COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer': Are The Kids Alright?
[The Aberrant Gamer is a weekly, somewhat NSFW column by Leigh Alexander, dedicated to the kinks and quirks we gamers tend to keep under our hats – those predilections and peccadilloes less commonly discussed in conventional media.]
Combine the veil of anonymity with the community elements the internet supports and you’ve often got a vocal mob. Far from being an exception, gamers are perhaps a case-in-point – off the top of your head, can you think of any other discussion topic, aside perhaps from American politics, that incites such a firestorm? An earlier Aberrant Gamer column took a look at the “hot-button issues” in the gaming community, examining those topics most likely to bunch gamer panties, and theorized that lingering social misconceptions and the fact that we still feel mostly alone in our world despite advances in networked gaming and an increasingly broader audience contributed largely to our defensive attitude and quick rise to anger.
One of the “hot-button issues” Aberrant Gamer highlighted in the past was our often unjust scrutiny at the hands of mainstream media, complete with accusations of violence, maladjustment, addiction and anti-social behavior. We’ve had to defend our favorite hobby from this kind of malign almost since its inception. We’re innocent.
Or, we were. Lately, many have found themselves asking whether, as our own society with its own set of norms and behavioral standards, gamers are approaching – if not already crossed – a line from the justifiably passionate into the alarmingly vitriolic. As certain kinds of gamer behavior, mainly online, reaches a fever pitch, many of us have found it increasingly difficult to take a defensive stance. It’s becoming harder not to ask certain questions about ourselves.
Are we crueler than we were years ago? And have we, as a society, become unhealthy?
This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
To find evidence that ought to encourage the gaming community to think twice, one need look back less than a month in recent history. Many of us have fought stereotypes of sexism and a fixation on sex for years. In other words, the old chestnut is that gamers – and games themselves – alternately exclude and objectify females. Such things cannot be entirely disproven, and both attitudes about sex and those regarding gender relations will probably be the topic of debate for quite some time in the game community, as they will likely be for human society as a whole for generations to come. That we have begun to have these dialogues is a sign, perhaps, that we are a sustainable audience, our own healthy community. And you’d think, with all these discussions, that perhaps some progress would have been made – after all, the fact that it remains an issue indicates that a good portion of gamers, if not the majority, have progressive, inclusive and constructive views on the subject.
And then, a certain webcomic crops up in response to a certain game and its producer, and somehow it sets us back to an era when games didn’t even exist. The issue doesn’t warrant any more attention than it’s already gotten, and many have expressed outrage eloquently enough, so I won’t add to it. But that particular Jade Raymond Incident was, to many, the culmination of some very subversive, very virulent attitudes into an overt act of hostility. It wasn’t simply an insult to Ms. Raymond, or to women in games; it was an insult to us all by association.
You could say that the incident was an anomalous act by a single rogue perpetrator, but couldn’t a community of the just and dignified have silenced the offender if we all shared unanimous solidarity against such behavior? Moreover, would the perpetrator have created such a thing if he or she didn’t feel there was an audience who would embrace his message? More shameful than the fact that such an image was created and propagated was the fact that an unfortunately significant percentage of our population, while condemning the image itself, said that Ms. Raymond deserved the attacks. Despite being completely unfamiliar with the capacity to which she was involved in the game and reducing her, essentially, to a spokesmodel, the opinion that she had manipulated people with her looks and deserved, along with the game developers who had made Assassin’s Creed, such harsh retribution was astoundingly prevalent.
Men will fixate on pretty women, and probably sexualize them, privately if not publicly. It’s a basic fact of human relations, and it probably will never change, and that fact in itself is no source of shame. But the potency of the hatred that showed itself like a wound on the face of our community was stunning, and I challenge anyone to argue that this incident can be overlooked without begging serious examination of our community and the messages we share amongst ourselves.
And sadly, the Jade Raymond debacle – of which, I remind, the offending webcomic was a culmination and not a beginning, as she’d already been receiving inappropriate and unfair judgment – is not the only incident that begs us to examine our culture.
Just about as nauseating is a video, only a few days old, created by a young gay man to demonstrate the way that fellow Halo 3 players spoke to and treated him because he indicated his sexual orientation in his gamertag. Obviously, in a game like Halo, players can couple verbal attacks with actual ones; the individual who was victimized in this particular situation told GayGamer.net that not only was he verbally abused, but his teammates turned on him and shot him. “You know Jesus hates you,” one attacker said. “I hope you die and burn in hell,” said another. The rest of the comments are so vulgar as to be unprintable.
One doesn’t need to watch the video to know that there are still issues of homophobia and hatred in society as a whole, but that people would use a video game as a vehicle to attack someone – and that they would do so in such a virulently hateful way – is saddening. It’s normal to feel competitive, to trash-talk, even to feel determined to take out your fellow opponent. But this is just sick.
Where Did You Learn That?
The one thread that ties all of us together in this is the fact that we love video games. Did games teach us to be so combative? Did they teach us to be violent, to attack without warning? Is the advent of networked gaming blurring the line between real people and video game characters? Can we be sure that, over time, games are not making of us reactionaries, reflexive, desensitized to human consequences? Have we killed one too many realistic CGI humans?
You positive?
Independent game designer Jonathan Blow (Braid), speaking recently at the Montreal Games Summit (covered by GameSetWatch’s big sister Gamasutra with contribution from this column’s author) asserted that we do learn, on an emotional level, from games, and suggested that perhaps gamers are not learning the right things. “My concern is that games designers of today lack discernment when we think about whether games are good or bad,” he said. “If players play it and report they’re having fun, we say, 'hey that’s a good game.' If not, we say, 'they don’t understand it.'”
He continued that the normal modus operandi in game design is to foster player engagement through the use of “scheduled rewards.” For example, the mechanics of playing World of Warcraft are repetitive and not in and of themselves complex, but players loyally repeat the same behaviors because the rewards – the better sword, the better mount, the higher level – keep players engaged on a basic level. While this factor alone is not necessarily a bad thing, Blow noted that these sort of rewards, which may very well gratify the brain on a neurological level, can be divided into two categories: “Some are like foods that are naturally beneficial and can increase your life, but some are like drugs," he said.
Continued Blow, "As game designers, we don’t know how to make food, so we resort to drugs all the time.” His conclusion, then, is that the cultural backlash from gamers toward games – the difficulty of pleasing the audience, their strong reaction when a game disappoints them – might be due to the fact that they’re undernourished, so to speak, forced to engage through rewards rather than sustainable, gratifying emotional experiences. And since, as Blow stressed, all games teach, the result just might be some incorrect learning on our part.
This column does not assert that games themselves are – or are not – the cause of this apparent escalation in hostile, unstable behavior in our community. And it is an overall behavioral trend; two extreme incidents are are demonstrated here as examples, but take a glance at review archives alone and there’s almost guaranteed to be, in the comment threads, a reaction to a reviewer’s opinion that seems unnecessarily venomous, excessively upset. And nor does this column levy accusations against all of us as a whole; it’s most likely that this encroaching trend of apparent hardening, of an increase in cruelty in our audience, is attributable to a vocal minority even as the majority numbers of healthy individuals who simply enjoy gaming continues to grow. It’s also important to note the positives that have come out of gaming communities online – friends supporting each other through difficult times, game-inspired charity organizations and events.
And yet. I once made the rather unpopular assertion that we must examine game violence and resolve our relationship with it in order to be justified in defending ourselves against the knee-jerk, sensationalized accusations of the mainstream media, politicians and TV psychologists using us to get attention. Unpopular though it may be, I offer that perhaps we ought to examine ourselves some more. What are we learning from games, from our anonymous online communities, and from our relationships with one another?
[All images are William Hogarth's "Four Stages of Cruelty" and were nicked from Tate.org.uk.]
[Leigh Alexander is the editor of Worlds in Motion and writes for Gamasutra, Destructoid, Paste, and her blog, Sexy Videogameland. She can be reached at leigh_alexander1 AT yahoo DOT com.]
Comments
Given that so many people play video games wouldn't it be more shocking if a some of them weren't jerks?
Posted by: Corey Holcomb-Hockin | November 28, 2007 3:51 PM
Online gaming (and the internet in general), for better or worse, gives almost everyone a voice. As in "real life", the jerks are always loudest.
I do believe that people learn from games, however, I do not believe it is a process that can be quantified or bound in any meaningful way. This would necessary be an emergent process resulting from the specific game, context, and person involved, and thus, necessarily unique.
Someone who is predisposed to negativity will absorb/interpret negativity anyway. I do not mean to imply that people pop out of the womb that way, but a violent game in the wrong hands would only be fuel to an already burning fire.
For example:
I hate to resort to a cliche defense in the game world, but if parents raised a child to be a dick, then a beautiful, relevant, and intelligent game series like Metal Gear Solid could just become "dick food".
Wow, I ended on dick food.
Posted by: Kris | November 28, 2007 4:24 PM
I always just sort of shrug when people complain about virulent racism and homophobia on xbox live. It's not that I don't find it offensive -- I do -- but the vast majority of that kind of speech comes from kids and teenagers. Has the rest of the civilized world forgotten how dirty and rotten children are? We tend to affix images of innocence onto them, but I still remember how it was when I was younger. Children can be brutal and shamelessly hateful, and when it comes to how they treat each other, they very often naturally are. The fact is that children are immature. It is a problem, but an age-old one that's merely finding a new manifestation.
As far as the Raymond/Ubisoft debacle goes... I find that while what happened was repugnant, Ubisoft did more harm than good by going after somethingawful.com and making an issue out of it. I doubt nearly as many people would've seen the comic in question if they had just ignored the comic in question. On top of that, I still feel as if the comic itself originates from a perfectly reasonable cynicism towards the game -- that a good deal of hardcore gamers were coddled into being interested in the game due to it having a sexually appealling producer/spokesperson over any legitimate qualities. Add to that the recurring feeling I got that Ubisoft was at times subtly promoting the game as such, and I can't help but find the comic somewhat amusing, if still patently offensive. But I read it more as a criticism of fanboys than Raymond or Ubisoft.
This all being said, the whole brouhaha doesn't help the public image of gamers one bit, which is a shame. But regardless of how the vast majority of gamers actually are, there will always be people like the comic in question's author (and its audience). So... I dunno. It's not something worth losing sleep over, to me.
Posted by: Toups | November 29, 2007 3:57 AM
I equate it to road rage. Granted, there are a lot of things that differ between sitting at a computer reading a game review and sitting behind the wheel, but the link I see is a lack of human contact.
You're out on the road and you're by yourself, those are machines cutting you off, slowing you down or riding your bumper. Some people handle other drivers appropriately while others don't, because they're removed from the human element behind those machines on the road. Its something to do with that disconnect.
You're sitting behind your computer reading a blog and you're by yourself. You read thoughts that may not be aligned with your own. If you can't handle it, like the road rage driver who thinks being cut off is a personal attack, then you lash out. You'd probably never act like this in a one on one, human to human situation, but your safe, behind your wheel, at your computer screen, and you think you can get away with anything and you let anger take over.
Keep in mind that I'm not saying if you do one you automatically do the other. I for one can admit that I'm a recovering aggressive driver, what I am saying is that its part of human nature, a biproduct of this changing world we live in, where everyone is becoming more and more disconnected.
There are going to be crazy people on the road and there are going to be crazy people on the internet. Unfortunately sometimes these people make us overlook the people out there who are actually nice, but the thing that makes us truly human is the ability to let these mean people and their mean actions roll off our backs and not affect the way that we behave.
Posted by: JoE | November 29, 2007 5:49 AM
I thought the Jade Raymond comic was kind of funny. I guess that's because shortly before the comic came out it seemed like gaming sites were inundated with headlines like "JADE RAYMOND INTERVIEWED ABOUT ASSASSIN'S CREED." The comic wasn't an insult to her. Rather, it was a funny, if tasteless, send up of the way all of Jade's Assassin's Creed PR was being received by the gaming press. It's also funny when people mock Peter Molyneaux, Clive Barker, and M Night Shamylan for having their names everywhere, oftentimes eclipsing their actual projects.
Is it Jade's fault or Peter's, Clive's, or M Night's that they're publicly exposed the way they are? Partially, they had to have agreed to it. Do they deserve the mocking or the insults? Probably not but they ought to be prepared for them when they take the job. I'm afraid mocking and insults are pretty much par for the course when you're a PR figure.
Now can we all stop over-analyzing gaming culture and let this Jade Raymond thing go die in a corner? It was nothing out of the ordinary and nothing anyone at Ubi with half a brain shouldn't have expected from the moment they chose Jade Raymond to be their spokesperson.
Posted by: Dren | November 29, 2007 12:19 PM
Great article.
(I thought of responding to JoE, but can't bring myself to bother right now. instead...)
I've noticed a trend recently. Several events such as the something awful comic, and the Resident Evil 4 trailer have shown some up bizarre reactions. It's not just the issues themselves, or the disturbing supportive (of the negative) responses to them to them are disturbing, it's the severe backlash against anyone that speaks out about it.
People don't want to confront anything, they just want to let issues slide into internet oblivion. They don't want to be accountable to societies conventions. There's this expectation to conform to the 'generic' gamer (ie. white middle class hetero male gamer with no sense of social responsibilty.)
These people are defending their territory they see gaming as theirs. Similarly I believe many are the same people that hate the Wii, because it is an inclusive technology.
I don't really believe there is such a thing as a single gamer community. Mostly because I refuse to be lumped in with the nutcases.
I'm actually starting to think that this is because gaming is at a watershed moment. Gaming is growing up.
Those that don't want to grow up with it feel like they need to defend their position, try drag it back into their ownership. They attack anyone that advocates a social responsible gaming future.
This is why it's not just 'issues' which have provoke attacks against people. Intelligent critical thinking of games also gets attacked, some gamers just don't want to grow up.
Posted by: Nectarine | November 29, 2007 1:42 PM
Leigh, I'm so thankful that you're around, and that you're always up for a sobering dialogue about issues that most people seem not simply willing but determined to ignore.
(also, as an art-grad, I gotta love the Hogarth images)
Keep it up, please!
Posted by: dk | November 29, 2007 4:12 PM
I think that the nature of games encourages players to become more invested in a product than any other media. Most of us has probably come into some contact with the never-ending war between the Trekkies and the Star Wars fans (or even dished out a salvo or two).
Two characteristics of games make investment into games a lot more pronounced than other media:
Play Time- Games tend to have much more content than other media. Compare the number of hours taken to get a character to lvl 60 in WoW with the number of hours in your favourite TV series. WoW probably comes out tops.
Active Play- Games allow you to choose your actions. This makes each experience that much more personal. While a film may have different effects on different people, games can have a wildly more personal appeal to players. Try thinking about your favourite game moments. Are these the non-interactive cutscenes or are they moments of play that came about entirely by your own actions?
If you consider these two factors, and combine it with the understanding that the average age of gamers is pretty young, I think it's only understandable that "hot button" topics generate a surprising amount of heated exchange.
Posted by: th15 | November 30, 2007 4:23 AM
@Dren:
"It was nothing out of the ordinary".
I've seen this argument a lot. I'd like to ask all of its propagators to reread Leigh's article.
The fact that both situations described in the article are "nothing out of the ordinary" is exactly the point. Sexism and the glorification of violence are more obviously prevalent in games than in any other medium, and seeing those themes repeated over and over again will certainly have an effect on developing, and even mature, minds. The least we can do is condemn the resultant behaviour whenever it rears its ugly head.
It's a natural reaction to not want to confront these difficult issues, but such complacency is a luxury we shouldn't afford ourselves any longer. To use a rather heavy-handed quote: "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
Posted by: farren79 | December 2, 2007 4:37 AM
@farren:
I don't mean to condone the sexism though perhaps I did. What started as Assassin's Creed PR featuring the prettiest girl on staff at the project quickly turned into PR based on sex appeal because of how it was received by the gaming media. That PR based on sex appeal spawned an offensive, sexist comic should come as no surprise to anyone involved.
The gaming media could have acted a little more mature. Had they focused on Assassin's Creed and held back on the comments about Jade Raymond being pretty I doubt the comic would have been made. Besides, the "omg a girl on the internet!!!" joke they modified for gaming has never been funny. Worse than not being funny, it is the origin of much of the sexist assholism plaguing gaming and the internet in general. See xkcd: http://www.xkcd.com/322/.
Were people to hold their tongues instead of saying saying "omg! A GIRL" or "pix plz" or "You smell pretty" or any of the other tripe spouted whenever a girl shows up in a game or in irc, I have to wonder if there would be any sexism on the internet at all.
Nonetheless, there is some fault to be had by Ubi and perhaps Jade. They ought to have known better. They're in gaming and they had to have known that gamers would read Jade's interviews because Jade is a girl and she is pretty, not because they were particularly interested in Assassin's Creed. To use the old adage, sex sells. You couldn't convince me that Jade wasn't chosen as spokesperson because of her sex appeal.
But let me put that bias aside for a moment. Clearly, Jade wasn't prepared for the shit that comes along with being a public figure. Especially a female public figure. It would be wonderful if Jade didn't have sex appeal and she could talk about gaming without being sexualized but she can't. Did no one sit her down and tell her gamers are the biggest bunch of sexist jerks on the internet? Did she not realize this herself? A large amount of her audience is probably still in high school. High schoolers will never be mature enough to see past a pair of tits. I don't mean to condone their behavior and I'm not trying to excuse it. But people should expect it, especially smart PR people. The way the interviews were reported and the comic coming out should have been things that Jade was prepared for.
I think I accidentally touched on the core problem here. A lot of gamers are teenagers. Teenagers as a group will never act mature. They're always going to be sexist, racist, hot tempered, petty, and suffer from feelings of entitlement. Why is anyone surprised when they act that way? Don't any of you remember high school? High Schoolers are assholes.
I guess I'm just bitter but I don't see how change is possible. Gamers are immature. Gaming sites pander to gamers to stay in business. What can be done? Maybe in years time the core audience of gaming will grow up a bit.
Posted by: Dren | December 2, 2007 9:30 AM
@Dren:
I think we essentially agree. Of course we can't stop teenagers behaving like teenagers. But, we do need to condemn sexism in the strongest terms, because we, at least, are supposed to be all grown-up. And there is just no excuse for someone who writes for a (semi-)professional publication to pander to his audience to such a degree that he starts spouting sexist remarks as well. Besides, as has been shown time and again, most games players are older than fifteen now.
The realisation that appointing an attractive female as a spokeswoman can and will lead to online stupidity can never be a reason to NOT appoint a qualified person (and I think we can both agree tha t Ms. Raymond is qualified, at least). Sure, Ubisoft management knew that putting Ms. Raymond into the limelight would help generate sales, but that double agenda is overshadowed immensely by the positive effect of going public with a female game producer. That's another reason that comic was so vile; instead of taking the easy route of cynicism, confirming stereotypes in the process, one should focus on the beneficial elements of the equation.
Jade Raymond is not Lara Croft - she was not created as a sex symbol, she's a person. A very brave person as well - of course she knew in advance that gamers are "the biggest bunch of sexist jerks on the Internet". Are you saying that she and Ubisoft management shouldn't be outraged because she should have seen this coming? Please don't let your (partly justified) cynicism cloud your judgement: you don't really think that if Ms. Raymond didn't want to be treated as a sex object, she should have let some man do the PR, do you?
Posted by: farren79 | December 2, 2007 3:32 PM
I don't doubt Ms. Raymond's bravery in becoming a public figure. Also, you have a great point in that it is a positive thing for Ubi to have come forward with a female spokesperson. However, if Ms. Raymond's trailblazing is two steps forward for women in the gaming industry the comic and gaming journalism's reception of Ms. Raymond are two steps back.
I feel like Ms. Raymond and Ubi's response to the comic are another step back. Filing cease and desists against people isn't going to make them respect you. If anything, it will popularize whatever you're trying to get taken down. I never would have known about the comic had it not been for Ubi filing and Cease and Desist.
The sad reality of the gaming industry is that Ms. Raymond could not have taken that PR position and not been seen as a sex object by jerks on the internet. Surely, Ms. Raymond and Ubi have every right to be outraged by the comic. But outrage is no reason to unleash their legal department. Ms. Raymond and Ubi could have handled the situation better.
Using a positive message to condemn the treatment Jade has received would have meant so much more than a legal threat. Ubi could have come out and said they were disappointed in the comic and particularly in gaming media's reception of Ms. Raymond. They could have reminded people that a big reason there are so few women in gaming is sexist treatment like the sexist treatment Ms. Raymond has received. They could have affirmed that the reason Ms. Raymond was chosen to do PR was her importance to the project, not her appearance. Lastly, they could have made it clear that it was the reporting on Jade that made her out to be a sex object, not Ubisoft's marketing department. A positive message would have gone a long way toward getting people to take Ms. Raymond seriously in the future and drop the sexist attitudes that started this whole mess. Ubi ought to have taken the high road here.
Posted by: Dren | December 3, 2007 4:37 PM
You're absolutely right.
If anyone from UbiSoft is reading this, it's still not too late!
Posted by: farren79 | December 4, 2007 12:32 PM
P. A. R. E. N. T. S.
Parents.
Parents are the cause and origination of dickhead gameplayers, as they are the progenitors of dickheads in daily life. Please don't underestimate how many truly stupid parents are out there producing neglected children who, for want of discipline, act... undisciplined. Before we level a single finger at games, movies, food, pills, whatever -- let's point to the people who are failing in their responsibility to train children, who become obnoxious, racist, homophobic, unruly, idiotic teens and adults.
They happen to like games. They like movies. Heavens, they might enjoy eating, too. Lots of people enjoy those things, and the distinction of games is the online component that puts the silent majority of nice people into contact with brats. It really does give them a voice.
My dad loves violent war games. He's also the most peaceful, caring person I know. What you play has nothing to do with your ethics. How you are raised by your parents has everything to do with it.
Posted by: Sam | December 7, 2007 2:46 PM