I thought about writing about this yesterday, but didn't; I was feeling rather emotional about it and thus figured it probably wasn't the best idea to spew out an ill-considered rant on such a sensitive subject. It's still a delicate subject, of course, but I feel a bit more mentally prepared to tackle it and attempt to do it justice today.
This will doubtless be difficult to write, so bear with me while I inevitably ramble around the point. It will probably also be quite difficult to read, particularly if you know me quite well… but, again, bear with me — hopefully you'll come away with a better understanding of some of the things I feel.
All right, preamble over: let's begin.
Yesterday, when I first thought about writing this piece, I was angry. I got suddenly very angry about something I've been angry about before, and have been doing my best to not be as bothered by: the ongoing "culture war" that has all but destroyed rational, reasonable discussion of popular media — particularly gaming — through public social channels such as Twitter, as well as all but destroying any credibility, inclusiveness and, in many cases, entertainment value the mainstream video games press had.
It wasn't really a specific event that made me feel angry; it was more a buildup of tension that just needed to be released. Recent controversies over the new Baldur's Gate expansion, the press and "social justice" types outright lying about why people didn't like it, needless outrage over Tracer's butt in Blizzard's Overwatch, the ever-present undercurrent of the morally superior looking down on people who are into video games and branding them misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, cis white heterosexual male scum… all of it was getting on top of me, even though a lot of it didn't even directly concern me and the games I'm into. But the controversies still resonated with me, since I've also seen very similar nonsense aimed at the games I am into.
When I get angry about something, after the fact I often like to take a moment to reflect on exactly why I got so angry — why is that thing in particular so important to me that it had such a powerful emotional effect on me? Video games are dumb timewasters, aren't they? Why should I care so much what some people I'd never want to hang out with at parties (not that I want to hang out with anyone at parties save for people who want to join me in another room and play computer games all night) think of the things I enjoy? Why do I feel compelled to continually defend my hobby and this medium from people who desire nothing more than to tear it down and remake it in the way they think it should be — because make no mistake, the loudest critics like this aren't after true "diversity" or "inclusion" since they, in many cases, simply cannot accept the existence of material they deem "problematic", nor can they understand that some people enjoy said "problematic" material and don't want to be called sex pests/paedophiles/misogynists/assholes simply for the things they happen to be into. Why?
Well, "video games are important to me" is the simple answer. And I could leave it at that. But I'm not going to: I'm going to explain exactly why video games are important to me.
Growing up, I was a bit of an outcast. I was shy, I lacked confidence, I didn't know how to talk to people. I remember on my first day at secondary school I turned to Matthew, one of my few friends from primary school and, with genuine fear in my eyes, whispered to him that I "couldn't remember how to make friends", which was putting me at something of a conversational impasse with Murray, the boy I had been sat next to in our tutor room. (Murray turned out to be a massive bullying twat, whom I finally punched in the face just as the headmaster was walking around the corner one memorable lunchtime; I escaped truly serious punishment on the grounds that he most certainly had had it coming for a very long time indeed.)
Growing up, I wasn't into sports. I was into stuff that other people weren't into. I played the piano. I played computer games. I wrote stories. (All of these are things I still do.) These were things that I learned I enjoyed at a very young age, so I have clung onto them with all my might for my whole life — and I've always known when someone would turn out to be a true friend, because they'd be into at least one of those things, and preferably more than one of them. Indeed, when I did eventually successfully remember how to make friends at secondary school, the group of friends I surrounded myself with were all a little like me to varying degrees — I was by far the most awkward and nerdy of them, but we all had our shared interest in video games which we felt like other people didn't really get the appeal of.
When the time came for me to go to university, I was terrified at the prospect of having to deal with new people and even live with them. Fortunately, I found myself living with a flat full of thoroughly decent people who tended to be remarkably understanding of my quirks. There were still occasions when what I now recognise as social anxiety would get the better of me, and I'd want nothing more than to lock myself away and escape into the wonderful worlds and stories gaming let me explore and be a part of.
I continued my love of video games throughout my adult life. They always served as something comforting to me: after a challenging day at university, games were there to help me relax. After a difficult day working in teaching, games were there to help me vent my stress. After a day of chaotic retail, games were there to help me chill out and forget about the previous eight hours. And after a day where everything felt like it had gone wrong, games were there to save me.
Those who have been reading this blog for a while will know that I've been through a few difficult periods over the last six years in particular. The most notable of these was in 2010, when my first wife and I parted ways and I was left unemployed, with no money and facing the prospect of having to move back home — something which I found mortifyingly embarrassing for a man of my age who had qualifications (and a failed/abandoned career based on those qualifications).
As time passed, I sank deeper and deeper into a very dark depression indeed. There were days when I was completely unable to function normally. I had a long period where I didn't — couldn't — get up until about 5 in the afternoon, which would always make me feel terrible when I'd stagger, unkempt, to the shop across the road from my flat and the guy with the smelly armpits behind the counter would ask "how my day had been".
Everything felt like it had gone wrong; I felt like I had completely failed at life. I felt like I had made all the wrong choices, and that there was no way out of the situation in which I found myself. And so my thoughts turned, as do those of many people in a similar situation, I'm sure, to whether or not this world really needed me in it any more.
Once that initial floodgate bursts and you start wondering such things, all manner of unwelcome thoughts start coming to the fore. Would it hurt? What's it like to die? If I did die, who would find me? Would anyone find me? Should I tell someone I'm feeling this way? Should I tell someone I'm going to kill myself? If I do, do I actually want them to stop me?
More often than not, these strings of thoughts would cause my brain to get into a bit of a feedback loop and I'd end up eventually just passing out from exhaustion, often after having had a spectacularly undignified cry and/or rage about the whole thing. But so long as the situation remained, the thoughts wouldn't go away entirely. I'd picture different ways of how I might do it, and what would happen once the deed had been done and someone found me — or what would happen if no-one found me.
To cut a long story short, I pushed through all that — more on how in a moment — and, for a while, things started to look up, and I started to think that I might have finally gotten myself into a situation where I could be happy and content, looking forward to the future rather than dreading it.
That didn't happen. The unceremonious loss of my job at USgamer for vague (and, frankly, probably spurious) reasons, followed by the horrendous way in which subsequent employer energy company SSE (or, more specifically, my immediate managers) treated me while I worked for them — yes, I am naming and shaming here, because it fucked me right up, and I am still bitter about it to such a degree that I often have flashbacks to my particularly horrible last day — caused me to once more sink into an awful pit of depression, and it wasn't any easier this time around, either.
Those thoughts of not being sure if I wanted to be part of this world any more started to come back. Familiar images of me holding a gun to my head came around; questions over what would happen if I followed through on these thoughts started to rise up once more.
And yet, even though I wouldn't describe myself as being out of the worst of it even now, I never once harmed myself, let alone made an attempt on my own life. Even in my darkest moments, I was always pulled back from the edge of that particular precipice.
Why? Two reasons, the first of which is the one I imagine most people in a similar situation quote: awareness of the few people in the world who do care about you, and what it would do to them if you were to do something as drastic as killing yourself.
The second is video games.
I'm not joking. A big part of why I am still on this planet is because of video games. And it's hard to explain exactly why, because there are a myriad of reasons I feel this way, but it is absolutely true, as ridiculous as it might sound.
Games have always been important to me. But over the last few years in particular — since about 2010 or so — I feel like I've really found the niche of games that interest and excite me, along with a group of publishers and developers who consistently and regularly put out things that keep me enthralled for hours on end. These games engage my emotions and draw me in with their stories and characterisation; these games make me feel like I can be someone that I'm not; these games put me in a situation where, while there might be problems and strife, there's always a way to deal with it, however challenging.
As I became more and more conscious of how I felt about these games, I started "stockpiling" — picking up games that I had no real intention of playing immediately, but which I wanted to add to my collection while they were still reasonably readily available. I also started re-acquiring games that I had previously owned that had made me feel the same way. And, one by one, I'd work my way through them, constantly finding new and enjoyable experiences to discover — even where, in many cases, said experiences weren't received particularly well by critics.
And here's how games saved me: the knowledge that in every DVD case on my bookshelf there is a new experience to be had; a new world to explore; new characters to fall in love with — that's the one thing that, every time, pulls me back from the brink of doing something drastic, however dark the situation in which I find myself might be, and however persistent those horrible thoughts in my head might be. I have literally had the thought "I can't die until I've played all the Neptunia games". I have literally had the thought "I'm not going anywhere until I've played all the Ateliers". And so on and so on; so much do I value these experiences — and the ability to talk and enthuse about them with those people I know who do respect my interests, even if they don't share them — that I can't bring myself to even hurt myself, let alone make an attempt on my own life.
You may think this is a dumb reason to keep living. You may think that this is unhealthy. You may think that there are more deep-seated problems here (and you'd be right). But trust me when I say: when even a tiny part of your brain starts considering whether or not you're really needed in this plane of existence any more, the part of you that is still concerned with self-preservation will cling on to any thing — however dumb it might be — that will help you survive.
For me, that thing is video games, and to my reckoning they've saved me from three particularly bad periods in my life: the nervous breakdown that convinced me once and for all that no, classroom teaching was not the career for me; my first wife and I parting ways; and my recent employment woes.
Hopefully it is now clear to you, dear reader, how important video games are to me. And, bearing in mind how important they are to me, can you perhaps understand how frustrating and upsetting it is to me when a needless, pointless cultural war comes stomping all over them — with the games that resonate with me the most inevitably being the ones that come under the heaviest fire from some of the most obnoxious people on the Internet?
Video games — as they are today, regardless of how "problematic" or whatever other bullshit adjectives you want to apply to them — saved my life. So you damn well better believe I will fight back with all my might against anyone who wants to change them and the culture surrounding them for the worse.
Video games saved my life. Thank you, video games — and everyone who makes them.
(Here's the source for the awesome image the header pic is based on, if you were curious.)
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The best posts tend to be the most personal. A really good and heartfelt post for the day, Pete. And you are certainly not alone, but are shining a light on what many others feel. That works out well for two reasons, one is that people who feel isolated will feel some comfort, and another is that not everyone is as articulate with their feelings.
It's a very personal post Pete. As someone who's known you throughout the entire period that you describe and before, let me make an observation:
I disagree (slightly) with the statement that video games saved your life. I think probably what you are describing might better be thought of in Persona terms – which is to say that I believe that what saved your life was what Durkheim was writing about so many years ago in his seminal essay on suicide amongst Catholics, Protestants and Jews back in the 1800s.
I don't want to put words into your mouth, but to my mind what you are describing are bonds, not games. The bonds of community, and inversely, isolation that go hand-in -hand with depression etc. The games that you love contain freeze dried rations of relationships – substitutes in the form of bonds – ties by proxy in the form of cheerful 'friends' who are prewritten to love you there for you inside Neptunia games and elsewehere.
These bonds in these games serve for a time, then give way to actual community inside and also outside games, They lead to social links of various kinds, diminish the sense of isolation, connect you to other arcana and what-have-you. You already get it – I don't need to mention MMOs or Twitter or whatever, Bonds. Different arcana. When you fall, these links are there to catch you in the same way they caught Yosuke and Naoto.
I bring it up because reading your blog, it is difficult to tell sometimes how aware you are of the (crucial) distinction between the form that worked for you (which is to say J-games) and the function these products provide, ie. community, relationships, social links and social ties which can be had in J-game communities, sure… but many other places too.
It's great that you had this specific medium there to catch you when you needed it, but you must realize that all these other things you describe (Sports, Community, Politics, The Church, etc.) of which you did not participate as an active member are just the same form under different names, and they provide the same role to different people as games do for you. J-games are a medium, but they are not THE medium. Different strokes for different folks, whether it be gangsta rap, eco-activism, golf, volunteerism or anything else.
J-Games worked for you, and that's great – but it does worry me when you get hardline and start talking about purity of the form and whatnot as if it were the games themselves and not the social links that were responsible for helping you out. When you start talking about staking everything, or at least your relationships, social capital and social links on the defense of said… it's… not great. What it says to me is that you need more types of bonds in your life. More arcana around town to develop and fuse with.
Watching this Baldur's Gate thing – another ridiculous non-troversy – just drives the point home further about how immature and insular certain communities inside gaming culture have become and I don't want you to become a martyr for this asshole cause. I think it's important to speak up when we see this kind of stupidity so that sane voices can prevail. You think Baldur's Gate is bad? You do know what the hate mob would do to Naoto in 2016 right?
It's not the boobs Pete, it's the social links. This medium happened to be right place right time for you and it's great that you could find that net to fall into – I'm glad you've gotten strength from your participation in the the community. The healing power of Lewd, if such a thing truly exists, explain it to me and make me believe. But Pete – it's really important to look past all the superficial bullshit of the form and concentrate on the deeper magic that existed beyond the dawn of time.
Falling on your sword over the phantasmal purity of gaming is the wrong move. We should not sanctify this stuff – placing gaming on a pillar as some sacred and untouchable icon puts it in a realm of holiness and ideology beyond critique or commentary where it was never meant to be.
I can perhaps say that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance touched me deeply saved my life — mine, *specifically* but that is a much different, much more personal statement than saying that I will fight to the death anyone who besmirches the honor of Robert Persig.
The experience you had with these games is separate from the actuality of games themselves. It MUST be so if you are to maintain a sane, healthy relationship with your hobbies. It's fine to say that Dr. Dre saved your life, or Zoroastrianism or whatever, but if your life was in danger, the thing that really saved you were the bonds that formed from your relationship with these products hat bound you to this world and to other people, and these are not traits that are unique to JAST games or a specific console or tribe. They are just bonds, they could have been anywhere or anything. Keep this point in mind, if nothing else.
The people – these zealots and cultists on all sides who are so furious in defending their love of X miss this point completely, and this is why we are seeing bullshit everywhere. It's not the X, it is the bonds that X creates, and these are universal. It must be respected that bonding agent A worked for you, bonding agent B worked for me, it is OK if they are different.
Be careful of elevating anything to sacred status, lest you place something in a holy realm where it ought not to be – all this creates is idiots fighting idiots over doctrine.
J-games worked for you, but Pete, that doesn't make them sacred or holy or something worth falling on your sword over at a psychological level — they aren't special snowflakes dude… or perhaps they are special, but special to you specifically. This distinction is crucial and it must be addressed in your writing on the subject.
You often talk and write as if someone who comes from way outside your realm of experience should just look at these things you love – something like Senran Kagura and just "get" it. As if asking the question of whether or not the first 15 minutes of SK should make an ordinary civilian feel uncomfortable was somehow an absurd thing to ask. Dude. that is not by any means a weird question when normal cultural norms outside the hardest core of hardcore otaku are taken into account. The burden is on you to explain that specialness to a skeptical crowd (as you have done in the example above) and to not take it so damn personally each time you encounter someone who just hasn't walked that mile and has a hard trouble relating. It's not an easy sell.
J-games are something that worked for you, and that it is personally important, but don't confuse the personal importance with universal truth. Keep distance and perspective between the personal significance and the universal form which exists elsewhere.
Just because someone doesn't share my experience with Insane Clown Posse… it doesn't make them a… what is it you sometimes call people? Joyless twat? Flaming cunt? Whatever it is, it doesn't make them so. It just makes them someone who hasn't walked a mile in my shoes. Had things have been different, I hope you could have formed bonds with another group, another tribe and ended up in another getting-better (I hope) place.
It saddens and worries me greatly when I read your blog and I hear you say things like you "don't know" whether or not Zoe Quinn "deserved" what she got — as if anyone ever who was just minding their own business "deserves" to be pinned to a rack and tortured systemically and mercilessly for years and years by a distributed and unaccountable hatemob of infantile children. In case you are curious, the answer is, yes, that it is uneqivacobly wrong, just as it is wrong when it happens to Baldur's Gate people or to Alison Rapp or to Pete Davison who was also the victim of a distributed hate campaign. It was wrong then, it was wrong now.
When I hear you talk about not letting people 'corrupt' the 'purity' of gaming… or rage about people who are trying to transform gaming or choke it or whatever when all that is happening is really that gaming is growing and maturing and diversifying upwards and outwards to no great panic… it worries me.
Don't go to war for Bewbs and Lewds and rage about SJWs when what you are actually fighting for is not boobs and lewds but just the universal truth of social links and community and feeling loved and being loved and feeling like you are in the place where you belong – because that is the exact same thing as is being fought for on the so-called "other side". Say it in these terms and ditch the hyperbole and step back from the edge of ideology.
Like, seriously. So someone is trans in the world of Baldur's Gate. So fucking what? They're trans. In a single dialogue tree that you have to work to get and which is written pretty inoffensively and which makes contextual sense in the narrative of the game. Big fucking deal. People are half-orcs in this world. How is that sense of craving belonging and love and inclusion any more "wrong" than loving Oglaf? It's not. You ask me to accept big giggly jiggly breasts, ok. I am skeptical, but I am listening if you are listening to me. But I ask you in return to distance yourself from those who cause suffering either directly through their actions or indirectly via the act of turning a blind eye or passively refusing to confront people who stir the hate machine regardless of creed or side.
Even if you DID have a very personal transformative experience with J-games, just… recognize the deeply personal nature of this truth and just don't be that guy Pete. Don't aid that guy, don't abet that guy. Wrong is wrong. Don't make excuses or look the other way or rationalize when you see people are going way out of their way to cause suffering to other people, and don't fly into a violent rage at the concept of critique. That's not the Pete I know.
Write about the transformation. Write about the healing power. This is how you can bring the tribes together. You want to be a writer? THIS is where the common ground is, this is what needs to be written about. What is it they say in Persona? I am you and you are me?
You're partly right about the bonds thing — the thing that, in part, draws me to such experiences is the cast, and during/after playing it, the ability to enthuse about it with others. But it's more than that: I like the feeling I get from exploring a dungeon, fighting a boss, whatever — I enjoy how all the aesthetic elements come together to create an experience, particularly the music and art.
You seem to misunderstand my frustration, though. I don't give a toss about Zoe Quinn — in my limited experience of her on Twitter, she came across as someone I didn't want anything to do with, so I didn't have anything to do with her — and I haven't played the Baldur's Gate expansion and probably won't, because Infinity Engine games were never my favourite kind of RPG. What DOES bug me about both of these situations — and others like them — is seeing people deliberately spreading misinformation. No, let's call it what it is: lying. Lying in the name of advancing their "cause", whatever that might be. Zoe Quinn is not a blameless angel; gamers are not angry about Dragonspear because it has a trans character in it — both of these things and countless more are immediately apparent to anyone who does more than five minutes of looking into the situation rather than going by what the press tells you.
As I say, though, I'm not really interested in either of those issues enough to want to "fight" for them, but I *am* interested and concerned when this practice of lying shamelessly comes to the games that I enjoy, because it makes me worry that at some point developers and publishers are going to get tired of being berated based on misinformation and just stop doing their thing. That probably won't happen in such an extreme form, but we already see developers and publishers tiptoing around the increasingly delicate sensibilities of Western players with frankly unnecessary edits.
Where I also get concerned is when I, and people like me, are branded with unpleasant labels purely for the things we enjoy. In negative reviews of things I like, I've been called a degenerate, a sex pest, a paedophile and a terrible human being. In comment sections and NeoGAF threads I've been called even worse.
It's not about the lewd and the boobs, you see, though both of those are certainly appeal elements. No, it is about the story and characterisation, the nakama of the main cast — bonds, as you say. The fact that the games that are best for this tend to have a lewd aspect these days is a reflection of the market; they'd all work without the lewd, but the lewd is appealing and even usually serves a purpose for characterisation beyond titillation.
*This* is what I fight for and speak up about. I don't mind at all if someone tries Senran Kagura and bounces off it (no pun intended) so long as they 1) give it a fair shot and 2) remain appropriately respectful to those people who do enjoy it. Neither 1 nor 2 are happening in the business at the moment, and that makes me absolutely furious, particularly after the number of comments I've received via Twitter and privately thanking me for what I've written above, saying it puts into words what they, too, have been feeling. As I've always said, if you're not going to give something a chance, don't write about it. My brother used to insist EGM reviewers finish everything they play before writing about it — I have a strong suspicion that isn't particularly common practice any more, not when it's much easier to make animated GIFs from the first 15 minutes then never look back. THOSE are the people I have no time for, not just anyone who doesn't get on with something I like, and while I fully recognise it is immature to brand them a joyless wanker as a result, it makes me feel better, particularly as they probably called me a paedophile first.
These games are important to people, and the people who like them are good people. Unfortunately one of the lasting effects of this endless culture war is the rift that's been driven between people who feel they're morally superior to what they consider degenerate filth, and regular people who just want to enjoy the things they love without being branded sexist, racist, misogynist, a paedophile and anything else you'd care to mention.
Different people react to that in different ways. Some people attack others directly, and I condemn those people as being assholes, though frankly I understand the need to lash out when you feel powerless. Others retreat into isolation or small communities. I choose to express myself in the hope that others will find it relatable — and judging by the messages I've received, they do.
I hope that makes things clearer. I understand and appreciate your concerns, but some (not all!) are based a little on misinterpretation of the situation, I think.
As usual, succinctly expressed, emotionally powerful, and even-handed. Well done Pete. 😀