Over on Roosh V’s endearingly clueless gaming site Reaxxion, a self-described Red Piller named Mike Caputo is still mad at writer and experimental game developer Devin Wilson for suggesting, in a Gamasutra blog post last August, that video games aspire to be more than just “fun.”
This wouldn’t seem to be a particularly radical notion. I mean, “fun” is not the only thing that we humans expect to get out of art. Not every book I read is “fun.” Not every movie I watch is “fun.” Art is often challenging and even unpleasant. And aren’t #GamerGaters always telling us that video games are art? That they’re more meaningful than a game of Skee-ball?
Well, apparently not to Caputo, who thinks that trying to make video games anything other than fun is the equivalent of trying to bring back the Soviet Union.
Evidently unable to believe that gamers might be able to handle video games that are anything other than plain old fun, he warns readers that
video games will no longer exist as a medium in which to promote social good if they are not fun: no matter how well-designed for this purpose, their “healing” powers will go to waste because no one will play them.
And this makes him think of COMMUNISM. Because making video games that aspire to be more than “fun” is basically the same thing as making tractors that don’t work.
By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, it was littered with things like factories producing farm equipment that was worth less than its component parts, because not only did the end product not work, but the cost of salvaging the components was too high to be economical. This will be the result if we allow feminists and other peddlers of academic sanctimony to continue to interfere with the video game marketplace and turn it into a PC haven.
By “PC” I’m pretty sure he means “politically correct” and not “personal computer,” because all truly manly gamers know that PC Gamers are the “master race.”
Caputo warns his readers that the evil feminaziscommies are actually worse than the real commies. The Soviets, after all, weren’t deliberately trying to make tractors that didn’t work. But feminists are trying to bring down gaming on purpose.
[T]he feminist campaign to destroy gaming is just one piece of a larger strategy to eliminate or co-opt masculinity in all its forms. Video games are one of the few media that cater more to male than female entertainment preferences: they are dominated by games involving sports, war, and fighting, and often contain images of the female body that appeal to male sexuality.
It’s true. Outside of video games, images of sexy ladies are pretty much impossible to find. And sports? Just try to find that on television or in any of the gigantic stadiums and ball parks that dot virtually every largish city in America.
It’s time, Caputo cries, to “man the battlements.”
If you imagine the world of entertainment or leisure generally as a map, video games are one of the few geographic regions where boys are still allowed to be boys, and this is simply not tolerable to feminists. They look at that territory and see a dark black stain on the pink-tinted expanse of modern culture. Feminine sensibilities and political correctness dominate the traditional media, Hollywood, academia, and publishing, while video games serve a niche market that, though large in absolute numbers, impacts a far smaller percentage of the population than other media. In other words, they have us surrounded.
But all is not lost! The only reason the evil femmies seem to be winning now is because
we haven’t been fighting back. Men have spent 50 years meekly retreating, conceding cultural territory, and even defecting to the other side. It has taken a blatant, undisguised assault on some of the least-threatening members of the male population, people who mostly just want to enjoy their hobby in peace.
Apparently, enjoying a hobby in peace involves making lots of rape jokes and sending out death threats.
Caputo’s solution? Be a manly man and don’t listen to those devious wimmenz.
The answer is to become a man in the traditional sense: self-sufficient, productive, ambitious, knowledgeable about the world you live in, and resistant to female emotional manipulation.
La la la I can’t hear you, ladies!
Women who understand the benefits they get from living in a masculine environment will do what the majority of women do best: follow and support you, or get out of your way. The rest, alone, bitter, and without any offspring to indoctrinate as future feminists, will join their ideological fellow-travelers in the dustbin of history.
Huh. You know who else liked to talk about his opponents being tossed into the “dustbin of history?”
This dude.
H/T — Responds_to_Woosh on r/againstmensrights
Wouldn’t “a man in the traditional sense” be too busy chopping down bears and wrestling trees to waste his time playing pixelated make-believe?
I find this immensely ironic considering that the last two threads got derailed by us all talking about our favorite video games (Skyrim in particular).
Yeah, because we’re not seeing movies, books, music, television shows or any other form of media still catering to men and being sexist to women, right?! …right?
I mean, it’s not like the Super Bowl is still a thing. [/sarcasm]
Yup, because representation is a finite resource in their eyes. Women getting representation is the same thing as taking representation away from men. LGBTQA+ people getting representation is taking it away from straight people. PoC getting representation takes away representation from white people. Communists! All of them red-bellied commies for daring to want to put themselves on the same level (or even close to it) as straight, white, cis-gendered men!
In other words, it’s all about them, and when it’s not, it should still be, because otherwise it’s not fair. To them. COMMUNISM!
Reaxxion was also bawwwwwwing about E3 and PAX and “booth babes” and “sexy cosplay” “bans”. It is pretty interesting to notice that PAX has been banning “booth babes” for a good while, and it is only now that bawwwwing intensifies. How odd. Surely a coincidence.
The article was truly something to behold.
The key bit is, of course, this:
So despite using rhetoric that implies that he just wants SOME kind of masculine space to exist SOMEWHERE, he actually wants everything to be a masculine space everywhere.
Which explains why the slightest female influence on anything makes him think he’s losing everything forever.
@katz –
I find it odd that “masculine” things are considered to be stronger, ergo better, but the slightest brush with the feminine and the shits are lost.
Thus, I present to you, the Unnecessarily Gendered Products blog!
To piggyback on Paradoxical Intention’s post, yeah, there are not books about men, no tv shows featuring men, and especially none with manly men doing manly things, no sports on the teevee with men, no male talking heads blathering on and on about anything men are interested in.
No men anywhere doing manly men things.
Also, and I don’t mean to mean to nit-pick, but way to miss the problem with Soviet Communism.
“The rest, alone, bitter, and without any offspring to indoctrinate as future feminists, will join their ideological fellow-travelers in the dustbin of history.”
They’re never going to drop that “feminist women will end up lonely and childless” argument, are they? My projection sense is tingling!
Talk about projection these are the folks destined for the dust bin of history. I also have been made aware that the MRA vs. MGTOW spat has gotten worse and GirlWritesWhat is now frothing at the mouth and my be quitting I am not sure but these folks are a trip
WRT the Super Bowl, the NFLdoes have a _huge_ female audience, despite the idiocy that was displayed this last season. However, the big game is watched by men just for the commercials as much as women. I come from generations of Pittsburgh Steelers fans and love watching American Football. But, when it comes to the Super Bowl, if the Black ‘n’ Gold aren’t playing, I’m quite indifferent.
He’s got a point. When Ada Lovelace wrote the world’s first computer programme it didn’t have soldiers or aliens in it or nuffink; just some Bernoulli numbers.
*points and squeals* YINZER ??
XD
Really? Really? I can’t even—UGH
Boys being boys? I guess someone’s mad that we feeemales are taking umbrage at rape and harassment.
@Paradoxical Intention
Thanks for linking that blog. I once thought about writing a satire where every consumer product is gendered, but I realized it would be too much effort to make the difference from reality apparent. Because we already gender SO MUCH that we really don’t need to.
Oh, and hello, kinda new here. I actually commented once before (a few days ago), but I think nobody noticed it because I had to wait for moderation. Been following this blog for a few months, decided to finally comment. Hi!
@PI
Oh hell, I saw the dumbest, most quarter-assed gendered product ever the other day. You know those as-seen-on-TV mini-shavers (which are, surprisingly, actually really good)? Sparkly pink and silver, marketed as eyebrow trimmers for women?
http://www2.woolworthsonline.com.au/Content/ProductImages/big/779309.JPG
Well…
http://www2.woolworthsonline.com.au/Content/ProductImages/big/779308.JPG
THEY ARE LITERALLY THE SAME THING DOWN TO THE EYEBROW SHAPER. THE ONE AND ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THE FUCKWHATTING COLOUR. WHY?! [/capslock]
I’m curious, what exactly do guys see in Roosh V? I looked into him more within the last 2 months, and honestly, aside from the terrible “game” advice, he’s also a horrible person. I’m beyond baffled as to what young men see in guys like Roosh and Matt Forney?
Have a welcome package!
@shietka
Nice to have you with us, you’ll find a welcome package if you click on the candle picture on the right, in case you’ve not checked it yet.
I got welcome ninjad, well played, katz.
I looked at the Unnecessarily Gendered Products page but it was black text on a white background and didn’t have either pink flowers or blue guns on it so I don’t know if it caters to my interests or is for people with different genitalia. Please fix so I can consume it in the approved manner.
I wish these guys would decide if we’re feminazis or femicommunists. Because I’m pretty sure we can’t be both at the same time.
The misunderstanding that drives the entire post, in one sentence. No, this person is not saying that “fun,” as in “enjoyable to play,” is not an essential element of a game. This person is saying that “fun,” as in “an ill-defined metric of a game’s worth,” should not be the end goal, that games should aim for something nobler. Reading between the lines a bit, I’m guessing it’s supposed to approach the idea that “but it’s fun” shouldn’t be an excuse to pump out harmful crap.
And you try to take the intellectual high ground with this sentence? Psh. Sure, sure, the “charitable” interpretation is that he just got his head stuck in acadamia and forgot the practical nature of games, not that he was making a deeper point that sailed right over your head.
“Straight catharsis shouldn’t be the only definition of ‘good’ for games, they should aim to be something greater.”
“You want to make games unfun! That’s ridiculous, it’s like trying to make farm equipment that doesn’t work, commie!”
It’s kind of astounding how often this happens; someone you don’t like makes an ambiguous argument, and you leap straight to the most uncharitable and extreme interpretation, and act outraged that your opponent could even fathom such an idea.
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u153/mistersite/commienazis.jpg
@sparky “I wish these guys would decide if we’re feminazis or femicommunists. Because I’m pretty sure we can’t be both at the same time.”
Sounds like they’re going with CommieNazis.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CommieNazis
Could be another case of an inability to distinguish between fiction and reality, they seem prone to that.