Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Author: Damion Schubert (Page 34 of 136)

Yes, the Media Affects People

March 9, 2015 /

Today, esteemed youtube personality TotalBiscuit opined about societal effects of video games and other media.

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.

GDC 2015 Wrapup

March 8, 2015 /

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 to kickstarters, 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.

On Brigading the GDC Tag

March 3, 2015 /

GamerGate followers have decided to brigade the #GDC2015 twitter tag with their usual hysteria, disregard for threatened women, nutball conspiracy theories, unsubstantiated attacks on IGF,  unrelated bullshit attacks on ‘SJWs’ unrelated to gaming, ad hominem attacks on those attempting to help expand gaming markets and generally appalling bullshit.  Because that’s totally way to win a skeptical audience of game developers to your side.

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!

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).

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.

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.

A Brief Comments Thread Related Note

February 28, 2015 /

I’ve tried to keep a very laissez faire attitude towards the comments thread on this blog.  It was a stance I took when I proposed GAMR – I felt that the best way to show off the idiocy that was eating at the anti-consumer movement known as GamerGate was to let their comments speak for themselves.

Along the way, though, the comments on this blog took a turn, from being a place where people with divergent opinions could healthily disagree to one where attacks were getting uncomfortably personal.

Today I started deleting comments that have, in my opinion, crossed the line.  This has centered on one inflammatory person, and some posts from people who responded to this person in kind and who, in all honesty, should know better.  One of those posts was, in fact my own.  Know that, definitely in the short term, my tolerance for that kind of bullshit is going to drop to about zero.  And to the nameless, faceless person who caused all this to happen by launching bombs at people from the safety of anonymity, I invite you to go start your own blog if you want to keep posting in the manner you are now, because the stuff you were posting most recently isn’t going to pass muster here anymore.

I still welcome those who have divergent opinions, and I still have several pro-GamerGate voices who post on here who I feel do contribute to the conversation in a way where the tone can still be civil, constructive and interesting.  I’ve in fact invited one such person to do a front page post (we’ll see if he accepts my offer.  I don’t want Zen of Design to become an echo chamber, but I also don’t want the comments thread to be a poo throwing exercise either.

What’s Going On With the Escapist?

February 23, 2015 /

The Escapist appears to be going through a period of great upheaval in the last 6 months. Just to recap their last few months:

  1. When GamerGate started, the Escapist bent over backwards in order to make themselves home for GamerGate.  It started with them being the only major game site that didn’t close down #gamergate threads, and culminated in a befuddling editorial that vastly misunderstands the actual metrics and economics of AAA game development.
  2. This all led to the Escapist doing the disastrous interviews with developers about GamerGate.  One of these developers was one of the original harassers of Zoe Quinn in #burgersandfries (this one embarrassingly was removed from the site).  Another cheerleads rape as a game trope and had a financial investment from founder Alexander Macris for his Gor-themed RPG that was undisclosed. A third was repudiated by his employer Microsoft for saying that the games industry was 90% supportive of GamerGate.  (Full disclosure: I was also interviewed for this).
  3. During this period of time, the Escapist has just been cutting ties with some of their most notable talent, in particular their video talent such as Jimquisition, MovieBob, Miracle of Sound, I Hit It With My Axe (a series about playing D&D with porn stars) – I feel like I’m missing a couple, but it seems pretty much everyone other than Yahtzee has wandered off.  And at some point, Yahtzee has to realize he could probably put up a Patreon and make twice what Jimquisition does.
  4. The Escapist had a nasty layoff just a month ago, which hit several long-term employees including long-term Editor-in-Chief Greg Tito.
  5. Despite the need for layoffs due to budget cuts, the Escapist has managed to find some money to get some new writers contributing, all of which have a unique and curious slant of being decidedly more right-wing and/or blatantly pro-gamergate.  This includes Lizzy F, who described the ‘gamers are over’ articles as an attack on her 3-year old autistic daughter.  It includes Brandon Morse, who appears to have little or no gaming writing in his portfolio but was labelled one of the top 30 Republicans under 30.  It includes Liana K, whose somewhat befuddling takedown of Anita’s video series is mostly that Anita is too successful, and Anita’s followers can be kinda mean.  And it also includes reaching out to Oliver Campbell, who wrote this about one of the most vile extended campaigns of harassment in the history of gaming.

Um, right.  At any rate, I think it’s very clear that the Escapist has decided to embrace a certain editorial slant for their future content,  which is fine.  Game journalists SHOULD be able to have slants and biases – otherwise, every single piece of writing will read like the puff pieces that just regurgitate publisher talking points, which is what games journalism was back in the print days.  It is, I note, probably going to be roughly as fair and balanced as, say, Fox News.   Or, dare I say it, less objective than Polygon – just the other direction.

Pandering to this audience has created some level of excitement amongst the GG diehards.  Will it work?  Possibly.  Polygon is actually doing pretty well from all evidence I’ve been able to find, in stark contrast to the Escapist’s sinking fortunes (compare the 1yr data to see what I’m talking about), so clearly talking about games from a well-defined point of view can build a readership.  That being said, GG is not actually a very big movement – KiA’s readership of 28K is a rounding error compared to the 12M people that Kotaku reaches monthly, and the Escapist’s sinking fortunes overlap tidily with their embrace of GamerGate, meaning that the slow shift they’ve been making already appears to be alienating more people than they’re bringing in.

All that being said, I can tell you that I’m no longer the target market for that magazine.

On the Topic of that Silly Cartoon

February 23, 2015 /

The continuing saga of Mark Kern condemning the games media for #gamergate (part one and part two)

The Cartoon that Mark is referring to is this one.   Embedded image permalink Later, he tried to constructively egg on the people who were pointing out that this was basically him peddling GamerGate talking points while pretending to pursue an avenue of peace – which basically means he’s asking for everyone to just shut up and accept GamerGate’s demands.

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Mark Kern Doubles Down on Being Wrong

February 20, 2015 /

Earlier this week, I wrote an article about Mark Kern’s extremely bad interpretation of events over the last few months.  I was inclined to give him a pass beyond this.  I mean, it’s possible he’s been busy and not been paying close attention to what’s been going on.  People who are in the quagmire that is #GamerGate have no idea how soap opera-like   the whole thing is – I was only able to keep up for a while because I was switching jobs.  Seriously, I’ve been in start-up mode professionally for the last month or so, and I swear, after a full day of dealing with that insanity, I have no time and energy to read about which KotakuInAction guy is mad because which GamerGhazi moderator said yadda yadda yadda.  It’s got more daily twist and turns than a Mexican telenovela, with the added bonus of you have to learn and understand Chan culture to be able to make sense of any of it.   You come in a few months late, and its an incomprehensible mess.

So I figured, maybe he’s busy. Maybe he doesn’t fully grok the origins.  And to be fair, he is legitimately trying to prod these magazines to be agents of change, which is nice and idealistic.

The problem is that blaming Kotaku and Polygon for the events since last April is kind of like blaming Walter Cronkite for Vietnam.  And describing these events as Yellow Journalism is grossly unfair to the people who were the true victims of Gamergate.  Chief among these victims include three game developers: Randi Harper, Zoe Quinn and Brianna Wu.  It includes many others.  Including, I note, myself.

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