Is Gaming Leaving Gamers Behind? [linked article]

TheLizardbones · September 2014

Originally posted by Torvaldr
Originally posted by Nadia
related to her conclusion

(Videogames) are becoming simply another medium—one with no inherent bias towards any group. In twenty years, it may sound as old-fashioned to call someone a “gamer” as it is to call someone a “moviegoer”.

disagree with her conclusion,

a common phrase with boardgaming meetups are "go unplugged" - play boardgames

implying a negative bias with video games

videogames will always be a subculture (as will be boardgaming)

in my biased opinion, from 40 years ago,

Pong in the 70s had a similar subculture to anyone playing WOW or Grand Theft Auto 5

I agree. For the last 35 - 40 years it's been a sub-culture and not one with a positive or respected label. What I see now are a bunch of hipster bloggers and "journalists" trying to gather clicks and make themselves relevant and riding on the gamer to get there.

There is also this whole fiasco as well that is trying to pin widespread human issues on a sub-culture: http://kotaku.com/over-600-game-creators-call-for-an-end-to-hateful-har-1629371868

Meanwhile, back at the Hall of Justice, gamers are just playing games with friends like they always have. If people want to buy into some guys opinion that gaming/gamers are dead, or because there are a few douche-bags or loudmouths that being labeled a gamer should be anathema, go for it. It's always been a spurned title imo. I'll keep playing games and stay out of the hipster culture part of it.

You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones

aiming that people like me are afraid of new features I am busy on Wurm fucking TERRAFORMING!!

I'm not trying to nitpick, but that really looks like a statement of "there are new features over there, but I like these new features over here".

LFD/LFR is a feature that allows players to join dungeons and raids with groups of people without having to manually put the groups together using just chat. It allows players to slot themselves into specific roles. Combined with a system of tiered dungeons and raids where players can stumble through or focus a lot of time on them, it allows a much higher percentage of a game's population to enjoy dungeons and raids.

I guess one could argue that the features in game X are not appealing to some gamers and thus they move to games with feature Y instead.

However, to decribe that as 'gamers leaving because they dont like new features' is being disingenuous at best.

Now regardless of the reality of it let me tell you the immutable truth on my PERCEPTION and WHY I left AAA games. To be clear, what I am about say can be completely dilusional but the quesiton is 'WHY' did they leave and a 'why' in this context depends on how we (or I in this case) perceive the situation.

I left AAA gaming because they felt TO ME like they lacked innovation and repeated the same forumla over and over again. I FELT that the indie games had more interesting innovation to offer and I enjoy my game play more.

Now regardless of if indie games really are more innovation or not the answer to the question of WHY did I leave is NOT because I didnt like new features. In fact, in my mind it was the exact opposite.

Now...why would I have that impression if its is inncorrect?

LFR...my idea of innovation is not a tool that adds to the raiding mechanic but perhaps thinking of not having a raid at all and doing something completely different. LFR is like adding a AC to the back seat of a car when I want to drive a motorcycle

I tried to make a distinction between "game play" features and features "in general". There is new "stuff". A lot of it isn't game play, but things surrounding or supporting existing game play. I would say that supporting existing game play is an indicator that the game play has matured. It needs to be supported and improved, but doesn't need the dramatic changes that are an indicator of a genre "growing up" rather than "being mature". Not to improve sales or increase the number of players at any rate.

That's what we need Indie developers to do. They need to innovate and shake things up because that's how they are going to sell their games. MMORPGs are in the position of being the most expensive type of game to produce though. It makes it really hard for indie developers to even make an MMORPG, much less innovate something and be successful at it.

I'm not sure what to say about the behavior referenced in the article. Compare that behavior to the home computer market around say, 1983. Everyone I talked to and hung around with (in user groups no less) simply assumed that one day everyone would have a home computer. We rolled our eyes at people who thought you could create an artificial intelligence with a Commodor 64, but we knew that eventually computers would be ubiquitous. I don't recall anyone threatening anyone with rape, murder, torture, etc. because they wanted to buy a computer, no matter who they were. We weren't threatened by moms buying computers to keep recipes. That stuff is very disappointing, but at the same time, it is an indicator that the, I'm going to call it "fundamental" point of view, in gaming is dying. It will be a relief when it's finally dead so I can get on with playing games and I won't have to think about the social ramifications of what I'm doing.

My response to this sub-topic is related to what is in yellow below

-------------------------------------------

Originally posted by Azaron_Nightblade
Originally posted by Torvaldr
I'm not an mmo gamer. I'm a gamer. I was a gamer before PCs and computer games were mainstream. Gaming hasn't left gamers behind. Gaming has left behind the same demographics it always has, those that are stuck in a pocket refusing to progress. Gaming has never been static or stagnant. Those who refuse to accept that reality are marginalized and left behind.

I have to agree with you.

A lot of the "MMO's are on decline/stagnant/etc..." comments come from people who disregard any new features they don't like.

More MMO's coming out with systems they don't like? "MMO's are dying, it's clear! Everyone can see it!"

I've enjoyed the old games, and I'm enjoying the new ones now.

I dont think its that we like new features because the problem with that comment is that you actually need new features in order for there to be new features. I think the problem we have is a LACK of new features.

----------------------------------

the explict reason in my head why I stopped playing ArcheAge is because to me it felt like I was playing nothing more than an expansion pack to EQ2 from 2006. Which makes me feel that the comment in yellow is an EXACT opposite of my reasons.

That might clear it up a bit, we might be talking about two different things

Nadia · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

another lucrative subculture - Trading Card Games

Konami’s Yu-Gi-Oh! $26 Billion in Sales in North America

http://www.toydirectory.com/monthly/article.asp?id=1021

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by Nadia
Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

I think both sides have a point.

On one side it is a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing and will before to long be an activity that everyone does now and again like TV.

However, gaming is my hobby and I put a ton of time into it. More than any hobby my parents or grandparents had. So with that if I cant call myself a gamer what am I supposed to be called?

TheLizardbones · September 2014

Originally posted by Nadia
Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

I am using the term "sub-culture" wrong. Kind of the way people will use "niche" to mean "small" when it doesn't necessarily mean "small". Video gaming has been a billion dollar industry since before Y2K. It's a sub-culture, but it's not a small or cheap sub-culture.

CrazKanuk · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Nadia
Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

I am using the term "sub-culture" wrong. Kind of the way people will use "niche" to mean "small" when it doesn't necessarily mean "small". Video gaming has been a billion dollar industry since before Y2K. It's a sub-culture, but it's not a small or cheap sub-culture.

Meeeeeh, ESRB actually says that 2/3 of households play games. NPD says that 91% of youth 2-17 years old play games. I think that games ARE culture. The sub-cultures are probably the variations on the different types of gaming systems.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by CrazKanuk
Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Nadia
Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

I am using the term "sub-culture" wrong. Kind of the way people will use "niche" to mean "small" when it doesn't necessarily mean "small". Video gaming has been a billion dollar industry since before Y2K. It's a sub-culture, but it's not a small or cheap sub-culture.

Meeeeeh, ESRB actually says that 2/3 of households play games. NPD says that 91% of youth 2-17 years old play games. I think that games ARE culture. The sub-cultures are probably the variations on the different types of gaming systems.

I would agree however there is a difference between people who like movies and a movie buff.

Many of us here at MMORPG this is our full time hobby and if we didnt have to work it would consume most of our daily life.

Are we gamer buffs?

iridescence · September 2014

Usually subcultures mean people share certain specific interest and build up certain commonalities based on that (their own jargon/style of dress etc.). "Gamers" are so diverse in the types of games they play and things they enjoy I don't think they have much in common. It would be far more accurate to refer to "MMO players" or players of say Minecraft or Call of Duty as their own distinct subcultures.

Really talking about "gamers" as a cultural group makes about as much sense as talking about "book readers" or "movie watchers". I'll be happy if this antiquated term just dies out.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by iridescence
Usually subcultures mean people share certain specific interest and build up certain commonalities based on that (their own jargon/style of dress etc.). "Gamers" are so diverse in the types of games they play and things they enjoy I don't think they have much in common. It would be far more accurate to refer to "MMO players" or players of say Minecraft or Call of Duty as their own distinct subcultures.

Really talking about "gamers" as a cultural group makes about as much sense as talking about "book readers" or "movie watchers". I'll be happy if this antiquated term just dies out.

book worm = someone who reads a lot

movie buff = someone who likes a lot of movies

gamer = someone who games a lot.

It sounds like the media at the moment has a problem with the word 'gamer' to describe the same thing the other examples are providing. would they be less offended if we just called ourselves 'game buffs'?

understand 'Gamer' currently dosent imply people who are not 'gamers' dont play games. it implies that 'gamers' makes games a hobby.

People should stop getting suck into whatever the media says

Nadia · September 2014

I'm willing to challenge being called a Gamer (regardless of what you play or platform)

will not lose its negative stigma with the mass population of adults

videogames to me are like comic collecting (but a bigger market)

they both have billions of fans

but i still get the same strange looks from adult nongamers

when i tell them i'm a gamer -- which is equivalent to me telling the same people

I play Dungeons and Dragons !

I'm happy with my recreational choices, i dont care that most adults cannot relate

To declare that you spent a weekend playing video games to some would make it seem as though you’d partaken in a slovenly and perhaps slightly shameful activity, but saying you spent a weekend watching sports, it would seem to almost everyone that you had committed your weekend to an entirely socially acceptable activity, even though the difference between these two activities is not all that great.

In fact you could argue that if you had spent your weekend playing video games as opposed to watching sports you would probably have gotten more mental exercise. However, when these are the prejudices held against people who would play video games on a regular basis, it’s understandable how those who have dedicated a large portion of their lives to video games haven’t exactly been met with praise and admiration.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by Nadia
I'm willing to challenge being called a Gamer (regardless of what you play or platform)

will not lose its negative stigma with the mass population of adults

videogames to me are like comic collecting (but a bigger market)

they both have billions of fans

but i still get the same strange looks from adult nongamers

when i tell them i'm a gamer -- which is equivalent to me telling the same people

I play Dungeons and Dragons !

I'm happy with my recreational choices, i dont care that most adults cannot relate

related article

http://www.giantbomb.com/profile/gamer_152/blog/the-stigma-surrounding-video-games-and-how-to-stop/72902/

To declare that you spent a weekend playing video games to some would make it seem as though you’d partaken in a slovenly and perhaps slightly shameful activity, but saying you spent a weekend watching sports, it would seem to almost everyone that you had committed your weekend to an entirely socially acceptable activity, even though the difference between these two activities is not all that great.

In fact you could argue that if you had spent your weekend playing video games as opposed to watching sports you would probably have gotten more mental exercise. However, when these are the prejudices held against people who would play video games on a regular basis, it’s understandable how those who have dedicated a large portion of their lives to video games haven’t exactly been met with praise and admiration.

it is getting better but your insight is dead on. I told someone I didnt know very well that I was a gamer without hesitation or embarrassing subtext for the first time only a few years ago. I am now proud to call myself a gamer, its only the most significant innovation in leisure time ever created in the history of mankind.

I do wish there was less murder simulators in the industry, it does get tiring and I get tired of having to explain that I am not a serial killer.

TheLizardbones · September 2014

Originally posted by SEANMCAD
Originally posted by CrazKanuk
Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Nadia
Originally posted by lizardbones
You don't spend billions of dollars on a sub-culture.

guess it depends on your definition of subculture

I think console gamers are a subculture -- and thats a billion dollar industry

I am using the term "sub-culture" wrong. Kind of the way people will use "niche" to mean "small" when it doesn't necessarily mean "small". Video gaming has been a billion dollar industry since before Y2K. It's a sub-culture, but it's not a small or cheap sub-culture.

Meeeeeh, ESRB actually says that 2/3 of households play games. NPD says that 91% of youth 2-17 years old play games. I think that games ARE culture. The sub-cultures are probably the variations on the different types of gaming systems.

I would agree however there is a difference between people who like movies and a movie buff.

Many of us here at MMORPG this is our full time hobby and if we didnt have to work it would consume most of our daily life.

Are we gamer buffs?

I will keep the "Gamer" self designation as long as possible. I don't usually get uptight about particular words, but I'm not going to be happy being called a "Gaming Buff".

So "Gamers" are a subculture, but "Gaming" is not. I think that is where the conflict lies. This is new for gaming and gamers. There is viniculture and wine snobs, but a lot of people just drink wine. There are car aficionados, but nearly everyone drives a car. Gaming is moving into an area where there are "Gamers", but many people play video games. The same thing is probably going to happen with mead, though probably without the vitriol and negativity.

**

I don't think gamers in general are opposed to the idea of many people playing video games, but I think many of them are opposed to the idea of people who are not gamers directing the market on styles and trends in gaming because of the money that non-gamers are spending on video games.

Nadia · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones

I don't think gamers in general are opposed to the idea of many people playing video games, but I think many of them are opposed to the idea of people who are not gamers directing the market on styles and trends in gaming because of the money that non-gamers are spending on video games.

no question there are money grabs,

but that's always been the case (example movie tie ins - w books / games / candy )

online gaming is more popular than it's ever been thanks to social media sites like facebook, Browser games, and the emergence of mobile gaming like Candy Crush.

but i haven't seen this nongamer popularity impact new pc games (or maybe my head is in the sand )

disclaimer -

I'm not counting adding new features to existing games, like WOW Pokemon battles

even EQ had the minigame gems (a derivative of TETRIS) for downtime 10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YFeSnvYXFU

nongamers are not going to fork over $40.00 for a videogame unless its something like The Sims

AlBQuirky · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
I will keep the "Gamer" self designation as long as possible. I don't usually get uptight about particular words, but I'm not going to be happy being called a "Gaming Buff".

Would being called "Buff Gamer" suit better?

TheLizardbones · September 2014

I do not think anyone is going to look at me and think "Buff" anything.

Acidon · September 2014

Originally posted by Harafnir
Weird analogy, and weird thinking. "Its like movies, but only science fiction! Now its all kinds of movies!" The correct analogy would be:

Ffor 50 years a group of people have loved going to the movies, to see all kinds of stories. Then, suddenly compaines start to focus on a new consumer group, an untapped market to see where that will lead. So they begin to make movies for people that do not like movies. And it is quite succesful, a lot of people that do not like movies and do not have the attention span to sit still and actually watch the movie for any length of time, suddenly start to buy tickets. Only problem is, all the people that actually did like movies have very few movies to see nowadays. And they get upset not a single company care about the actual movie lovers, and they feel they have nothing to see that is not catered to uninterested people with a short attention span.

In short... We wanted more Easy Rider, Star Wars and The Iron Cross. Instead we have a full market with slightly different American Pie.

There is a more correct movie analogy

Excellent analogy. Very well put.

I tend to agree with the direction the OP was going. There aren't enough of us "old guard" to matter to the money men, and that is understandable from a business point of view. It's very unfortunate, for the few, but I would go as far as to say it was inevitable. I guess I'm less bitter these days because I've finally come to accept what happened a decade ago. Yeah it took me a while. I'm still bitter.. Just less so.

As I have said before, though it's a very unpopular thing to say, if you weren't around for the firsts you just can't fully understand how much better the communities were and how much better online gaming was. No matter how much you want that not to be true, it is.

I hold no contempt for the new generation of 'gamers'. Not anymore anyway. I just tell things like they are.

Beatnik59 · September 2014

Originally posted by SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Beatnik59
This whole "gaming leaving gamers behind" stuff coming out in the game press has nothing to do with the mechanics, gameplay, time or any of that. There's no reason to think, from what I've seen, that the game industry wants to do away with hardcore fandom, DLC, massive hours on treadmills, etc.

This has got to do with satisfying the claims of critics, typically feminist critics and old-school conservative moralists, that there's too much erotica, too much violence against women, too much gore, too much dirty language and so on. Their argument is basically that these games are transforming us into these 'misogynerds' that say abusive things to women and threaten violence over Twitter. It is basically Jack Thompson 2.0 ... except this time, Jack Thompson wears lipstick and subscribes to Ms. Magazine, and the gaming press is taking Jack Thompson's side.

The problem is, of course, that the feminist critics of gaming, like Anita Sarkeesian, are so obsessed with how women are portrayed, they fail to see how the games have, over the course of ten years, stripped out the things that women liked to do. Where is the entertainer class today? Where is crafting? Where is starting your own business? Where are the options for a deeper roleplaying experience? Because we used to have it, women (and men, also) used to like it, and we don't have that anymore.

Frankly, I think the best solution to all of this is to get back to sandbox...get back to something that includes other, non-combat activities and promotes community. Early SWG was a very friendly game to female interests. CoH was friendly to them too. But we don't have those games anymore because they've all been stripped of everything that wasn't "combat combat combat" all the time.

And so, rather than lobby to give women more reasons to play in these environments, thereby giving women the ability to influence the community from the inside, these critics would rather have women influence these communities from the outside, by taking issue with things like bare midriffs, female-gendered MOBs that we kill, hypersexualized renditions, etc. And this approach, in my opinion, is doing much more harm than good.

/EndRant

completely disagree on multiple points.

1. (given the reaction toward Anita's points) which if you watch her videos is nearly 90% just showing obvious things with NO opinion on the matter at all. just an illustration. Its pretty clear that because of the outrage toward her that there is some fucked up problem and it aint with her.

2. There is to much violence in video games...full stop...and NOT because of any morality behind it. Its just 99.9% of all video games and its far over done, much over rated, tiring and now flat out fucking boring. yawn

Yes, I agree there's some "fucked up problem," but it's not the problem we think it is.

Probably the best "anti-gamer" article I read on all this was on Jacobin, not because I agree with all of it, but at least its honest enough to identify the real problem here...and it wasn't "violence against women," but an assembly line, consumerist fandom that has identified so strongly with the status-quo product, it can no longer imagine anything else.

Fair enough, but when you start to realize that games (specifically MMOs) were--at one time--something more, something female-friendly, and something that encouraged roleplay, discourse between the sexes, and creativity, you find out that the true enemy isn't "gamers", but an industry that has taken out reasons for females to even be in the games males play.

Note that I said "taken out"...this was a conscious removal. And the reason I can say this is because I played games like CoH and SWG that had housewives, female students, ballet dancers, elderly ladies and professionals play...alongside their children, no less, in games with bare midriffs, female MOBs and "tropes" included.

I don't see that kind of player in today's games, for the reasons I laid out initially...it has nothing to do with tropes, it's that there's nothing here in the genre for them anymore. It has all been taken out and put on Facebook via Zinga, with some of the most exploitive F2P mechanics ever seen in gaming, playing on a woman's natural sense of empathy. If you want to see the exploitation of women in gaming, THERE IT SITS. But if the exploitation of women is there, why isn't Feminist Frequency there?

Because Feminist Frequency is not about critiquing the way the industry exploits women, men, or any other demographic for financial gain. Feminist Frequency is incapable of seeing the genuine exploitation that is there...only this kind of "faux exploitation" based on how images of women are used. The channel is about promoting the myth that gaming is some sort of "art" that needs to conform to some bourgeois notion of pluralism...not a real pluralism, but an academically derived, sterile pluralism. Except, of course, it isn't art. It's a multi-billion dollar industry with horrendous working conditions inside of it, based on vapid consumerism. The industry was, at one time, about more. But those times have passed, at least in the MMO community, and all we are left with is exploitation.

Now that we have removed the women and gave men MMOs about combat only, you have a problem. What do you do when you remove the women? Well, you start to replace them with eye candy...but the eye candy has a purpose. It gives the male target audience (sexually active males) some libido reward for the effort they put in. You make the tasks grueling, but you reward the tasks by showing a pretty girl in something erotically pleasing...for a lot of men (unfashionable, poor or uneducated men) it is the only girl they have. And the games allow them to indulge a fantasy of having a relationship with them. Is it healthy? I can see both sides of it, but one thing it's not is unpopular.

So when a pretty, white, upper-middle class bourgeois, highly educated woman starts to make the case that it is, somehow, wrong for game companies to produce this, and that it is, somehow, wrong for the above males to like this, you get a reaction similar to Marie Antoinette telling the sans culottes to "eat cake." "Libidinal satisfaction for me, but not for thee" seems to be the subtext that typical gamers see in Ms. Sarkeesian's work, even if that wasn't her intention.

Does that excuse the threat that prompted her departure from her home? No. Honestly, I don't think she is a bad person, but you have to wonder why--after just completing a series on the misogynistic inference when games use "the damsel in distress" as a motivation--she would willingly air out such abuse on Twitter, becoming the very damsel she criticized?

Perhaps because, subconsciously, she is nothing other than a bourgeois woman, a woman who has value, who is driven subconsciously to start a war to protect her status. She, unwittingly, delivered gaming into patriarchal norms. As the face that launched 1,000 Tweets, she pitted man against man, woman against woman, developer against developer, in perhaps the biggest patriarchal, realtime game in the history of gaming, carried out on Twitter. "Pick your role and fight the endless hordes of 'misogynerds' and do battle with bosses like MundaneMatt and Christina Hoff-Sommer! Save the world and defend the virtue of a white, upper-middle class, pretty woman!" Can't you see, man, how this is becoming absurd? This war is for what, really? Women in gaming? Or is it to solidify the power-elite in gaming against the criticism it brought upon itself?

Yes, I have sympathy for Ms. Sarkeesian, but my sympathy is that she has become a pawn in a game that is not her own...and that women like my mother (who got taken to the cleaners in a browser-based Facebook game) are going to be exploited twice as hard, because everybody is thinking that the exploitation of women has to do with things like dancing girls in GTA, and NOT about a sensitive young girl who sees a fox trapped in her yard, and needs to spend money to free it, or watch it die.

Make no mistake here, friend. The real feminists know what the deal is here, and they know that if women are going to have any shot at participating in this industry, we have to get rid of the "old boy network" and nepotism that colludes, locks out discourse, and separates people from production. It is not enough to play "rally around the flag" with a fashionable media personality in the effort to look like "good people" when we do.

We have to do more...gamers of all genders deserve more.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by Beatnik59
rant..

Again I can not stress this point enough and it will save you from a lot of over texting and over thinking.

If you watch her video she RARELY makes a value judgement. Most of what she does is illustrate.

So for example she might say something like, 'in game X woman was killed' she does NOT say that its bad or good. The people who do not watch her video ASSUME she is making an overly judgemental value statement when in fact all she is doing is showing you where the grass is green.

Its like attacking me for giving someone a list of games that are violent and NOT MAKING ANY VALUE STATEMENT ON THAT LIST

people who ASSUME I am making a value statement based on a provided list are usually having an internal value confilict themselves. Not me.

does that make sense?

so for people to get enraged over someone pointing out that there are no female leads in games is nearly hysterical.

She is not saying there SHOULD female lead roles she is just saying there are NOT any. So people getting upset at that seem to be very confused

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
I do not think anyone is going to look at me and think, "Buff" anything.

gameaphile!

yeah it pretty much ticks me off when the media can convince large number of people that a word inapproate so then we have to find another word that means the same fucking thing just so we can communicate.

like..sandbox

TheLizardbones · September 2014

Originally posted by Beatnik59
Originally posted by SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Beatnik59
This whole "gaming leaving gamers behind" stuff coming out in the game press has nothing to do with the mechanics, gameplay, time or any of that. There's no reason to think, from what I've seen, that the game industry wants to do away with hardcore fandom, DLC, massive hours on treadmills, etc.

This has got to do with satisfying the claims of critics, typically feminist critics and old-school conservative moralists, that there's too much erotica, too much violence against women, too much gore, too much dirty language and so on. Their argument is basically that these games are transforming us into these 'misogynerds' that say abusive things to women and threaten violence over Twitter. It is basically Jack Thompson 2.0 ... except this time, Jack Thompson wears lipstick and subscribes to Ms. Magazine, and the gaming press is taking Jack Thompson's side.

The problem is, of course, that the feminist critics of gaming, like Anita Sarkeesian, are so obsessed with how women are portrayed, they fail to see how the games have, over the course of ten years, stripped out the things that women liked to do. Where is the entertainer class today? Where is crafting? Where is starting your own business? Where are the options for a deeper roleplaying experience? Because we used to have it, women (and men, also) used to like it, and we don't have that anymore.

Frankly, I think the best solution to all of this is to get back to sandbox...get back to something that includes other, non-combat activities and promotes community. Early SWG was a very friendly game to female interests. CoH was friendly to them too. But we don't have those games anymore because they've all been stripped of everything that wasn't "combat combat combat" all the time.

And so, rather than lobby to give women more reasons to play in these environments, thereby giving women the ability to influence the community from the inside, these critics would rather have women influence these communities from the outside, by taking issue with things like bare midriffs, female-gendered MOBs that we kill, hypersexualized renditions, etc. And this approach, in my opinion, is doing much more harm than good.

/EndRant

completely disagree on multiple points.

1. (given the reaction toward Anita's points) which if you watch her videos is nearly 90% just showing obvious things with NO opinion on the matter at all. just an illustration. Its pretty clear that because of the outrage toward her that there is some fucked up problem and it aint with her.

2. There is to much violence in video games...full stop...and NOT because of any morality behind it. Its just 99.9% of all video games and its far over done, much over rated, tiring and now flat out fucking boring. yawn

Yes, I agree there's some "fucked up problem," but it's not the problem we think it is.

Probably the best "anti-gamer" article I read on all this was on Jacobin, not because I agree with all of it, but at least its honest enough to identify the real problem here...and it wasn't "violence against women," but an assembly line, consumerist fandom that has identified so strongly with the status-quo product, it can no longer imagine anything else.

Fair enough, but when you start to realize that games (specifically MMOs) were--at one time--something more, something female-friendly, and something that encouraged roleplay, discourse between the sexes, and creativity, you find out that the true enemy isn't "gamers", but an industry that has taken out reasons for females to even be in the games males play.

Note that I said "taken out"...this was a conscious removal. And the reason I can say this is because I played games like CoH and SWG that had housewives, female students, ballet dancers, elderly ladies and professionals play...alongside their children, no less, in games with bare midriffs, female MOBs and "tropes" included.

I don't see that kind of player in today's games, for the reasons I laid out initially...it has nothing to do with tropes, it's that there's nothing here in the genre for them anymore. It has all been taken out and put on Facebook via Zinga, with some of the most exploitive F2P mechanics ever seen in gaming, playing on a woman's natural sense of empathy. If you want to see the exploitation of women in gaming, THERE IT SITS. But if the exploitation of women is there, why isn't Feminist Frequency there?

Because Feminist Frequency is not about critiquing the way the industry exploits women, men, or any other demographic for financial gain. Feminist Frequency is incapable of seeing the genuine exploitation that is there...only this kind of "faux exploitation" based on how images of women are used. The channel is about promoting the myth that gaming is some sort of "art" that needs to conform to some bourgeois notion of pluralism...not a real pluralism, but an academically derived, sterile pluralism. Except, of course, it isn't art. It's a multi-billion dollar industry with horrendous working conditions inside of it, based on vapid consumerism. The industry was, at one time, about more. But those times have passed, at least in the MMO community, and all we are left with is exploitation.

Now that we have removed the women and gave men MMOs about combat only, you have a problem. What do you do when you remove the women? Well, you start to replace them with eye candy...but the eye candy has a purpose. It gives the male target audience (sexually active males) some libido reward for the effort they put in. You make the tasks grueling, but you reward the tasks by showing a pretty girl in something erotically pleasing...for a lot of men (unfashionable, poor or uneducated men) it is the only girl they have. And the games allow them to indulge a fantasy of having a relationship with them. Is it healthy? I can see both sides of it, but one thing it's not is unpopular.

So when a pretty, white, upper-middle class bourgeois, highly educated woman starts to make the case that it is, somehow, wrong for game companies to produce this, and that it is, somehow, wrong for the above males to like this, you get a reaction similar to Marie Antoinette telling the sans culottes to "eat cake." "Libidinal satisfaction for me, but not for thee" seems to be the subtext that typical gamers see in Ms. Sarkeesian's work, even if that wasn't her intention.

Does that excuse the threat that prompted her departure from her home? No. Honestly, I don't think she is a bad person, but you have to wonder why--after just completing a series on the misogynistic inference when games use "the damsel in distress" as a motivation--she would willingly air out such abuse on Twitter, becoming the very damsel she criticized?

Perhaps because, subconsciously, she is nothing other than a bourgeois woman, a woman who has value, who is driven subconsciously to start a war to protect her status. She, unwittingly, delivered gaming into patriarchal norms. As the face that launched 1,000 Tweets, she pitted man against man, woman against woman, developer against developer, in perhaps the biggest patriarchal, realtime game in the history of gaming, carried out on Twitter. "Pick your role and fight the endless hordes of 'misogynerds' and do battle with bosses like MundaneMatt and Christina Hoff-Sommer! Save the world and defend the virtue of a white, upper-middle class, pretty woman!" Can't you see, man, how this is becoming absurd? This war is for what, really? Women in gaming? Or is it to solidify the power-elite in gaming against the criticism it brought upon itself?

Yes, I have sympathy for Ms. Sarkeesian, but my sympathy is that she has become a pawn in a game that is not her own...and that women like my mother (who got taken to the cleaners in a browser-based Facebook game) are going to be exploited twice as hard, because everybody is thinking that the exploitation of women has to do with things like dancing girls in GTA, and NOT about a sensitive young girl who sees a fox trapped in her yard, and needs to spend money to free it, or watch it die.

Make no mistake here, friend. The real feminists know what the deal is here, and they know that if women are going to have any shot at participating in this industry, we have to get rid of the "old boy network" and nepotism that colludes, locks out discourse, and separates people from production. It is not enough to play "rally around the flag" with a fashionable media personality in the effort to look like "good people" when we do.

We have to do more...gamers of all genders deserve more.

It would be a lot easier to take all of this more seriously if instead of talking about the person who made the videos you talked about the content of the videos. It would help if you discussed the response to her videos in more detail rather than her response to that response, which included death threats that the FBI felt were credible. Maybe discuss how all of that relates to the video game genre expanding to start including more people from all walks of life and how the much smaller segment of gamers now feels disenfranchised.

But no, you blame the response to one set of videos on her, and even there you imply that she's not even responsible for her own thoughts. Me thinks you have focused a little too much attention on one person to be taken seriously.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
Originally posted by Beatnik59

It would be a lot easier to take all of this more seriously if instead of talking about the person who made the videos you talked about the content of the videos. It would help if you discussed the response to her videos in more detail rather than her response to that response, which included death threats that the FBI felt were credible. Maybe discuss how all of that relates to the video game genre expanding to start including more people from all walks of life and how the much smaller segment of gamers now feels disenfranchised.

But no, you blame the response to one set of videos on her, and even there you imply that she's not even responsible for her own thoughts. Me thinks you have focused a little too much attention on one person to be taken seriously.

Here is a simplified version of how I see it after I had watched one of her videos

Vbloger: 'here is a list of all the video games with a male lead, here is a list of video games with a female lead'

Commmunity 1: 'how DARE you...you bitch!'

end ..full stop.

it makes no sense.

udon · September 2014

Originally posted by SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Raelln
Originally posted by SEANMCAD
like what? terraforming? advanced farming maybe? oh wait I know, animal husbandry right?

no..I know...classes!....lol

I can see you are really interested in having a meaningful conversation.

I'd list a few new features that have shown up in content patches/expansions/new game releases but I have a feeling you'll just deride them claiming they were insignificant or damaging to the genre.

wait..i know day night cycle!

sorry I know this will sound sarcastic and an advertisement but its not

'sorry bro I play Wurm and that increases the baseline for feature expectations tremendously, there is nothing new from the mainstream MMO world'

I think "there is nothing new from the mainstream MMO world that I like" is a better way to put it. For instance personal story, full motion video cut scenes and use of phasing to tell a more detailed personal story are all examples of things from the mainstream market (because they cost a ton to make) that like it or hate it you can't deny is new.

Markets change over time and evolve or stagnate and die. It sucks if your one of the people who liked things the way they are and is great if you are one of the people who the market opens up to include.

SEANMCAD · September 2014

Originally posted by udon
Originally posted by SEANMCAD
Originally posted by Raelln
Originally posted by SEANMCAD
like what? terraforming? advanced farming maybe? oh wait I know, animal husbandry right?

no..I know...classes!....lol

I can see you are really interested in having a meaningful conversation.

I'd list a few new features that have shown up in content patches/expansions/new game releases but I have a feeling you'll just deride them claiming they were insignificant or damaging to the genre.

wait..i know day night cycle!

sorry I know this will sound sarcastic and an advertisement but its not

'sorry bro I play Wurm and that increases the baseline for feature expectations tremendously, there is nothing new from the mainstream MMO world'

I think "there is nothing new from the mainstream MMO world that I like" is a better way to put it. For instance personal story, full motion video cut scenes and use of phasing to tell a more detailed personal story are all examples of things from the mainstream market (because they cost a ton to make) that like it or hate it you can't deny is new.

Markets change over time and evolve or stagnate and die. It sucks if your one of the people who liked things the way they are and is great if you are one of the people who the market opens up to include.

it is true that I dont care about such features but let me give you a specific example of what I am talking about so maybe you can understand.

I bought ArcheAge, I was questing along so that I could get to level 50 to experience all the boats and stuff like that. Mind you I have experience ship combat in MMOs before, Darkfall in 2009.

Now while playing the game I was reminded on EQ2 back in 2005. Then it hit me like a rock. Wait...this is 2014 and this game feels exactly like EQ2 back in 2005.

Does that put any finer point on it at all?

Regardless if it does or not it doesnt really matter. what DOES matter is that in my head (regardless of its right or not) it FEELS to me that indie games are more innovative than mainstream and you are talking to a guy who has Oculus Rift Dk1 and DK2 and is a developer himself. On the diffusion of innovation curve I am pretty close to the 'innovation' side so to suggest I left mainstream MMOs because I am a lagard is hysterical to me.

Beatnik59 · September 2014

Originally posted by lizardbones
Me thinks you have focused a little too much attention on one person to be taken seriously.

Brother, if that were the case pretty much everyone on every side of this whole "gamers are over" cluster-fack shouldn't be taken seriously. One might even say that everybody in this whole event isn't responsible for their decisions per se; they are just falling back on their knee-jerk reactions to the detriment of any useful progress.

Beatnik59 · September 2014

Originally posted by Acidon
Originally posted by Harafnir
Weird analogy, and weird thinking. "Its like movies, but only science fiction! Now its all kinds of movies!" The correct analogy would be:

Ffor 50 years a group of people have loved going to the movies, to see all kinds of stories. Then, suddenly compaines start to focus on a new consumer group, an untapped market to see where that will lead. So they begin to make movies for people that do not like movies. And it is quite succesful, a lot of people that do not like movies and do not have the attention span to sit still and actually watch the movie for any length of time, suddenly start to buy tickets. Only problem is, all the people that actually did like movies have very few movies to see nowadays. And they get upset not a single company care about the actual movie lovers, and they feel they have nothing to see that is not catered to uninterested people with a short attention span.

In short... We wanted more Easy Rider, Star Wars and The Iron Cross. Instead we have a full market with slightly different American Pie.

There is a more correct movie analogy

Excellent analogy. Very well put.

I tend to agree with the direction the OP was going. There aren't enough of us "old guard" to matter to the money men, and that is understandable from a business point of view. It's very unfortunate, for the few, but I would go as far as to say it was inevitable. I guess I'm less bitter these days because I've finally come to accept what happened a decade ago. Yeah it took me a while. I'm still bitter.. Just less so.

As I have said before, though it's a very unpopular thing to say, if you weren't around for the firsts you just can't fully understand how much better the communities were and how much better online gaming was. No matter how much you want that not to be true, it is.

I hold no contempt for the new generation of 'gamers'. Not anymore anyway. I just tell things like they are.

I've been cynical too, but I still believe in the place where you can live a life of your own design, rather than the one you are stuck with.

MMOs were a liberation...liberation from scripted plots, liberation from necessity, liberation from your own condition. You could be who you wanted to be...human or orc, male or female, good or evil--and everything in between. You could do more than live in your world...you could build your world and build your own stories.

Somewhere along the way, all the things that we thought got left behind got put back in...scripted plots, anonymity, "life on rails." Somewhere along the way, these things became rote.

But I still believe in the dream, because it is simply too good not to do eventually. Technology and apathy with other formats will help bring it about, eventually. I'm sure of that.

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