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I like playing video games a lot and would describe it as my main hobby, so I guess that makes me a gamer. I'm often dismayed at the hypocrisy of the gaming community when it comes to the medium; the "hardcore" people seem to be acting out childishly because they finally got what they wanted and now can't handle it. I spent my youth steadfastly defending games as being an artform, arguing that they had a social value to contribute, and that this would only grow as the medium matured. Many of my fellows in the community made the exact same argument. And now, ten or fifteen years later we're seeing the fruits of that as games take crucial steps both into the mainstream and into societal criticism and social commentary, which I think is a great development. But that means games themselves now need to be subjected to that same criticism and commentary, that's part of being art. And now suddenly large sections of the gamer community can't handle that and want to crawl back into their pre-artistic cave and fling death threats at critics. I think the criticism is great. Games haven't had a Ulysses yet and won't for a long time, but if gamers and game makers engage with criticism and try to do criticism of their own, however clumsy it is from both sides, the medium will be better for it and games will get better, both as art and as entertainment.
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Jun 10, 2016 08:25
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doverhog posted:I think that the "are games art" and what is a "gamer" arguments are almost completely separate. On, the contrary, I'd say that the question of whether games are art has been a core question in the gaming community since its inception, and it has been the recent change where games are now being accepted as art (both by developers trying to make "worthy" games, and critics applying traditional art criticism to the medium) which has caused the existential crisis in the gamer community that spawned all that horrible poo poo we've seen recently that has led to many members of the community feeling reluctant now to even identify themselves as "gamers". If the status of games in art was not in question one way or the other, I don't think there'd be any current controversy in the community over what is or is not a game, or who is or is not a gamer. We see these discussions and arguments now because some extremely vocal members of the community are unwilling to engage with the consequences of games being art. This isn't the only factor in the recent breakdown of the community, but I'd say this, along with the greater mainstreaming of gaming as a hobby are the two biggest drivers of people inside the community either becoming unwilling to call themselves "gamers" out of fear of association, and others becoming unwilling to admit anyone other than a small and specific class of the hardcore into the term. Demographic change was the powder and Art [games and criticism] was the spark. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 09:26
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doverhog posted:The gamers involved in gamergate or such do not care about what is art, they are afraid of their identity and community of like minded people going away. They are afraid of this because they are treating artistic criticism as an attack on their identity. Reveilled fucked around with this message at 09:57 on Jun 10, 2016 |
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Jun 10, 2016 09:48
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doverhog posted:Ok, the issue is still a perceived attack on their identity, not the artistic merits of games. The attack could be come from any angle, the point is, it is perceived to be an attack. The place the "attack" is coming from matters though. When it was "games are harmful to children and make them violent" everyone who played games as a hobby was united in agreement that this was a stupid and baseless attack and everyone in the community sang from the same hymnsheet on it. When it became "games have problematic messages due to their underlying attitudes on sex and race", some welcomed that criticism and saw it as a sign that games were growing up as a medium and now able to contribute to society in a constructive way, and with that came the consequence that games should be held accountable for their messages, whether explicit or implied. Others saw it as an attack on their identity, and that divided the community as a result. It was because the implicit assumption in wider society that "games are not art" began to change that the question of "what is a gamer" came up. It was because game developers started very consciously trying to make worthy artistic works that the question of "what is a game" came up. If the "attack" had come from somewhere else, these questions would have not come up or have come up differently, because they would either have been genuine attacks (e.g. banning video games) which would have meant anyone who said they were a gamer be welcomed through solidarity, or it would have been an "attack" about something else and the line would get drawn differently. I mean, if you don't think the gamersgate type folk care about whether games are art, why do you think the common defense against attempted analysis of games is "it's just a game"? To me, that says that the only defense they can make against such criticisms is to deny that critical analysis applies to games, which is functionally the same thing as saying that they are not art.
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Jun 10, 2016 10:08
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doverhog posted:You make some good points. I'd still say, the questions are separate, but games being critiqued as art is a factor in the gamer question. You won. gz For that it's worth, I'll agree SMAC was art. 
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Jun 10, 2016 10:20
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Powercrazy posted:Why should anyone, self-identified gamer or not, give a poo poo about the "community"? Personally I'd like people to be able to discuss games critically without being subjected to death threats. I think that would make games better. So I care about the community because members of the community are making those death threats and I'd like them to stop doing that please.
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Jun 10, 2016 18:18
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:The gamer label carries connotations of homophobia, sexism, racism, anti-intellectualism, and a whole host of other problems due to extremely loud assholes creating an association between calling oneself a gamer and in their next tweet saying "shut up Sarkeesian you stupid oval office." Did you call yourself a gamer before the recent splits and controversies? I'm of a similar mind as you, but ten years ago I'd have comfortably called myself a gamer, and even though I've stopped like you have, I've never felt comfortable surrendering that term to those people, and I'm sure as poo poo not going to do something like start calling myself a ludophile or whatever term people might come up with in future. It bothers me that just as gaming has started to move into the mainstream, the term we used to us to describe ourselves as hobbyists has been wrenched backward into a niche of social malcontents. When I was younger I looked forward to the day when describing myself as a "gamer" would have connotations no different than describing myself as a "film buff". But that day looks as distant as ever, even as games have become mainstream.
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Jun 14, 2016 17:30
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wiregrind posted:Why label yourself? At what point would you need to be calling yourself a gamer? Do you go around asking people "Are you an Otaku too?" It's a useful shorthand in conversations about hobbies. If I tell people I meet that I'm a film buff, that communicates that I go to the cinema more frequently than the average person and probably quite like those movies which mainstream cinema-goers might not have much interest in. If the other person I'm speaking with is the same, this indicates we could have a conversation about, say, the cinematography in Our Kind of Traitor, as opposed to a conversation about whether the Warcraft movie was any good. I can also play the harmonica, badly. I might possibly mention that if someone asked me what I do for hobbies. But my sister would describe herself as a musician, since she plays eight instruments and is in two orchestras. People just have names for practitioners of hobbies, that's all.
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Jun 16, 2016 05:32
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