AHC: Progressive Gaming Culture

[Kermode]

I wonder if it might be as simple as Zoe Quinn not meeting Eron Gjoni. There'll be other controversy-magnets, but they don't necessarily have to have an obvious misogynistic slant. This not only improves public perception of gamer culture, but it also reduces far-right sympathy among gamers- gamergate served as a gateway drug for many, and rising negative stereotypes about gamers alienated many gamers from "SJWs". Perhaps Gamergate was a black swan event?

Sadly not. That Gamergate was able to take off despite its claims being absolute hogwash to anybody who bothered to look into it shows that the underpinnings of the movement were already there. The Zoe Post merely provided a convenient focal point to rally against; it wasn't a sea change in opinion. The pot was bound to boil over eventually.

Just look at Anita Sarkeesian. She was receiving harassment and death threats as soon as she launched the Kickstarter for Tropes vs Women— years before GG was a thing.

 

[Kermode]

Anyway, I agree with others in this thread that BlameHerGate and their ilk are a minority in the industry and fandom, and that progressive views do reign. After all, video games continue to feature more diverse characters— so either the industry is genuinely progressive, or at least it's sensible marketing to pretend to be. But, certainly, it is indisputable that a sizeable (and extremely loud) minority of gamers are actively hostile to the representation of anyone other than straight cis white men. So the question is: how can we make this group smaller?

I think it is fair to say that the largest bugbear amongst those with regressive views is feminism, and that the rest of their regressive views spiral out from there— if one start railing against one group, it's easy to suddenly find common ground with people who rail against other groups, too. So I would posit that if the existence and presence of women in video games was less controversial, then there would be fewer of these regressive sort.

To do that, video gaming needs to be seen as less of a "boy's activity". Interestingly, this wasn't always the case; per this excellent article from Polygon, video gaming only started being perceived as something "for boys" with the NES, as Nintendo deliberately sought to position their console as a toy to avoid association with earlier consoles. Personally, though, I would say the "point of no return" comes in the Genesis/SNES era, as video games begin to be targeted to teenage boys, with all the hypermasculine posturing and objectification of women that entails. I think, if that's drastically toned down, the result would be a very different userbase.

I think one such way to change the direction of the era is to have a less aggressive SEGA— a SEGA that isn't advertising its console with dick jokes and otherwise playing into the whole "console war" mentality. Another way would be for more video games to actually take note of their female fans, cultivate a relationship with them and even directly appeal to them instead of treating them as an afterthought. The Polygon article notes Myst had a large female following; perhaps that could be a start, with adventure games and derivatives becoming a female-dominated genre.

 

[Ancien Regime]

Another point of departure would be to either not have 4chan exist (reactionary groups have been using it to recruit young white men since /b/ opened) or for m00t to moderate /b/ and never have /pol/ exist.

Possibly an actual adult buys 4chan from Poole in like 2003 and cleans it up. In general, a huge part of the problem is that there was almost zero responsible adult supervision on the Internet from like 2000-2014 just as it became even easier to access it (for example going from needing an AOL account to just being able to click on the IE/FF icon and hop on) and we all know what happens with young males and zero adult supervision.

 

[Wallet]

Make early video much cheaper. This opens video games to poor people and minorities. TBH for most of gaming history the majority of gamers were white middle class boys. It's definitely expanded to all classes, but more work could be done

 

[KuboCaskett]

Why does this thread exist? Can we just have it moved to chat so I don't need to see this obvious flamebait; already we had one guy banned for something he shouldn't have so we don't need others going down the line as well.

 

[Bulldoggus]

Just look at Anita Sarkeesian. She was receiving harassment and death threats as soon as she launched the Kickstarter for Tropes vs Women— years before GG was a thing.

I have argued the whole GG movement was first activated with Sarkeesian, and with that campaign catching the ire of the worst of the internet. Though the name wasn't picked up for a few years, GG basically started in 2011 or 12 or whenever Anita did.

 

[FlyingSquirrel]

There was a fair amount of politically charged discussion on the Bioware forums (the only "gaming community" that I pay much attention to) before they closed down, and some of it has carried over to the one unofficial fan forum that I participate in. I think this may be a case where the conservatives and right-wingers are just a little noisier as opposed to being more numerous. There is definitely a group of people, for example, who think that the various nods to diversity in Bioware's games are ham-handed, forced, and pandering. The off-topic politics thread in the unofficial fan forum where I post is dominated by about 10 or 15 right-wingers, but again, it may not be the case that they actually represent the majority so much as that most of the leftists and moderates just don't feel like getting into the weeds with them. (I've told myself more than once that I'm done reading and/or posting in that thread only to get sucked back into it somehow!) I certainly see plenty of people in the actual discussions of Mass Effect: Andromeda whose screen names I've never seen in the politics thread.

Similarly, Gamergate may have been one of the most high-profile instances of gamers calling attention to these sorts of issues as they arise in games, but that doesn't mean the majority actually agree with them. I suspect that you'd find a majority either disagreeing, indifferent, or not even understanding what the whole thing is about anyway.

I suppose one area where games and right-wing politics might overlap a little is that, traditionally, conservatives have tended to favor the use of military force abroad and hard-nosed police tactics at home more than progressives, and there are still a lot of video games where fighting and killing enemies is a big part of the game. (As a gamer who leans left, this does make me uncomfortable at times, particularly in games like the Mass Effect series where cooperation between different species and organizations is actually part of the point.)