The Forgotten Passive Skill of the Video Gaming Scene: Misogyny

I’ve been thinking a lot about gender diversity in the video game community recently or, rather, the lack thereof. The competitive circles—your Halos and your Soul Caliburs—are my biggest concern, but this is an issue that encompasses most aspects of the scene, so it would seem careless to be too specific. Anyway, first I need to apply some foundations.

I’m going to try to pre-empt the invariable negativity here and say that this isn’t about blaming any particular group of people for how male-centric things are; everyone is conservative to a degree. We learn what constitutes ‘normal’ and then adapt and that’s fine, up to a point. But what if the ‘normal’ is deeply flawed? It takes a certain amount of conscious thought and effort to propagate something better. I simply feel like this idea of progress is worth holding onto, even if it feels laughably optimistic at times. 

So, with that said, I’ll be blunt: the vast majority of gaming communities are wrapped in a passively misogynist demeanour (as well as being fairly racist and ableist, but these are distinct issues).   The reinforcements pervade through every active voice: from concept and 3D artists, whose objectifying designs apparently trump any kind of continuity of pragmatism; a user-base that thinks it’s totally fine to just assume ‘everyone is a man by default’; and marketing departments that push ‘AAA’ games like they’re Action Man for Man-Children. If these three things alone were ceased —the most outstanding examples of accepted widespread misogyny in the industry—we would find within a short period that video games really aren’t the ‘Other Man’s World’ they’re so often sold to us as. 

It’s no secret that the attitudes around what gaming is (and what a ‘gamer’ is) result in environments where people feel they have licence to be hostile and derisive. Hell, to this ‘Aris’ guy it is, quite literally, a licence to sexually harass. I’m not talking about what could be called ‘the nonsensical hate-stream’ here; that non-differential and aimless kind of rage is often more absurd than threatening to the average non-gendered player. It can potentially make an irritating experience for anyone, but for all of the lashings of hate-spiel a guy might come to receive while playing a game, he is never going to be made to feel that he shouldn’t be there because of his gender. The real issue is that—thanks in part to the ‘everyone is a man’ imperative—the attention towards female players becomes much more severe, and focussed.  Women are often made to feel compelled to remain silent in online games and not convey their gender, because ‘man’ isn’t just the default: it’s a casually-enforced standard of ‘normality’, and to deviate from it actually justifies harassment to some people. 

This point is largely rhetorical, but if men are the default, what does that make women? The harassment and shit-talk is the ugly forefront (and it is obvious by this point that it is not ‘just children’ who perpetuate it), but the justifications are laughably callous: things like ‘she should expect it if she’s so blatantly a girl’ or, ‘you should just not use your microphone if you can’t deal with it’. So, you can only be treated equally if you go out of your way to keep your gender to yourself? No one would ever say this to a guy because he was using an explicitly male name, so what does this really amount to other than silencing female voices and denying femininity? This line of thought is what happens when people conflate the average bad manner of online communities with what one should expect for having the audacity to be openly female. Put simply, treating everyone equally cannot possibly align with ‘everyone is necessarily a guy until stated otherwise’, but these positions, apparently, settle down together with disturbing ease.

 

This excellent piece explains eloquently how different kinds of privilege can be hard to perceive. This does not mean that everyone who has never paid thought to fixing things is at fault: societies are steeped in it. Unless you live in a sealed culture-proof box, this is normal. And by ‘normal’ I mean ‘something we are collectively saturated in.’ Still, I feel the need to say flatly this isn’t a zero-sum game of attributable ‘Privilege Points’ being picked at: trying to make the culture around video games more gender-inclusive simply serves the best interests of everyone who enjoys games. Well, maybe it doesn’t serve the interests of people who hate women? I don’t know, fuck those guys.  Explicit boundaries on gender are largely a thing of the past; no one (who gets taken seriously) says that women flat-out shouldn’t play games.  Implicit barriers, though, are very much alive, and out-dated ideas on gender are not unusual. In fact, they are usual: just look at a magazine or a music video and try to reach the conclusion that society offers us a balanced presentation men and women. The threads between different media can’t just be severed, and I feel that the video game sector is far less independent of the toxic mainstream than many of its fans might like to believe.

This position often leaves me feeling that all people can reasonably do is minimise the issues caused to children who grow up with nothing but subtle (and sometimes very un-subtle) codes and messages that mediate their gender expression. This coding is a fundamental presupposition to pretty much any cultural work that involves humans: in representing a fictional world the author invariably draws upon the environment around them (as well as other works) to fill in the holes of an initial concept. The suppositions of ‘useful generalisations’, of generic conventional tropes and out-dated—but simple and effective—narratives and expressions: these things cannot be undermined with little effort. The conventions are so ingrained that even skilled and well-meaning artists are beset by the ease with which their attempt at a subversive concept can fall into clumsiness; opportunely ‘marketable traits’, hackneyed dialogue or setting, or maybe just an end so heavy-handed and fantastic that the audience doesn’t take the ideas seriously.

The point where people will lazily defend the status quo (and so their own apathy) is, generally, where I get dismayed. Calling out a person’s recycled ‘jokes’ is sometimes decried as “feeding the trolls” or “white knighting”, while shameless marketing practices are shrugged off with a cynical “sex sells” mantra. Put simply: if Sonic fans were able to mount a defence for SEGA’s choice to give Shadow a gun and a motor-bike—and, sadly, they were—what can’t people defend?  There is simply no positive end to these positions; it’s conservative acceptance masquerading as cunning aloofness.

There is also that oddly defensive slant that it is ‘equally sexist’ for male protagonists to so often be muscly, chiselled and/or athletic. Well, no, it isn’t. To hold this view is an example of privilege taken to an extreme. I could point to many titles, but I may as well stick to competitive games. So, Starcraft: this is not the same as this. Not even close. Then there’s the fact that—when you step away from just protagonists—male bodies are represented in just about every light imaginable in video games, though they are almost never sexualised to the degree that women are. The conventional approach to design, from narrative to characters, caters implicitly to some theoretical adolescent man who consults their penis before every financial transaction. I have never known anyone to whom the level of sexual content was a contributing factor in their purchase of a game.

I guess what I’m getting at is that any position that doesn’t accept the idea that it’s easier to be accepted at face-value as a ‘male gamer’ than as a ‘female gamer’ (and that there is something inherently wrong with that) is ultimately empty.  It’s obstructive to adopt a demeanour of presumed powerlessness that must cede its judgment to the mighty gods of Commerce & Marketing. It’s untenable to hold that the enforcement of masculinity is an equally pressing issue for men when the function of this trope depends on promoting a kind of superiority in ‘manliness’: any inadequacies in the presentation of men are a triviality against the non-stop objectification and marginalisation of women. I think everyone could benefit from the binary of gender itself being broken down a little, but that's a whole other post. Anyway, that’s my position: it is never beyond communities and individuals to reform or refine their standards.

With all that said I’m going to skip back to where I started: the lack of gender diversity. There’s the sexualisation, the outright misogynist ‘everyone is a man’ mind-set, and the perceived masculinity of coordinating and competing to win; the protagonists are almost always male, while their female counterparts are almost always half-naked. Then there are the conservative marketing elements that carelessly perpetuate all of this mundaneness. Given these facts, the perceived infrequency of women as ‘gamers’ does not seem odd at all, nor down to some sweeping biological disposition: we are just exceptionally conservative. The only way to change it is to actively consider it, and to call people out—from developers to players—on their terrible standards or pitiful demeanours. Gaming has grown to be mechanically and visually fantastic, but the underlying values and sensibilities are too often regressive and lazy by comparison. I think we’re entitled to voice our disapproval of that.

Silly Starcraft Streaming Standard

More Starcraft 2 things abound, but I can’t help that it’s a sweet community. Also, streaming live content is a thing now. Okay, so that is slightly obvious at this point. I struggle to come to grips with our growing means to be awesome sometimes. Here’s another one: did you know that, on average, it’s faster to download a CD than to simply rip the information from a disc? You probably did, but damn. The point, though! It’s a new avenue, and the diversity established so far is nothing short of impressive. So impressive, in fact, that scrambled-word-thoughts seem necessary. 

So, the breadth of streaming tools is wide:  it’s a standard of the internet now. And Team Liquid, dedicated folks that they are, aggregate a great deal of the talent around the Starcraft community. Their list of active players encompasses Brood War, MOBA (LoL, HoN, DotA) gamers, the occasional FPS and those seeking respite in other areas: the Skyrims and flirtatious beta builds of the day have a home here, too. So it’s not just a list of people playing (or casting) Starcraft 2. It is mostly that.

Over the course of the last year or so, I’ve been surprised by the players’ and commentators’ resourcefulness on these streams. Surprisingly few thrive on skill alone; it’s the most obvious and ubiquitous quality among featured streamers, so raw talent or cultivated skill (more often a mixture) is a strong, but non-differentiating, base.  Former Warcraft 3 professional Kim ‘SaSe’ Hammar garners an impressive amount of viewers with this approach: just a generic music playlist and razor sharp skill. Very simple, but living in Korea is a definite aid to the ‘razor sharp’ part.

Luckily Starcraft 2 gives skill a wide berth: some excel at a passive game, others will strike at any opening they see; players are necessarily reactive, but some prefer to force their enemy’s hand with deviations. There are all kinds.  But I’m going to go ahead and say that differences in style are only small factors when it comes to popularity. Infestors or Mutalisks are fun to see under good control, but these aren’t the things that gave Steve ‘Destiny’ Bonnell or Greg ‘Idra’ Fields their many fans. Tournament results are one simple factor, but I’m of the persuasion that the most popular figures will always ooze personality.

Idra is a good example to go with, though: his successes led to more coverage of his habit of, erm—I’ll say vociferous negativity.  The implications of the community’s indulgence don’t really concern me; to be able to jump on stream and average around ten-thousand viewers within an hour is simply impressive. But Greg is that rare conflux of results and deliciously bitter character. If there was a list of formulae to stream success, Idra’s paradigm would be somewhere near the top: years of practice, a high standing in tournaments, and the maintenance of a blunt, border-line-offensive attitude. He also streams a lot of dub-step playlists, which I guess doesn’t hurt against his overwhelmingly pop-centric peers.

In fact, music is a neat factor when it comes to simple un-narrated play. One caveat first: the reconciliation of musical artists with the services that are running ads (the ‘Twitch.tv’s and the ‘Justin.tv’s of the world) is a monstrous endeavour. I do not envy the people one day tasked with disentangling this realm. That said, as long as the music can’t be depended on (i.e. you aren’t able to rely on an individual artist or song being aired) there seems to be little liability for the moment. Or at least that’s how things work in my naïve head.

So for now, music is simply a nice thing that we are able to have. It isn’t a huge deal to some, but it can definitely make the difference.  Ilyes ‘Stephano’ Satouri makes for a good example; he’s a superb French player, maybe one of the best in the world. But when he streams his chat isn’t flooded with rapturous awe or dumb balance arguments. I mean, there’s some of that, of course. But the majority are expressing their surprise: a classic rock playlist. I’m biased, of course: others could think of Stephano in the same vein as SaSe and I wouldn’t be in any position to criticise them. Music is a golden thing for those who don’t want to put energy into a persona or any kind of narration.

Sean 'Day9' Plott is the opposite of this. Former Brood War player, commentator for Starcraft 2, and a damn fine analytical take. His highly structured (and animated) approach to putting on a stream show attracts an admirable amount of viewers, and the condensed format allows for episodic delivery. So it’s a style that fits both conventional pre-recorded video and a live audience: genius. The abundance of content is staggering. Somewhere in the early four-hundreds (each episode roughly an hour long) I feel like the word ‘practiced’ becomes grossly insufficient. But I could write swathes about just Day9’s achievements; suffice to say his energy and charisma is a huge asset to the community. And no one else really does it like Day9. That’s not to say that there aren’t any other structured, pre-planned streams; just none that focus on replay-analysis and simple story-telling.

I guess it occurs to me far too late that I can’t possibly do justice to this community without going into much more detail, but the depth really is part of the allure. Figures like Incntrol, TLO and Catz deliver such a widely differing set of experiences that it’s tough to zone in on what attracts a large viewership.  One thing seems certain: a player or a commentator needs a platform before they can gather momentum in this place. For every player generating decent ad revenue, a hundred skilled players toil in obscurity.

The MOBA Muffin

So, Defence of the Ancients. It always struck me as odd that the territory carved out by DotA didn’t have a genre with which to define itself for a period of time best measured in the decay of Carbon-14 isotopes. It lacked a box in which we might place (and judge) it, and people love placing things. DotA’s weighty legacy is almost clear by this point, save for a few minor ambiguities. For one, folks can’t seem to decide what to call the follow-ups. There are only three prevalent genre-titles, but that’s enough to draw confusion as to whether there are actually any fundamental differences that come with the tag. There aren’t, by the way. The first I encountered was ‘Action Real-Time Strategy’, which sounds like Command & Conquer with Bruce Willis and a generous helping of quick-time events. The worst thing about ARTS (other than the fact that at first glance it looks like I’m talking about some kind of Humanities pressure group) is that a key part of this genre is that it has removed almost every conventional aspect of RTS games: the ‘A’ may as well stand for ‘Antithetical’ in this scenario. It’s completely unintuitive.

Another tag used for these games (I’ll save the best for last) might actually be the laziest label I’ve ever seen. It is, simply, the Dota genre. That’s right: the name of the game that brought attention to this genre is this genre. Talk about dicey positions to occupy: all I need to do to irk a fan is imply that Dota represents its own genre like Halo games aren’t really FPSs. That is, imply DotA’s attraction amounts to bells and whistles. Not that I think that this is true (although prolonged exposure to Warcraft 3’s ladder will induce this sentiment), but this kind of low-hanging categorisation invites incredulity.

And I come to an abrupt rest with the suddenly-not-so-silly-seeming moniker ‘Multiplayer Online Battle Arena’ (MOBA): simple, to the point and, as an added bonus, kind of rhymes with ‘DotA’. It’s always a good thing for people to be able to say ‘I want to play more games like this’, with the correlation in mind that they can then punch that genre acronym into Steam and go nuts. Even with this convenience at my finger-tips (and ignoring the fact that there’s a certain degree of ambiguity surrounding the genre’s name) I still feel that there’s a slight futility in it all. Like the best one can hope for is a tag that isn’t too obtuse, deliberately euphemistic or outright vague. These tags come to mean far more to people who have experienced a genre than they could possibly mean to the curious newcomer, and that isn’t really the case for more traditional media. The fact is, ‘MOBA’ could stand for almost anything and still be more useful than say, ‘JRPG’, whose highly informative components advise us that these are indeed Japanese Games in which you Play Roles. Okay, so this is a kind of shaky analogy, but the point is there: JRPGs have many common themes. There are conventions which familiar players will pick up on and expect, but they lie ruthlessly unapparent to the new. MOBA games are just like that.

I realised a little while ago that I was around at the dawn of this stuff. It sounds kind of clichéd, but I couldn’t believe what Defense of the Ancients turned into. This was due in large part to the fact that I backed a losing competitor, Tides of Blood, and bore DotA a special kind of hate. It wasn’t just that its popularity gobbled up Warcraft 3’s custom games lobby, but that it held onto some philosophical premises that were pretty harsh to me: choice and capability superseded simplicity and balance, and the general community struck me as somewhat insular. It was equal parts prejudice and calculated self-dissuasion on my part, but I’ve since come full-circle to find a rekindled interest in MOBAs. In any case, this kind of digression deserves its own space. For now, on with story-time!

Back when Warcraft 3 was my game of choice I hit the custom games a lot, trying out new or familiar maps on-and-off for half a decade. The idea of League of Legends, Heroes of Newarth or million dollar tournaments coming from this was not insanity to me, because ‘insanity’ implies that I had given this outcome any thought. There are only so many permutations for how things can unfold—factors go in, results come out: never a missed communication. (relevant)—and the branch where the originally-awkward, chaotic Hero Arenas eventually coalesce into an actual genre was unexplored.

When you take away the tech trees, the production timing and the unit placement of traditional RTS games, you’re left with the Heroes of Warcraft 3. Hero Arenas were the earliest manifestation of this sentiment, pretty much as I just put it: stripped down, pick a Hero, go crazy. This all came from Blizzard’s ideal of special units you may equip, can gain EXP, but are not some form of deity to whom the player-camera offers eternal tribute. Shit’s happening elsewhere. This general principal was rinsed and repeated by map-makers for years, while the consuming public would allow the superior products to shine and the inferior to fall by the way-side. As I mentioned before: the idea of a genre growing from this was beyond my conception. The scale for success for a custom game on Warcraft 3 (or the one I would conventionally ascribe, anyway) was that I saw people hosting it with frequency. Genre-creating wasn’t on my scale.

There were many maps that applied the basic principal of Warcraft 3’s Heroes to their design, with extremely diverse sets of circumstances, and equally varying degrees of success. As a simple example of the tool being pushed in a very different direction to MOBAs, there was the popular Enfo’s Team Survival, which held—other than a couple of key oversights in its earlier builds—a sound principal in equipping your Hero to defend from waves of monsters which would eventually over-run you. The meat of the competition here was the ability to either cast supporting skills to bolster a failing defence, or to hurl annoyance at the enemy team’s heroes in an attempt to throw off their survival. The very controlled and limited nature of the human element in competitive gameplay meant that it was possible to plan out what you would do for the majority of the game. Sadly it also sapped at the map’s lasting appeal.

Defence of the Ancients emerged as the dominant map for a number of reasons. For one, it had an impeccable support community; new versions were frequent, adding Heroes, options, items and bug-fixes. But if I had to guess why it really stuck, it would have to be the game’s encompassing focus. As I mentioned before, the MOBA genre is essentially the concentrated innovation of Warcraft 3, minus every conventional RTS aspect: it needed a similar appeal to stick. The way you micromanage your Hero and distribute ability-points mirrors that of Warcraft 3; the optimisation of limited inventory space; the importance of choosing when and where to engage—all rooted in this genre’s make-up, just as they were indispensible pieces of Warcraft 3’s standard game. It seems stupidly obvious, in retrospect, but if you’re using an RTS interface for something that is fundamentally not an RTS (and what you are playing is certifiably Not Dumb) then it must be something else.

So, Warcraft 3. If DotA represents a stylised version of Warcraft's innovation, was its creation and refinement—or something very much like it—inevitable? After all, if DotA hadn't accrued its enormous fan-base, another custom map would have. The hooks, the map-editing tools, the potential fans: they were always going to be there. Maybe I'm passively handing over too much credit to Blizzard, but it's not every day a game gives life to a new genre.

In the next post of, er, PLB? Ahem. Why e-sports is ruining e-sports, and why sensationalist previews produce a narcotic-like effect upon their writers.

De-Netting and Generational Issues with Blue Hedgehogs

Far be it for me to impose my mortal wants on the technology-spirits. Their swirling whim decided a couple of weeks ago that I should be severed from the inter-realms. And, well, losing the internet sucks. Okay, so I guess it's hard to get more concise than that last statement, so I'll just head in the opposite direction and elaborate. I don't know the exact point at which TV became obsolete. There wasn’t a polite pop-up message when Internet 2.0 came out, advising that users may find TV slightly underwhelming within X amount of days. Still, it wouldn’t hurt thinking about some form of courteous reminder, as nothing draws a more jagged line under a useful service than its sudden removal. For one thing, news channels are woefully under-equipped to cater for viewers who would like to hear news. Unintuitive, I know, but there's enough stupidity on display to fashion a kind of rudimentary stress-test for your sanity. The repetition of ‘The Top Story', in particular, gets old very fast, especially when you know other things are happening. I noticed this before losing the internet, but lack of immediate alternatives makes the situation roughly fifty times more painful.

In the spirit of fairness—and since plain truths are apparently on the agenda—the internet could be considered humanity’s most robust model yet for an actual ‘Time Vampire’. But I want to contest this as a simple, negative truth on a couple of grounds, mostly the mind-bending dichotomy of the internet. It’s the same tools that enable us to whittle away an hour on F7U12 that give us the ability to gather swaths of information and communicate with peers. The theories of the best texts of history are bundled up with the most juvenile humour imaginable in the internet; pornography on one page, feminist discourse on another. It’s a kind of a big place.

For every task I was freer to follow without the assistance of a series of tubes, I was prevented from pursuing another. It becomes commonplace to, say, want to write about or look into something, only to come across a research block which hadn’t previously existed. That being said—and I understand this rant has reached evolutionary-levels of obviousness by this point—it is fucking sweet to perceive that difference in technology. After finite media and the narrow lane of TV's out-put, well, it's like turning on a fountain of Everything.

In any case, rant-concluded. Video games. This video review feels like some kind of mirage. You'll know what I mean when you see. Did you see? Good, now I can explain myself. Sonic games have not been good in a long time. I don't think there's a more concise way to put it. Simple truths are fun. The ten-year-old Sonic aficionado in me is trying desperately to make me check myself: perhaps there's some way I could couch the slimy spin-offs and disappointing lack of refinement more favourably? Sadly no. I draw the line at Hedgehogs on Motorcycles. I don't mean to so sound premature as something to the effect of 'This changes everything!' But seriously, this changes everything. Or at the very least cashes in on it in a pleasing way. Coming up: MOBAs. Why people should probably try them or, y'know. Something.

Contenticus!

Updates will commence in some form of regularity within mere days. Since gaming has its tendrils wrapped neatly around my attention at the moment (note: this has been the case since 1993), most of the posts will concern those nooks and crannies. Beside this some form of audio content is in the works, which will likely cover a variety of topics, though it doesn’t have a core concern at the moment. Lots of good games, though, both among us and on the horizon. It will probably be hijacked by that. Snap.

It did occur to me a little while ago that I never put in plain writing what the hell I’m attempting to accomplish with this blog. My lack of fixed topicality certainly hasn’t done me any favours in terms content consistency. I’ve been all over the place with theatre reviews and poetry. I’m sharpening… Something. It could be that I’m left with a pointed stick rather than a blade, but no matter. I think the main thing to take away is that something is becoming less blunt.

Gaming has always been my first interest, and will likely always retain primacy. That said there are topics which branch across, and I would feel remiss if I didn’t mention such things. For instance DC chose to reboot their entire comic franchise not long ago, and in doing so simultaneously pulled every main character back to their mid-twenties and destroyed unknowable amounts of continuity. I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad move on DC’s part but, well, being provocative is fun, and this one’s going to be around for a while. My point is I’m liable to make lengthy divergences at any time. I’ll never wander too far, though. Hopefully.

The Diablo 3 beta is a touch passé by this point and, having represented only the tiniest slither of its actual might, may only serve as skeleton for what's to come. Still, that bone-structure, eh? There are whispers of a Wizard that is too strong and of broken Demon Hunters, but these things are probably the least of people’s concerns at the moment. It’s just nice to root notions of a new game in mundane fields like class balance. There’s a kind of instant basis for comparison that opens up. It may just be me, but the first thing that springs to my mind with the idea of a comically all-powerful caster is Diablo 2. Blizzard knows how to leave the right impression. In fact, everything about the gameplay resembles its predecessor. For one who enjoyed the previous instalment, it’s refreshing (worrying?) to see that everything which made the series alluring is entirely intact. Beyond that there is nothing but greener pastures: more stream-lining, production quality and customisation opportunities. It’s all sunshine and rainbows (dank tombs and temples?), until you see a guy pimped out in a £100 suit of armour.