that first-hand with a variety of collectors who self-identify in a very unhealthy way with their collections: e.g. SF memorabilia, trading cards, vinyl, and of course weapons. I’ve seen their priorities about friends, family, and societal goods absolutely warped by their obsessions with their fandoms (Objectivists are basically fanbois for Ayn Rand potboiler novels) or the items they collect.
This fact has caused me to write off game journalism wholesale. Auto journalism is a close second to this, but even it is a little better than gaming journalism.
I don’t count FF as “gaming journalism” so much, though, as meta-analysis (of both gaming AND gaming journalism, really).
I think the fact is, it’s all the same monster at this point - all inside baseball - and FF was undoubtedly the first to shine a light on it all (to mix my metaphors).
Whatever happens now, it is IMHO inarguable that we owe a large part of getting the ball rolling at all to Ms. Sarkeesian.
It’s enthusiasm for a subject combined with some unhealthy amount of entitlement and power to enforce it.
The power available can make being a fan of the British Empire or collectable cards or 70s comic books or whatever, a level that’s benign all the way up to murderous.
I’m about your age; I’ve had a software-development career; I’ve spent far too much time playing video games. We’ve probably played a bunch of the same ones.
I’d be interested to hear you expand on this “cherry picked” thing, because although I sometimes grumbled a little, inwardly, over the examples Sarkeesian used when criticizing movies, I felt from the get-go that she had video games dead to rights, that she was, if anything, bending over backwards to be gentle and use little words.
She looked at hits with actual gender dynamics that could be examined, something that eliminates quite a large percentage of the market (games that don’t feature women or that don’t feature gender) immediately. I don’t think that’s the same as cherry picking.
And it’s really not just video games. Most of the atrocities of the modern era map onto super fannish behavior that probably seemed “cute” and “hobbyish” before it very definitely didn’t.
As one example: Why are the KKK based partly on knighthood themes? Because Walter Scott novels were popular at the time that racists were forming their clubs. Scott didn’t make slave-owners and their descendents racist, but his work helped those racists organize their ideas of themselves, and the general fandom was used as a framework to piggy-back other ideas.
People who are already taught sexism and racism, use the popular stuff in their lives to form connections with others, and build networks to police hated groups out of “their” clubs. It’s happened with fans of Nineteenth century novels, scientific research, and dock-working, and hundreds of other settings where humans interact, just like it has happened with video games.
Here’s the thing. I play video games. I enjoy them and I see no reason to write them off when what we can do is make them better.
Most of life is not a binary. What’s the best way to fix the problems in games and in social media? The exact same thing that leads to good long term decision-making (which, incidentally, is a large part of building a social media platform, as you know): including a diverse group, and recognizing all the stakeholders and not one small, monolithic group.
The games aren’t the problem. The fact that the entire industry was dominated by a small, non-diverse group is. That the decision on what is a good game, what it needs to look like, the kind of story it needs to tell, was made by this group getting feedback from those just like them.
There’s three ways to handle criticism. Two are knee-jerks: proclaim it’s all wrong and attack the messenger ( see what happened to AS, or what puppies in sci-fi did) throw up our hands and claim “throw the whole thing away” (like you’re doing), or listen, consider the merits and look at how you can improve things. Try to think of options you didn’t before. Ask others – including the critics and especially those stakeholders who haven’t traditionally had a voice in the proceedings. It’s hard work, there are no magical incantations to shortcut the process, but it works.
But in order to do that, you have to prove to those other stakeholders that it’s safe to do so, and that you really are going to listen.
Again, it’s not impossible, just hard. But the end result is worth it.
Personally I think it comes up in games so much because they are associated with childhood, safety, escapism, and control…because white men are largely raised in walled gardens so they want their nostalgic memories of childhood unsullied by women and brown people as well as anyone who doesn’t work to keep that effect going. They are often especially threatened by the mere concept of the hopes, dreams, and creative contributions of women and brown people. They very much do not want to acknowledge the world outside of them, and they very much do not want to acknowledge that a large part of their enjoyment and more terrifyingly, their existence, depends on those very people while demanding that they give up creative and recreational space for white guys to play in at all times by default. They don’t want to be reminded of what they are or how they got there. They don’t want to see themselves as adults but to believe that they are special little fans whose fandom is the most importantest. How can you enjoy the illusion of control that games provide when the things you’ve expected to be controlled for your benefit all your life aren’t being controlled within it?
I honestly cannot fathom the privilege and lack of self-awareness to say “oh you’re BRINGING problems with race or sexism into games” when you experience it. Fuck no, there IS NO PLACE TO ESCAPE FROM RACISM AND SEXISM in the world… not even in games. Not even in our fantasies are we allowed to exist.Fuck them. Most of them contribute nothing to the art they pretend to care about. Just entitled consumers wagging the dog IMO.
THIS
The stuff I have rolled my eyes at in the gaming store back in the 80s. While they were not the greatest role models I really thank Bob that it was a reasonably woke group of adults keeping herd on us at the gaming table so much so that when the more challenged dorks who we didn’t game with were browsing in the store made shitty remarks we would just roll our eyes or let them know ‘dude not cool’.
More than once I had the thought you know guys maybe just umm treat women as people and oh god TAKE A FUCKING SHOWER MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK.
So because you don’t find value in video games that means journalism on the topic is inherently “the lowest form of journalism”. Sorry, but that’s plain bollocks.
To reduce the whole of games journalism (and by association, gamers themselves) to a caricature of “dude doing a video review of Halo 6 in a Cheeto fueled living room bong haze” is frankly offensive.
No, the issue is assholes.
ETA On further reflection many of these criticisms can be equally applied towards stereotypical hardcore sports fans. You know, the people that riot when their favorite teams lose (or win), or that will fight you for speaking ill of their favorite sports personality. I don’t enjoy sports but I’m not going to waste my time shitting on others’ enjoyment and say they are wrong. It’s just not my thing.
The point is toxic fandom isn’t unique to video games.
However, there are a vastly disproportionate number in the videogame arena, and they are … weaponized. There’s something fundamentally wrong with this kind of media, what it does to people, how it is used.
What we saw with gamergate was a preview of what was going to happen on the social media platforms with Trump. Interactive media with no constraints, no limits, causing endless damage to society. Just another “game” for the “lulz”. I understand this now.
We have a Switch, but the kids aren’t very interested in it. I even brought it on our last trip with a new game and could barely get any of the three of them to play it. That’s a blessing in retrospect, I’m gonna throw the thing out. We also have an Xbox One that we only use for 4k blu-ray playback, I kinda have to keep that because you can’t exactly buy a blu-ray player these days, but I will disable the gaming parts of it in the settings.
This videogame stuff is toxic as hell and I want no part of it any more.
These are broad statements and largely wrong. Gamers aren’t a monolithic entity. Toxic fandom runs the gamut of all media. But really it’s just the internet enabling terrible people to be terrible like always. Brigading misogyny, racism, homophobia, and so on aren’t confined to the video game realm.
You’ve made it quite clear that this is not a topic that interests you and have had numerous posts saying how awful you think video games are and how worthless you think the community is. Cool. Points duly noted. Unless there’s more you have to add, let’s leave it at that.
For many of us, gaming is a very positive thing. I’ve made lifelong friends and had deeply meaningful experiences thanks to the gaming communities I’ve been a part of. Of course there’s a dark side to it - but this is always the case with any medium.
I hadn’t thought about this in years, but something you said made me remember that I used to be part of a Quake clan in the Denver area pre-Y2K. All dudes, of course, because… I mean it was Quake?
Years later:
one of those dudes was convicted of some kind of child molesting charge.
one of those dudes is in prison for beating up his wife.
three of those dudes got divorced.
All this I heard through the grapevine 15+ years later. I did not connect those dots between toxic gaming culture and a quake clan I used to be a part of until literally right now, but I’m ashamed, truly ashamed, that I ever called myself a “gamer”.
I wish I had appreciated how especially toxic videogames are, because they are interactive media, sooner. I wish I had understood exactly how big the risk to society is for this kind of interactive media, and how it’d end up with everyone suffering under Trump, sooner. Thank you Anita. Thank you Feminist Frequency.
I’ve noticed that the more self-confident you are about being logical and not swayed by emotion and rhetoric, the more vulnerable you actually are to those things. Overconfidence breeds not just carelessness, it means you don’t bother to actually learn about your emotional reactions, or typical rhetorical tricks, which means you lack defenses.
