Well, minorly, anyway. This magazine offers their coverage of #Gamergate, offering the phrase I surely hope appears in my obituary. Being in the same sentence as Tim is quite an honor and a privilege.
Those within the industry openly made statements against Gamergate, including: gaming companies such as Blizzard and the Entertainment Software Association (commonly know as the ESA and gaming’s top trade group); publications like Game Informer, Polygon, and Giant Bomb; and creative luminaries such as Tim Schafer and Damion Schubert. Some statements where measured, like the ESA’s assertion that “There is no place in the video game community—or our society—for personal attacks and threats.” But others weren’t. Schubert called it “an unprecedented catastrofuck,” which remains one of my favourite combinations of words ever. Even the vaguest of questions about the legitimacy of the movement seemed to evaporate.
The latest super happy fun circling the #GamerGate hashtag is that there are those among them who are dancing a jig because professionals have admitted that the flash mobs circling the hashtag have made it harder for archivists and social scientists to research the field of gaming.
Hey, dipshits, having clean and impartial research of gaming is actually good for gaming.
It has been instrumental in, for example, countering the lies and hyperbole from people like Jack Thompson, who were literally making shit up in hopes of shutting down or suing major studios and making a buck for themselves in the process.
It turns out that research is pretty handy at making better games.
I realize that going anti-academia is all the rage now, but seriously, screw people who hope that hiding our history and stunting research in this pivotal field of art somehow benefits game developers or gamers.
I am consistently bothered by this throw-away phrase “media affects people” as if its some kind of argument winner, an inarguable statement of fact. In reality it’s lazy, it’s too vague, it’s pseudo-intellectual at its worst.
Speaking of lazy, I should note that research on the effects that media has on individuals and society as a whole in various forms has been going on for — oh, DECADES now. It’s seriously a dedicated branch of study, and even the tiniest google search would have found it for him. If he wasn’t too lazy to throw bombs without actually wondering if maybe this criticism isn’t coming from somewhere.
I was thinking of responding in length, but it turns out that I am ALSO lazy. Fortunately, this reddit poster gave a long, factual analysis of the known research, much of which would have mirrored several of the most important studies that I would have pointed out. Some of these I haven’t read yet (surprisingly – I do try to keep up), but the one regarding the increase in aggressiveness in vulnerable personality types seems of particular interest to me
That being said, renown scholar and gentleman TotalBiscuit left a lot more room in the discussion by wondering where research was regarding other media. As mentioned previously, there are some truly infamous ones, some of which you are likely to learn about in any psych 101 or communications 101 class :
Of course, all of this is common sense – we reflect the opinions and attitudes we see very, very quickly. Advertising is big business largely because the media is incredibly effective at changing people’s minds – and for that matter, so is YouTube gaming content. Few doubt that the recent portrayals of gay people on television, led by high profile events such as Ellen Degeneres’ coming out, is a huge factor in the astonishing collapse of all opposition to gay rights in America.
And even some renown YouTube personalities believe, for example, believe that, say, an episode of SVU can change people’s opinions on gamers and is worth getting angry about. This isn’t unfounded – I can’t find the link right now, frustrating, but research has shown that, for example, rural whites who get most of their information about black people from watching fictional television tend to have a much darker outlook on African Americans than those who encounter them regularly in their daily lives.
Yes, media affects people. The exact details of how are still being researched – and likely will be endlessly in the future. The level of responsibility we expect media creators to own is still up for debate, but so far, little has been found that is so alarming that legislation removing first amendment protections merits consideration. But it is well in the world of enough that activists should feel comfortable asking a company like Blizzard to change some avatars in hopes of of incurring positive change.
I had a great time at GDC this year – it’s the first time that I’d been there for a while, and once I’d spent some time there, I regretted the years that I missed it. There were some great talks – I’m hoping to come back to a couple later if I have time, especially Riot’s excellent talk on their efforts to clean up their community – but as usual, the best talks were at the bars and restaurants, the breakfasts, lunches, dinners and late night parties, where some of my most favorite genius level game developers freely were willing to swap ideas and points of view, as long as the cups remained full.
And that’s the part about the games industry that is really cool. Game development is, at its core, a Research and Development field. Believe it or not, players really DO get bored and sick of seeing the same game over and over again – just as sick as we get of building them. Pushing games to the next level isn’t just about pushing pixels and polygons, it’s about always getting better and finding new angles. Making games is hard technology and big business, but above and beyond that its quite clearly art – and one where pushing the state of the art has always been god damned exciting for me and everyone who loves the craft.
What really smart people need is NEW INPUT, something that varies from the voices that they read, hear and work with the rest of the year.
Gamergate was a frequent topic in these impromptu discussions, but usually a brief one, and unless you were at a session directly about harassment, the only topics that came up frequently were the hashtag spamming, the thin-skinned overreaction to a Design Legend playing with a ‘prepared’ sock puppet, and Mark Kern’s bizarre recent career self-immolation – i.e. all the very most recent self-inflicted wounds of the cause. Even recent awesomely funny events like Skull vs Bathtub made nary a mention in conversations full of drunken gossip. Most game developers are well detached from the controversy — their opinion can probably be summed up with ‘are we really still talking about this awfulness?’– but the glimpses they got this week were not favorable towards the trolls, and most of us were much happier to spend this precious time we had with long-seperated colleagues picking their brains on topics of greater interest to progressing the art and science of game development. Like, you know, Cock Hero.
Seriously, far more time at these informal gatherings discussing much more interesting questions, both deeply practical as well as wonderfully theoretical. Is PC AAA actually still viable for new blockbuster success, or were World of Tanks and League of Legends flukes? Will future MMOs be relegated tokickstarters, or will we see another major nine-figure one like WoW anytime soon? Is mobile-darling and superbowl-ad-sporting ‘Heroes’ Charge’ really just a complete ripoff of a game from China called Dao Ta Chuan Qi, and if so, are lawyers getting involved? Why is the Asian casino mobile market nowhere near as successful as the American one? What are the ramifications of combining machine learning with teledildonics? Can the new Harmonix Rock Band product conquer the enormous issues of hardware and licensing that pushed the entire genre of gaming with fake plastic guitars to the brink of extinction? Is assymetrical gaming actually going to be a ‘Thing’? How long until someone figures out how to make an Oculus Rift experience that is both awesome at parties and yet doesn’t make the average user want to puke after 15 minutes of play? You’re startup is going to try what now? Does it have money yet? Who wants drinks? Where’s the next party?
These discussions are like catnip to me, and getting the perspectives of other people who have other expertise is vital to keeping the idea train flowing. It’s no wonder that GDC continues to be a huge part of the business of making games – we’re still awaiting word that this year’s exact population quote, but estimates of 25000 I believe put it at the biggest yet. Efforts to describe it as shrinking are laughable – this year, even the Monday summits were packed –as are efforts to describe it as an SJW hugbox. I was about as likely to find myself in a discussion about improving breast bounce physics, blood spatter, console device specs and monetization as I was to talk about social justice themes.
A small but significant number of people sought me out to thank me for writing on Zen, particularly since August, which I always responded to awkwardly, when in fact I was feeling enormous gratitude that at least some of you out there are paying attention. And despite the fact that I actively sought out Zoe, Randi, Brianna, Leigh and others related to recent events just to shake their hands, I was way more excited about running into Mark Rosewater again, at which point I promptly turned into a blubbering fanboy.
But that being said, there’s one thing that’s significant this year in that regard. In the past, the social justice themes such as Zoe Quinn’s panel discussion on how developers can protect themselves from awfulness and the #1ReasonWhy panel would have been seen as odd side discussions, a tiny side track attracting smaller fringier audiences. This year, these talks were full, and felt like part of the core of the curriculum. Developers are now going to talks and tracks that they were ignoring before. It FEELS like the events of the last 8 months have elevated the importance of these topics to the point where everyone in the industry accepts that these are no longer fringe concerns, but part and parcel of being in the industry. For better or for worse. Nothing captures that more eloquently than the other speech at the GDC awards, the one by Daniel Vella that condemned harassment and urged developers to stand together against it – a talk that earned a standing ovation.
The last 8 months have been awful for game developers in the games industry overall. GDC was quite the opposite in almost every way. It was a reminder that the art and science of making games is still awesome, and the tribe I’m doing it with is still a pretty incredible group of people. Quite simply, it’s a reminder that I love making games, and I never want to stop.
Central to this effort was Mark ‘totally not a gamergator’ Kern. Congratulations, Mark! You’ve managed to torch the communications efforts of the flagship development conference of your industry!
So we owned the GDC2015 tag today to raise awareness, that was good. The conv. are already starting and will go through GDC. Give em room.
Too late, Mark realized his mistake and started to try to misaim his wrath at games journalists, which as mentioned before, is him completely missing the point of the last six months. While game developers continue to be harassed by this contingent (including no small amount of shit thrown at Zoe Quinn – a GAME DEVELOPER who spoke today), Mark continues to enjoy the internet fame that comes from providing cover to this brigading. (UPDATE: late drunken reporting gave a bad link. However, there were several non-factual takedowns posted with this being one example. Old link left unchanged).
You can use this one instead, targeted more to intended audience: #GDCPRESS
Too late, Mark. Too late. And incidentally,still incredibly thoughtless for the people who are just trying to do their jobs. And it does nothing to address the actual issue – the harassment that many developers feel – especially women – caused by overly aggressive jerks piling onto them. You know, harassment like the tweets you encouraged and enabled today being aimed at what should be one of the most joyous weeks in the year for most game developers.
I’ll answer this, @Grummz – most of the female devs in my list are afraid of speaking up not because of the press, but because of harassers. — Damion Schubert (@ZenOfDesign) March 2, 2015
Developers who would like for this tag to be functional and useful again may want to consider the use of GoodGamerAutoblocker. I have been told by multiple other developers now (none of which who were using the tool on Sunday) that it’s been quite effective.
And for those of you who claim the block bot is censorship, freedom of speech doesn’t mean the audience has to listen to whatever the fuck is coming out of your mouth. The people who have done so have heard your pitch and decided, for whatever reason, that they don’t like what #gamergate is selling.
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