Angel Dust on 28/7/2013 at 22:25

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Not to mention it's the kind of shitty journalism that has turned the indie scene, in some eyes*, to be little more than a "platform for a bunch of egotistical hipster douchebags".

* Not mine. I wasn't even aware of this view. Maybe it's because of the sites I go to but indie gaming to me is stuff like Kentucky Route Zero, Hotline Miami and Teleglitch. I have no idea what BlowFish's opinion of various things are at all.

Starker on 28/7/2013 at 22:35

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No kidding. Combine his personality and the fact that artists tend to be the sensitive types with people always trying to push his buttons and you will wonder why something like this didn't happen a lot sooner. I'm not saying that Fish is without blame, but the amount of hatred that the internet can focus on one person can wear anyone down.

Just try to imagine getting this, constantly: (http://gamerfury.tumblr.com/)

Muzman on 28/7/2013 at 22:57

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Rohrer I kind of put in a special pile. He is, as you say, kinda an artist whose medium is games (perhaps some meta category of 'the games scene'). This I'm ok with as I think he's got some interesting notions, even though he seems like the late 20th century on fast forward of late ; Beatnik->hippy->faintly libertarian->paranoid Neo Con.
The press does love him though. But that's coz they're all secretly wishing they were Robert Hughes or someone like that, writing about Warhol in New York in 1972.

The rest we can seem to blame almost entirely on Indie Game: The Movie. (Speaking of which, McMillan is pretty good, since we're making a list).
The Fish saga might be the final death spiral of an abusive symbiotic ego relationship. The problem is one side survived and will move on to form another such relationship no matter what Sterling says unfortunately.

(I second that feeling that, by reading RPS and having no idea about this XBLA crap, I feel like some kid who follows a techno fanzine and has no idea that NME are devoting issue after issue to every stupid word said between Liam Gallagher and Damon Albarn. This is further to my argument that consoles, like Britpop, poison everything.)

Fafhrd on 28/7/2013 at 23:48

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[video=youtube;YfUlhqLdScY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfUlhqLdScY[/video]

june gloom on 28/7/2013 at 23:53

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Same deal I have when I get involved in discussions about women in video games, LGBT issues, or whathaveyou. I've just gotten really conscious about privilege and stuff -- I think about it a lot. Part of this is because I am forever examining and re-examining my political and social views (when I get really introspective I cook great dinners) and part of it is because I've had some contact with social activists and their supporters -- real ones, not the tumblr escapees who just try to score points on how PC they are.

More specific to this conversation, there's a real issue in the industry in which there just aren't enough POCs in game development. Can you name any well-known black developer other than Derek Smart? What this results in is an abundance of white people (with the protagonists very often brown-haired Anglo-Saxon types with five-o'clock shadows because that's what the developers look like) and a mostly very poor representation of black people in video games. They're far too often thugs, gangsters, pimps, hookers, drug dealers, or just plain old stereotypical "angry black men." At best they're shouting bald dudes in the military. Making the protagonist a nuanced, realistic black person like Lee from The Walking Dead is considered bold or even subversive. (http://thegrio.com/2011/11/11/blacks-play-games-but-dont-design-them/) And yet more and more black people are playing video games these days -- often way more than white people of similar age groups. *

And since I know you only mentioned it because of what I said about Jason Rohrer, that article I link to about Rohrer's Castle Doctrine pretty much nails it. Rohrer is forced to live in a place where he doesn't feel safe, for the first time in his life (he's how old? My age maybe?) Nevermind that many people, many of them poor, many of them not white, many of them not heterosexual, and many of them not male, have much lower baselines for a sense of security. We -- white and black alike -- have been trained through the media to fear and avoid black people, particularly young black men. Castle Doctrine is a reinforcement of this.

* And as long as I'm talking about changing gamer demographics, (http://www.gamespot.com/news/esa-women-make-up-almost-half-of-all-gamers-6410363) women make up half of gamers now too, and I'm not just talking about "lol hehe the sims r00lz and cake is a lie~ <3<3<3 who wants to play WoW with me??" stereotype which might have -- might have -- had a kernel of truth to it 6, 7 years ago but is certainly not anywhere near accurate now. It basically boils down to "girls don't play video games and shouldn't play video games and only do it to get our attention but if we want your attention we'll ask you for it bitch sudo make me a sandwich ha ha ha i post on 9gag." Or take this one comic artist -- who did some beautiful work with DC's Starman series in the 1990s -- (http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/11/13/hey-quasi-pretty-not-hot-girl-you-are-more-pathetic-than-the-real-nerds-tony-harris/) going off about how female cosplayers are all attention whores.

"Fake geek girl" is actually a fucking myth. It's composed of two fallacies. The first is the idea that only girls can be dumbass hipsters trying to look cool/get sex/whatever. I mean, I get it. I hate when people try to claim they're such huge nerds because they like Star Wars. That's like claiming you're a vegetarian because you fucking ate french fries. It's the implication that being a "geek" is some sort of separation from larger society. It's a form of othering -- but the problem is that geek elitism supports and perpetuates this too, like you're in some super secret pocket protector club or something, which is the other fallacy. It's essentially one side going LOL LOOK AT ME I AM SOOOO NERDY and the other side saying "no you're not, YOU NOT TR00 FAN WHERE'S MY CAPE?" But here's the thing: unless you're someone completely fucking boring like my mom, EVERYONE is into something "geeky." Some people are into tabletop war gaming. Other people like fantasy football. Some people have read every fucking Marvel comic book printed since 1970. There's probably a few people whose VHS archives could fill in the "lost episodes" of Doctor Who, for crying out loud. And even my mom is into Biblical archeology and is something of a theology nut (emphasis on nut.) There is no point in being elitist about geek culture because there is nothing to be elitist about.

This turned into two rants for the price of one, I'm sorry, I'll go eat dinner now.