Intel Pulls out from Gamasutra

Off-topic
#63

I would agree on the * “not falling into the war rhetorics” * which Kain definitely does well, but absolutely not * “without taking sides”*.

He makes one absolutely perfect point which kinda makes up for how ridiculously the whole article begins.

It’s the “Entitled Gamer” nonsense all over again, only one step further. Yes, some gamers act like entitled brats. Yes, some are misogynistic. Yes, some are loud and vile. Some also raise money for charity. Some are just normal people like you and me. (Okay, normal is a stretch, but you get my point.)

You can say all the same things about sports fans, politicians, and college kids. There is nothing unique about “Gamer Culture” other than the way people have been stereo-typing it (and “nerd culture”) for years.

Right to a T. I would put my signature under that.
Yet it puzzles me how at the same time he can start the whole article stating something that made me slap my palm against my forehead and almost made me stop reading. Almost.

I understand what Leigh Alexander was trying to say in her now-infamous “Gamers Are Over” article. She was trying to say that video games have evolved, that they’re no longer in the jurisdiction of so-called nerds, and that ‘gamer-culture’ as we know it has expanded.

That’s why she writes things like this: “Developers and writers alike want games about more things, and games by more people. We want — and we are getting, and will keep getting — tragicomedy, vignette, musicals, dream worlds, family tales, ethnographies, abstract art. We will get this, because we’re creating culture now.

Aside from the fact that he doesn’t give a damn at all about her cultural-politruk-class of rhetorics, it makes it sound like he (as well as she) doesn’t really know anything much about the actual history and scope of game production (and the themes it worked with) of the past couple of decades, aside from its very most mainstream part, which is really hard to avoid by anyone.
And which has been led and determined not by some weird gaming nerds, which was always only a (minor) part of the wider gaming community (the community which Kain himself described so well), but by business-focused mentality (aim for cheap thrills and action 'cos it sells good) taking over the industry for quite a while now.

This business-driven production is recently kinda forced to take a step back with the gaming community turning more towards more creativity-driven production led by indie developers, or professionals-gone-indie like Brian Fargo, Chris Roberts, Dan Vávra, the Obsidian team, etc… which means a way more open thinking and variety prospectively getting back into the gaming mainstream.

This is the actual revolution taking place in the gaming industry these days. It has nothing to do with Alexander or other ideological revolutinaries.

All she has done is that she artificially demonized the gaming (or gamer) community by picturing it whole with the looks of its minor part, then turning it into a scapegoat that she could try to theatrically murder in public and say: * “Everyone! Look what I have done! I have slain the vile culturally opressive demon of the Gamers! The new era of culture and games is nigh! Remember me as The One that brought you all this and rejoice!” *

In effect she only insulted and pissed off a huge amount of people and got just the crowd response she asked for. Which she is now actively twisting as a proof to her claims.
And Eric Kain & co. are shielding her enthusiastically.

We are refusing to let anyone feel prohibited from participating.”

Oh yeah, like TFYC? Or like some of those people she made lose their jobs and even boasted about it out in the open on Twitter? Yep…

Great revolutinaries. Just like Robespierre, Lenin, or Che Guevara.
We aim to make history and who doesn’t stand with us stands against us. Or shit like that.

2 Likes
#64

I haven’t really participated in the discussion of gamergate. I have however been watching event’s unfold from the start. Myself I’m nearly 40 now and I’ve been playing games since I got an Atari as a child in the early 80’s.

My opinion is that I find it really disheartening to be back in this place where it’s okay to stereotype anyone that likes games as some kind of 15 to 25 year old manchild social reject deserving of all the “cool people’s” scorn. I was enjoying games when I was 5 years old, I hope to be enjoying them when I’m 85 years old.

Watching supposed professional members of the media down in the trenches slinging crap in the mud with the twitter masses has left me with one question. Why do so many people who absolutely despise games and gamers work covering games, or even making games in some instances?

And this is part of what brought me to this game. I had heard about Kingdom Come before this gamergate thing, and was interested in it. But seeing Daniel stand up to them and be a voice of reason made me feel that it was important to support the good developers who are willing to make the games they want to make, without worrying about meeting political correctness quota’s and inserting things into the game that don’t belong there for the sake of appeasing the hipsters.

1 Like
#65

I think you’ve mixed up two different things here. Kain is speaking about the culturual evolution of video games while you are speaking about the economical evolution or development of games in the past few years. Nobody said that they can’t exist both. I personally think they do.

And it’s kind of obvious that the “maintstream part” is INDEED the core of gaming. It’s what the vast majority of people are interested in (that’s the reason why it’s called mainstream). Of course there are new developments in the indie sphere towards community and creativity driven games and away from comitee and business driven decisions. But that’s not the big story, at least not at this stage in history. They only project which has gained real public attention is Star Citizen but even this huge crowdfunded project is small compared to a single big AAA (console) game like GTA or Assassin’s Creed. Maybe there is a revolution here, but it’s only in its baby days and we don’t whether it will be of big significance in a few years from now on.

What you try to dismiss here is that there is a cultural evolution in gaming which is connected with its bigger target audiences and its bigger and better reception in mainstream media and in the general public. 20 years or even 10 years ago video games were indeed seen as “toys for boys” by a huge public majority. Only few people saw them as meaningful media or art. This has indeed changed a bit recently and games have become part of the overall culture by implementing meaningful ideas. But of course it’s still entertainment. If you don’t acknowledge that part it makes no sense for me to even discuss games and topics like #gamergate with you, sorry.

But of course Alexander is over the top, way over the top. By the rhetorics she used and the direction she went forward she tried of push gaming as a whole medium in a certain direction. That has happened in other media before without much of a success. So she is in no way a voice of reason and I may disagree with Erik Kain on this one. It’s his own interpretation of what she might wanted to say behind the aggressive rhetorics. Maybe he’s wrong with that but the point is that he is trying to lead the issue to an actual discussion by looking at both sides - even the extreme voices - and filter out arguments for a reasonable pursuit of the topic. He deliberately tries to ban the aggressive rhetorics from the discussion and he searches for ways to bring the whole thing to a level on which people could talk to each other again instead of yelling in each others faces.

So I don’t think he defend her. I don’t even think she needs any defence. She has an extreme opinion and voiced it. Why not? Many people do. That’s called freedom of speech and you’re free to believe whatever you want to believe. If you think that she is just stupid and her arguments and rhetorics are BS speak up and write your own articles. You cannot expect people to take you serious if you answer an extreme opinion with ad hominem attacks in the same manor. That’s the nature of a flame war but not the nature of a fruitful, mature and reasonable discussion.

I also want to remember you that it’s not the case that Alexander’s piece came out all of a sudden. I’ve been following user comments on gaming media (especially reviews) for quite a few years now and what I’ve experienced is that in the past few years that was a huge, very aggressive and very vocal opposition on the internet against every voice or opinion that criticized games for its treatment of certain topics. I don’t even talk about Sarkeesian and stuff but even when a reviewer just mentioned topics like misogyny in a review (without it having ANY influence on the score -> see e.g. various reviews on GTA V…) there was a huge chunk of comments demonizing the reviewers for “destroying their hobby” or “pushing a left wing agenda on them”. These voices were existent long before the whole #gamergate thing broke out and long before the events around Sarkeesian and Quinn happened. You might rightfully call these voices a mouthy vocal minority because that’s what common sense kinds of tells us. But it’s sadly not how the atmosphere and the (gamer) communities on major gaming sites were consisting. On Gamespot there even was a show dedicated to stuff like that called “Feedbackula” in which such comments were treated with humor. So this flamewar started long before #gamergate happened and I see Alexander’s article and the one following it partly as a response to that or part of that longer story. I don’t want to defend anything here (in fact, I don’t think that my personal opinion is of any importance here), I just want to put the events in the bigger picture. You might call Alexander and likeminded people revolutionaries and maybe you’re right but I think we should at least accept the possiblity that this is a two-sided war and both sides got more and more aggressive and extreme as time went by (which is quite common development in human interactions by the way). It’s the very nature of a flamewar which is happening for months and years now with various stages of developments and various levels of involvement of different parties.

In such an helix of verbal extremism I applaud every person - like Erik Kain - who tries to break out and leave the war rhetorics even if that means that you have to make compromises. There is nothing to win in war - just in peace.

#66

I actually couldn’t agree more with this in particular. The issue is elsewhere.
When I noticed claims about someone reporting on the matter without taking sides and only a couple of seconds later I encounter arguments like those that he used in the very opening lines of that supposedly neutral article, it simply made me go WHAT?!

There has undeniably been some notable development in the mainstream of gaming production as of late, in a large part because the mainstream was for a long time to a large extent narrowed down by the business aspect of game production and most of the richer and more progressive sort of content and themes was kept out simply out of disinterest of the people managing the money, who were always interested only in what they saw as “trendy”.
Look at the very beginnings of KCD as a prime example.

There have always been people in the gaming industry, both male and female, trying to bring in new ideas and content, but they were mostly forced to do it outside the mainstream and do their stuff small-scale around the indie sphere or in minor studios on the outskirts of the mainstream line. These still managed to produce numbers of very good quality games which also brought some decent and ongoing variety to the entire gaming production. But they usually didn’t have as much promotion, media coverage and public awareness as the mainstream, richly funded AAAA… titles and therefore for most people they may be as good as non-existent.

And then there come some bunch of people, presenting something that is trying to look serious to the wide public (which doesn’t know much better by itself), while being painfully ignorant/selective about the given matter (either because they don’t know, or because they don’t care as it doesn’t suit their point). And they go ahead painting the entire gaming scene as if it was about nothing more than freakin’ Duke Nukem. And acting like the redeemers of the industry in the process.

And while they themselves fortunately managed to do it in a biased enough way to hopefully make at least some of the none-the-wisers raise their eyebrows and ask themselves * “oh, really?”, then there comes a seemingly neutral and very professional-acting guy, apparently an actual proffesional journalist, who sais: * "Dear ladies and gentlemen, this young miss is actually making a very good point."
Which effectively only shows he is probably just another of the none-the-wisers, which is of course apparent only to people actually following and interested in the gaming industry. Which are being globally labeled The Horrible Evil Misogynist Sexists even for rather mild attempts on some/any defense. NOT speaking about the actual flamers. All are being thrown into the same bag.
And he actually only helps spreading the misinformation and misunderstanding further.

It’s not about the gaming sphere being fundamentally twisted at its core and a revolution coming up due to some bunch of idologists ranting long enough.
Because changes within the gaming industry are not and even should not possibly be realised by some sort of outside overseeing force policing the game developers and what they do. They are always realised by the people who make the games directly and find themselves the ways to push their ideas even through an unfavorable system.
Unless someone tries to take them out of the game completely - which you effectively can if you have the means to attack someone through at least a few independent (or seemingly independent) pieces of media.

If you gave the game developers enough freedom to just do their job and realise their visions, the “great changes” in the currently pretty narrowed-down and restricted mainstream game industry production would take playce anyway on their own, without any wannabe-revolutinary ideologists involved.

Whoosh! Well, I guess this just might be my very point on this issue in its entirety.
I hope. It’s getting a bit tedious.

Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

There’s been A LOT of visits being made into that overwhelming question we’ve got here. :slight_smile:
Never mind. Just my mind getting a bit tired for the day. Good night!

1 Like
#67

i think elliot was referring to something a little more high minded…not the kind of onanism that pseudo intellectuals would consider an “overwhelming question”, like “how many feminists can you fit on the head of a pin”

© 2015 Warhorse Studios www.warhorsestudios.cz