Posts filed under 'Problems'
Opening night for the community theater presentation of The Scarlet Pimpernel in which I’m participating is less than two weeks away, and I realize that I’ve gone for several weeks with almost no gaming of any sort. Playing games has long been my primary form of relaxation, often taking up as much of my time as working for a living.
I haven’t spent much time in Middle Earth and Arkham. And since I’m the default GM for our tabletop RPG group we haven’t visited any of my own imagined worlds in even longer.
But while mastering dance steps (in high heeled shoes, no less!), striving for that high B-flat, and struggling to deliver lines in a convincing British accent, I’ve had time to reflect on an aspect of gaming that I don’t normally think about: games are primarily escapism, a way to make entertaining and constructive use of unstructured time.
While some who went on a self-imposed one-week gaming abstinence program found they couldn’t make it, I’ve had a pretty easy time. Why? Because a tremendous portion of my free time has been filled with the creative work of putting together a show that will (we hope!) entertain our audience. Participating in this play has fulfilled most of the desires that spark my interest in games.
Of course, just being busy wouldn’t do it. It just so happens that putting on a theatrical production offers a lot of the same pleasure that games do: the challenges, the imagination, the social interaction, the thrill of success (measured by applause).
Enjoying a reasonably comfortable games-light existence for several weeks hasn’t made me disdainful of them, though. In fact, if anything, I have an even greater appreciation for the value of play than I’ve ever had before.
I’ve spoken before (and no doubt will again) about the fact that games—though we may play them to escape, relax, and kill time—are one of the most worthwhile things we can do. We’re lucky to be a species that plays. The New York Times Magazine recently published a very interesting article on the benefits of play, as well as the reasons.
Play—be it gameplay, roughhousing, theatrical plays, or improvisational roleplaying—feeds our souls, exercises our brains, and keeps us happy. We should all do as much of it as we can. But for those who suffer a compulsion to play games, in particular games that they don’t actually enjoy, I recommend you find alternative escapes. Not non-play escapes, not non-game escapes, but different ones.
If you’re bored and frustrated with one of the many treadmills in an MMORPG, take a moment to consider the reward offered for your effort. Solving problems in games isn’t always fun, but it is generally enjoyable. If you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, by all means do something else!
The world is full of opportunities to play, and thinking gamers are in an excellent position to appreciate those opportunities and take advantage of them.
February 21st, 2008
Instead of trying to offer a considered and thoughtful analysis that ultimately treads on the same path others have already expertly walked (Broken Toys, GameGirlAdvance, No Cookies for Me, Shrub.com, FeministGamers, and many others), I figured I would instead offer a personal reaction to the Jade Raymond fiasco.
Put simply, I’m angry, ashamed, and depressed. Why is it that the same male gamers who long to have more women join the ranks of gamers feel entitled to gawk and grab? It seems that some core of what we define as “gamers” has built an exclusive, unwelcoming community where the simple social norms of courtesy don’t apply. They use “rape” to mean “beat in a game” and consider “gay” and “girl” acceptable insults. They act like rutting goats when someone reveals herself to be a real-life woman in a game, then hoot in derision when she leaves. They insist that no female gamer can possibly be physically attractive, insist that attractiveness is the most important characteristic a woman (gamer or not) can have, then deride female gamers (skilled or unskilled) for lack of ability.
Does it sound like I’m “male bashing”? I’m not. I’m bashing assholes. When I was a kid, we watched Free to Be You and Me (which I now watch with my daughter). I honestly believed the world was changing and would continue to change. I thought everyone wanted a world with fewer assholes.
Now I see the “boys will be boys” attitude broadly accepted.
I don’t blame men for this. I don’t blame women. I blame our culture itself (as practiced by both men and women). Look, I know feminism is hard. Even people who aren’t afraid of the word “feminism” struggle to realize their ideals. I know too many people of my generation who have given up the dream of self-actualization and equality. And look at how gender is treated TV today.
So it’s not just gamers. This rot is everywhere.
But it’s pretty bad in “gaming culture.” The anonymity of online gaming, the historically male base, the weird connection between machismo and competition (a fundamental aspect of games)—these have given birth to a core in which sexism and hostility aren’t just endemic, they’re sometimes lauded and often defended!
I’ve heard some people call for thicker skins or appeal to the right to free speech. Well, I’m actually a big fan of humor. I believe anything—yes anything—can legitimately be the subject of humor. I believe, too, that anyone has a right to express any idea in just about any form.
What bugs me here is our culture (our modern culture, the heavily American Internet culture, the gaming culture). If you want to be an asshole, you have every right to do so. But those of us bothered by this sort of thing have a duty, despite the fact that the prevailing culture doesn’t seem to agree, to express our dissent.
November 28th, 2007
Alas, despite my passion for them, games continue to be a leisure-time-only activity for me. When my job keeps me tied to a desk for every hour of sunlight, the holidays approach, I contract food poisoning, and we decide to refinish a room in the week and a half before guests arrive, I find I have little time to play anything.
Coordinating leisure time with other people, a prerequisite for most games, can become downright impossible. I suppose that’s one reason why MMORPGs proudly advertise the ease of soloing. More importantly, it’s one reason why I, who ultimately prefer the creative fervor of collaborative storytelling with rules (that is, tabletop roleplaying games) spend so much more time playing computer games.
When I find myself so crunched for time that I can barely squeeze out a blog post a week, I nonetheless manage to fit in a bit of game-related activities. Here are my top four:
- Reading gaming blogs (much easier than writing posts) and other game-related media
- Poring over my ever-growing list of games I’d like to try
- IMing with friends about their game time (vicarious leisure > no leisure at all)
- Writing up quick descriptions of campaign settings I’d like to run
So what do gamers do when we don’t have time for real gaming? What para-gaming activities to do you enjoy?
Tobold once observed (and recently reiterated) that the true economic unit of MMORPGs is time. It seems it’s almost inherent to computer games (solo games, too) today that their worth is somewhat measured in how long they take to play. This doesn’t seem to be a characteristic of offline games (although replayability is a big issue).
Why is that?
November 14th, 2007
odanu put up a great post at the Feminist Gamers blog analyzing in detail (and from a feminist perspective, of course) the characters of Donna and William, in World of Warcraft. The obnoxious William has been playing “keep away” with the perpetual victim Donna’s dolly since beta. The post articulated much that’s percolated in the back of mind ever since I first saw those two. Great insights.
The “boys will be boys” flavor that colors William’s behavior disturbs me deeply. When I see parents of young boys treat their male children’s misbehavior this way (and I’ve started to see it a lot, now that my daughter is two and interacts more and more with other children), I feel a bit of creeping despair. “Free to Be You and Me
came out thirty-seven years ago!” I think. “Why do we still have Tender Sweet Young Things? And the very different William on that hopeful (if cheesy) album wanted a doll to nurture and love. Stormwind’s William is a petty sadist who wants a doll only to hurt Donna.”
I’m equally disturbed to see the parents of victimized girls intervene immediately and aggressively while expecting boys to suck it up and deal with their own problems. While the boys are learning impunity for their misbehavior, the girls are taught helplessness in the face of adversity.
I expect gender politics and social challenges at playgroup. But in Stormwind, where I’m pleased to see confident guards of both sexes patrol the streets, you’d think these kids work out their differences constructively . . . even if it might mean a trip to the graveyard for one of them!
November 1st, 2007
I recently said that asking “what women want” from games is the wrong question.
Sanya Weathers over at Eating Bees says that asking women in the game industry to talk constantly about their role as women instead of gaming professionals is the wrong thing to do to. Go read what she has to say.
Because Soylent Pink is people!
October 17th, 2007
Take a look at this post concerning Ubisoft’s new “Imagine” series of video games targeting girls aged 6 to 14.
Based on Ubisoft’s study, the first games in the line, to be released in October, are “Fashion Designer,” “Master Chef,” “Animal Doctor,” and “Babyz.” [My wife observed that “Babyz” looks a bit like the detestable “Bratz.”] “We did research, and we are studying the market… that’s what the girls actually like, so we should try to fulfill their needs,” Shara Hashemi, Ubisoft’s Brand Manager for the Imagine line, told Multiplayer in an interview last week.
My response: Ugh!
I don’t have special access to the “research” Ubisoft did, but from the descriptions it sounds as if they’ve fallen into the same trap that so much research in general does. However good their data gathering, they’ve asked the wrong question. They claim the main goal of Imagine games is “to have fun.” Then they turn around and say, “The games are built on ideas and concepts that every girl can relate to and they allow girls to expand their creativity while they’re learning real facts and real-life concepts.”
In other words, as with so many girl-targeted products, these games give girls a chance to play at being older girls or women . . . and little else. These games give girls a chance to change diapers, shop for clothes, and cook.
The boy games that the Ubisoft representative said girls aren’t interested in, in contrast, give players a chance to involve themselves in larger-than-life stories and activities. In other words, the results of this “research” confirm industry and cultural expectations that while “boys will be boys,” girls will be women.
The one Imagine game that sounds like it offers something other than a pixelated version of dolls, babysitting, and dress-up is “Figure Skater,” a game in which the player strives for career-life balance in pursuit of an Olympic gold medal. That actually sounds like fun, with a narrative and an opportunity for escapist fantasy.
Okay, Ubisoft just wants to sell games to girls, so they did research that tells them what they can expect will move off the shelves and into girls hands. Unfortunately, such girl-oriented games have performed notoriously poorly, because even though many existing games have elements hostile to female gamers, women wind up playing the fun ones anyway. On the other hand, almost nobody buys the pink boxes.
I bridle at this game line because, as the parent of a two-year-old daughter, I can see the onslaught of cultural expectation coming hard and fast. By the time a girl is “6 to 14,” she’s developed her own tastes, but she’s also been given heavy-handed lessons in what she’s supposed to like.
Remember, Ubisoft began this effort because “A quarter of DS owners are young girls but less than 10% of DS games are aimed specifically at them.”
The point is not that a quarter of DS owners—the girls—are stuck with a toy that doesn’t target them. It’s that a quarter of people who find the DS appealing are girls already! Already, one in four DS owners is female, no doubt mostly playing some of the 90+% games targeted at people.
The most interesting question is: which ones?
October 2nd, 2007
Okay, this new xkcd.com comic isn’t not about games, but it certainly applies to some things I see in game forums. Since we’ve been talking about things that prevent women from getting in to our hobby, I thought I’d post it here.
It’s funny ’cause, man, I wish I had an EMP cannon for just such occasions!
September 28th, 2007
Asking what women and girls want from games is the wrong question. The question probably has no real answer, and if anyone ever found one, it’d basically be useless.
I’ve put off writing about the topic of women and gaming for a while for two reasons. First, it’s a difficult and big topic. Second, it happens also to be a topic I care a lot about.
Thanks to a minor synchronicity, I’ve decided that today’s the day I begin to tackle to subject, though I’ll have much more to say on the subject in the future. The synchronicity that sparked this post involves reading this one at female-gamer.com and discovering the following video (thanks to this post on Feministing.com).
A very funny fake ad from SNL, but unfortunately it’s not really all that outlandish. The early 90s saw the introduction of “Battle Trolls,” macho versions of the bright-haired plastic dolls popular with girls. Although I saw the original ad over fifteen years ago, I still remember the narration: “Everyone knows that girls like trolls, but what to boys like? Battle Trolls!”
It made me shudder then, and it makes me shudder now, especially when I watch my two-year-old daughter putter in her kitchen for a few minutes making imaginary cakes, then switch over to her pirate ship for some high-seas adventuring.
I don’t pretend that, within our culture, a person’s gender doesn’t influence what he or she looks for in games. I won’t bother to speculate on how much game predilections depend on the biology of gender (my instinct an experience suggest biology has almost nothing to do with it, but that debate goes hopelessly beyond the scope of this blog).
But every time someone asks, “What do women gamers want?” We get the silliest answers—from men, from women, from everyone. For instance, a fascinating article in The Escapist a few weeks ago on the topic of heroines in video games included quotes from a variety of women in the industry. While one woman wished that female video game characters would “be wearing pants,” another said
Give my heroine a PMS day where she, unexpectedly and without reason, decides to pull the ears off small bunny rabbits. Have her try to leave the house and go back to change shirts four times. Let her have some upper body limitations and figure out how to manage using her legs.
Seriously? I game almost exclusively with women, and I don’t know a single one who wants menstruation in her escapism.
Here’s the main reason the question of “what women want” is stupid: We all want exactly the same thing from our games. Oh, some of us may prefer puzzles, others strategic board games, and still others vicious PVP, but what we really want is fulfilling entertainment.
In games with a narrative (most video and tabletop roleplaying games, for instance), this means that we want to be heroes—reluctant heroes, action heroes, and antiheroes, perhaps, but heroes nonetheless. On the more abstract, gamey side, we all want to be challenged, usually progressively, but not overwhelmed.
Do some women want the chance to decorate their avatars in MMOs in greater detail? I can assure you that an equal percentage of men want exactly the same thing. Do some adolescent men like to drool over cheesecakes in chainmail bikinis in their game books? Well, plenty of men are turned off by such illustrations, too.
In the end, the reason fewer women than men are attracted to all genres of gaming has everything to do with culture and almost nothing to do with “what they really want.” Almost all video and roleplaying games fail with women not because women don’t want to play such games, not because the games haven’t been successfully targeted to women, but because the games have been targeted at the hard core of a niche market. Most developers still market to the passionate minority. As soon as they start developing for people, not for “Men aged 18 to 35″ or “Women with $50,000 median income,” they’ll really start seeing a profit.
—
I could go on and on about this topic. As I said, it’s very important to me. I’m an unashamed feminist and an unashamed gamer. My regular gaming group comprises one man and four women. And, straight male though I am, I too bridle at the absurd physiques that decorate the books and the sexist language (see he or she) that even my favorite game company ridiculously insists on using.
So I’ll have more to say on the topic in coming posts.
September 27th, 2007
People have long discussed what it’s like to play a character of a different sex in an MMORPG, and there’s not much left to say on the subject, but a post by the Infamous Brad about the treatment of his female character in City of Heroes made me realize that men playing women may be shocked my something that’s all too familiar to women players.
Brad argues that, when other (male) players think the player is a woman, they will treat that player as stupid or, if the player is assertive, call that player a bitch. To such assholes (as Brad accurately dubs them), women players serve as viable flirtation targets, and possibly as audience for long-winded instruction they don’t need. But the assholes simply don’t think real women deserve respect.
I’ve found this to be completely true, I’m afraid. About half my MMORPG characters are female, and players usually assume (wrongly) that there’s an actual woman player behind the character. When they do, some—not the majority, but a significant minority—treat me like a fool.
To some degree, I think it’s mostly players like the Infamous Brad and me—men who convincingly play female characters—that make a stink about this sort of thing. My wife plays, and plays female characters almost exclusively. She gets this sort of treatment all the time. But she doesn’t say much about it. I suspect that’s because she already deals with it in real life. Let’s face it; this sort of treatment isn’t at all unique to the anonymous online worlds where we slay dragons.
It’s endemic to academe and meeting rooms, too.
There are women players who roll with the punch, others who make a fuss even at the risk of being branded a bitch. But men simply don’t expect to have their ideas and suggestions dismissed without being considered. When men speak, they expect their contributions to be given due consideration. When they participate in an activity, they expect their efforts to be equally valued at least until they prove themselves unworthy.
So for us men, it’s absolutely shocking when we encounter it online. For women, it may be enraging, but it’s not altogether surprising.
Women simply don’t get respect from everyone. They consistently get dismissed, ignored, ridiculed for no other reason than that they’re women. Not by everyone, no. But there are enough assholes, online and off, that the experience can’t be all that unfamiliar to most women.
The real point, here, is that convincingly playing a woman may give men a chance to experience the downside. (The upside—free crap in exchange for typing /dance and acting like a complete moron in major in-game cities—is well-documented and not all that much of an upside.) Men, it’s your chance to do what Eddie Murphy did on Saturday Night Live so many years ago. (Go watch the video if you haven’t seen it. Hilarious.)
So if you’re a man eager to experience to prejudice and condescension women face regularly, roll up a female character and play her well. This is an interesting wrinkle to the roleplaying aspect of these roleplaying games, one that’s not truly available to tabletop gaming or online games with voice chat (but that is available to online interaction outside of games).
As a humorous endnote, I’ll mention here that I’ve had good success being perceived as a woman player when I play woman characters. I attribute this to a lot of the same things Brad mentions in his blog post. But I never expected it to have anything to do with my training as an editor.
Apparently, though, grammar helps! Several years ago, while playing my main in Dark Age of Camelot, a female mercenary, I formed a pretty good online friendship with another player. Eventually, he worked up the courage to ask if I was really a woman. I don’t know why, but I told him I was. “i knew it,” he wrote. “want to know why? because of the capitalization and punctuation. men don’t do that.”
July 30th, 2007
This is apparently true, and it isn’t good. A couple obsessed with some online video game almost let their kids starve to death: Police: Babies starved as parents gamed (MSNBC.com).
The article basically sticks to the facts and is fair. And the events are an argument in favor of at least recognizing that video game playing can be a problem behavior for some people. I’m still not in favor of labeling video games as clinically addictive, despite the article’s link to discussions on the subject.
No, video games are not the problem; it’s the people themselves (in this case the parents) who are the problem. Yes, more kids are abused by drug-using parents, and those cases are all too often completely ignored. Maybe ’cause we’re jaded. Maybe ’cause we’re scared of thuggish drug users but not nerdy gamers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend that no problems exist.
Most people who play video games use them very healthily. Most people who drink alcohol use it healthily, too.
So what to do?
What do the non-alcoholic friends of people with a problem do that genuinely helps? What do you do when your friends spend all their time and money at casinos?
What doesn’t work is calling the problem behavior a disease (it doesn’t help). Outlawing it doesn’t do any good either. And since I don’t have friends who have what I recognize as addictive or compulsive problem behaviors, I don’t really have any experience.
But what does work?
(Tangentially: I wonder if this is actually an argument for more voice chat in online games. I am not thrilled by voice chat in MMORPGs, ’cause I fear it will interfere with my ability to roleplay. But making the people you’re gaming with real and facilitating players actually getting to know one another may enable the same social support online that people get when they have healthy groups of real-life friends and coworkers.)
July 16th, 2007
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