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Of course nothing was going to happen, and we can keep telling ourselves that until something inevitably does in one of these situations.Regardless, I did want to use a different example since that one is if nothing else overplayed in these discussions by now, but I really didn't feel like digging. The point isn't one incident, it's a long history of horrific behaviour by "gamers" in the name of defending video games or whatever the shit it is that motivates these clowns.
As I've pointed out before, "gamer" does in fact differ from patrons of other mediums in that it has a kind of community identity to it, something that fulfills the basic need for group belonging that's inherent to the human experience.
You can't simply demand that people who use the label as such drop it immediately because you're pissed off at the way some gamers have been acting, that only gives them reason to be pissed off at you for taking something away that they feel is important to them.
If people do move away from the label "gamer", then it's going to happen naturally, not because they get yelled at for being a gamer.
The thing about these kinds of jokes is that they tend to reflect on the beliefs and character of the people making it. If I'd met someone who made a mean-spirited joke about some group, I could reasonably conclude from it that they don't exactly think highly of that group to begin with. That's why offensive jokes tend to be considered so offensive, because while they might be hyperbole or exaggeration they at some level speak towards the joke-teller's beliefs.
And some days I feel a little like "a pox on both your houses". It can be pretty difficult to walk that fine middle ground between two extremes on either side.
I think that there's multiple definitions of "gamer" being bandied around, depending on the speaker. One of them is "someone who plays games", and another one is "someone who plays games and considers playing games part of their identity".
Combine this with clashing reference pools for drawing inferences from -- the "stereotypical" gamer is different from person to person -- and you have a recipe for misunderstanding.
The use of terms like "real gamer" and "true gamer" just reflect on those different reference pools. It's a poor phrasing that basically just means "a different subset of gamers based on the games they most prominently play and/or the behaviors they display".
When you put it that way...
Yes, presenting it as just "received a death threat" is a problem, because it's a criminal act punishable by law. And I doubt it was the first time.
@GlennMagusHarvey:
There definitely has been a noticeable ingroup bias on both extremes. We're always willing to call out the assholes on the "other" group, but it's harder to notice or care about the ones that we identify with.
Female gamers have been regularly complaining about these issues for a long time now, so the calling out is coming from inside the house. Said calls are often ignored because of the hardcore types ostracising women and minority groups. Painting sexism complaints as something only the "other" does is not productive, nor is acting as if gaming is Ferguson.
Well I think that the coherence of a group (and it's self-defense) is partly influenced by the...well, how much there is an impulse to stick together. And usually there's more impulse to stick together the smaller or more specific the community is.
re death threats
I don't think that some people realize that death threats are criminal acts punishable by law. At the very least, they don't think it through when they're actually talking about doxxing someone and then going to their house to kill them, as an internet threat. It's probably just a natural escalation of threat posturing.
That said, I'm not saying the law should be lenient on them. It absolutely should NOT be, because death threats are pretty fucking serious, and everyone ought to learn that there are limits where you don't go even when you get really angry.
And there was simply no way that could last forever. Gaming is rapidly become mainstream enough that treating "gamers" as a separate category from, you know, anyone else who happens to have enough disposable income and spare time to be able to play video games will become more or less pointless.This "need for belonging" stuff basically reads as you wanting video games to be an exclusive club, a thing that divides you from other people and lets you feel superior to them. That kind of feeling is precisely what motivates most of the assholery that this is a reaction to. "Gamers" are desperate to hold on to this identity by shutting out any kind of change or criticism from people they don't consider to be part of the group.
Scrolling down the guy's timeline for ten seconds found video game jokes, but I'm sure he really does believe that everyone who's ever touched a controller belongs in the gas chamber. That other joke is clearly targeted at the (ridiculous) #gamergate hashtag and not at people who happen to play video games.I liked it when Arthur Chu referred to it as #quinnghazi.
Okay, let me ask you this, then: do you believe that it is inherently wrong for people to want to form communities based on common interest?
Because that sure as hell sounds like you do. It doesn't at all sound like you want gaming to not be an exclusive club, it sounds like you hate the very idea of there being any sort of social group based around playing video games.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the exclusive nature of the games community is a problem, but there are far better ways of solving that by destroying it altogether. Without this community, people will feel isolated and unable to connect with each other based on their shared passion. Being a "gamer" is important to many people because otherwise they would be more alone.
If you really wanted to help games become more inclusive, then you should start talking about how anyone can be a gamer, or how gamers shouldn't act like there's any such thing as a "true gamer" based on what kind of games they play. You shouldn't immediately resort to fixing gamer culture by trying to tear it down altogether: that'd be like burning your entire house down because the piping's rusty and the paint's peeling off.
[user deleted]
No. I have a problem when those communities start excluding people even though they share that interest too.
I don't hate it. I do think that "playing video games" is at this point a broad enough interest that claiming that everyone (or even a majority) of the people who partake are actually part of the same community is pretty much bullshit.
That is what this is all about. One hundred percent. The whole idea of leaving the word "gamer" behind is to stop dividing people into gamers and not-gamers. It's about throwing away the baggage of decades of asshattery and trying to start something new. Nobody wants you to stop playing video games. Nobody wants you to stop discussing video games with other people. It's about dropping the us-versus-them mentality.[user deleted]
I might have an easier time believing this if it weren't for two key reasons:
1) Getting rid of the word "gamer" isn't going to do jack shit when it comes to people acting like entitled, elitist assholes. While labels are vitally important in allowing individuals to easily assimilate themselves into a coherent group identity, they are also not synonymous with the group identity itself. Getting rid of the label might make it harder for people to coherently identify with a group, but it won't change the core of the group's essence.
2) The entire "gamers are dead" thing only started after gamer started questioning game journalists' motivations. Harassment and misogyny are real things and there are very much real bigots within the gaming community, but at the same time a lot of the people asking questions about game journalists were simply people who were otherwise skeptical. It strikes me as supremely suspicious that game journalists only started calling for an end to "gamers" after gamers began approaching them skeptically.
And who exactly are you trying to shame here? And for what?
You claim it's for the bigots within the gaming community, and on that I can certainly understand, but then why the fuck are you demanding that everyone else be dragged through the mud as well? Shame should only be given to those who have done something shameful.
[user deleted]
>us-them thinking as a mechanism that cannot be overcome
>group identity as stratified and binary
Why buy into this paradigm? It's utterly useless to obsess over ingroup/outgroup labels while you're trying to address behaviour. "There is a toxic element in the gaming community" vs. "Gamers display toxic behaviour". Which clause seems most likely to lead to a productive discussion? Inventing 'gamer privilege' is pointless, as that shit already falls under the umbrellas of sexism, racism, and the like.
Well, maybe if you didn't make disparaging statements specifically against all gamers then "not all gamers" wouldn't be a completely valid counterargument. "Not all X" is a bad argument because most of the time people aren't talking about all members of group X, only that group X has a problem in remaining complicit about the bad members. But in this particular instance you've just admitted that you mean all gamers.
If you were to say "gamer culture has a problem with misogyny" I would agree with you. If you were to say "gamers should put in more of an active effort to call out those who act like bigots" I would agree with you. I am on your side on these issues.
But if you're going to say that every gamer needs to be punished? Not just encouraged to call out the bad apples, but punished? I can't even begin to articulate just how disproportionate and extreme you're being right here. This is something you would expect from an anti-feminist strawman, not an actual person.
I don't understand how you leap from "people should stop using the term 'gamer'" to "gamers must be punished"...?
[user deleted]
Mostly because of the shame element that @Kraken mentioned. If you don't really think that there's a point to the label "gamer", I don't have a problem with that, but trying to force shame onto people who find it meaningful to them it isn't really justified, IMO. As @InsanityAddict said, there are better ways to go about this whole thing.
I apologize if I ended up getting upset or yelling at anyone (more like using bolded text, but I digress), but as someone who's played video games for all my life being a "gamer" is something meaningful to me and I really can't just abandon it.
I'll always do my best to be productive in helping curb the abusive and sexist behavior within games, and I'll always strive to be the best person I can myself, but I'll never be ashamed of being a gamer and I'll never abandon it because it does mean something special to me.
People have been complaining about game journalism for years for various sorts of bias. People have been questioning journalism in general for even longer. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are still on the air, and people have become fatigued with journalistic corruption in generally after using Outrage too many times. This manufactroversy isn't special. Gamers are not special. So naturally, I'd suspect ulterior motives considering the disproportionate anger towards #quinnghazi compared to the many, many other bullshit game reviews in the past.
I'll admit that there were a lot of anti-feminist assholes that jumped on the bandwagon as soon as the initial blog post revealed itself, and I won't pretend that I condone or agree with their stance.
However, one of the major events that jumpstarted the controversy is that immediately after the initial post, major sites like Reddit and even 4chan started blocking out any and all discussion of the event, regardless of whether it actually constituted harassment or not. This was what ultimately led to most of the outrage, not the fact that the whole thing happened, but the fact that they went through such great lengths to shut down the issue. The Streisand Effect was definitely in full force here, and if it weren't for that I highly doubt this would have ever reached the sheer levels of flame-warring that it has now.
If it weren't for this major issue, I would have agreed with you on this.
I wonder if a similar thing is going to happen to the anime fandom at some point.
Because anime is pretty much as diverse of a medium as gaming is, and it's also rapidly changing from a niche interest into mainstream notability.
That name is even stupider than #gamergate. I did not know that was possible.
I think the movement to go beyond this term needs to do a better job with getting this message across -- that it's about a "post-'gamer' world" rather than being against playing games.
(I don't think that this movement's goal is all that important, personally, but I'm just saying, if I were to do this, I'd do it that way.)
I definitely agree about this -- getting rid of one label doesn't mean you'll get rid of the factionalism. Maybe it'll die down a bit but then very soon someone will come up with a new label.
Miyazaki and shonen have been mainstream for a long time, and anime has had a substantial influence on American blockbuster films since at least The Matrix. So it's not necessarily "changing", but partially a greater acknowledgement of that influence. Also, a lot of anime fans are pretty bad at marketing to say the least.
"Anime" is a far more narrow term than "video games" considering it refers to things from one specific country, so even if more people watch it, it can only get so big.
Honestly I wouldn't say it's a very good comparison due to the whole "specific country of origin" thing. Which also means "mainstreamness" varies based on geography, and I don't just mean "Japan versus not Japan".
The anime fandom has the circus about otaku pandering and cultural appropriation(seriously, does no-one remember the debacle surrounding loli stuff on this very site?).
I don't really understand how pedophilia is related to cultural appropriation. I mean, yeah, it's bad, but it's not the same.
They're two separate controversies, but there probably are folks who consider it part of the same oppressive system, ie overprivileged white males believing they have the right to nubile bodies and the cultural heritage of others.
Re: Otaku pandering,
I'm not an avid comics book reader, but nerd pandering reminds me of Spider-Man's infamous One More Day storyline in which Spidey makes a deal with the devil just so the powers that be could dissolve his marriage with Mary Jane (rather than, you know, having them get a divorce). The whole thing makes me wonder, if the fans are ready for more adult Spider-Man stories, yet the editors insist on keeping him a perpetual teenager, who's really culpable for nerd fandom immaturity? I know there's no one culprit, but it seems that nerd media producers do a good job of alienating people outside the adolescent/young adult white male demographic.
-obligatory JacobinMag post-
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/death-to-the-gamer/