1144: A Life Without Nerd-Rage

I haven’t even contemplated going back to Twitter yet, but not because I have no desire to run into the scumbuckets who drove me off it in the first place. No, my lack of desire to go back to Twitter stems from my dislike of irrational table-thumping arguments on the most ridiculous of subjects, usually video game-related.

Mr Craig Bamford said it best back in February:

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TRYING TO HAVE SERIOUS DEBATES ON TWITTER OF ALL THINGS?

See title.

No, really. See title. I’m enormously, impossibly tired of how everybody who writes about games seems to think that the best-or-only way to have debates on serious, often wrenchingly-personal issues is on Twitter.

Yes, I’m guilty of this myself. I know. But every single time it happens, I feel like I’ve made a mistake. I’m just reminded of how Twitter is an incredibly dumb way to handle these things. The posts are too short, there’s no proper threading, you can’t follow the discussion properly unless you follow everybody involved, expanding the size of the group makes it even worse, you can barely mention people without drawing them in…

…it’s just a gigantic dog’s breakfast that makes absolutely everybody involved look bad.

Worse, it elevates bad arguments. It seems custom-tailored for dumb appeals to authority/popularity and thrashing of strawmen and misquotation and pretty much everything OTHER than an actual grownup discussion of issues. It’s absolutely one-hundred-percent boosting the arguments that are “simple, straightforward, and wrong”, as the saying goes. That likely has a lot to do with why everybody seems to rush to the most extreme interpretation of arguments and positions. Extreme arguments tend to be straightforward ones.

Sure, there’s worse. Facebook, for example. But every day I’m more and more convinced that Twitter should really be used to link to arguments, instead of make arguments. It’s not working. So, please, stop.

I agree with him entirely. Too many times over the last year in particular have we seen game journalists and critics with disproportionately loud online “voices” telling us what to think. Usually these loudmouths are attempting to address the issues of sexism and misogyny in the industry — a noble goal, for sure, as few can deny that women still get treated like shit at times through no fault of their own — but more often than not they get so embroiled in beating their fists on their desk that they lose all track of their arguments and end up coming across as… well, a bit childish really. Often these rants come about when the full information on a given situation isn’t available, either — they’re a kneejerk response to things which often aren’t the “problem” they appear to be at first glance.

Let’s take the recently-released Tomb Raider reboot as an example. I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve been discussing it with a friend who has this evening. He’s an intelligent sort of chap with a keen critical eye, and he has found himself very impressed with the depiction of the young Lara Croft as a vulnerable young woman caught up in a situation that she isn’t entirely comfortable with, and having to do things that she finds difficult or scary. The tale of Tomb Raider is as much one of Lara overcoming her own difficulties at dealing with particular things as it is about… whatever the overarching plot of the new game is. (I’m intending to “go in blind” when I eventually play it, so I have no idea what the actual story is about.) My friend compared it to the movie The Descent, with which it sounds like it shares many of its themes and much of its tone. This means that Lara is frequently put in various types of danger — from the environment, from wild animals, and from other people. This also means that there are times when the wet-behind-the-ears young Lara is absolutely fucking terrified of what is happening to her, and justifiably so.

Is this sexist? No, not really; it’s a perfectly human response to shit your pants (not literally… I don’t think) at the prospect of having various forms of unpleasantness inflicted upon you, regardless of whether you’re male or female. Likewise, as much as we would like to forget it happens, violence and sexual assaults do happen to women — and men too, for that matter — because there are certain portions of human society who are complete scumbags who have no regard for human life, male or female.

Lara happens to be female, which means that the situations she is put in over the course of Tomb Raider have been under a disproportionately greater amount of scrutiny than if she was a male hero — regardless of whether or not said male hero is a realistically-rendered character (as Lara is intended to be in this reboot) or a muscle-bound caricature. Lara is put into some difficult situations over the course of the game, including at least one scene where she appears to be at risk of sexual assault. Much was made of this scene when it was first revealed — particularly comments from the development team that it would make players “want to protect Lara”. This was immediately interpreted by the aforementioned loudmouths as being misogynistic and in a sense they’re correct to say that — the characters in the game are misogynists who don’t care about Lara’s wellbeing. But — and here’s the thing — this doesn’t mean that the developers share these attitudes just because they put these characters in the game. You have to have conflict and tension for something to be exciting. Did it have to be the implied threat of sexual assault? No, of course it didn’t, but equally that doesn’t mean we should shy away from such subjects in our entertainment — to do so can actually be pretty harmful, as it makes genuine victims of this sort of thing feel like their suffering is something to be ashamed of. It’s also just plain insulting to grown-ups who want their entertainment to acknowledge that Sometimes Bad Shit Happens to Good People.

I don’t want to get too bogged down in Tomb Raider because it’s just one example of this sort of thing going on. I happened to sneak a glance at Twitter earlier out of curiosity and it seemed that the latest controversy to hit the Intertubes related to Sony’s new God of War game, which features an automatically-attained story-related Trophy awarded to the player the moment after the lead character Kratos stomps on the face of a Fury following what, I assume, is one of the series lengthy combat sequences. The trophy is called “Bros Before Hos”, which is arguably somewhat in bad taste, but we’re talking about a series full of a muscle-bound man ripping the eyeballs out of mythological creatures the size of your average Ikea while shouting incoherently, so I think we can agree that subtlety went out of the window a long time ago.

Because a Fury is a woman, this scene (and by extension the Trophy) is now misogynistic. Again, it might well be in the context of the game — I haven’t played any of them so I don’t know what sort of person Kratos is (besides “the angriest man in Greece”) and what his attitudes towards women are — but in the case of the game’s development, God of War is based on established mythology (or an interpretation thereof, anyway) in which the Furies were (are?) female, and not very nice things to encounter to boot. If you had the opportunity and the means, you would probably want to stamp on their face too, and that’s nothing to do with the fact they are women — it is, however, everything to do with the fact that they are infernal goddesses of much unpleasantness. Do we now have to disregard established mythology because of concerns over violence against women? No, that’s ridiculous; that’s wrapping the world in cotton wool, which helps no-one.

Note that in all of these cases I am not advocating for people to be free to promote things that are harmful to society. I would feel deeply uncomfortable playing a game in which you were somehow rewarded for inflicting domestic violence on someone, for example — although if tackled with sensitivity and care (which many triple-A developers lack, but which many smaller-scale or indie developers have proven themselves to possess in abundance) it could be possible to create an interesting, if distressing sort of interactive story about domestic violence. (In fact, it has sort of been done at least once, to an extent anyway: for a fascinating and challenging exploration of an abusive relationship through the use of allegory, play the game Magical Diary — which was written by a woman — and pursue the romance with Damien.)

What I am instead saying is that getting outraged any time a female character (or, for that matter, a non-white, young, elderly, homosexual, trans or other “non-white twentysomething cis male” character) is placed in peril, regardless of the circumstances, is counter-productive. It diminishes the value of the arguments as a whole, and distracts attention from content that genuinely is a problem. After the controversy over the Hitman trailer with all its leather-clad nuns and other assorted ridiculousness dreamed up by the 14-year olds in Square Enix’s marketing department, I confess I found myself blocking most of the people involved in the “discussions” around the issue on Twitter not because I wanted to deny there was a problem, but because I couldn’t deal with the way people were arguing about it. There was no debate, no discussion — nothing but “I’m Right, You’re Wrong” for day after day. And as soon as one controversy subsided, another appeared. And so it continued for month after month after month. It made me stop caring completely, which is the complete opposite of what these people presumably intended.

Rage like this doesn’t even have to be directed at a sociological issue, though; just recently everyone has been getting extremely angry at EA because of SimCity’s online requirement, just like they did with Diablo III. Again, very few people are considering all the facts at play here, which I won’t get into now, and instead resorting to kneejerk rage which, if you disagree with, you’re somehow an asshole. There always has to be something to be angry about. And it’s exhausting.

So, in summary, I am very happy to have now, for the most part, taken a step back from the seething masses — and while said masses are still seething I have very little intention of heading back in a Twitterly direction unless absolutely necessary.

I’ll let Irina sum up how I feel about all this with the Understatement of the Century.

Quite.

#oneaday Day 871: A Change of Heart

It’s not easy to change your own opinions, for any reason. It’s even harder to change it when someone else makes a convincing argument as to why you are wrong and therefore a big dumb-dumb poopy-head. But sometimes it’s something you have to do in order to move with the times.

I have two very different issues in mind for which I’ve encountered the above concept. I’ll tackle them in order of difficulty to comment on.

First up is mobile gaming.

Last year, I wrote this post. In it, I described how I thought the supposed pressure from Nintendo’s investors for the Japanese giant to start developing for smartphones rather than its own proprietary hardware might not actually be a terrible idea. I actually still don’t think it’s an awful idea, but after a year of reflection, observation and immersion in the mobile gaming industry, it’s clear that what I describe and suggest in that post isn’t going to happen.

For all some iOS developers’ attempts to take the iPhone and iPad seriously for gaming purposes, there are at least ten times as many developers churning out free-to-play or quick-hit casual games. For every developer who is up front about the cost of their app and refuses to nickel-and-dime the player with additional in-app purchases, at least ten times as many incorporate some sort of means of endless monetization, be it an “energy” system, a means for players to buy in-game currency without earning it or the facility to unlock content without having to progress naturally through the game.

I don’t begrudge these developers their income, of course — games cost money to make, and every developer wants to make it big with their titles. But, unfortunately, the prevalence of such business models in the mobile gaming space makes it all but impossible for the “core” gaming community to take it seriously. As much as many of us moan about grinding for levels or money in games, a lot of us secretly quite enjoy it — it provides us with “war stories” about how we played Mahjong for six hours straight in Yakuza 2 in order to be able to afford a fancy dress to give to a girl, or how we accumulated fifteen bajillion souls in Demon’s Souls only to die and then die again on the way back to retrieving them, losing them all forever.

In short, the effort and personal sacrifice involved in accomplishing feats in some of these games is rendered meaningless if someone can just come along and pay ten quid to bypass all the pain and suffering. Sure, it’s convenient, but it renders achievements meaningless — particularly if the game’s monetization strategy features “pay to win” items, whereby players can pay real money in order to gain a significant in-game advantage, be it the ability to “continue” after death without score penalty or simply acquiring powerful new equipment.

What this means is that “core” gamers as a community don’t take mobile gaming seriously, which means that when developers do come along wanting to do something serious and non-exploitative, they often get ignored — particularly if their game is seen as “expensive” compared to the myriad free and 69p apps out there. If you want a recent example of this in action, just consider the Kickstarter campaign for Republique that I wrote about here. Despite starting as an effort to get “triple-A” games on iOS, the team behind the project gradually had to accept that this mission statement wasn’t going to get them the funding that they wanted, and eventually had to expand and promise PC and Mac versions. Even then, it looked for a long time like they weren’t going to make it.

Anyway. I was wrong. I accept that. Mobile gaming is its own thing, and that’s cool. I will continue to appreciate it when a developer treats me as a player rather than a customer (or worse, cash cow) and provides me with deep, meaningful, worthwhile experiences on iOS, but I’m no longer holding my breath for it to be the next big thing in portable gaming — at least not for the “core” audience. There is still a place for dedicated handhelds.

Now for the second issue. I kind of don’t want to talk about this much because there’s been a lot of angry table-thumping surrounding it in recent weeks. There are, too, a lot of very vocal commentators on the subject and I really don’t want to attract their ire — firstly, because that is by no means my intention, and secondly, because I’ve seen people really get laid into as a result of such arguments.

I am, of course, talking about gender issues and the question of whether or not the video games industry constitutes a rape culture.

Some context, first. Apologies to those whom the following offends, but it’s necessary to include it for context. (NSFW, duh.)

This trailer for the upcoming game Hitman Absolution made a lot of people very angry, for various reasons. The ridiculous nun disguises covering impractical porn-star dominatrix outfits. The question of how exactly a nun conceals a rocket-launcher inside her habit. The fact that this really didn’t look like the Hitman series people knew and loved.

By far the biggest concern, though, was the violence towards women depicted in the trailer.

I am not going to get into the broader discussion of whether or not this is indicative of a rape culture here as, to be frank and honest with you, I do not know enough about the subject and therefore feel ill-qualified to comment on it.

What I can discuss, however, is how my own thought processes went.

My initial reaction to the trailer was simply “WTF”. This was shortly followed by “that’s clearly sexist and unnecessary”, and I commented as such on Twitter around the time it was emerging. My opinion was that the trailer was the result of a horny marketing department making deliberately sexually-provocative promotional material in order to get people talking about the game. On that note, it certainly worked.

I thought little more of it for a while, until articles like this one started to appear, claiming that the trailer was indicative of a larger problem — the trailer was, to paraphrase Brendan’s piece, not simply sexist, but evidence of a culture that normalised violence against women, and specifically sexual violence. In short, a rape culture by its very definition.

I had no idea what “rape culture” meant when I saw the initial discussions surrounding this trailer. My initial reaction, like many others, was to assume that “rape culture” in fact meant “directly endorsing rape”. Despite being conscious of the fact that I had publicly spoken out against the trailer, the accusations flying around and the increasing anger of commenters on the subject — on both sides — made me feel deeply uncomfortable and, yes, defensive. No-one likes to be told that something they care deeply about has such an odious undercurrent, after all.

But I stepped back for a moment and considered what was going on. This was clearly a hot-button issue for a lot of people, and one that I knew wading into with ill-informed opinions would be desperately, desperately unwise. I’d already seen a few weeks previously that a friend who had inadvertently ventured into a similar discussion got very publicly torn a new one (a little unfairly, I feel — though that’s an altogether different story) as he attempted to discuss the matter.

So here’s what I did: I stepped away. I read through the various angry tweets, blog posts and articles with a degree of detachment, attempting to understand where these people were coming from and why those who were saying “it’s no problem, what’s the big deal?” were pissing them off so much. I read up a little on what “rape culture” as a term actually meant.

And I came out of it feeling differently to the defensiveness I felt before. I already knew there was a problem with sexism in the industry, but now I felt I had an increased (though by no means comprehensive) understanding of the issue. I am aware that there are still things I do not understand about issues of feminism, gender, sexuality, rape culture and cultural norms — people spend years studying these things, after all — but I am willing to at least learn about these subjects before sticking my oar into a debate I am currently ill-qualified to have. I am also aware that many of the commenters who feel so passionately about this issue are not, as might first appear, condemning the entire industry and everyone involved in it as sexist, misogynist perpetuators of a rape culture, because gross generalisations are never helpful.

Let’s get off the specifics because, as I’ve said several times, I don’t want to get into that particular discussion right now.

The key issue is that a little consideration and reflection goes a long way. Knee-jerk, immediate, passionate, emotional and ill-informed reactions might feel good in the short term, but often they leave you looking like a jackass. I’m glad that I stepped back and considered the way I felt about the discussion surrounding this issue — and why — before even thinking about jumping in and potentially making a twat of myself.

It pays to have flexible opinions, a willingness to educate yourself and, yes, the ability to admit you were wrong (and understand why), in short. That’s not to say that you should blindly follow the herd — quite the opposite, in fact. You should take the time to explore an issue, find out as much as possible and gather sufficient information for you to be able to accurately decide whether or not your initial reaction was, in fact, correct.

If it was — in your opinion, anyway — then you’ll be well-equipped to argue your case. And if it wasn’t, it’s important to be humble enough to admit it.