Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reports that Intel have pulled their adverts from Gamasutra in a new round of nonsense in the ever mounting pile of cack that is #GamerGate. Hamlet also suggests that this is an anti feminist campaign, which I don’t actually agree with because there’s far more to this than misogyny. Unfortunately too much of this issue is buried so deeply in that pile of cack that it’s hardly likely to see the light of day.
Intel, a company known for its processing power, don’t seem to have applied much processing power to their decision. Intel will now be faced with another angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, criticising their decision. The central issue of this latest round of dispute is Leigh Alexander’s Gamasutra article : ‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over. Intel should have shown some backbone here and let their adverts stay and I say this as someone who thinks that Leigh Alexander’s article was bloody awful, but I’ll most definitely defend her right to post the article.
The problem I have with Leigh’s article is that she goes at the subject matter with a ten ton hammer, swinging wildly and mostly missing the target whilst upsetting a lot of innocent bystanders. This is at the very least unhelpful and in many ways it’s adding more cack to the ever mounting pile of cack.
Leigh does make some good comments and amongst them is this one :
When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum.
However what Leigh’s article also does is go some way to creating something monstrous. There’s nothing wrong with the term ‘Gamer’. I’m a gamer, I’ve been playing games going back to the days of Manic Miner, Horace goers Skiing and Sabre Wulf. This reminds me, Elite passed its 30th birthday in September, which is rather scary. Where was I? Oh yes, the creation of the gamer golem. This needs to stop, for the good of everyone.
Leigh is far from the only person railing against the term ‘Gamer’. In another Gamasutra article Game Developer editor emeritus Brandon Sheffield argued : Let’s retire the word ‘gamer’. However he doesn’t really make a compelling case and starts from a very odd position :
Think about what that means, and how all-inclusive it is about a person’s life and interests. It’s a simple enough word to break down – it means one who games, right? But there’s nothing more to it. It defines someone who plays games, to the exclusion of all else.
That’s just a very odd point to make. Brandon argues that people who engage in other activities have more than one word to describe their activity but I’m still scratching my head as to why the answer is to retire gamer rather than adding more terms, such as ‘game playing public’ … oh wait people do use that one.
Closer to home for readers of this blog, back in August Iris Ophelia of New World Notes blogged : I Love Games, But I’ll Never Be a “Gamer”. Iris reviews games, plays games but writes :
To me, the classification of “Gamer” has a lot of baggage; it’s a word that feels inherently exclusionary and hostile
What disappointed me most about that post is that Iris comes from a Second Life background, where there are plenty of negative connotations associated with the term “Second Life”. There are stereotypes about perverts, people with no life, basement dwellers, yadda yadda yadda. Those within the Second Life community know that those engaged with Second Life come from all walks of life and have different hopes and aspirations, we’re not the Borg and all the same, so why try and make ‘Gamer’ a narrow based term?
The excellent Drax Files : World Makers has been countering the Second Life stereotype, you’d think that with all the resources the gaming industry has they’d be able to make an equally compelling series countering the stereotypes about gamers. Hans plays with Lotte, Lotte plays with Jane, Jane plays with Willy, Willy is happy again, Suki plays with Leo, Sasha plays with Britt, Adolf builds a bonfire, Enrico plays with it.
Misogynists are going to be misogynistic whether or not they play games. Those who think it’s funny to threaten females with rape or death are going to be infantile enough to do so whether they play games or not. These threats are often made on social media and go way beyond game journalists and females. Politicians are insulted often on social media by people who play games and people who don’t. People should absolutely called out on their anti-social behaviour but these sort of actions are not exclusively the domain of those who play games.
Then we come to the issue that is supposedly at the heart of all this nonsense, ethics in game journalism. The issue, if there ever was one, is far more deeply buried inside the pile of cack than whether the term ‘Gamer’ should be ditched. Those who genuinely believe it’s an issue will need to shovel really deep to try and make some salient and relevant points to raise a sensible discussion about that. I fear that they will have to go far more than knee deep to rescue that discussion, indeed I think the may have to abandon all hope. However if people really believe that there is an issue with ethics in gaming journalism then make some sensible and salient points on the matter, don’t add to the ever mounting pile of cack, it’s deep enough now.
The term ‘Gamer’ needs to be reclaimed as a broad heading to describe people who play games before it’s too late and we really do see a monster holding the term close to its chest. A high level baddie like that is going to be hard to bring down, even if you group with friends to battle it.
There’s nothing at all wrong with the term ‘Gamer’, let’s not create a situation whereby there is something wrong with the term.
Lord we are getting old, Elite is already 30?