I am absolutely thrilled to say that, over the last few weeks, I’ve actually found not just moments but hours of time for gaming. I haven’t found the time to play much of anythign during a solid half year of heavy involvement in two demanding musical productions at the local community theater, and I’ve missed it, missed gaming of all sorts.
In the brief time since the curtain fell on our last performance of The Full Monty, I’ve managed to clock in quite a few hours of LotRO and at least four or five sessions of Arkham Horror, and already my brain has started ticking with observations about how the games work.
One form of play I did not give up during my sojourn on the stage was playtime with my now three-year-old daughter. Play with her is pretty much continuous, as she constantly insists we all assume roles in an extended narrative. This pretend play, which I hope she will continue to enjoy even as she adds dice and game mechanics as a resolution tactic (and she already does have her own dice and dice bag, though at present they’re merely toys to her), is obviously common among children. I remember hoping to “play magic” with my friends on the playground in elementary school, though sports gradually lured most of them away.
All of this is by way of saying: I finally have time to write about the many things that have been percolating in my head.
But I’ll get to that a little later . . . I’ve got games to play!
July 17th, 2008
Alec Bings
I continue to be absorbed in an activity as geeky as gaming but with only limited intersection. Before the curtain fell on our last performance of The Scarlet Pimpernel, I failed to resist the temptation to try out for the next musical being staged at the same theater, The Full Monty. I’m thrilled to say that I got a great part, and rehearsals are well under way.
Instead of rolling dice, logging into LotRO, or shuffling decks of event cards, most of my spare time is absorbed in learning how to strip and trying to hit a high C#. At least I’m getting play a role, though not to roleplay.
The breadth of knowledge that my fellow cast members demonstrate for obscure musicals and the careers of stage actors easily rivals the compendiums of rules and exceptions that gamers memorize in pursuit of their favorite hobbies. I suppose this is typical of any activity that requires a higher level of skill or talent (or both) than the average person has.
I noticed the same phenomenon among magicians, back when I was active in the amateur magician community. Magicians displayed the same impulse to collect things relevant to their chosen hobby that gamers often do, too, obsessively buying more lecture notes, instruction books and videos, and props than they could ever hope to use. (And no, I was definitely not immune to this impulse.)
Even my wife’s knitting group is clearly a collection of yarn geeks.
Is anyone not a geek? The people I see around the office certainly try to come off as geek-free. We certainly live in an era where geekiness is mainstream. I certainly hear comments pooh-poohing science fiction and video games far less often than I used to (though tabletop roleplaying gamers remain a subject of mirth for many).
Do we have the Internet to thank for this widespread acceptance of geekery? Does the fact that science-fiction blockbuster films give us believable dinosaurs instead of jerky claymation miniatures that only a truly imaginative fan could enjoy contribute? What about the fact that gaming consoles and computers now give users consistently immersive and engaging (and accessible) entertainment free of dot-munching yellow circles?
Geekery is now the inescapable norm. The borders of geekery get blurrier and blurrier, and the definition of “gamer” gets fuzzier. Where once there seemed to be a divide between those of us who self-identify as gamers and those we labeled as “casual,” we now see a spectrum. And even that spectrum is artificial, as the obsessiveness with which some play Bookworm exceeds the dedication others show to EverQuest.
Now if only we can get everyone to recognize that one geekdom isn’t necessarily better than another.
Except for furries.
Everything’s better than furries.
April 16th, 2008
Alec Bings
Opening night for the community theater presentation of The Scarlet Pimpernel in which I’m participating is less than two weeks away, and I realize that I’ve gone for several weeks with almost no gaming of any sort. Playing games has long been my primary form of relaxation, often taking up as much of my time as working for a living.
I haven’t spent much time in Middle Earth and Arkham. And since I’m the default GM for our tabletop RPG group we haven’t visited any of my own imagined worlds in even longer.
But while mastering dance steps (in high heeled shoes, no less!), striving for that high B-flat, and struggling to deliver lines in a convincing British accent, I’ve had time to reflect on an aspect of gaming that I don’t normally think about: games are primarily escapism, a way to make entertaining and constructive use of unstructured time.
While some who went on a self-imposed one-week gaming abstinence program found they couldn’t make it, I’ve had a pretty easy time. Why? Because a tremendous portion of my free time has been filled with the creative work of putting together a show that will (we hope!) entertain our audience. Participating in this play has fulfilled most of the desires that spark my interest in games.
Of course, just being busy wouldn’t do it. It just so happens that putting on a theatrical production offers a lot of the same pleasure that games do: the challenges, the imagination, the social interaction, the thrill of success (measured by applause).
Enjoying a reasonably comfortable games-light existence for several weeks hasn’t made me disdainful of them, though. In fact, if anything, I have an even greater appreciation for the value of play than I’ve ever had before.
I’ve spoken before (and no doubt will again) about the fact that games—though we may play them to escape, relax, and kill time—are one of the most worthwhile things we can do. We’re lucky to be a species that plays. The New York Times Magazine recently published a very interesting article on the benefits of play, as well as the reasons.
Play—be it gameplay, roughhousing, theatrical plays, or improvisational roleplaying—feeds our souls, exercises our brains, and keeps us happy. We should all do as much of it as we can. But for those who suffer a compulsion to play games, in particular games that they don’t actually enjoy, I recommend you find alternative escapes. Not non-play escapes, not non-game escapes, but different ones.
If you’re bored and frustrated with one of the many treadmills in an MMORPG, take a moment to consider the reward offered for your effort. Solving problems in games isn’t always fun, but it is generally enjoyable. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, by all means do something else!
The world is full of opportunities to play, and thinking gamers are in an excellent position to appreciate those opportunities and take advantage of them.
February 21st, 2008
Alec Bings
During the holiday season, I received quite a few wonderful games—computer games I’d been longing to try, some roleplaying game books, and several board games. I’ve been enjoying all of them between rehearsals and daddy-daughter time, but Arkham Horror
has take my breath away.
I did not know such games could exist!
It is the first board game I’ve ever played with roleplaying elements that actually feels a little bit like a real roleplaying game. Oh, you can only choose from a few characters, and their statistics are relatively simple. But the characters are vivid (in part thanks to being stereotypes).
And the game itself is a marvelous GM. Since the game is purely cooperative, all the threat and challenge must come from the mechanics.
And these mechanics tell a story. The plot is simple enough, but with a bunch of different primary enemies to choose from and a big enough cast, the possible variations are staggering. With players who are willing to act a bit silly, a bit of in-character interaction can even emerge.
And then there’s the random element. It’s done exquisitely. The things that ought to be random are; other choices are left entirely to the player. For instance, unlike that gadfly Talisman (from which, no doubt, Arkham Horror acquired some of its genes, you can move in any direction the geography allows. Do you want to go shopping? No need to roll 1d6 and jiggle back and forth, back and forth around the one location where shopping is possible. Rather, dodging crazed cultists and swopping airborne monsters, you move to the shop of your choice.
I’ve played the game solo a few times. It supports anywhere from one to eight players. It scales fairly well, as the number of players determines the difficulty of certain challenges. A solo game is harder than one with several players, but that’s not all bad.
Because in this game, it’s just as fun to lose as to win. This is a Lovecraftian game after all (yes, it is contaminated with the impurities to pure Lovecraftian horror that August Derleth introduced, but while that may water down the bleak Lovecraft cosmology, it makes for a more colorful game). In the end, one should expect to lose about as often as one wins.
Losses are a downer. RPG players are used to “winning,” and my RPG friends who’ve played the game with me seem a bit resentful when the tide turns against them. (Maybe that means I’m too gentle a GM?)
Still, when the big evil monster shows up and starts the final fight (if things get to that stage), it’s immensely satisfying to beat the enemy down even as one or two players are “devoured.”
In truth, I think we’ve won a bit too often. After a successful game (and they’re usually close calls), I review the rules and often find some tidbit that would have resulted in our early demise. The rules really are a bit complicated. I’ve found it helpful to keep the official FAQ on hand, and to use most of the house rules the designer originally proposed.
I’m eager to try the game with the expansions. I received The King In Yellow
expansion during the holidays, but as we’ve been enjoying the core game, we haven’t quite seen the need to add it to play yet. Still, I think the next time we play, we’ll be shuffling in the new cards to see just what surprises they hold.
Who would have thought a visit to the cursed town of Arkham, MA, could be so pleasant?
February 1st, 2008
Alec Bings
The Brainy Gamer (a proud new parent, as well as a terrific blogger and podcaster) recently asked for thoughts on what age kids should be introduced to video games. I began writing a comment, but it turned into a post, so I’ll put my thoughts here instead.
My simplest answer: I haven’t yet seen a video game I’d want my two-year-old daughter to play.
I still believe that games (in general, not just video games) are among the absolute best learning tools available. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that most good education involves games and most of the best games involve learning. I haven’t examined the thought in detail, nor searched for evidence, but I suspect that peak playing experiences and peak learning experiences are biologically and socially very similar. I think humans (and other animals) have an evolutionary imperative to play that, at its root, arises from our need to learn and adapt.
But of course that doesn’t mean we should be plopping our six-month-old children in front of Halo 3.
My own daughter is now two and a half years old. We’ve been very careful in the consumption of all sorts of media. We decided to comply with the AAP’s recommendation to avoid all television before two years of age before she was born. I know some quality children’s programming may not hurt, but I also know that a you child’s mind may be one of the most powerful things in the universe.
Children seem built to learn, and to learn fast. It’s a good thing, too, because they have so much to learn. I remember thinking, in the first few weeks of her life, how many things I knew and knew how to do. Somehow, she’d have to pick up most of those, as well as learning millions of things I’d never know. Staring at the little warm bundle, I couldn’t imagine how it would ever happen.
Watching her walk and dance and do puzzles at two and a half, listening to her sing and laugh and have imaginary conversations with a toy llama, marveling as she happily matches pair after pair of Memory cards, I can see that, yes, it’s possible. She will successfully transform from the helpless tube she was to a wise, fun-loving woman. She’s built for it!
So much of what she’s had to learn exists in the “real” world. She had to learn that when she’s holding a toy and opens her hand, the toy drops to the ground. She had to learn that she can roll a ball. She had to learn that the cat doesn’t like to have her tail pulled but loves to have her face rubbed. She had to learn that when she laughs, her parents almost always laugh too.
Do you know that feeling of euphoria when you get completely immersed in some new and fascinating subject? Or when you begin to internalize the mechanics of a game? A new human has to be immersed in life. Every moment—even one so simple as picking up a rattle—is a moment of full engagement. As adults, we get experience this total engagement, this mindfulness, only occasionally; for children, it can be a full-time experience.
My daughter was exposed to some television before her second birthday. Not a lot. We never once left her in front of a set while we rushed about getting things done. (We still haven’t. When she’s watching, we watch too.) Whenever she caught a glimpse of that glowing, musical box, though, it grabbed her attention and sucked it in
The first time I saw it happen, I was a bit terrified. She directed her full concentration to the screen. She didn’t have any words, but the faces and music and colorful lights consumed her full attention. I knew her mind was fully engaged.
But her body had gone slack. The wriggling, the grasping, the giggling, the wild kicks . . . they all stopped. She became almost 100% watcher.
Television is so ubiquitous we forget how powerful it is. Watching my daughter get caught up in it, though, reminded me: it is awesome; it is terrible.
My daughter did have some positive early exposure to games. Although we resolved never to play World of Warcraft (despite the compulsion) while she was awake, when she was ten months old I did once log in long enough to move a character from one location to another in preparation for an event after her bedtime and she caught a glimpse of the screen. She loved watching “the bird” (I don’t remember if it was a gryphon or a hippogriff) fly gracefully over the forests.
She responded differently than she had to television. She sat in my lap, stuck her arms out, and leaned back and forth the way the bird did. She flapped her arms. And she laughed.
It seems to me that she knew, somehow, that we were involved with the flight. She saw the figure sitting astride this fantastical animal, and she understood that, in a way, we were riding it. I’d been pretty liberal in letting her play with my job-provided laptop. She’d bang on the keys and laugh or squeal when the screen changed. (We even have a record of some of her earliest “e-mail messages,” long strings of characters that delighted her grandparents.)
She understood that this device wasn’t there just to show her things, that it was a tool for doing things. She’d ask for the bird every couple of days for a while, so we’d send one of our characters on a longish flight. When it landed, she was sated.
Now, our daughter watches a little bit of TV almost every day. That is, as a family we watch from fifteen to forty-five minutes of TV together within the hour or so before she goes to bed. We choose the content from DVDs and video tapes.
See, now she’s ready for it. She has a huge mental vocabulary, so she can understand what’s happening on TV. When she was one year old, she didn’t necessarily understand that everyone had a name, that animals couldn’t talk, that balls never fall up, that letters had sounds. Now, when she watches a few clips from Sesame Street (out of distaste for Elmo, “the Red Menace,” we only spin up selections from Sesame Street: Old School
, which offers a peaceful five minutes of cows instead of an overproduced barrage of self-promoting music and colors), she asks insightful questions about how the characters are feeling or sings along with the girl bringing her llama to the dentist.
So what about video games? Is she ready? She may well be ready for video games, but I haven’t found a single one that I’d waste her time with.
We don’t think she needs to master touch-typing by the time she’s five, and we know that a program that splashes bright colors on the screen in response to bangs on the keyboard will only interest her for a little while, while costing more than the handful of animal figures that stimulate her imagination, figure in her storytelling, and keep her happily entertained for endless hours.
Really, these things aren’t so much games as toys. They’re virtual toys controlled by the keyboard, but toys nonetheless. As for the educational programs designed for slightly older kids, like the ones I see running on computers in the children’s section at the public library, I haven’t found one that appealed to me. Why? Because they don’t seem fun. (Defining “fun” can make for an excellent exercise when discussing the theory of games, but I still maintain that games should be fun.)
And she’s not ready for games requiring skill, dexterity, and timing, though they may be somewhat more fun. She’s still working on catching balls, the mechanics of fitting puzzle pieces together, and living without diapers.
My daughter shares my passion for games, but she doesn’t truly play them. For example, she adores chess (I happen to have a Simpsons chess set
, and the brightly colored, anthropomorphic figures are a big part of the appeal), but “playing” consists of setting up the pieces—along with other toys—on the board. When she helps roll the dice while the grown-ups play Arkham Horror or Descent, she’ll carefully count the dots, announce the number, and then throw her hands up in the air and cry, “I win! Daddy wins! Mommy wins!”
In a year or two, she’ll really be playing games. She’ll delight in figuring out how the rules work and developing strategies. She’ll take pleasure in a hard-won victory and (I hope) a fair defeat. When she does, I won’t hesitate to play video games with her.
But I’ll sure as heck be playing board games, ball games, card games, skill games, and roleplaying games with her, too!
January 17th, 2008
Alec Bings
The grand illusion in roleplaying games (single-player CRPGs, MMORPGs, and even to some extent tabletop RPGs) is that you face greater challenges as your character becomes more powerful. The truth, though, is that the end game content of MMORPGs is almost exactly as challenging as the first few levels, which is to say, “Not very.” In this post, I’ll continue thinking about what would make a dream MMO.
An idealized, perfect video game would present its player with a pleasurable rise and fall of challenge and difficulty. After the initial learning curve, players ought alternately to face challenges that give them a thrill and to enjoy the fruits of meeting said challenges. The fact that different people find different degrees of challenge in a single activity presents designers with one of their great challenges.
As Tobold points out, when a game has a multimillion–dollar budget, its publishers want more than just the praise of a few hardcore aficionados and sage critics. They need customers—and lots of them. Make the game too difficult and too many people will give up.
The converse isn’t actually true (except in the absurd). Making a game too easy will drive hardly anyone away, as long as there are perceived challenges to be met. In an MMO, you can strive to reach the level cap, scheme to get some rare piece of gear, or strive to down the greatest foes (again and again).
Thus, developers opt, time and time again, for easy games with mass appeal. A wise decision. I have some real-life friends, dedicated WoW players, who occasionally find the game’s challenges to be just within their abilities! This leaves gamers like me, who actively enjoy testing their gaming skills, a bit out in the cold. I think, though, that there’s a design solution, not too hard to implement, that would render games fun for a broad audience interested in a low-difficulty game that’s simultaneously satisfying for the more hardcore gamer.
For the most part, MMORPG game goals are achieved through time investment and social engineering. In fact, outside of special encounters designed for groups, the enemies you face at the level cap are just as easy to defeat as the kobolds upon whom you committed genocide back when you were level 2. Probably easier, in fact, because you’ve been granted a greater breadth of tools to deal with enemies. Yes, you advance through levels and watch your statistics climb, but the player skill required for a level 70 character to defeat a level 70 monster is only slightly greater than that required for a level 1 character to defeat a level 1 foe.
The greatest challenge for me in getting to the level cap in WoW, in hitting the cap of various professions, in exploring intriguing instances, was in finding sufficient time.
There are, of course, other reasons to play MMOs than for the challenge. After all, WoW held my interest all the way from level 1 to level 70. But let’s face it, there’s a reason so many WoW players create artificial challenges for themselves. They still want to play the game (because they have friends there, because they’re addicted, because they find the game relaxing and pleasurable even if it’s not altogether interesting).
This lack of challenge doesn’t sit well with everyone. Some turn to PVP (although even the staunchest PVP advocates agree that most MMOs don’t implement it very well). Some simply abandon MMOs.
The solution can be found in the many existing games that let players level-set their own challenge level. Many recent FPS video games do this explicitly, but a great many games, including nonvideo games, scale to meet the skill levels of their players. Two-person strategy games, for instance, allow players to choose opponents who present a pleasurable (not necessarily evenly matched) challenge.
An MMORPG should offer a player hundreds of possible goals. The very visible goals of leveling, improving equipment, and seeing rare content serve the explicit design goal of keeping players happy while they pay monthly subscription fees, but a flatter approach offering even the newest player dozens of goals of varying challenge levels could do just the same.
Instead of rushing players to the leveling treadmill, why not explicitly offer them a choice of activities with different degrees and sorts of challenge?
- Easy: the chance to clear ten rats out of the basement for a modest experience reward
- Moderate: the chance to rescue a villager from angry goblins for more experience and a decent weapon
- Hard: the chance to call out the head of a local gang for more experience and a valuable reputation game
- Nearly (but not quite) impossible: the chance to head off on an difficult overland journey to capture a wild horse which can ultimately be tamed to be a mount, granting no experience reward whatsoever
These are all straightforward adventure quests, of course. A rich game with a fulfilling crafting system, thrilling PVP competition, social goals that foster guild loyalty and teamwork, achievement ladders, and strong exploration and narrative elements could present an even bigger menu to the new character. Each possible path to advancement should present the player with tasks of different challenge for the player.
It’s always a numbers game, of course, but it’s possible to balance activities so that a player who enjoys greater challenge will receive approximately the same reward for time invested as a player who prefers to relax with a series of comparatively easy quests. Since MMO designers have a vested interest in keeping people playing as long as possible, they are hesitant to grant greater advancement rewards to players willing to pursue greater challenges.
Instead of galloping quickly up the one mountain that counts (leveling, in all existing MMOs of note), challenge-oriented players may, for instance, earn prestige items (that horse from questing may have a different look than one purchased from the local vendor), titles, and even access to Easter-egg style content. Taking on a greater challenge may result in more rapid “advancement,” but it doesn’t have to equate to a more rapid consumption of content.
After all, the main reward for taking on more challenging gameplay should be the pleasure of more challenging gameplay itself.
Of course, the question remains: what challenges, exactly, can a game present? What activities can invite a player to use his own skill, rather than the aribtrary number next to his character’s skill, to meet a challenge? I’ll delve into that a bit—and into questions of an alternative system of rewards that doesn’t focus only on power acquisition, into tools to enhance the dying social dimension in MMOs, and the concept of a broad range of advancement paths—in upcoming posts.
For now, I’ll just end where I began: By simply granting players greater choice in the level of difficult of the activities they pursue in game, a dream MMO can maintain mass-market appeal without sacrificing challenging gameplay.
January 11th, 2008
Alec Bings
I don’t like bloggers making excuses or apologies for absences, but as I haven’t posted in over a month, I do think a quick explanation is warranted.
I do most of my writing on the corporate dime. The company I work for requires me at my desk for around forty hours a week, but gives me far fewer hours worth of work to do. This usually gives me ample time to muse in writing about games, correspond with friends, and read.
Periodically, though, it just gets busy! December usually works out that way. In the weeks leading up to the end of the year, panic about fiscal statements and rushed sales result in longer, more work-filled hours.
I could, of course, write blog posts at home, but since this busy time at work coincided with the holidays, there was little enough time at home to sit around writing about games. Family and friends—and my very absorbing participation in musical theater—consumed most of the remaining hours.
That said, I do have lots to chatter about regarding games in the coming weeks, and I look forward to putting some of my thoughts into writing.
After all, though I didn’t get to write about games, a fair amount of the family and friend time did involve playing them. I’ve tried a bunch of new board games and several new video games, and I’ve started reading a couple of new tabletop RPG books. I got to experience more of the wonderful world of toddler gaming (earlier posts on the subject: 1, 2, 3, 4), this time with some commercial products. And when everyone was off to bed and I couldn’t sleep, I even found time for a few digital adventures in online worlds.
January 8th, 2008
Alec Bings
A few minutes after I arrived home from work on Tuesday, a knock on the door announced the arrival of a UPS delivery. Even though the box clearly indicated that it came from Santa, I couldn’t bring myself to wait till 25 December. I tore right into it. In fact, I’d been expecting it. My mysterious Santa has been hinting to me (through posts on this blog and in my BGG mailbox) that something was on the way, a nice touch which really added to the fun.
Check out the wonderful contents. My Boardgamegeek Secret Santa gave me two wonderful games—both Modern Art and YINSH!
I’ve wanted to give Modern Art a try since I first heard of it, in part because it gets such overwhelmingly positive press and in part because its mechanic is completely different from anything else I’ve ever played. Boardgame geek I may be, but I’ve never played an auction game. I’m eager to see what it will be like. I also suspect that, in contrast to the more “genre” games I often favor, this one will be easier to break out with less geeky friends, so it may get more play that some of the games that are gathering dust in my closet.
I got DVONN (a GIPF project game) a few years ago (in expectation of an extended vacation with family who are otherwise sort of unfun). I loved it, and I’ve shared it with several friends who enjoyed it quite a bit too. Unsurprisingly, the friends who like it tend to be chess and go players, delighting in the abstract strategic and mathematical elements of the game
In addition to enjoying DVONN’s gameplay, I took great pleasure in the pieces themselves. They’re elegantly simple, but the aesthetics—color, texture, weight, and shape—delight the senses. (In fact, my daughter loves playing what she calls “the Circle Game.” She’s two, so this mostly means stacking, sorting, and placing the discs, and telling me exactly where I should put mine.)
I expected nothing less from YINSH, and I’m not disappointed. The game only arrived yesterday, and it’s a sort that doesn’t interest my wife much. (Although my daughter and I “played” it once, using a ruleset similar to the Circle Game.) But I did get to read the rules and fiddle with the pieces. I love that the rules are so simple and straightforward that, when I find a willing opponent, we’ll be playing within a minute or two. I love that the game is so complex that we’ll be playing for hours. Combining go, othello (reversi), and connect four, YINSH should be tremendously satisfying.
I have yet to get my gift package out to my BoardGameGeek target, so I’ll have more to say about the whole process soon. So far, though, it’s been fantastic. So . . .
Oh great Secret Santa, thank you!
November 29th, 2007
Alec Bings
When I have an evening free of Scarlet Pimpernel rehearsals, Thanksgiving guests, and home renovations, I still quite often choose to spend it in virtual Middle Earth. I haven’t talked about it much lately in part because I’ve been re-exploring content as I (for no sane reason) pursue the “Undying” title bestowed on those who can survive to level 20 without defeat.
That said, I’ve had a bit more time to play in the last few days, and during that time I’ve tried to bring three players over from WoW. They’re partway through 10-day free trials, and it’s interesting to hear their reactions.
My wife, whose tastes strongly resemble my own, believes she’ll switch in the near future. She likes, as I do, the greater realism, the immersion, and some of the minor gameplay tweaks (everyone can loot a mob for a “gather ten pelts” sort of quest; the fact that there don’t seem to be targeted, timed buffs).
Another friend has had a grand time. She basically only plays ranged fighters (she has four different hunter alts in WoW), and she’s already experimented with two hunters in LotRO. Her comments have been positive overall, but I don’t know if she’ll be willing to give up WoW.
Her husband is pretty sure he doesn’t like LotRO. His criticisms: the font, the color of dialog boxes, steering with the arrow keys (he refuses to use the mouse), and not already knowing as much about it as he does about WoW. (Can you tell that I’m a bit dismissive of his complaints?)
All of this reminds me of how different the needs of different gamers are, and incidentally why I’ve had a falling out with WoW. WoW caters to a the broadest possible audience in part by catering to a low common denominator.
My recruitment efforts outside the game may meet with only limited success, but I hope my plan to get recruited into a kinship within the game will go well. I was delighted to discover that a kinship recruitment event will take place in the Shire (under the grand Party Tree) tonight on the Landroval server (one of the unofficial RP servers) at 7.30 EST.
Ever since my all-time favorite guild (formed in Dark Age of Camelot) disbanded as its members sought other games, I’ve been looking for something like it. I joined two WoW guilds, both of which turned out awful in different ways. Perhaps tonight I’ll make a connection with a roleplaying guild that actually enjoys playing the game in character (instead of not playing the game but emoting at one another or playing the game and not really roleplaying after all).
November 28th, 2007
Alec Bings
Instead of trying to offer a considered and thoughtful analysis that ultimately treads on the same path others have already expertly walked (Broken Toys, GameGirlAdvance, No Cookies for Me, Shrub.com, FeministGamers, and many others), I figured I would instead offer a personal reaction to the Jade Raymond fiasco.
Put simply, I’m angry, ashamed, and depressed. Why is it that the same male gamers who long to have more women join the ranks of gamers feel entitled to gawk and grab? It seems that some core of what we define as “gamers” has built an exclusive, unwelcoming community where the simple social norms of courtesy don’t apply. They use “rape” to mean “beat in a game” and consider “gay” and “girl” acceptable insults. They act like rutting goats when someone reveals herself to be a real-life woman in a game, then hoot in derision when she leaves. They insist that no female gamer can possibly be physically attractive, insist that attractiveness is the most important characteristic a woman (gamer or not) can have, then deride female gamers (skilled or unskilled) for lack of ability.
Does it sound like I’m “male bashing”? I’m not. I’m bashing assholes. When I was a kid, we watched Free to Be You and Me (which I now watch with my daughter). I honestly believed the world was changing and would continue to change. I thought everyone wanted a world with fewer assholes.
Now I see the “boys will be boys” attitude broadly accepted.
I don’t blame men for this. I don’t blame women. I blame our culture itself (as practiced by both men and women). Look, I know feminism is hard. Even people who aren’t afraid of the word “feminism” struggle to realize their ideals. I know too many people of my generation who have given up the dream of self-actualization and equality. And look at how gender is treated TV today.
So it’s not just gamers. This rot is everywhere.
But it’s pretty bad in “gaming culture.” The anonymity of online gaming, the historically male base, the weird connection between machismo and competition (a fundamental aspect of games)—these have given birth to a core in which sexism and hostility aren’t just endemic, they’re sometimes lauded and often defended!
I’ve heard some people call for thicker skins or appeal to the right to free speech. Well, I’m actually a big fan of humor. I believe anything—yes anything—can legitimately be the subject of humor. I believe, too, that anyone has a right to express any idea in just about any form.
What bugs me here is our culture (our modern culture, the heavily American Internet culture, the gaming culture). If you want to be an asshole, you have every right to do so. But those of us bothered by this sort of thing have a duty, despite the fact that the prevailing culture doesn’t seem to agree, to express our dissent.
November 28th, 2007
Alec Bings
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