You can read Part 2 in all its horrifying glory here
Part 1: Where Do I Start?
I’ve spent many sleepless nights combating anxiety, fearing
the future, and puzzling over what life means to me. Pretty sure I’m not the
only one who wonders about her place in the world, but I do it like, a lot. I
am obsessed with my legacy to an unhealthy degree, and so I strive to put
whatever talents I was born with and personal insight I was fortunate to
receive to the best possible use; Sure, given my chosen specialties I probably can’t
save the world but I can make it slightly enjoyable for someone else, I think.
I hope. Anyway, I worry about what my
role as a converted gamer/game designer of the female persuasion can do for humanity.
When I say “converted,” I mean I didn’t grow up with games
like so many of peers did; I came to know and love the medium through an
unconventional means later in my life. Games and I are totally perfect for each
other, though—like, soul mate perfect, and it’s a real bummer to realize that I
missed out on so many important events in the blossoming of a beautiful art medium,
even though I was growing up alongside it. However, I’m not entirely ungrateful
for having spent some time on the outside, because I like to think it’s granted
me a lot more perspective on games and their presence in the consciousness of
the population at large. For starters, I know exactly what it’s like to be discouraged
from games because of my gender (not just from hostility within the industry,
either—more on that later), and how easily that early discouragement can
completely turn you off of games for life.
FOR LIFE—seriously, consider the gravity of that statement! That fate
would have been mine too, save for my unbelievable luck and insatiable cravings
for hot guy butts. I discovered games by reading about them first, so that I
could actually have something in common with them! That's right, I was a wannabe; what are you gonna do about it???
When I was younger, I was told by everyone and their dog that video games just weren’t for my anatomy. My folks were very conservative in their younger years, (they’ve since let up a lot though) and that perpetuated image of an adrenaline-pumped violence lover that was “the gamer” really didn’t jive with them. Anywhere in the popular media you saw someone gaming, it was always a boy, and it was always PUSHING THE LIMITS RADICAL, DUDE. But another interesting thing I overlooked at first was that media targeted towards girls also supported that claim from the opposite perspective. “Video games are totally icky!” I’d hear the pink, giggling voices say, on far more than one occasion, “keep as far away as possible!”
For brevity’s sake I’m going to spare you the life story
here, even though it’s totally juicy and awesome; suffice to say I eventually
accepted my non-gamer fate (pretty quickly, considering I had little reason to
try and fight it) and as of writing this, I’ve spent the majority of my life
perfectly happy to not be involved with games in any way. My closest friends
and the people I hang out with most often suffered the same treatment when they
were younger and are also uninterested in games (but give me time, I’m doing my
best to change that!). But thank goodness, for here we are, in an awesome
revolutionary time when video games are finally undergoing a massive revolution to
become more creative and cool and unique and interesting and most importantly,
inclusive!
Except totally not.
I mean, obviously some excellent progress has been made in
the past few years, but you have to realize that all of these fantastic changes
are all happening within the industry,
and everyone on the outside is still pretty much experiencing the exact same
thing as when I was a kid. Gamers are still adrenaline-pumped violence lovers,
boys are still radical, and girls still think games are icky. If you are
someone in games who has been marginalized in the past, but has been fighting against
it for years and is now finally starting to taste something that sort of
resembles recognition, congratulations, that’s a hard thing to do, but here’s some
bad news: not only will you have to keep fighting for a very long time unless
things change on the outside, but if things don’t change on the outside, as
soon as you are out of the picture, all of your efforts will have been for
naught (I’m all sweaty just thinking about all that meaninglessness)! Consider it: at the
end of the day, the games industry will never run out of folks of the white, often
male variety—they have always been there and their culture expects them to
continue to be there. But you? Where are your successors?
The behavior of the game industry today brings to mind some
kind of panning-for-gold metaphor. We’ve begun to realize that there’s
a bunch of amazing, diverse people out there, but have taken to sifting through
the mutlitude of developers/contributors within our bubble. There you are! Here's a
gold star and a pedestal. Not to say that isn't a positive development...but, maybe it’s just me, it still feels less
like these new voices are actually representative of a portion of the gamer
population, and more like some kind of novel, exotic viewpoint you can listen
to for a few minutes and go home feeling slightly more culturally rich, or
whatever. If that were not the case,
then we probably wouldn’t be seeing the same faces being paraded out again and
again at every game conference, and why those faces use their platform to name
the same names. I mean, I see the talks, you guys. You had better believe the
moment a twitter handle gets thrown out there I am on it like Sonic (Adventure 2). After a span of about two
years, I’ve stopped seeing names that I don’t already recognize. With the
exception of groups of people who are in mortal danger for being outspoken, I
can’t imagine that everyone belonging to a marginalized group, save for a
handful women and men with slightly darker skin, aren’t getting a well-deserved signal boost. I can only conclude that they don’t exist, or there aren’t nearly enough
of them. But I know for a fact that there’s a huge stash of delicious booty waiting to be dug up (plundered, if you will,) outside our bubble. Thousands upon thousands of minds that have the
potential to completely destroy games as we know them with their staggering, stupefying, mind blowing new ideas.
As developers, gamers, and contributors who eat, sleep,
and breathe games, and who interact almost exclusively with each other, maybe it feels like anyone who is anyone is also doing the same, because games are
the best thing ever and of course everyone must be playing games because how on earth could you not they’re seriously
so cool??? Even as I hop between these two worlds on a regular basis, I find myself forgetting
how many people have long since written off games from their life. I’ll get
caught by surprise, after some impassioned five minute long rant about how
baller Journey is and it totally changed my life, and the response is “Yeah, I
don’t really do video games, heh.”
Suppose I’m wrong though—maybe Chic’s still wet behind the
ears, and clearly doesn’t know what she’s talking about—of course there are
TONS of diverse voices in games, they just haven’t quite gotten their footing
yet. Let’s take a moment and jump outside the games bubble, into regular,
unaffected, non-gamer life—something I’m actually probably much more familiar
with. In the next part of my rantifesto, I’m gonna talk about females and games
specifically (ugh, finally she gets on topic!) and show you some examples of how gosh-down HARD it is for girls to be introduced to games. If we can't get new players and designers in once the old ones have moved on, only the status quo we're already sick of will take our place.
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