Rian Johnson’s Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi came out just over a year ago and it has continued to cause a great disturbance in the fandom. I personally saw The Last Jedi two times within 24 hours on its release, something I’ve only done once before with The Fellowship of the Ring.
The difference between those two instances is that I absolutely loved The Fellowship of the Ring, so much that Lord of the Rings has arguably surpassed Star Wars as my favorite film trilogy. The Last Jedi, I didn’t particularly care for on my first showing. After my second viewing, my feelings didn’t change. They likely got a bit worse the more I thought on it.
People have gone to great lengths to dismiss any and all criticism of the film as blind hatred, not true fans, man children who can’t handle change. To me, it’s about respecting the property. More particularly, a lack of respect for the Star Wars saga. Rian Johnson set out to “subvert expectations” and in the process, essentially subverted the entirety of the Star Wars saga and assassinated multiple characters in the process while simultaneously making decisions that didn’t fit the pace of the film or support the narrative it was trying to present.
Poe & Holdo
The film starts off taking Poe Dameron, who we were led to believe in The Force Awakens was a hot shot pilot that was willing to take risks that would put himself in jeopardy for the good of the Resistance, and revealing he is apparently willing to sacrifice entire squadrons for a single minor victory that might boost morale. This seems like a bit of a change of character for the sake of setting up Poe to be wrong in his opposition to Holdo.
With Holdo’s introduction, it seems like Poe doesn’t believe she’s who he’s heard of because she’s a woman, striking a chord with 2017’s fresh surge of feminism and painting a target for many a YouTube video complaints. The problem with this entire set up is that Star Wars does not take place in 2017 Earth, but a long time ago in a galaxy, far, far away. Women are leaders in the Star Wars universe. They are senators, queens, admirals, generals, Jedi, smugglers, bounty hunters, assassins, and adventurers. Poe clearly holds Leia in high esteem. It’s logically inconsistent for Poe to simply be in disbelief that Admiral Holdo is capable because she’s a woman, yet that’s the impression the film seems to give.
If the film had included information that, based on her appearance, Poe recognized her as coming from a pacifist planet we’d have some basis of his disbelief. Instead it seems like a ham fisted way to set up a strong woman to dress down the hot shot pilot and thus “subvert our expectations” in having the hot shot pilot in Star Wars be a bad thing.
Then there was the whole “tell us you have a plan” vs “STFU stupid man, I don’t have to tell you jack” angle that just…. made no sense. Yes, she didn’t owe Poe an explanation. He was demoted, she didn’t know him, he was a potential loose cannon, but to not even say “yes, we have a plan and no you don’t need to know it”? The extent to which they had her remain silent seemed irrational.
What’s more, the speculative leap from “it’s impossible to track a ship through hyperspace” to complete acceptance that it’s possible, developed, and happening, had no support. It was just speculative guessing accepted as fact. It seemed far more obvious, and I thought they were going to do it, that someone in the Resistance was a traitor feeding their coordinates to the First Order. If they had gone this route, Holdo and Poe could have simply distrusted each other as the spy. Between Finn and Rose, they might have deduced the possibility of the hyperspace tracking technology, but by that point you’d have Poe unwilling to trust this information with Holdo (or if you took it to her, why would she believe a few nobodies who are pals with Poe?).
Ultimately, I felt nothing for Admiral Holdo. She was a fairly useless character who accomplished nothing (a common theme throughout this film for all the characters save a couple) and was written out as quickly as she was introduced. Her death had no weight or emotion to it, though. With no time to care about her, I really didn’t care about her dying.
What’s more mind boggling to me is that Abrams, Kennedy, and Johnson didn’t plan to write out the original cast with Solo’s death in VII, Leia’s in VIII, and Luke’s in IX to begin with. Personally, I’d lean towards Luke surviving to cameo in future films as the Jedi Headmaster since everyone just assumes he’s going to die akin to Obi-Wan and Yoda.
At the start of this film, Leia talks about how tired she is of losing people. It’s not guilt, but there’s a sense of survivor’s weariness to Leia that makes her simply shuffling off to leave her friend to die perplexing. It seems to me that having Leia stay on the ship and perform the heroic sacrifice would have had far more emotional weight and would have given Leia a truly heroic send off.
It would also allow Holdo to be carried forward into IX to be further developed and fleshed out, taking on the torch in a General Leia or Mon Mothma role.
Rose and Finn
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Rose Tico was a fairly unnecessary character with how the film played out and a lot of her parts make no sense. That said, anyone who attacked the actress is a complete and utter fool. Kellie Marie Tran was given a script and she portrayed what was written in that script. She did her job. She didn’t write the script, she didn’t design the character, she didn’t make the story decisions.
Personally, I liked Rose’s introduction. A lot. Her fan girling over Finn with a quick flip of the switch to tazing him for his attempt to desert the Resistance made an interesting and fun introduction. I liked that she seemed like she was loyal to the Resistance above all else. Even tripping over her words in front of a hero she admired, she wasn’t going to give that hero any leeway whatsoever if he was going to hurt the Resistance.
Then she just sort of turned into Finn’s sidekick who was there to make a few comments on animal cruelty, class inequality, and war profiteering before ultimately taking action to save Finn by crashing her speeder through the plot to leave massive gaping holes.
The final scene with her saving Finn and telling him they’re going to win the war by saving what they love just didn’t work for me at all.
Rose has known Finn for about a day and she’s in love?
Rose stops Finn from preventing the cannon from blowing open the doors to allow the First Order access to wipe out the Resistance.
Why didn’t the First Order just fire the cannon again into the base and kill everyone at once?
How did Finn drag/carry unconscious Rose the entire distance from their crash back to the doors and get inside before the walkers made any progress?
Why didn’t the First Order just take one shot and kill Rose and Finn as he was carrying her all that way back?
Just nothing about that entire scene made any sense.
Rey
Yes, Rey is still essentially a Mary Sue.
An “idealized and seemingly perfect fictional character. They can usually perform better at tasks than should be possible given the amount of training or experience, and usually are able through some means to upstage the main protagonist of an established fictional setting, such as by saving the hero.”
Rey can instantly fly the Millennium Falcon, repair the Falcon on her own, overpower Kylo Ren with the Force, use Jedi mind tricks, defeat Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel after again overpowering him with the Force and advocates said it would be explained in The Last Jedi. Instead, The Last Jedi simply showed that she can further train herself with a lightsaber, is so powerful that she scares Luke, doesn’t need any training from a Jedi master, and can use the Force more reliably than Luke did when he sought training from Yoda. Even mirroring Luke’s confrontation with Vader by going to face Snoke and Kylo, she comes out ultimately victorious and suffers no loss or real setback whatsoever.
Rey is perfect. She has no flaws. She is skilled at everything with no background or training. And she is better than the established canon’s heroes. There is no passing of the torch in the sequel trilogy. Rey carries her own torch, she IS the torch, and doesn’t need one from anyone that came before.
Snoke
There’s nothing to even say. Snoke was a joke. We have no idea what he was or how he did anything up to this point other than being supremely powerful in the dark side, except apparently fairly oblivious to the Force at the same time. Much like Holdo, since we knew nothing about him it’s hard to really care that he’s dead beyond the emptiness of not knowing anything about how we got to where we are in the story when so much was by his doing.
Luke Skywalker
Now we come to the real crux of what drove so many fans up the wall. Luke Skywalker is part of American mythology. He’s one of the last of our mythic heroes. Johnson not only assassinated Luke’s character, but in the process wrote the entire story of the Skywalker saga to be completely irrelevant and moot.
The Jedi were utter failures in every sense of the word. Everything about the prophecy was complete rubbish. Anakin didn’t bring balance, he set the galaxy to darkness. Luke was not a new hope, he was a temporary blip before he also set the galaxy to darkness. Everything that happens in episodes 1-6 is completely pointless. The best we can hope for at the end of 9 is that Rey finally sets everything right because she read some books and was wiser than all Jedi throughout history.
If I sound a little bitter, it’s because I am. In “subverting expectations” and deconstructing Luke, Johnson managed to essentially crap on everything George Lucas had done with the Star Wars saga.
What’s frustrating is we’ve got interviews from Mark Hamill indicating he was supposed to be shown as having the Force swirling around him with how powerful he was at the end of VII and they didn’t do it. Production art shows him meditating with what appears to be a Force, or even Sith, ghost behind him.
If Luke had been pushing Rey towards that cave, towards the dark side, it would definitely not be what fans expect from Luke. We could have had Luke rediscover, and put Rey on the path of, the original Jedi from the expanded universe (which Disney is using pieces of here and there) in using both light and dark side of the Force and maintaining balance within themselves rather than the split of Jedi and Sith.
This would finally complete the Skywalker saga in full circle. Anakin, through his son, returns balance to the Force by Luke returning the Jedi to a path of balance within themselves. And that prophecy would be embodied by Rey, a nobody from nowhere, rather than the Skywalker bloodline. Yet it would still be Luke passing the torch to the next generation rather than Luke being irrelevant entirely.
Yes, Luke ultimately does something to buy the Resistance time and becomes an inspirational legend across the galaxy and I’ll admit that a final scene of Luke gazing at the sunset in mirror to the first time we met him was poetically beautiful, but a single scene of poetic mirroring isn’t better than the whole narrative coming together in mirror and contrast to bring resolution to the whole story.
Episode IX will be the conclusion of the Skywalker saga and with everything set up by Johnson in Episode VIII, the only way the saga can conclude is with the Skywalkers having been ultimately a blight upon the galaxy, not a new hope, not a correction of the Jedi mistakes. That’s why I’m bitter.
Wishes and Dreams
In hindsight, I’d have preferred Episode VII kicked off with Rey and perhaps even Finn being the only two surviving Jedi of Luke’s school, possibly with a handful of students. Luke has still disappeared and Rey and Finn have two different views on how to proceed forward – Rey searching for Luke and Finn looking to aid the Resistance.
With Finn, we could have Jedi Leia giving him some guidance and give her a chance to actually be a Jedi in her own right rather than space flying nun.
With Rey, we could have Luke discover the new path for the Jedi to follow (he already breaks from tradition with his school of Jedi in the EU anyway).
And instead of retreading and rehashing the Empire vs Rebellion, we could have had a new direction for the saga with the Knights of Ren vs the Knights of the New Republic. Fans have long wanted a Knights of the Old Republic setting, but why not the same vibe set in the New Republic with Luke’s students as the key figures?
Going Forward
So what can fans do to save Star Wars?
Be loud on social media? Make YouTube videos? Write letters?
Nothing.
Seriously, if you didn’t like The Last Jedi, there’s nothing you can do to change the course Disney and Lucasfilm is taking the series other than simply not go to future films if you feel that strongly about it.
For me, I simply decided I didn’t like this new version of the canon and decided I wouldn’t bother with any of the novels and comics, etc. I’ve heard Rebels is pretty good, so I’ll watch it eventually, though. I’ll watch Episode IX to see how Abrams tries to resolve everything, though I have no sense of anticipation for the film whatsoever at this point.
Instead, I decided to simply go back through the entire EU, starting with the comics and novels set prior to the Old Republic and I’m currently reading the books/comics and playing the games set in the Knights of the Old Republic era. I’ll continue working my way through the prequel era, the original trilogy era, and onward through the post trilogy, new Jedi Order, and on until I’ve completed the entire Star Wars EU saga.
It’s that simple, really. If you don’t like it, let it go and enjoy what was there before instead. Maybe we’ll eventually get an animated series with Han, Luke, and Leia set after Return of the Jedi, but at this point that’s about the best one could hope to ever see – though even then, knowing it all culminates in them all essentially being failures kind of takes some of the fun out of it.
But in the end, it’s a movie, no matter how beloved. It’s not worth death threats, anger, and hatred. The Dark Side can be seductive and too many who disliked The Last Jedi have fallen to its temptation.
If you didn’t like it, detail why you didn’t in a respectful manner, but realize that some enjoyed it. There’s no accounting for taste, after all, and some people… well, some people are just happy to be wrong.
“America’s 150 million gamers want to gather. They want to sit next to each other, elbow to elbow, controller to controller. They want the lighting to be cool, the snacks to be Hot Pockets, and they want a full bar because they aren’t teenagers anymore.”
As one might expect, gamers began mocking the tweet and, by extension, the article itself. Yet there’s a problem with a lot of the responses I saw: They didn’t read the article. If they had, they might have found that Bowles writes a rather positive description of gaming and its future as a centerpiece of American culture. The article goes so far as to comment on Hollywood’s decline during gaming, streaming, and esports’ continued rise. The article’s message is fairly clear: Gaming is no longer a hobby just for kids and teens and is growing exponentially. Not only is it not going anywhere, but it’s going to become even more of a standard staple in entertainment and may even be the savior of some struggling industries.
Let’s evaluate the article itself:
The headline, “All We Want to Do Is Watch Each Other Play Video Games,” is referring to the meteoric rise and record setting shift witnessed with YouTube and Twitch. No gamer can deny that the old new media – gaming magazines/now gaming sites – has been upended by YouTube reviewers/critics and Let’s Players with streaming on Twitch an even newer factor.
Ninja’s 635,000 consecutive views playing Fortnite with Drake made headlines. Streaming and esports are, essentially, watching others play video games and it’s appeal has proven massive. This is noted further with the sub-headline: “Gamers are the new stars. Esports arenas are the new movie theaters.”
If there was any doubt on the direction this was going, the first sentence should set the stage: “Video games are beginning their takeover of the real world.”
The article describes how malls, movie theaters, stores, parking garages, and more locations are converting to esports arenas and content farms are popping up to generate content with the same level of management as a major studio production.
Football teams are celebrating wins with dances from Fornite, which the article notes has racked up 129 million hours viewed on Twitch in under a year. That calculates out to 2.48 million hours a week. If Fortnite was a weekly television show, that might translate to 2.48 million viewers per week. That’s half of what The Simpsons pulls in. Yet that’s not a valid 1:1 comparison. In February alone, Bowles notes that Fortnite received 2.4 billion views on YouTube. Billion, with a B.
After establishing all this, the article states a very real fact that ESPN broadcasters were adamantly against just 3 years ago: “Esports are, finally, just like any other sport.”
eSports Saving America! (‘s malls)
As the online presence is growing more dominant on the streaming and review side, physical space is being taken up by esports arenas and gaming bars. However, here’s where that tweet quote comes in and even within the article where opinions may diverge.
“Those 150 million gamers in America want to gather. They want to sit next to each other, elbow to elbow, controller to controller. They want the lighting to be cool, the snacks to be Hot Pockets, and they want a full bar because they are not teenagers anymore.”
Commenters are correct – not all gamers are alike and the huge growth of eSports turn outs doesn’t mean all gamers want to squeeze into a room to watch others play games. Some don’t even want to be in a crowded place to play games together.
But I don’t think that’s really the full intent of the article and I think we, as gamers, should be a little more tempered in our reaction. “They want to sit next to each other, elbow to elbow, controller to controller” isn’t necessarily a literal statement. Nobody literally wants to sit with elbows touching and there’s no logical scenario that controllers would be. It’s more of a gaming iteration of “stand shoulder to shoulder.”
Considering the past number of years have primarily had journalists depicting gamers as anti-social goblins living in shadowy rooms despising human contact, I really think it’s reasonable to accept a claim that gamers are, in fact, normal people who want to gather with friends and enjoy a shared hobby. As the article notes, it’s a natural extension of the already sociable aspect of gaming as we chat on headsets while playing even when we’re not together in the same room.
Breaking down this contentious paragraph, simply think of it as such:
150 million gamers aren’t antisocial, they enjoy interacting with fellow gamers.
There’s a demand for public venues where the hobby can be enjoyed alongside fellow gamers.
They want these venues to have a comfortable atmosphere, not the dark basement stereotype.
The average gamer isn’t a kid anymore.
A Live Example
The article then shifts to describing a new esports arena in Oakland and its pre-opening party. 4000 people inside, a line stretched around the block right in the middle of a tourism hot spot. That’s a good turn out by any stretch and the fact that a game related venue is approved for a major tourism traffic area is more important than the gamers present.
The Co-founder is cited as saying he had to speak at four community meetings to convince the community it would like having the arena present. That means it took effort to get gaming in this location, to have it be present in the community. It also means it was successful. For all the complaints that gamers voice about how politicians, business executives, and everyone calling shots don’t get it, here you have a community that was convinced it was just as beneficial as a grocery store (the cited alternative that was initially desired). That’s a big deal.
Regarding that poorly chosen tweet, some also complained that it suggested gamers were stunted to associate “I’m grown up” exclusively with “I can drink alcohol.” That’s not accurate either, as the article notes the Oakland eSports arena faced challenges with getting a liquor license as the misconception was present that teenagers were the majority demographic when in actuality is cited with 25 being the average age. It’s a fact that most adults want alcoholic beverages as an option in public venues where they congregate.
The article has quotes from gamers in attendance, appreciating a larger venue than the typical back room in a gaming store or commenting on the layout. What caught my interest was that Bowles interviewed 77 year old designer Herb Press who may offer the most positive comment in the article:
”This is an audience involved in this particular time in the computer age, but I’m amazed how critical they are,” he said. “They do have serious concepts and tastes. I heard one come out of the bathroom and say it looked cool in there.”
Actual importance of bathroom ambiance aside, it’s worthwhile to note that it’s a tangible realization that gamers have “serious concepts and tastes” in a major publication like the New York Times. That’s a far cry from the Dorito gremlins we’re frequently written to be in clickbait articles. It suggests that despite the best efforts of certain groups, gaming is growing too big and all-encompassing as a cultural past time to be ignore and dismissed as nonsense that the kids do.
Even if we still find this amusingly valid in our hearts.
E-Celeb Dread
The next portion of the article is where the real concern should settle. Discussing eSports organizations and the industry that’s growing. As Bowles writes, “Their job is to be cool gamers.” The very notion sounds less like a gamer growing popular for their natural personality and connecting with an audience and more like manufactured gaming celebrities akin to the latest pop idol churned out by American Idol year after year.
It’s noted there are numerous growing eSports teams (perfectly reasonable) and content mills (possibly concerning). That’s where we’re getting into the idea of manufactured gaming. When gaming it about churning out content to mine for something that might go viral, that’s not really gaming so much as it’s trying to find something that will become popular and presenting it for the sole purpose of increasing popularity so that popularity can be translated to followers & subscribers to generate more revenue for corporations that are funding the celebrity in question.
However, it’s noted many have broken away from the entertainment company they were partnered with to pursue their own media companies. That ironically brings them full circle – back to where a content creator on YouTube has replaced the big media conglomerations and has more reach. If gaming can hope to stave off the typical corporate corruption that seems to seep into everything, an ongoing system of direct connection between creators and fans is the way to do it.
Hollywood vs Gaming
Bowles wraps up the article discussing the decline of movie going. Talking to a former Capital Records president who has turned to gamer management (again, think manufactured e-celebs), he says the future is in eSports and gaming, which he believes will surpass movies as an entertainment industry and he acknowledges that a lot of people his age still think gamers must be ‘nerds in their basement’ and says that puts the entertainment industry behind the curve, or “asleep at the switch.”
This entire article is example after example that gaming is, if not THE future of entertainment, at least a major part of it. It’s a shame that so many gamers won’t realize this article is actually in support of their hobby, proclaiming its prominence in the future of culture, based entirely on a poorly chosen tweet.
That’s not entirely at the gamers’ feet, either. They’ve gotten so used to clickbait and disparaging headlines that they do what any gamer would – they don’t play. They don’t click the article, they don’t give the publication click-money. They do what they can to deny the “enemy” points on the board. And while the context of that paragraph in the article isn’t entirely bad by my interpretation, it’s still oddly out of place in the context of the article as a whole.
After all, there’s no mention of Hot Pockets at a single esports arena, gamer bar, or gaming center in the article, nor requested by anyone interviewed, so why suggest gamers want the snacks to be Hot Pockets? That runs contrary to the paragraph’s depiction of gamers as having serious concepts and tastes as well as contrary to the push that the average gamer is an adult, not a teen or kid.
Besides, tendies are the superior choice these days, anyway. At least give a gamer some nugs.
This week, The Escapist published an article with a strange double headline. The page’s tab header reads “The “Gamers” Image is Dead and We Should Bury It” while the article headline itself reads “”Gamers” Are Still Dead Y’all.”
Taylor Hidalgo starts off saying that gaming is alive and well, but “the basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls image others have of gamers is still very troublesome. It’s an image we need to resist.” So is this image dead and we should bury it or is the image alive and we should resist it? Which is it?
And for that matter, an image we need to resist? It’s an image that games journalists have been pushing as the primary representation of gamers for the past 3 to 5 years, if not longer. If the gaming community is supposed to present a better image, doesn’t that include the journalists who are supposed to have their fingers on the pulse of the gaming community? Countless gamers have voiced their stories of how gaming got them through depression, stopped them from committing suicide, helped them through the awkward period of being a social outcast in school, or how they became more sociable through socializing with their online friends while gaming.
Instead, they feature article after article about the worst they can find about gamers. They push a single side of gaming communities: the very one Hidalgo says is troublesome. Meanwhile, writers like Liana Kerzner are ignored, their voice unwelcome in publications. Liana is one of the few I find on Twitter who frequently speaks on the positives of gaming culture and the accepting attitude the community has offered her through the years.
There are countless critics of games and the gaming community, yet so few first and foremost describe themselves as video game historian and preservationist Patrick Scott Patterson does: as an advocate for video games. Rather than miring himself in the negatives, Patterson most often focuses on the positives or, more often, the facts of industry history.
Journalists refuse to cover these positive aspects of the gaming community. It runs contrary to the basement dwelling goblin they so frequently push as the de facto image of gamers. It also doesn’t earn outrage clicks and drive traffic like controversial articles do, which may explain why inflammatory headlines and accusatory articles are more commonly seen.
A Problem With Vocabulary
I find it ironic that Hidalgo talks about a problem with vocabulary as part of the struggle when journalists, supposedly wordsmiths themselves, seem incapable of considering their audience when choosing their language for articles.
Just this week, Ubisoft announced there would be a mode in Assassin’s Creed: Origins that had no story and no combat. The purpose of this mode was to allow players to simply wander the game world and take tours of historical information to learn about ancient Egypt’s places, cultural traditions, beliefs, and practices. It’s essentially an interactive museum mode, which Assassin’s Creed has always had to some extent. Being able to read entries about various locations has always been in the series, this just removes interruptions for players to focus on that if they choose. It’s an optional mode and one I think could prove interesting after completing the story or, for some, to explore before the story or even separate from the story entirely.
However, articles are presenting it as if Ubisoft is exploring the idea of Assassin’s Creed being “fun without the murder,” as though the series may shift towards a model that removes combat entirely. Nothing I’ve seen from Ubisoft’s quotes or Ubisoft employee tweets suggests anything of the sort, yet journalists choose language that heavily leans that direction.
I have seen a lot of gamers give knee jerk reactions to these headlines, thinking the game is being dumbed down, everything that makes the series what it is (assassin’s gonna assassinate, after all) will be removed. I roll my eyes at these comments and point out it’s an optional mode that just removes the triggers for combat. It likely took no time to implement and alters nothing of the game’s basic premise. I suggest they consider it more of an add on mode rather than exploring a way to alter the series as a whole. I get far fewer responses still raging about Ubisoft ruining the game when discussing it as such.
I understand why gamers are on edge. The games media falls over itself to praise games like Gone Home, which gamers refer to as “walking simulators” since there’s no game play beyond wandering around and clicking on things. If you read a few articles, games journalists make it sound like these games are the future and should be replacing violent action games as a whole. The journalists will quickly turn around and say they never suggest games shouldn’t be made, but it’s simply not true. It’s been stated often and repeatedly that games not meeting with the approval of progressive politics should basically dwindle until they’re a footnote in gaming history. Again, ironic that journalists are so unaware of the language, tone, and vocabulary they use that they can’t understand defensive responses from the very audience they write for.
And if gamers are supposed to speak to others without using language that a non-gamer wouldn’t understand, why are journalists constantly writing articles with strings of academia phrases that only make sense to third year gender studies majors? Why use a five dollar word when a ten cent word will suffice? Telling a gamer to approach a game from the critical lens of feminist analysis in regards to cishet heteronormative standards with white colonial influences is just as fruitless as Hidalgo’s examples of “frame perfect links, expert jungling, getting mana screwed, pocket Mercy, No Mercy runs, TAS runs.”
The ignorance of the media in casting accusations while turning away from any mirror directed at themselves astounds me and only succeeds in these writers and their audience talking past each other rather than with one another. While we’re on the topic of using words wisely, why attack “Gamers” as an identity, group, or image when you want to challenge the “public stereotypes of Gamers” instead? That’s something everyone should be able to get behind; Gamers are collectively so much more than that.
Are Journalists Out of Touch? No, It’s the Culture That Is Wrong.
The next part of the struggle, Hidalgo says, is gaming culture itself.
“It’s hard to push into games from the outside because there is resistance to the concept of glossaries. More pertinently, those who need them.” Yet new players have entered Final Fantasy XIV with no knowledge of the series and/or no knowledge of MMOs in general and praise the welcoming community in the game. Forums frequently have beginner guides with, yes, glossaries for those who would need them, not just for MMOs, and there are allsortsofwikisonlinenow generated by the communities.
With gaming growing into the largest entertainment industry, reaching across multiple age groups and a vast array of new players from every age, journalists are surprisingly blind to opportunities before them. If new players, young and old, are coming in unaware of the different cultures within gaming (and there is not actually one single “gaming culture” as RPG communities differ from FPS communities differ from MMO communities differ from fighting communities), why are the games sites not growing a subdivision for these new players? Articles written expressly for people who are picking up a controller or the mouse and keyboard for the first time, regardless of age?
Remember I mentioned Patrick Scott Patterson being an advocate for games? He’s written for a games publication you’ve probably never heard of: Little Player, a bi-monthly magazine for kids. This is a publication specifically for kids, reviewing games rated EC, E, and E10+. I’ve not seen the big sites mention this publication, nor have they emulated it.
Rather than demanding gamers accept that all games need to be designed for all skill levels, why not write for different skill levels? The recent Dean Takashi Cuphead kerfuffle made me realize that if my mother decided to try a video game, where could I tell her to go read about them that would make sense to her? Why are there not journalists specializing in articles aimed at children, aimed at adults, or even seniors who are interested in games for the first time? This idea hit me more profoundly just recently as a friend and I replayed Power Rangers for SNES. It’s not a hard game, but it felt like it was a beat ’em up aimed at kids and people who never played that type of game before. It was a perfect suggestion to play for someone new to the genre before they step up to Final Fight or Double Dragon and then on to Battletoads, for instance.
Now, granted, I do agree that modern games do better with their multiple difficulties than having entire games for different skill levels and I think gamers who despise these options are doing a disservice to their community. If someone isn’t good at video games, but enjoy playing on easy mode in the solitude of their own home, it’s not hurting anyone. If they play easy mode in a fighting game until they are completing entire play throughs perfectly, then start normal to do the same and work their way up to the hardest difficulty, how is that bad? If anything, it’s training to “git gud.” But where are the articles aimed at introducing the different difficulties and advising these new players on which is best for them? Not just commenting on them, in a review, but divisions of sites dedicated to new players diving into the differences of these games, their difficulty level, and introducing them to learning the ins and outs?
If the gaming community accepts different subforums for different aspects of their games, do journalists really think gamers wouldn’t accept a wider variety of skill levels being reported to if the reporting sites were divided into similar categories?
Hidalgo goes on to say that things “that widen games to audiences formerly in the outside of the culture read as some kind of betrayal. Those who feel passionately about games seem to want to keep them close, locked into a familiar shape with familiar communities.” Hidalgo doesn’t give specific examples, so it’s hard to say what gamers are resisting without wild speculation. However, Gamers frequently complain about retreading the same thing on an annual basis and go nuts for innovative new presentations of familiar ideas or fresh new IPs as a whole. Valiant Hearts has a 10/10 on Steam. Okami is still beloved 11 years after its release and the HD PS4 release has many gamers excited to revisit the artistic world. Journey was praised by gamers and press alike.
There’s Room Enough For Us All
The problem we run into is that journalists so frequently push these things that “widen games to audiences formerly in the outside” as replacements for games that are enjoyed rather than new additions to the landscape. You don’t see movie critics saying art films should outright replace the summer blockbuster. And much like Hollywood, the games industry needs their mindless blockbuster tentpoles as well.
If Ubisoft didn’t have revenue flowing in from the annual Assassin’s Creed or Tom Clancy SomethingOrOther blockbuster, would we have gotten Valiant Hearts or Child of Light from that same studio? Journalists don’t seem to acknowledge the concept and as such, I feel a lot of gamers overlook the same when they also complain about “yet another Call of Duty” or the like.
I keep repeating myself that there’s irony in this article and journalists refuse to look in the same mirror they want gamers to gaze upon. But once more, if journalists want gamers to settle down and let new arrivals to the community enjoy games that aren’t violent or take new approaches to gameplay, those same journalists must also allow some gamers to enjoy their boob modded Call of Duty games without accusing them of hating real women.
In-Groups and Out-Groups
Hidalgo goes further in critiquing the “culture that feels those already playing belong to the in-group, and out-groups trying to join either need to fold themselves quietly, or leave. That games don’t belong to anyone but those already in.” This is human nature and something you’re going to find within every community.
Should one expect to enter an Amish community and want them to start using smart phones to text you when the next community event is?
Should one expect to enter the reggae scene and want more heavy metal guitar riffs in the music?
Should one expect to join a romance novel book club and expect to focus on Japanese shonen light novels?
Should one expect to join a local Japanese Cultural Society and expect more focus on tribal cultures in the rain forests of South America?
No, to join any of these communities, the out-groups are expected to fold into the community, to understand the community before injecting new ideas. Why should gamers not expect newcomers to enter and integrate before raising questions and considering change?
And that strikes at the heart of a lot of the problems. Gamers are being told they’re toxic quite often by people who again and again indicate they have no understanding of the community they’re criticizing in the first place. This causes that community to push back, perhaps sometimes too harshly, which leads to accusations of aggressiveness.
Sexism in the Community
Hidalgo gets a little more specific with the problems in the gaming community, claiming women “have a hard time pushing into game communities without the expectation to just tolerate the sexism already present.” I’ve been playing video games since I was in kindergarten and I’ve never been exposed to sexism that women would have to accept. I started playing MMOs with EverQuest, joining a guild that was run by a woman. I played World of Warcraft for ten years where the guilds I was in had single women, married women (their partners often playing), with raids having a mix of men and women and some guilds and raids also run by a female guild leader. In college, my friends and I hung out with one of the biggest gaming nerds you’d ever meet and nobody thought her odd for it. I’ve been to gaming conventions and gaming meet ups where nobody ever said one word about women in a negative way. Most gamer guys want, more than anything, a partner that shares their love of the hobby, so why would they actively want women out of gaming?
I’m not going to claim there is absolutely no sexism in gaming and just because I’ve not seen it directed at the women I’ve played alongside doesn’t mean other women haven’t experienced it, or even the women I’ve played alongside haven’t. Women get hit on in games, sometimes far too aggressively, and are even attacked when they reject the person coming on to them. They can be treated as less capable just for being a woman, but again, I’ve not see it happen in all my years online.
Slut, bitch, and other slurs are hurled too often, I’ll agree, but I don’t think it’s fair to treat this as an exclusively gaming culture issue. This is a wider issue with anonymity and a lack of empathy in online interactions. You see it everywhere online, from debates over film to what toppings belong on pizza. Some subset of people take things too far and while the gaming community can take steps to be better than other online examples, it feels like they’re often treated as an outlier rather than an average example of an issue with society online as a whole.
There’s also the fact that people are unnecessarily cruel to men online as well. The same people who will be blatantly sexist towards women are the same types who will be blatantly cruel towards men for any perceived weakness and will attack what they think is most vulnerable, whether it be race, orientation, or masculinity. I’ll see gaming journalists on Twitter rant about toxic masculinity and men seeing women as sexual conquests turn around and insult men as being “virgin losers.” In doing so, they imply a lack of treating women as sexual conquests makes a man somehow inferior, which seems to feed into the very thing they claim to be against. It’s weird.
Fostering a Positive Community
As for how to address this situation? Attacking gamers as a whole isn’t going to solve anything. Instead, if journalists want to contribute to positive change, they need to be discussing ways developers have encouraged good behavior rather than complaining about bad behavior. This is where developers can take actual action in fostering more positive communities.
Take Final Fantasy XIV, for example. After 10 years of World of Warcraft, the community was often lamenting to being more and more toxic. This happened as the game became more and more anonymous. Queueing for dungeons with people from other servers you’ll never see again for the rest of your gaming life removed any concern for behavior where server reputation previously carried some weight. Players who were new to a dungeon often stayed silent and just hoped nobody noticed they had no idea what they were doing, even after Blizzard added a dungeon guide in the game. If you screwed up, you expected to be assailed with raging accusations of poor performance, being a “shit player” and the like.
Moving over to Final Fantasy XIV, the same cross-server anonymity exists, yet the behavior is largely praised by new players as a completely different experience. The FFXIV dev team have implemented positive reinforcement. When a player has never run content before, the group is notified someone is new to the dungeon. I most often see happy responses because running someone through their first time gives veteran players bonuses for completing it. Players are often more patient to explain fight mechanics as a result and I frequently see reassurances not to be too worried. I’ll even see players give tips to new players about roles the veteran is not currently playing, but have played at length otherwise. At the end of dungeons, players can give commendations to players who did well or were helpful.
Likewise, harassment is dealt with harshly in FFXIV, with cancelled and banned accounts being a real possibility for repeat offenders, but I personally think the various subtle positive reinforcements have more impact.
I’ve been in 8 man dungeons where my friends and I made up 5 of the 8 and thus had majority control. We had one new player, a healer who wasn’t new, and a DPS rounding out the group. The DPS was constantly bad mouthing the new player for mistakes. We tried to ease the tension by talking, but they remained aggressive, so as the majority we kicked them. The healer, who we didn’t know, immediately thanked the group for it, even though they weren’t the target of the abuse. We got a replacement, explained the situation and continued to try the fight. We got closer, but spent our entire 90 minutes attempting and failing to win. In the end, everyone was still happy with the progress and the new player was very grateful for the tips and for sticking with it. We disbanded thinking they had a solid understanding of the fight and would be able to clear it in the future. I’ve seen similar situations where I didn’t have the majority vote being with friends, but the player screwing up stayed and the player bad mouthing them was kicked out of the group.
You’d never believe this sort of behavior happened in any gaming community if you listened to the articles online.
I’m not personally familiar with it, but League of Legends implemented a “Player Reform” system and, while its success and methods can of course be debated, it’s an example of developers looking at how to foster improved experiences for the community rather than simply saying the community is bad. Blizzard has been evaluating what it can do with Overwatch to foster a more positive community as well.
Racism in the Community
Moving from a focus on women, Hidalgo notes that “Minorities who speak against the overwhelming lack of representation are just called racists themselves for failing to accept that whiteness is the default, and any deviation is somehow confrontationally political where overwhelming underrepresentation isn’t.” Once again, writers and readers speak past one another rather than with one another. Many gamers welcome minority characters and a wider diversity of protagonists, but the critics who propose such things so frequently do so by insisting existing characters should be erased, removed from future games, and replaced with the new minority.
Or worse, that the existing character is somehow bad because they’re white. Their tone indicates that simply being white is itself wrong. Any time a game doesn’t have a minority protagonist, it’s “problematic” and entire articles are dedicated to the grave injustice rather than simply noting potential ways a change in protagonist might affect story possibilities or would have fit the period better. The atmosphere has become so confrontational and so bullish that many gamers have become skeptical of attempts by developers as pandering for journalist approval rather than deeply developing these characters, which only makes things worse!
Gamers do have a point, though: there’s a difference between representation and token representation. I also have an issue with utilizing minority protagonists only for said protagonist to be supported by a bevvy of stereotypes, such as black characters being commonly joined with hip hop soundtracks or typical “gangsta” costume design and such. A young black man can’t be into heavy metal or classical music, or dress in comic book t-shirts rather than sports jerseys?
Yes, some people take their resistance to these characters too far and some are likely genuine racists themselves. You’ll find bad apples in every orchard, but that doesn’t mean they’re the standard. Again, journalists tend to focus and report exclusively on negativity and ignore any positivity from gamers.
Fantasization of Sexual Femininity and Toxic Masculinity
The last point, however: “Fantasization of sexual femininity and toxic masculinity is the expected normal, and any push for alternatives is seen as invasive and unwanted.” Without getting sidetracked again about vocabulary and how these phrases come across more like buzzwords now days, the problem, Mr. Hidalgo, is many gamers don’t accept the “toxic masculinity” academia that you’re claiming to be a negative in the first place. I’ve seen claims that a male character killing demons is violent power fantasy and thus toxic masculinity itself. But I’m not sure how would one prefer bloodthirsty demons hellbent on the ruination of all mankind be dealt with if not a bladed weapon to the horned skull.
As for fantasization of sexual femininity, well, that’s not present in every game on the market either. Some are overly exaggerated and ridiculous and even gamers laugh about the silliness of some of them. But they also don’t agree that it’s harmful to society and no studies have conclusively suggested they’re wrong. I won’t talk in depth about this aspect because it would probably take at least another 10,000 words as it first requires agreeing on what constitutes negative sexualization of femininity versus acceptable sexualization. Again, we dive into vocabulary that’s not exactly aimed at the average reader, so I’ll leave this to the previously mentioned Liana Kerzner’s upcoming Lady Bits video series (Disclosure: I backed the series on Kickstarter as I’m interested to see what comes from Kerzner’s approach to the subject topics).
Game Designers Can’t Be Open With The Community
I will agree when Hidalgo says “Honesty about design is read as manipulation, and developers are punished for getting out of line or designing games in “wrong” ways,” though. There are vocal people in the gaming community who have a hair trigger to attack developers and designers and while I find them foolish, I struggle to completely blow them off and blame them for being defensive when journalists and even some developers have actively bred a hostile environment against them. A lot of the time, what Hidalgo may see as aggressive punishment, I see as lashing out over being hurt. “Hurt people hurt people” as the saying goes.
The claims Hidalgo quotes from Charles Randall state that game developers would share everything gamers want to know about game design if not for the toxic community has a grain of truth with a smear of bullcrap. As Liana Kerzner has noted, developers have to be careful what they say because if they dare say something interesting, it becomes controversial, and PR reps are going to keep them gagged from talking whatsoever. The smallest statement can be dragged up years later to smear a developer to force them to make public apologies at what should be a great moment for them, their team, and their career. It’s not just the gamers that developers have to be careful around, it’s the press that’s eager to tear them apart for saying anything not deemed progressively correct.
The Games, They’re A Changin’
I respectfully disagree with Mr. Hidalgo that gamers insist games must continue to be the same as they have been for 40 years. The fact that games have grown and spread as much as they have, to a wide range of diverse types of games, proves this is simply inaccurate. What many gamers are opposed to is that the way games are, and have been, are inherently bad and that they, as people, are somehow inferior human beings and inherently bad for enjoying these games.
While many critics will claim “nobody wants to take away your games,” they turn around and write article after article about how these games are harmful and need to be forever abandoned. Journalists are not approaching gamers in good faith by simply covering new games with different ideas so much as detailing why games that are loved are “problematic” and need to be changed. If developers and journalists would come to the community from the stance that there’s room for both kinds of games, for all kinds of games, a lot of animosity would calm down with time. Then criticism of specifics can be addressed without the overall paranoia. Note, I say “with time.” It’s going to take some time for games press to rebuild a trusting relationship, even if they present an olive branch to the community and start working to build those bridges.
While I can fully agree we need to accept that the criticism about the sexuality built into games like Bayonetta or Lollypop Chainsaw is valid, I fully disagree that “No one is saying these games are inherently bad” because that’s precisely what the journalist-praised Feminist Frequency videos repeatedly stated, as well as explicitly stating there should be no games styled and developed in this way in current year. It doesn’t help that in criticizing games like Bayonetta, or Ivy from Soul Calibur, the critics demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of what the game’s story and presentation is commenting on. Bayonetta and Ivy are equally decried as sexual objectifications by feminists while simultaneously praised as strong examples of empowerment flaunting female sexuality by….yes, feminists. If different schools of thought among feminists don’t agree, how can we expect gamers who aren’t steeped in feminist theory to accept that these characters are unquestionably “problematic?”
As for the “skimpy nuns, bikini-clad martial artists, exposed-breast ninjas, and The Witcher sex scenes” creating an image that the games community doesn’t resist, I ask why should the games community resist the image? The games community isn’t presenting this image as representative of them as a whole, YOU ARE. Journalists focus on specific games, or even single scenes in a single level of a game, and treat them as representative of every single game on the market. Not to mention the double standards of sex scenes with female companions being decried as “virtual porn” while sex scenes with male companions get articles gushing over which guy is the hottest.
You don’t see the entire film industry labeled as toxic because questionable pornography exists. You don’t even see the film industry condemned by a majority of publications as promoting toxic masculinity because summer action movies simply exist. Entertainment Weekly hasn’t labeled all of HBO’s programming toxic because of one scene from Game of Thrones. Instead, writers in that medium acknowledge there are a wide range of movies. Why can’t writers in the games media do the same?
A Look In the Mirror
Mirror, mirror, I’m not sexist. But can I prove it to a journalist?
One thing I can fully agree with Hidalgo on is “Dispelling the toxicity does mean taking a hard look in the mirror.” But that’s something the journalists who want to lay the entire blame squarely, and exclusively, on the gamers have refused to do for at least the last five years. Actively ignoring positive communities and gamers within them does nothing to help present the maturity within the community as a whole. As a result, I don’t see the gaming community as responding with aggressiveness, but defensiveness.
Games journalists’, and their sites’, hands are not clean and until you accept that you and yours are fostering a hostile atmosphere with the gaming community, there’s not going to be an end to the unproductive devisiveness. Journalists have to start coming to their articles with a mentality of discussion rather than one of aggression towards their readers. If you stop attacking them, they may stop counterattacking in defense of themselves and their hobby. Once these gamers feel they can stop looking over their shoulder, they can start to look in the mirror at themselves as well.
Let’s Bury The “Gamers” Stereotypes
Yes, the “worst aspects of the “gamer” image need to be universally examined and challenged,” but they need to be examined and challenged in good faith, not blanket statements and accusations stated as fact from on high. And while these “challenges need to be accepted as a part of the culture,” the press needs to report on valid criticism of the criticism as well, accepting that counter points to these challenges are just as valid as the challenge itself.
Where Taylor Hidalgo hits the nail squarely on the head is this:
“The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough, and that’s keeping communities at their most angry. This culture needs to start fighting an image it’s never fully earned but still has. That image is holding gaming to an image that has been in the deathbed for years, but needs to finally by buried.
Games have already changed, and will continue to change, and holding onto an aggression-centric culture isn’t helping.”
He’s totally right. The parts of the gaming community that encourage furious dissent aren’t being evaluated enough – because their arguments and their points of view aren’t evaluated at all. We’re at a point where criticism is viewed as the truth and any opposing view to that criticism is invalid. The idea that “the truth is somewhere in the middle” has become a phrase of derision, as if it’s somehow a vile concept to explore.
What’s most frustrating about this article’s conclusion is that this image of the angry white straight male gamer is INDEED an image it’s never fully earned but still has, and one that the gaming community has tried to fight for years. The problem is their most high ranking allies, the gaming press, turned against them and perpetuate that image as the only representation of gamers. How can gamers fight this image when the only exposure from the media is to twist everything into this image? How can this image die if it keeps being resurrected over every possible complaint?
Stop necro’ing the stereotype, guys!
If we’re going to finally bury the image of gamers as a “basement-dwelling Mountain Dew goblin teenager stereotype who screams at his mother for “interrupting” his boob-modded Call of Duty match to give him his pizza rolls,” then the gaming press has to stop making that the only image they claim exists. The gaming community has raised hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars for various charities through the years. They go out of their way to help other games. They are contributing members of society. But if the gaming press continues to focus exclusively on negative stories, weaving negative narratives, and depicting gamers as hateful, nothing the community does is going to change that misconception.
The way gamers have been treated the past few years makes me think of a line from Zootopia: “If the world’s only going to see a fox as shifty and untrustworthy, there’s no point being anything else.” If the gaming press is only going to portray gamers as mean and vicious people, how many gamers have given up on trying to be anything else? The press has, in a way, engaged in psychological warfare against gamers and I’ve seen more than a few admit on Twitter that they’ve essentially given up on trying to prove they’re better.
And that’s a pretty sad thought.
If the gaming press wants the community to be better, they’re going to have to accept that they truly are better than their worst. The gaming press has to stop judging gamers by the worst actions of some while judging themselves only by their own best intentions. Your readers aren’t evil. The majority are not sexist or racist or bigoted.
If you want them to show you their best, give them the chance to be their best. Spotlight them at their best. The more you call them monsters, the more you encourage them to give up and accept the role along with the title.
In the last week or two, the debate has once again flared up on Twitter and various sites over whether or not games journalists should be good at games. The source of the new dust up of discussion stems from Dean Takahashi’s article at Venturebeat ‘Cuphead hands-on: My 26 minutes of shame with an old-time cartoon game.’
Takahashi starts his piece by acknowledging he sucks at Cuphead, but he immediately offers a defense: “the run-and-gun platformer from Studio MDHR and Microsoft is difficult.”
That would be a fair defense if not for the 26 minute video that shows Dean’s inability to overcome a jump in a tutorial and then his repeated deaths on the first level, even the first encounter with enemies in the first level to some degree.
Takahashi goes on to say “While my performance on the captured video below is quite shameful, as I never finished the level, I think it shows quite well why Cuphead is fun and why making hard games that depend on skill is like a lost art.”
I agree with the statement and it’s a reasonable one to make that could warrant some interesting discussion, but it doesn’t resonate with gamers when you don’t get through the first grouping of enemies in the first level. Takahashi didn’t finish the first level… he barely even started it. Yes, Cuphead looks fun and making hard games that depend on skill is rarer now than the late 80s and 90s, but the video doesn’t really give gamers a reason to believe Cuphead is an example of a throw back to those style of games.
I give Mr. Takahashi a little leeway, unlike many lambasting him on social media who seem to have watched the video and never read the article. He notes he didn’t realize you can’t jump on enemies like Mario games. If a gamer comes at this with a platformer mentality, that’s fair. This isn’t a platformer, it’s a run and gun more akin to Contra.
My issue is that the video also shows a lack of learning from those mistakes. You should only die a couple of times jumping or running into enemies before you realize that should be avoided. Takahashi also notes “I think you’ll all agree that at the very end of the video, it was very unfair that I died by jumping into the forest canopy.”
No, Mr. Takahashi, I don’t agree. You didn’t jump into a forest canopy, you jumped into an enemy that we can see descending from that place just before. The final death just happened to jump into that enemy before it descended into sight from the leaves. The fact that a games reporter doesn’t realize this, even after reviewing their own video, is disappointing.
I am not without sympathy
However, I’ll give Dean some credit. He roasts himself in his own article. He talks about his shame. He invites us to laugh at his poor gameplay video. I think he goes wrong trying to justify it with the reasons I’ve mentioned above instead of continuing to roast himself and keep encouraging the laughs.
There are also plenty of reasons that could better explain, but not try to excuse or dismiss, the poor performance. Dean Takahashi has been in the tech and games journalism industry for 25 years. Assuming he started fresh out of high school at 18, that would put him in his early 40s.
Hard truth, gamers: we’re not immortal and the one boss we can’t defeat is time. We age. Our reflexes will slow down. I see it on forums all the time as gamers in their 30s and 40s feel they no longer have the motivation and reflexes for twitch gaming, hard mode difficulty, or hardest level raiding in MMOs. Many note their reflexes and reaction times have decreased.
Now compound this with the possibility of action platformers and run and gun not being your favored game genre since childhood and it starts adding up to a more sympathetic picture. Add to it that he was apparently trying to hold a bit of an interview with the developer at the same time and things continue to add up to contribute to poor gameplay. Dean didn’t address any of this, but if all of these factors hold true, he should have. It would have added a touch more sympathy to the painful presentation and could have painted an increasingly hilarious picture.
Now, I’m not entirely excusing Dean. Others have noted he gave Mass Effect a poor score when he didn’t realize he could assign stats and points to basically level up in the game, so there’s some history of being bad at games here. I’m not telling anyone to give Mr. Takahashi a free pass, but 2 incidents shouldn’t be a career execution.
Nice advice, but shouldn’t journalists be good at games?
Short answer: No.
Medium answer: Not necessarily good, but competent.
Nuanced answer: If they’re reviewing games, they should be competent to play them, but not all game journalists are reviewers and thus not all game journalists need to be good at video games. Some just need to be good at journalism. (Though, yes, I’m aware of the Super Meat Boy error).
Maybe Dean Takahashi really is bad at playing video games, but still loves playing video games. I would say this just means he shouldn’t review gameplay, not that he can’t be a good games journalist.
Takahashi notes in his article on 9/8/17 “The DeanBeat: Our Cuphead runneth over” he writes around 30 stories a week, or around 1560 articles per year, but only a dozen or so game reviews per year. So Takahashi is, by admission, more of an industry games journalist, not a gameplay/game review journalist.
That’s perfectly reasonable, and gamers should actually want people like this in the industry. They’re the ones likely to bring us stories about developer profiles, company rumors, analysis of what various industry circumstances could mean (like the ongoing Ubisoft battle to fend off Vivendi) that don’t require being good at games, or even competent at them, or even understanding game design concepts.
That doesn’t mean Takahashi, or journalists like him, should never touch a controller at a convention like Gamescom, either. I still found value in his shameful gameplay article noting the 1936 Japanese propaganda film inspiration for the game. If a journalist is bad at a game, but can offer more bits of info like this from developers during their 30 minutes at a convention preview, I can find value there.
While those journalists are doing a few previews at a show, but mostly writing stories about industry events, people in the industry, and potential impact of industry changes, or even technical facts about hardware, other writers who make it their focus to play and review games can simply do that (and hopefully also go to the conventions and shows for previews as well). People like Takahashi enjoy talking to people. Others like playing video games. So why send someone who loves playing and reviewing games out to talk to people if they don’t enjoy doing so?
Why ask a tank to heal and a healer to tank? Different classes can have different specializations and there’s no reason journalists can’t, or shouldn’t, do the same.
Is there a place for bad gamers in games journalism?
People have said Dean Takahashi is incompetent at games, that’s he’s not even at a basic level. He’s bad at games.
(Mr. Takahashi, if you’re reading this, full disclosure, I had a good chuckle at the Cuphead Tutorial vs. Pigeon Problem Solving comparison. I won’t apologize for that chuckle and as much as you’re buried in hateful criticism, I’d hope you can get some self deprecating amusement as well. That said, you write better than the pigeon, so don’t feel like the Internet has entirely gone to the birds. You could fully embrace that and ponder a “Dean & The Pigeon Review Team” as a bit)
I’d go so far as to say that journalists like Takahashi could be beneficial to the industry in ways that core gamers are overlooking. Nintendo loves to attract the demographic of “general consumer” more than core gamer. It’s been explosive for them with the Wii and even the DS and 3DS to some extent. Mobile games are huge with general consumers rather than core gamers. MMOs have long been bastions for wide range of demographics, particularly skewing older than core gaming traditionally has. Square Enix has Father of Light (Dad of Light in the US) on Netflix right now about a son reconnecting with his 60 year old father through Final Fantasy XIV.
A journalist who isn’t a core gamer could possibly offer insight to parents who didn’t grow up gaming and are curious about trying it. As in Father of Light, retirees have time on their hands and with gaming an ever growing phenomenon across all age groups, why shouldn’t people who have never picked up a game be allowed to do so? Why couldn’t they have some articles aimed more towards them than we core gamers?
I’m not saying Dean Takahashi, or journalists who have shown similar “fails” with their gameplay, are all equivalents to 60 year old retirees who have never played a video game, but I am saying that the journalists who do more industry coverage and less gaming might have a voice those similar not-yet-gamers may find useful. Possibly even to the point of a whole new, if small, division of games coverage.
So, yeah, much to my surprise and complete opposite of my first instinctive response, bad gamer journalists may actually have a place in the industry. I think the key is to go a step further with, and now we get sticky, disclosure of that fact.
AAAAARRRRGH GERBLURGAAAATE!
I’m just throwing it out there because others are already doing so and it’s going to get brought up anyway. Yeah, yeah, GamerGate, “actually, it’s about ethics in game journalism,” etc., etc. Get it out of your system. This isn’t really about that, but tangentially it is about a layer of disclosure.
This entire dust up started with “I suck at Cuphead.” I’ll reiterate, I think the mistake was the follow up “but in my defense” statement, which I think Takahashi agrees with per his later article.
If a journalist isn’t a core gamer, doesn’t get to spend much time gaming, and is more of an industry journalist, that’s fine. Just say so up front. Just comment your time is spent writing about things and people in the industry more than the games and gameplay, but you did have the chance to go hands on at a press event, convention, or whatever.
Write it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t get to pick up a controller often. Write with the clarity that the game isn’t for people who aren’t really gamers. It’s not an entry level game. If someone who’s been in the industry reporting on games for years finds themselves screwing up this much, someone who’s never played a game might want to find something else to start with. Find an angle that uses your weakness as a foundation and a strength. Make it clear you’re not really “among” core gamers at this point and this article really isn’t written for them as they won’t benefit from it as much.
Absolutely some will still call for your job, but you’ll find a lot of gamers surprisingly reasonable when they’re just told up front the article probably won’t help them along with some insight as to why.
And if you played poorly and you know you played poorly, but you want the readers to join in and laugh, don’t make excuses. Own that comedy of errors to the fullest extent and roast yourself thoroughly in the article. The readers are going to, you might as well fire up the grill and get the cookout started yourself.
Like many other gamers, I was watching the Airplay panel on #GamerGate at the SPJ convention in Miami, FL yesterday. While you’re sure to see articles about the event and the debate, as well as the results of a bomb threat forcing the venue and surrounding neighborhood to evacuate, I wanted to talk about what wasn’t actually discussed as a result of that evacuation.
The moderator, Michael Koretzky, wanted the afternoon panel to discuss how journalists should approach hashtag groups in the future, not specific to #GamerGate, and was adamant about not bringing up past mistakes and past issues. He repeatedly stated he, and the journalistic ethics representatives Lynn Walsh & Ren LaForme, weren’t originally there and didn’t know who did what in the past and thus wanted to hear nothing of it. Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopooulos questioned how to advise what to do going forward if past mistakes couldn’t be cited.
I don’t think it’s difficult, but it is best approached by redefining Koretzky’s question, which is what I wanted to do here, as well as answer it using the broad beginnings of GamerGate as the example:
If GamerGate had only started within the past week, how do gamers feel journalists should approach the situation to present a fair story?
My answer:
Examine what’s happened to start. Assuming we’re in the first week of stirrings, there’s been a post from a jilted lover claiming their ex, a game developer, was emotionally and psychologically abusive as well as involved in repeated infidelities within their relationship. One name specifically mentioned is a game journalist, though no accusations of conflict of interest or quid pro quo relationship has been mentioned in this post. Nonetheless, conversation has started in community forums and social media regarding perceived conflicts of interest and moderators have responded with very heavy hands to silence any discussion of the accusations to any degree.
If your publication is involved with anyone named in the post, the first and immediate thing to do is to talk to those named and understand specifics. Was there any positive coverage or mention of this person in your work and what was your relationship at the time? Is there any actual or potentially perceived conflict of interest? If so, update the articles with disclosures immediately and place those updates prominently at the top of the article.
Second, release a statement acknowledging the accusations and informing your readers that not only is that specific incident being evaluated, but your group is evaluating their ethics policies regarding conflicts of interests and disclosures as a whole. Update this if necessary, expanding to other topics that may have grown since its last revision, such as the arrival of platforms like Kickstarter or Patreon.
Third, if your site hosts forums, allow for discussion under heavy, but reasonable, moderation. Personal attacks, release of private information, or unhealthy comments are not acceptable, but in silencing all questions or discussion, moderators only add to the perception that there’s something more going on. Moderators should have a responsibility to help guide discussion in the right direction. In the case of the post that sparked GamerGate, the discussion should have been directed not at the game developer, but at the journalist, the publication(s), their policies, and if those policies lacked in ways that would allow, or already had allowed, other misconduct.
If you’re just a journalist wanting to cover a story about an online hashtag and weren’t involved in the situation to begin with, Milo said “just do the work.” Simple, yet also complicated in a leaderless, largely anonymous, online group. As a group of people only united by a hashtag to say “I agree there’s an issue here,” the question of who to talk to is obvious, but I don’t believe it can’t be answered.
So what would a journalist need to do? Again, we’re assuming the controversy is in its infancy here.
Follow the hashtag for a day or two and identify two things.
Who is well spoken and commenting on it favorably?
Who is well spoken and commenting on it unfavorably?
Contact a number of these people and ask if they’d be willing to be interviewed. As discussed at AirPlay, explain the difference between complete online anonymity vs journalistic anonymity where their full real name won’t be used in the article, but the journalist and their editor need to know who they are. I believe people will be willing to talk.
Listen to both sides, take their statements and comments, then follow up on those by verifying them as much as possible. Find chat logs or online records such as Twitter history, archived pages, etc. to support claims. Basically, “trust, but verify.”
Present both sides of the story. With GamerGate, it would have been: detail why one side believes the outrage is an attack against an indie dev for being a woman developing non-traditional games and the other side believes there is justifiable concern over impropriety and conflicts of interest in the publications they rely on to give them information on where to spend their money.
COMB OVER DETAILS.
When presenting the story, make it clear these are individuals who support the concept of the hashtag as they personally relate to it, but that they don’t claim to speak for the group as a whole.
I honestly believe in its infancy, it was this simple. Now, a year later, there may be more nuance and complications, but I wouldn’t change much. The only main addition I would advise journalists today, as the 1 year anniversary approaches, would be slight alterations/additions:
Follow the hashtag and see which prominent online figures are cited. If the opposition to a position is citing someone as a prominent figure, it’s worth contacting that figure whether they are legitimately involved or not.
Lurk on forums like Reddit and see where the users are listening for information, then talk to that source. Again, this may largely be YouTube channels.
Contact people for interviews, as before.
Be prepared to do multiple stories on the topic. There will be plenty of material.
Again, COMB OVER DETAILS.
When presenting the story, make it clear these are individuals who support the concept of the hashtag as they personally relate to it, but that they don’t claim to speak for the group as a whole.
I emphasize number 6 because I think it’s crucial to covering online groups associated with one another only through social media hashtags. With enough interviews, though, I think it is possible to identify common themes and present both sides of a story, even with sources who can be paranoid about their anonymity.
So basically, that’s what I think should be done not specifically to cover #GamerGate, but to start laying the groundwork for future stories with hashtag groups, which will likely only grow as our reliance on social media to communicate continues as well. This is simply my opinion based on nothing more than my thoughts. I don’t have experience in journalism beyond a single community college class years ago and don’t claim to be an expert, but I think it’s something that will grow more important in the years to come.
To paraphrase Oliver Campbell, journalism is essentially about communication. The people aren’t going to tell journalists how to do their jobs, but journalists are going to have to adapt to evolving methods of communication among people to pursue their stories.
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