Blips: Platform Exclusive

Source: If you love games, you should refuse to be called a "gamer"
Author: Simon Parkin
Site: New Statesman

In a new article for the New Statesman, Simon Parkin critically examines the term "gamer" and considers what it means to be a member of the "gaming community." It's a solid piece that gets at my own personal apprehension to using the word "gamer," and helped me better understand why I find the term uncomfortable. I found Parkin's most powerful point to be the way "gaming community" is thrown around, while no analogue exists in other pop culture media. There is no homogenous TV watching community or music listening community, but there are smaller groups that express dedication to specific shows, bands, and genres. "Gaming community" is a misnomer for "people who play games," which is, increasingly, everyone, thus stripping the original term of any significance.

As an insider in the "gaming community," I know that the term is supposed to be taken as a label for people who play certain types of games: "real" games, "hardcore" games, or any other type of game that could not be labelled as "casual" or "social" or played in a web browser. The irony of the image above is that Pac-Man was a kind of casual game in itself, debuting in bars and other social contexts for adults and kids to play alike. Would people who enjoyed playing Pac-Man from time to time be considered "gamers," or does the label imply a more concerned dedication and time investment in the medium? These kinds of elitist barriers exist in other mediums, those that separate the "likers" from the "lovers" (moviegoer v. cinephile), but somehow the general term "gamer" has been turned into a label that leaves no room for those who have not dedicated part of their souls to video games.

To be a "gamer" is to make game playing critical part of your identity on the level of an occupation. Parkin slyly points out that people who read books (another non-homogenous group) don't typically refer to themselves as "readers." and likewise, "gamers" should cast aside the label that makes them sound like a singular group (a less than flattering one, at that). All kinds of people play games, but "gamer" doesn't encompass this idea. There's a reason labels like "girl gamer" and "gaymer" have surfaced in recent years, and it's because members of those groups looked at what makes a "gamer" and they didn't see themselves. I highly suggest checking out Tracey Lien's expose from last week to learn more about how the "gaming community" came to be identified as a boys club, and some of the problems that have stemmed as a result.

It's time "gamer" went to way of the outdated stereotype it represents, or else the term is in serious need of co-opting and repurposing to better serve the actual range of people who enjoy video games.

:image by SplitReason:

Blips: Everybody Calm Down

Source: Plague of game dev harassment erodes industry, spurs support groups
Author: Brian Crecente
Site: Polygon

Brian Crecente has written up a great piece on the recent rise in game industry departures spurred in part by online harassment from fans, often including death threats. The article is flat-out depressing in its mini-profiles of several figures in the development community, and comes out at the end with a none-too-hopeful message. Will this problem become less of an issue over time or will it continue to get worse? Can anything really be done?

Pointing out the actions being taken by sites like Kotaku and IGN to moderate their comments and forums is a good start. Even if these are private websites, they're some of the largest game enthusiast communities, so if hate speech can be tamped down there, it sends a message about the image the gaming community is trying to project as positive.

Still, the one thing I found missing from the Polygon article was hearing from harassers. Maybe that would require a separate piece so as to not detract from the stories of the victims of this abuse, but I think getting insight into the minds of these knee-jerk hotheads would prove a helpful perspective to have. I can't fathom uttering threats like this at all, much less in the context of rebalancing a video games multiplayer mode. What triggers it? Top-down solutions are only going to get us so far. We have to sit down and speak to these *shudder* gamers. Otherwise we're just moving the class to another room and hoping the "problem kids" don't find us.

Why are the "problem kids" problematic to begin with? It might have something to do with games and the Internet, but tons of people, especially young people, engage in new media without these kinds of issues. How much of this outlandish behavior can be attributed to the nature of the medium, and how much is the result of outside factors like socioeconomic status, family/household environments, and mental health? How much is that young people have defined their own rules for online behavior because parents and other responsible adult parties don't have the experience of growing up with social media to teach proper behavior? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet that it's a factor.