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?
Thanks for this, David. It’s really frustrating to see a bunch of people demanding I get out of “their hobby”, when most of them weren’t born when I started playing the NES 25 years ago. (apparently we had a coleco vision when I was even younger, but I can’t remember it) I have been playing them for 25 years and making them for 7 years.
It’s more like, hey GamerGate teenagers, I’m sorry you took my hobby/profession and made it into your whole identity such that you get personally hurt fee fees any time someone critiques a video game, but stop trying to ruin my hobby with your blatant lady-hating and censorship techniques.
Terrible people. Every single one of them. I am 100% confident in saying that #GamerGate has brought nothing of value into this world, and games, game makers, and game players, and everything even vaguely related to video games will be better off when they have found something else to occupy their hateful little minds.
I grew up in California and went to college in Oregon in the mid-90’s. I remember my freshman year I made friends with a couple of guys, and they said they were going to the arcade and I could come if I wanted. They were so surprised that I reacted enthusiastically. And I was so surprised that they were shocked I would be enthusiastic about video games. It never occurred to me at all before that very moment that anyone had the idea girls/women didn’t like video games, because like other posters here, I grew up playing them with my friends and my sister and nobody had thought we were weird. So the first time someone thought it was weird I was a girl who liked video games, it was really weird.
The guys didn’t think it was a bad thing, though. They thought it was cool. It was just weird that it was so weird to them.
First video game I ever played was Warioland on the Gameboy when I was about 6 or 7. Been fascinated with electronic games ever since.
Count me as another Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time fan. After seeing it in the #1 spot many times in Nintendo Power magazine, I finally rented it from Blockbuster…and instantly wanted to buy it! Now I still keep my Nintendo Gamecube because on that platform I have the disc with a collection of Zelda games, including Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask and the original LOZ game. I have a saved file on OoT where pretty much everything is done except the confrontation with Ganondorf, so I can go hang around almost anywhere in Hyrule anytime I want. I remember having so much fun fighting Volvagia that I quit without saving just so I could do it again, then quit again to get my brother to try it.
Now I’m playing Pokemon X while my brother has Y. I’m looking forward to seeing him come home again for Christmas so we could trade the Pokemon exclusive to our versions, trade to evolve and maybe battle if I’m no longer far behind him in the game.
It’s actually thanks to Pokemon X/Y that I finally feel justified in getting a 3DS. I was just feeling sulky for a while after Megaman Legends 3 got cancelled, since that was what I was planning to get the 3DS for in the first place. The Megaman Legends series is another of my all-time favorite games. I still have those PS1 games.
…oh my, I’ve gone on a long tangent about games I love. But yeah, claiming games as “mine, not for girls” is just selfish.
Hm? Moderation? Is there a word in my last comment that is in the filters?
Further proof that gaming is not WhiteDudeProperty:
http://interestingfunfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Ah-Funny-252819-2529.jpg
Brittersweet/chickpeasarada – the change of nym would have bounced your comment into moderation.
I have said it before and I will say it again: Pong.
MY PEOPLE! I couldn’t afford the Zelda 3DS when it came out, but I want it! This thread has made me feel all my old game feelings again. (My BF has very kindly lent me his PS2, since mine died, and am now playing Grandia as insistence. And since someone mentioned .hack, I was all OMG I CAN PLAY .hack AGAIN!)
See, this is one of the things I like about video games! Everyone can play, and have fun, and understand why (for example) want to play Zelda’s Lullaby or Saria’s Song. And really, who does it hurt that more people want to play, especially people who have been there from the beginning. It’s not like they’re not going to make FPS games and such anymore. There will just be more stuff. Different stuff. Just because I was annoyed that the minute Zelda was all dressed up in OOT she was all ‘OMG I SCARED AND IN CRYSTAL’ doesn’t mean I didn’t love that game! *grumble*
I kinda want to play the new FF but I don’t have the console for it. Le sigh. Money money money. But at least I can play Kingdom Hearts again! (Ah, Disney/Square crack.)
Ohh, that makes sense. Oh well. Thanks for telling me.
…anyway, something about Ocarina of Time again. I found this video where a guy who’s playing the game blindfolded(!) gets thrown off when he runs into a glitch.
@chickpeasarada
The Volvagia fight is so fun! And the Fire Temple is super frustrating sometimes. I’ve had to download the PJ64 emulator and an OoT ROM every once in awhile to get my Zelda fix (I’m somewhat transient–a “stray”, as I like to call myself), and I had to run up that razor-thin pathway to the Megaton Hammer within the time limit with direction keys rather than a joystick. NOT. COOL. I fell off so many times, I stopped counting.
One of my favorite things to do in that game was rescuing Epona. I loved Epona. I was so excited to see her again in Majora’s Mask. That game was great too, but OoT will always be my favorite.
Has anyone else seen the analysis on that game as a representation of the 5 steps of grief?
*MM as the grief cycle, not OpT, sorry
OoT, you stupid racist Kindle (I call it racist because it autocorrects any Japanese word to “Kawasaki”. My boyfriend’s Japanese, Kindle, I take offense to that!).
@Magnesium
I’ve noticed it’s the younger teen and all twenty year olds in other fandoms who are the ones most wanting to barricade the doors and not let people in. I’m not a gamer, but I am a Doctor Who fan, and it’s usually the new-er fans, the teens who are saying “Well this isn’t the REAL Doctor Who, and people who like it aren’t the REAL fans, and really if you haven’t done you’re not a REAL fan anyway. The series is just for the fangirls now, and fangirls should be banned”
Meanwhile fans like myself who have been watching since before the series was cancelled, survived the wilderness years, and are actually excited that new people, different people are enjoying a series that no one had heard of for 15 years are rolling our eyes and thinking “Who made you boss of fan categorisation?”
Hmm, am I a gamer because I played the original Zelda on NES all the time and was also amazing at the original 4 iterations of Mario? Or am I not because once my Nintendo died I never purchased another console and now only play puzzle games and Pretty Good Solitaire on the computer?
Wtf at the guy who thought Big Bang Theory is the only reason women like nerd stuff. I would credit the LOTR movies with making nerds cool. It paved the way for Harry Potter, the Doctor Who reboot, Game of Thrones and Big Bang. Among many other things. I also think the big technological leaps around the turn of the century made both video games and comic book movies more palatable to the masses. I’m not sure why any nerds find this so terrible. These things being popular means they continue to get funded.
It always makes me laugh when men act like women being in fandom is a new thing. It was a women who gave us terms like “Mary Sue” and “shipping” and “slash” (although men in fandom tend to dismiss all of the above as “girly” stuff). Women like nerdy shit as much as men – and that’s in spite of it failing to include people like us or reach out to us or even acknowledge our existence.
RE: emilygoddess
I admit, I have weird conflicted feelings about slash (it was how I came to terms with myself back as a gay guy in Texas, but god the fetishizing can really give me the creeps, and I’ve mostly quit reading it now) but it does seem to have been created by women.
RE: JM
I dunno, I’ve seen a lot of old-guard comics fans throwing tantrums because GET OFF MY LAWN! Ditto in science fiction. In comics, it seems to be the younger creators who are starting to change the industry a good bit, despite there being some older innovators. (Bryan Talbot, I adore you!)
You have beautifully captured my attitudes towards the GamerGate idiots. I *am* a gamer, I was pumping 20c coins into Wonder Boy back before most of these gamebros were even born, I was manually circumventing the copy protection in Prince of Persia (the original!) before they were out of nappies, and the thing is I’m not that old … So I’m hoping this is mostly just a childish phase of exclusionary nonsense they’ll grow out of as they reach their late 20s.
In the meantime I’m wondering who made them the arbiters of gamingness. Who the hell are they to determine what makes a Real Gamer?
This feels like the gaming olympics… or is it just me?
Why do we have to prove that we like videogames? To whom? I got tired of going through “gamer tests” long ago. To have to explain for how long I played and which games and consoles I bought 20 years ago… like I’m explaining how I murdered someone. It annoyed the hell out of me.
No matter how many games any of us played, no matter how much we enjoyed it, it’s like they’ll always find something and say “I knew it! Fake geek (optional girl)!”.
Yeah, I’ll “take away” their videogames to Mars with me XD.
I’m so old, I remember when electronic games looked like this:
And I used to want one sooooo badly.
Yeah, I’m kinda with you Elektra. It’s why I mentioned that I pretty much quit gaming ten years ago. I just can’t give enough shits about it anymore. The whining manchildren certainly don’t help, but I left before they took over the Internet.
Remember Karalora’s great alphabet post? I’m not sure I did it justice, but it is now preserved on my blog for your amusement.
Nina: OMG! I had one of those. I d forgotten all about that thing. My brother also had that round one where you had to tap the identical sound and colors coming from the device in sequence. I forget it’s name.
We were definitely a whole gaming family though. My Mom regularly kicked our asses every Friday evening in Monopoly, Uno, and Bingo. This was before video games.
Really, what American hasn’t played at least one tabletop game or video game in their life?
I like slash, but I seem to find that any gay male acquaintances (with only one exception that I can think of) have the same reaction I have to typical girl on girl media. It’s not made for me, and the sexuality of the people/characters involved is meant to be titillating.. It’s the whole OMG LESBIANS THAT ARE ACTUALLY BI thing that I have vs guys who have sex with guys but are entirely geared towards a female audience thing. Basically fetishizing someone’s sexuality is just sort of weird and debasing.
I guess that’s why manga has yaoi vs. bara. And whatever the lesbian equivalent is.
On a random side note: Did anyone have a Tamagotchi?
I came across this article not too long ago and it sums up my sentiment on why self-identified fandom is problematic that I think was entitled “In Defense of the Fake Fan.”
The essential argument being: the “true fan” is a mythical standard used by gate-keepers who simply presume the way in which they like something must be the rule. To them, the vast majority of people who simply enjoy something without the zealousness are pretty much “fake fans.” Rather than see that as a negative – see it as a sign those people are slowly becoming an obnoxious minority.
The writer explains why, though he loves comics, he can’t be bothered to read every issue published under a certain title or related to a particular character. He explained quite accurately that the whole “completionist” mind-set among comicbook fans is less about how much you like something than a competition of whose read more of something. They do this under the impression they “understand” those comics better than more casual readers who, God forbid, do it because they have fun reading them as they were intended…
As a comicbook reader – especially after stuff like the “Flashpoint” event – I’ve realized that a good deal of events that happen across titles can be easily described within a sentence or two somewhere online. It isn’t like titles being interconnected was entirely for narrative integrity as much as making people buy more books, purely on the assumption they may’ve “missed something”, but the internet has made that void by just giving you the information on a wiki.
To me, “gamers” are really no different. They keep setting up these impossible goal-posts that they conveniently meet and can often be more concerned over who’s “better” at a game than whether it was fun to sit down a play. It’s why I refuse doing online multi-player unless it allows for non-competitive co-op (the way they do it in Dark Souls encourages you to get help from others when having trouble in an area or boss). I play games to escape into another reality and dealing with grotesque trolls is already enough when using the internet. Why the hell would I want to deal with someone who continually calls me a “faggot” as an insult?
I had a Tamagotchi! (As did my brother and our mom.) We also each had a knock-off Nanopet, the kind you could hook together and have a boxing match.
While we’re nostalgia’ing, what about those old handheld games (e.g. Tiger)? I had a pod racing one and a stick-shaped one with Tetris on it.