Readers, I am tired. As, I suspect, are you. For months now, the discourse has more or less been held hostage by a vocal, angry contingent of self-described gamers who have rendered countless people afraid to engage in social media, afraid to speak publicly, even afraid to remain in their homes. Yes, Virginia, there is a terrorist element in games, and the introduction of national and international coverage in this debacle has put more lives at risk, rather than validate or protect the people this “movement” has already hurt.
Regardless of where you stand on the “issue,” to deny how it has ruined and endangered people’s lives is to turn a blind eye toward the stated, well-documented facts. This isn’t part of a “side” to be debated. You have people, many of them women, almost all of them already disinfranchised in some respect and hardly the movers and shakers of an industry, in fear for their lives. The time to respond to this was over two months ago.
Those who know me personally know I locked my social media accounts ages ago and have avoided making any public, personal comment on current events, outside of simply collecting and curating the words that others have put together. I still, even as I write this lengthy forward to the week’s roundup, feel too afraid to truly speak my mind about what has become all of our lives since August. Just collecting and posting others’ thoughts has been enough for my name to show up in conspiracy charts, accusations of ‘scamming’ our patrons, my private Facebook profile screencapped, nasty emails, the whole lot — just for linking, not even editorializing. Who knows what will happen as a result of my writing this?
The long and short of it, readers, is that something here has to break, and by the looks of it, it’s not going to be That-Hashtag-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named to fall apart first. It’s going to be us.
Now. Having said all that, let me try to muster one last brave face for you and get through this week’s roundup. Welcome to This Week in Videogame Blogging.
The Devil’s Backbone
At The Guardian, Simon Parkin offers up a profile on US politics’ recent move to include game developers in an ongoing conversation on future warfare, thus deepening the connection between games and the military-entertainment-industrial complex.
Also in the vein of military games, over at Vice the seasoned Leigh Alexander attempts to pin down that most inscrutable of creatures, Metal Gear Solid 3. In doing so, she reveals some of its least talked about, yet incredibly compelling commentary on the dirtiness of war.
Hollow Bodies High
At Polygon, Claire Hosking shares a solid takedown of the Damsel in Distress trope and just why, precisely, it’s creatively lazy. (Content warning: Polygon’s choice of stock imagery peppered throughout the piece features close-ups of terrified women tied up and gagged. Why this seemed a good idea to anyone, I’m not sure.)
Meanwhile, at Paste, Gita Jackson dashes off a missive questioning why, for a game which so heavily features fashion as a gameplay mechanic, the costume design in Final Fantasy X-2 is so awful. At Gamasutra’s Member Blogs, Tiny Cartridge’s Eric Caoili goes to some length to illustrate just what makes the card game Netrunner exciting from an inclusivity standpoint.
Finally, at Kill Screen, Dan Solberg has an excellent profile on independent game developer and artist Lilith, creator of Crypt Worlds.
Also, a brief shoutout, but Gaming Intelligence Agency has loads of coverage from IndieCade if you find yourself wanting more.
Dispatches from Vienna
First Person Scholar has begun a partnership with its German-language counterpart, Paidia. As our German Correspondent Joe Köller notes, the fruits of this cross-pollination have already begun.
Two strong pieces from Videogame Tourism: Agata Góralczyk muses on human interaction in post-apocalyptic games while Dan Heck entertains a thought experiment on a large-scale crossover game.
At Herzteile, we find a podcast interview with board game developer Andrea Meyer, while at Kleiner Drei there’s an exciting interview about Lady Internet, an upcoming communication network for women.
This Ain’t the War You’re Fighting, It’s the Red October
If you follow one link in this week’s roundup, let it be this one: Dan Olson’s latest episode of Folding Ideas is a whammy of a breakdown on the Gate of Gamer and why, even if only a minority of the “movement”‘s participants harass, all of them benefit. This line in particular is worth isolating:
The use of terror tactics, even if only by a minority, has created an environment of fear that all members enjoy the privilege of.
While not directly addressing the Gate of Gamer, developer Stephanie Bryant picks apart one of its popular retorts, which certainly predates the campaign: why “just make your own game!” is so oblivious.
I leave the final word to our own Mattie Brice, who more than anyone else has hit the nail right on the head on why the fight against harassment is more like provocation, largely playing into the same spectacle which has already hurt the industry’s most vulnerable members:
This line of thinking seems to come from a couple of factors from what I can see: the ‘logical’ one of if society can see that people in the hate campaign are awful people, they don’t get credence, and the selfish one, that they want to do something but can’t bring themselves to a level where they feel like they can make a real difference. There’s a lot that goes into these two feelings, but simply, society already sees games culture as aberrant and horrible, and therefore doesn’t need to see it get worse to be convinced, and this entire conflict isn’t about gamers and wanting to feel like you’re a good person, it’s about the continual victimization and marginalization of minoritized people in games. It was in the beginning, always is, and yet there hasn’t been any real, healthy effort to counter this. Instead, people waste their energy dealing with people who can’t be convinced, and make bloodsport of it.
It’s Not the End of the World, It’s Just the End of A Song
As always, thank you to our readers who send in submissions via Twitter mention and email. You make these roundups stronger.
Reminder, you have a few more days to get your submission in for October’s Blogs of the Round Table topic, “Masks.”
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