Ever since the bizarre social backlash now known as #GamerGate first erupted in August, we’ve heard a lot of alarmist, entitled nonsense from self-described gamers who are pig-biting mad that so-called Social Justice Warriors and, you know, girls, are invading what is inevitably described as “our hobby.”
Thing is, guys, it’s not your hobby. At least it’s not only yours.
I don’t call myself a “gamer” – largely because so many of those who do embrace the label are such immature assholes – but, guess what, I play games too.
Indeed, as you can see from the picture above, I own more than 100 console games, some of which I’ve devoted hundreds of hours to. Over the years I’ve owned five different consoles – seven, if you count replacement consoles bought because I wore out the originals.
I first encountered video games in high school, playing Space Invaders in the basement of the University of Illinois student union. I wasn’t very good, and gravitated more to air hockey and pinball and other purely analog games instead. Still, by the end of the 80s I’d been bitten by the electronic game bug – starting with the bootleg version of Tetris I installed on my Mac in grad school to distract me from the tedium of actually working on my dissertation.
In other words, I’ve been playing games, off and on, for longer than many #GamerGaters have been alive.
But I’m sure many of these people wouldn’t consider me a “real” gamer at all. I’m not what you’d call hardcore. I’m basically a console gamer – I don’t even have Steam installed on my laptop. And I’m always little behind the time. I haven’t shelled out for an Xbox One or a Playstation 4. I didn’t beat Destiny ten hours after it was first released; hell, I probably won’t even pick it up for at least another six months or so when the price drops a bit. And I’m not a full-time gamer either. While I regularly get obsessed with certain games and play them to death, I also take breaks from gaming for months on end.
I also play a lot of the “casual” games that hardcore “gamer” types dismiss as not “real” games – addictive little timewasters like Bejeweled and Peggle and Candy Crush – as well as decidely un-hardcore games like Super Monkey Ball (which I played mostly for its billiards minigame) and Sega Bass Fishing. (That odd device in the picture of my game collection? A Dreamcast fishing controller.)
And while I play a lot of shooters – as you’ll see if you look closely at the picture of my collection – I often play on the easy setting, and I never play multiplayer at all. My favorite games tend to be those that give me the option to goof off for hours on end. I don’t even want to imagine how much time I’ve spent in the various Grand Theft Auto game universes, driving off cliffs on “taxi missions” gone wrong and generally causing trouble. (It would be nice if these games were less blatantly sexist, but Rockstar sure as hell knows how to design compellingly immersive open worlds.)
So, yeah, I’m pretty far from hardcore. But, you know what, angry gamebros? This is my hobby as much as it is yours. I may not fit your gamer stereotype, but I play games too, and the money I spend on gaming is as green as yours.
And there are a lot of us out here – game players who look a lot different from the angry gamers now ranting about evil Social Justice Warriors trying to destroy their supposedly male preserve. Hell, the comments section of this blog if full of them, many of them aficionados of RPGs and obscure interesting indie titles I’ve never heard of.
As Misha wrote in the comments to a recent post here, addressing one of the many gamebros out there incensed that non-dudes are invading a gaming world he sees as rightfully his,
Newsflash: It is not YOUR hobby, OR the hobby of your hapless diversity-hating gamebros. The individuals who want to see games evolve beyond depictions of harmful cultural stereotypes and tired sexist tropes also, wait for it, Play. Games. I play games. I am so excited by the recent footage released for FFXV that I could puke. You do not own them, and you do not speak for me.
Me neither.
Another commenter in the same thread noted that women have been playing video games from the beginning:
What I find so ridiculous is the fact that these guys act as though women playing/creating games is a new thing. I’m 3-freaking-6 years old. I’ve been gaming since the Atari 2600. I OWNED a copy of the ET game – yeah, that same one that most of those putzes only got to read about being discovered in a landfill in whereverthehell.
I’ve been a part of gaming allllll this time. Just because they didn’t want to recognize that or acknowledge my existence or the fact that I was right there, the entire time, playing in the WoW beta, playing in the Guild Wars beta, playing in the City of Heroes beta — that’s not my damn problem. They were the ones living in their own happy little penis-centric, he-man girl-gamer-haters club while I was over here, doing my own thing and having fun.
Their obliviousness is nobody’s fault but their own.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants added:
I’ve been gaming since the days of Pong, ELIZA, Merlin, Space Invaders, and Pac Man. Back then it was something both boys and girls did after school. It wasn’t seen as nerdy – in fact, the arcades were where the delinquent kids hung out.
It seems like today’s crop of misogynist gamers have their core identity way too wrapped up in being the coveted marketing demographic. They want to be pandered to and flattered with hypermasculine characters and alpha storylines.
It’s kind of hilarious that they’re treating this whole thing like it’s a RL video game, complete with black ops, sockpuppeting “missions”, evil shadowy enemies, rallying cries of threats to individual liberty, and an anything-goes mentality of inflicting maximum damage on opponents. Except the consequences of stalking and harassment are real, and permanent. In their imaginations they’re a group of beleaguered rebels taking a brave stand for freedom, but they’re actually the bad guys. They’re fighting against social justice and ruining a lot of people’s lives in the process.
It’s just a hobby, fercrissakes. I can’t imagine, say, model railroad enthusiasts getting all bent out of shape about more people taking up their hobby, and embarking on a hate campaign to define it as for old people ONLY. These guys really need to grow up and get some perspective.
Amen.
Elsewhere in the thread, M. the Social Justice Ranger described her experience,
I haven’t been gaming for quite as long as some of the other women here, but I first picked up a keyboard in 1989 and a controller in 1990, so it’s certainly been a while. Sure, I prefer single-player to multiplayer, Nintendo to PlayStation or Xbox and platformers, RPGs, pet sims and puzzle games to shooters, but I do consider my hobby to be a large part of my identity, so other gamers are usually (not always, but usually) willing to count me as one of their own…
… Until they discover that not only have I committed the cardinal sin of being born with a vagina, but I’m only interested in others who’ve committed the same sin. Then all of that flies out the window for rape threat after rape threat after rape threat.
Sigh.
I don’t want to destroy their hobby, I just want to enjoy our shared hobby…
#GamerGaters, is this really that hard to understand?
Oh that’s awesome. 🙂
We used to mod Doom back in the day. Dad had a mac with a microphone that could take 10 second sound clips. We could then use a program to save them as sound files for my friend’s copy of Doom. Wish I still had it… it was the most absurd sounding game… the Spiderdemon would give a coy “hello”, then walk around with a noise like a squeaky bedspring. (Or rather, my buddy saying “squeaky” like said bedspring) and proceed to make popcorn at you. When it died, there would be a worried ‘He’ll be ok!”, followed by an earth-shattering *KA-BOOM*, and then Homer Simpson yelling “D’oheth”.
The Arch-viles would scream “Mr. Tambourine maaaan!!!” in William Shatner’s voice.
Love it! I had to sneak in mini-sessions of Doom as a kid because it was too “bloody/scary” for me. Even back then, I remember playing it and thinking ‘it’s a bunch of squares on a screen. How is this scary?’
There’s a Skyrim mod that pastes Zoidberg’s face on the mudcrabs and makes them do the “whoop whoop whoop whoop” noise. It’s funny coming across a group of them running around “whoop”ing. I got to mess around with my friend’s modded game, there’s so much cool stuff I want a pc!!
RE: leftwingfox
OMG that is hilarious. I would love to see someone doing something like that for a horror game like Five Nights at Freddy’s. It would effortlessly convert terror into tears of laughter.
@pendraegon, thanks, I get one. I just needed to hear it from someone else without wading into the forums of the purists who think anyone who plays PC games with a controller is some kind of blood traitor.
Also, so many fellow Skyrim and Zelda fans! Zelda is the other big franchise that I have been obsessed with since I was maybe 11. I think I’ve played nearly all the Zelda games (Majora’s Mask being my hands-down favourite) and I also have a giant Zelda tattoo on my calf. But I think Skyrim is definitely the game that has eaten the most of hours of my life. I thought I was nearly over it after completing most of the vanilla game, then went down the mod rabbithole and never looked back. Even a one or two good mods can make it feel like playing an entirely different game!
I’m actually currently working on a blog post about my top ten favourite Skyrim mods (temporarily delayed by the fact that I CANNOT CHOOSE IT IS SO DIFFICULT). But when I get it up, I officially invite all Mammotheers to come over and nerd out about Skyrim with me.
“I get one,” she says.
I should not be allowed on the internet while tired and full of painkillers.
Fromafar2013: So I said, “DIE THALMOR SCUM.” And walked away.
Goes to show you'[re not a REAL gamer – should have put an arrow in him and then run around the rest of the party MURDERING EVERYONE WHO GOT IN YOUR WAY!!!!
*pant* *pant*
Where was I? Oh yes – once again, “Rise from Erebus” for Civ IV – best mod ever.
I adored Ocarina of Time as a kid. You’d go through the child dungeons and get the master sword and it felt like the game had concluded, but nope! The game expands outward considerably, with one of the most epic boss battles I can remember from my youth.
Majora’s Mask I couldn’t play. I hate games on a timer where you need to be at the right place at the right time with the passionate fury of a thousand suns, and I never realized you could slow down time so I felt like it’d be impossible to get all the masks in time, never mind all the other content. Real shame, because I’ve watched playthroughs and everything about the game is incredible.
Thus ended my 3d zelda gaming experience. I don’t own any consoles at the moment and I don’t plan to, but I really do need to find a way to play the recent games. Apparently they too are amazeballs, even though I thought they looked a little hokey at first.
When I was a kid, I knew that gaming inherently wasn’t a boy only thing. But I did pick up that it was engineered towards boys though. So there’s my two cents.
Also, one positive thing about this whole mess, a lot of assholes are leaving 4chan. I’m still not reading it, because it’s still a cesspool of bullshit and nonsense. But I’m glad that 4chan won’t automatically make my eyes roll back.
Ooh, plus the shadow link fight. Yes, you can kinda cheese it by using the hammer or something, but I decided to try fighting with only my sword. Except every time you thrust forward (forward on the control stick and sword swing, which you do all the time to close distance), he hopped on your sword and smacked you. What followed was the most intense fight of my life, where I went through two or three fairy bottles and finally killed him with something like three hearts remaining.
Best gaming moment ever.
I don’t really think of myself as a “gamer” because it’s not my primary hobby and I have a backlog of PS2 games waiting to be played. But then I think about my Kongregate account, or how FFVII was one of my first fandoms, the amount of time I’ve sunk into Civilization 4 and 5, the fact that I will instantly love anyone who knows Okami and I still pick up Katamari Damacy or Monster Rancher when I’m stressed…I guess I technically count as a gamer.
My mother, on the other hand: she’s pushing 60 years old, and I guarantee you if you name any RPG for the PS1 or PS2, she’s not only played it, she’s beaten it and finished all the sidequests. Not exactly the type of person these guys think of when they talk about “gamers”.
RE: tinyorc
I think I’ve played nearly all the Zelda games
Did you ever play the old NES one? That’s the only one I’ve played, but I had a lot of fun giving my Zelda fan friend a surprise by bringing up my NES and us playing it all the way through together. It was the one Zelda game she’d never played!
(Though it did make me realize how idiosyncratic our names for enemies were. See, we got the game as tinies without internet, guide, or friends who played it, so…)
This contains MILD SPOILERS for .hack//GU
Once upon a time I was playing .hack//GU: Reminisce and I got to the part where you have to slog through the Moon Tree guild on the AIDA server, and get to the end and you need to fight Innis. That fight is a long way from the last save point and Innis is kind of a pain in the ass especially if you’ve never done that fight before.
I have sporadic supraventricular tachycardia. I got partway through the Innis fight and suddenly my heart went into fibrillation. I guess it was just that exciting? It was kind of terrible, and I thought about going to the ER. However, it happened at almost the same point when I finally had Innis in Protect Break, and Innis is so hard to hit with Data Drain, and that fight is so far away from the last save point, that I kept telling myself I’d go to the ER once I got through that fight and could save again …
Long story short, I wound up taking about 10 more minutes and by the time I was done the fibrillation episode was over, so, yay, I guess I saved a copay, but at the same time I want to emphasize that a game was apparently more important to me than my heart beating correctly.
Seeing how we primarily played those single-screen multiplayer games as kids… yeah, any additional play was a good one.
Gotta say, that sounds a lot more like my mental image of a hardcore gamer than harassing women on the internetz.
@kirbywarp
DearlordIlovetheShadowLinkfight!! I thought it was impossible at first, like maybe one of those battles where you’re supposed to die. When I started playing that game, my brother and I traded off on it. He would beat all of the big bosses, and I would do all of the puzzles. Then I started getting more into the groove of fighting and took on the desert temple by myself. Beating that temple was the proudest moment of my childhood gaming life, and I loved the fact that you had to beat it as both generations of Link.
Also, re-deads creep me out to this day. I start mashing the C button my ocarina is synched to as soon as Hyrule Town Square starts loading as adult Link. I still have to have daylight/people around me to beat the Shadow Temple. I couldn’t even do it as a kid. I immediately handed off the controller. Needless to say, I’m crap at survival horror games. I love them, but I’m crap at them.
Re: the old NES Zelda:
My sister ripped up my hard copy of the map because I “spent too much time playing”.
Obviously, I still haven’t forgiven her <_<
And Policy of Madness, that is definitely hardcore. Glad you ended up okay, too!
“If you follow the principle that surnames were often an indication of what people did for a living, what did a Weatherwax do?”
This is my best guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batik
I’d also like to emphasize that what I did was kind of stupid, but in my defense my fibrillation episodes are not typically dangerous (just scary as hell) and usually only last a second or two. This one went on and on and on, but I knew I wasn’t dying and I expected it to be over any moment now. It feels kind of like a supercharged anxiety attack, if you’ve ever had an anxiety attack.
I didn’t say it before, but reading this makes me really want to, so forgive me for being super late and super rambly. Not only have I been playing games since I was very young, they also mean something very important to me beyond simple entertainment or a hobby.
Wanna know what my first game was? Super Mario Brothers 3, the one for the NES. My uncle had an NES and a ton of games, which he gave to my dad at some point. My first exposure to games was sitting in the room with him, staring in awe as he just whisked through the levels without any problem. Eventually, I got enough courage to ask him if I could play, and he — wait for it! — got a second controller and taught me! When it was clear that I was having way more fun than him and playing it more often than he was, he bought me an SNES for my birthday and the All Stars pack of Mario games.
From that point on, gaming was a thing that me and my father did together. We played together, watched each other play (mostly me watching him, whether it was on a console or just sitting behind his chair and watching him play old, old DOS games I don’t remember the names of anymore), and basically celebrated the hobby as just that. A HOBBY. A thing that brought a 10 year old girl and her 40 year old father together to bond. Even as a teenager, with all my problems, it was still OUR thing. And I remember one major thing about it that I’ll never forget.
I was in a horrible wreck, one that tore the ligaments in my neck up and made it so that if I moved my neck a certain way I couldn’t move it back without pain. I was basically bedridden for a long time, unable to do much of anything, so I gamed… and my father did, too. Tired from work, worn down, he would still come in, set up a disc in the PS2, and play for me to try to make me feel better and loved and not alone. It’s something that still brings tears to my eyes and something that I always associate with gaming, that someone can relax and enjoy it while also giving enjoyment and love to another person.
He’s moved out of the gaming scene now, just because he’s lost interest in it, but he still respects that I love it. He still listens, still cheers me on, and still praises me, even if he doesn’t understand entirely what I’m talking about. He still smiles when I show him old games we used to play like Banjo-Kazooie, or Megaman, or things like that, and he supports my desire to want to make games. Hell, we actually have a plan for a game we want to make together when I have more experience!
And it isn’t even my father. I’ve met so many friends of mine that are basically family now through gaming. I’ve met people who helped me through depressive episodes, through hating myself, through wanting to die and through abuse that gaming, to me, is something that I will always treasure and look on fondly, even if I don’t actively play games as often as I used to.
And that’s why it makes me, among the disgust and hate I feel, feel PITY for these people. If all you see gaming as is “MY HOBBY MINE MINE MY THING FOR FUN NO ONE ELSE CAN HAVE IT”, you aren’t seeing what gaming can be. Yes, it can be just a simple hobby, played for fun and enjoyment and nothing else, but it can also be something that has a serious impact in some people’s lives, is MEANINGFUL and can bring people together.
And yet, they want to ruin what it can really be solely because they want it just for them. It’s seriously like the six year old bully stealing a four year old’s toy car because “I want it, so that means it’s mine”
It’s sad… because as far as I’m concerned, the people who do that, say that? They’re the ones who aren’t the “real” gamers. Not the rest of us.
@ryeash:
Oh lord, the re-deads. That scream will haunt my nightmares forever. And I have no direct proof of this, but I would believe that the shadow temple and the well were the reasons why I’ve never actually played a horror game in my adult life.
Oh lord the well.
Come to think of it, I lied about OOT and MM being the end of my 3d zelda career. I played through Wind Waker not too long ago. Jesus monkey-biscuits the boss battle and ending was absolutely perfect. It tugged every nostalgic heart-string in my body. Shame it took me so long to figure out how to beat the puppet.
And somehow they managed to make the redeads both less scary and terrifying at the same time. The eyes…. The eyes.
Broken butterfly…
I kind of want to hug your dad now. He’s a good egg. Warm fuzzy feelings, reading that story.
Sorry you went through the accident though; that sounded terrible. Internet hugs for the both of you, if you like.
Also, adding to the voices of “I love Skyrim and Legend of Zelda”. The only LoZ game I haven’t liked so far is Skyward Sword, and that’s because A) right-handed Link bothers me and B) I don’t like Fi. Majora’s Mask was definitely one of my absolutely favorite games, though, and in general I ADORE the Sheikah race. Like, so much so. I really wish Hyrule Warriors had Create-a-Warrior…
The re-deads and the well gave me nightmares, and as a kid I couldn’t even get past the first room of the Shadow Temple. It was all NOPE NOPE I’M DONE I’M OUT WHERE’S MY MARIO GAMES. (A friend bought me OoT3D, though, and I’m just getting all the Gold Skutullas before I go fight Ganondorf. Beating my childhood fear!)
@contrapangloss
My dad has his problems, like any other human being, but overall he’s honestly one of the best I’ve ever met. He’s also scary, because he’s one of those whose voice gets low and even when he’s angry and it’s utterly terrifying. He told me that he used to make me cry when I’d be a little shit by using that voice and he felt terrible every time because he was just trying to make me behave, not make me CRY!
I would gladly take internet hugs, though! Thankfully, despite how terrible the accident was, all it did was tear a ligament in my neck, which healed up after a few months. I basically walked away from something that nearly killed my mother and should have killed me with a minor internal would and minor scrapes and bumps. (My mom literally broke her jaw on my HEAD, which I’m still amused by to this day)
Nothing serious to add but much love to Dave for admitting to owning a dream cast fishing rod. as far as games being blatantly sexist, I am a firm believer for the most part that art imitates life so once it change in the real world it will change in the video world.
*wound. Learn to words, me.