Good grief! It’s been about a hundred years since I updated this thing – and unfortunately, my gallant return to this blog doesn’t come in the form of a particularly wistful or insightful analysis on any kind of video game thing. Nah. I kind of just want to update my readers on recent stuff that’s been happening, and share some cool events and links. So here we go!
I’ve been watching the #1reasonwhy hashtag on Twitter with an anxious kind of understanding. Like, part of me wants to jump right in and post a dozen of my own experiences, but I’ve also learned what happens if you say that shit publicly: you’re berated, blamed, dismissed. I’ve been there.
But why the fuck should I have to fear posting this? I’ve been quiet on Twitter and Facebook lately, for many reasons, but you know what? I think I’ll make my own list of Reasons Why right here:
[An interview with Warren Spector to coincide with the Game Masters exhibition at ACMI. Originally published in issue #228 of Hyper magazine, August 2012.]
“If I’ve done anything in my 29 years of making games, it’s that I’ve championed a single idea and been sort of bull-headed about pursuing that idea.”
Warren Spector – one of the most well-known, passionate guys in games development and with a head that is inexplicably not at all bull-shaped – is telling me about the various accolades he keeps receiving for his work in game design, the latest of which is the “Game Master” bestowed upon him by Melbourne’s ACMI. He seems a little confused by the fuss.
“It makes me feel uncomfortable, if you want to know the truth,” he continues. “I just put together teams that want to investigate my idea – that doesn’t seem like any particular genius or anything. I mean, I just find an idea that’s really interesting to me, and I manage to hire people way better than me to execute it.”
I’m so incredibly grateful I got to be so involved in this year’s Freeplay Independent Games Festival, which concluded barely a fortnight ago. I was a speaker in the conversation session Games and Words, exchanging thoughts on the written word’s relevance to video games. On the panel Levels of Discourse, I contributed to a discussion of various aspects of games criticism. I was on the judging committee for the Freeplay awards, playing through dozens of excellent indie games from all over the world. I somehow even convinced director Paul Callaghan that it’d be a great idea to let me present an award at the Freeplay awards ceremony. (I hope he’s not too mortified I took the opportunity to slip the word “throbbing” into the script.)
I have a history with Freeplay, actually, and I’d say it’d played a pretty critical role in what I do now. At last year’s Freeplay I met a whole bunch of people I’d only admired from afar till then; now I consider many of them to be great friends, mentors, and alcohol suppliers of mine. The year before, at Freeplay 2010, I’d just begun writing about games, and it was all the cultural discussion at the festival that really guided the path my writing would take, each panel I attended and game I played at Experimedia shaping my path like wire on a bonsai tree – so being an actual part of the festival my third time around means an immense amount to me.
And this year, as in previous years, a lot of discussion was generated that has me thinking still, even two weeks later. Though the official theme was “Chaos and Grace”, I think several unspoken sub-themes also emerged in conversation, and there’s one I’d like to expand on today…
Covetous. That’s apparently what a video game manifestation of me would look like, according to indie superstar and my good friend Andrew Brophy.
He has this hilarious theory, see, that game developers look like their games, in much the same way dog owners look like their drooling pooches. (It’s something that will be expounded upon eventually in the nascent game development fashion blog Indie Ankles, I’m sure.) Seeing him discuss it with a couple of other game devs on Twitter recently, I butted in to ask what a video game based on me would look like. I always figured I’d be the tangle of words in a work of interactive fiction, or perhaps something wistful, beautiful, and immensely sad in tone, like Dear Esther. (Wishful thinking up in here.)
But apparently I more closely resembled Covetous’ little melty boy-thing. Thanks, Brophy.
So I just got off a plane to this flood of tweets and messages and emails and urgh, I was already tired enough after spending fourteen hours watching old Futurama episodes with my kneecaps crushed against the chair in front of me. If you’re clueless as to why I might be on my blog instead of sleeping off the horrors of flying, I kind of wrote this article about PR sexism at E3 and it got a little attention. If you’re here for precisely that reason, cool! I want to address a few of the things that keep coming up in various comments, forums, tweets, and probably also hastily scribbled notes attached to the legs of the angry carrier-pigeons that will be arriving at my house in a couple of weeks.
Why didn’t you STAND UP FOR YOURSELF?
This is pretty much the most common negative response, and in hindsight, I wish I’d addressed it. I certainly thought of addressing it; what I didn’t think at the time was that it was apparently necessary. We already know well that women often don’t speak up. We should even know why – this article on “gaslighting”, which the entire internet read and linked and ranted about last year, illuminates the issue exquisitely.
In the first year of my games degree, I learned quickly to stay quiet in the face of male-heavy classrooms. I was never welcome; one guy said that this was a degree for hardcore gamers, and that I didn’t belong here, obviously being a player of the Sims or Farmville. In one of my very first classes, a guy raised his hand and said to the female tutor: “Hey, can we get a guy teaching this class?” I was always last choice for group projects, because nobody ever assumed a girl could know anything about games. Things got thornier when I tried to protest their stupid opinions of women’s abilities to play, develop, or analyse games. My gender was always used against me to shoot me down. “Nobody else has a problem,” they would respond. “Is it that time of month?” “You’re overreacting.” “You have an opinion, that’s so cute. Now get back in the kitchen.” From even more obnoxious classmates: “God, you’re a crazy bitch.”
It’s not pleasant to be the target of such language, and hearing it in such great volume – just for challenging a bunch of guys’ uninformed views – was exhausting in a way most can never fathom. Finally, worn down, I learned to say nothing.
But I also learned, in my final year at university, that writing was a fantastic release for me. It allowed me to finally enjoy games as much as any of my classmates did – in a far more productive way, and in what has generally been a much more supportive environment. My way of saying “fuck you” to the idiots of my uni was to advance in a field they didn’t believe I was capable of penetrating; to develop a career many of them only wished they could be a part of.
So the accusations of not “standing up for myself”, and the associated implication that what happened at that particular booth was somehow my fault, are both bemusing and frustrating for me. When you’re treated like that for years, it becomes really fucking exhausting to keep trying to speak up. You give up; you find other ways of dealing with the issue.
So what was my Kotaku post, if not retroactively standing up for myself to much greater effect?
Your little story means NOTHING unless you name and shame the guy!
For one thing, I don’t think the guy in question deserves to lose his job or be targeted by an internet mob. When these problems have been going on so long, I wouldn’t blame him for not realising that his behaviour wasn’t right. And following the embarrassment gamers made of themselves for the Ocean Marketing thing, I really don’t want to orchestrate another lynching.
For another – and I’ve said this several times and am getting quite tired of repeating it – this isn’t about the one goddamn guy. He’s indicative of a problem that’s deeply rooted in the industry itself. Naming him is treating the symptom of a disease, not the cause. We could all go and make his life hell with threats on the lives of his wife and kids and pet ferrets and whatever, but in two weeks things would be exactly the same as they were before. We would believe that the problem had been taken care of, leaving one guy bruised and broken while the true disease continues to manifest in the industry.
I think my refusing to name him is making people feel uncomfortable, because it prevents them from just blaming one person, destroying him, and then sweeping his remains under the rug. I mean, sure, I hope the PR rep in question has read my article and realises that what he did was wrong. I also hope that many, many others in the industry are also taking note.
And as a side note, I also don’t appreciate a fellow games journalist’s assertion that I am fearful of being blacklisted by the publisher in question. I mean, I’m not much of a reviewer; I have never done this for FREE GAEMZ, and the insinuation I’d care about that is a little insulting. If blacklisting is even a possibility, then I’d say that’s actually worth exploring as a real example of games journalism being broken – demanding that I name names is dodging the issue I’ve raised, and that in itself is pretty broken.
Fyi, everybody who visited booth X/played Y game was treated the same way as you.
That’s a real cute way of downplaying the issue. Nobody knows which booth this happened at, or what the game was. I’d also like to highlight a line in the article that everyone apparently missed: I looked down the booth and saw gamers at the other computers playing their own games, their own hands controlling the avatars.
At the time I visited, I was certainly the only one it happened to.
I’m a woman and it didn’t happen to me.
This kind of response has been incredibly disturbing to me. Besides belittling what I experienced, it’s also frustrating, because I kind of semi-understand the sentiment behind it. If this one chick comes out and complains about sexism, are people going to think all girls in gaming are like that? Gosh, how embarrassing for the rest of us.
I have trouble believing the problem was as isolated as many seem to be implying. Not when we still have Hitman trailers, not when ladies are still harassed online for the crime of having vaguely girly screennames. Maybe the specific PR problem didn’t happen to you. Maybe every one of the hundreds of people you met at E3 was unquestionably polite, and maybe not a single male attendee attempted to hit on you or check out your ass while you weren’t looking.
You might be incredibly lucky: none of it may have happened to you. But if it happened to someone else, it is still a problem.
Read that piece of yours for Kotaku. Katie, you’re better than Kotaku. They’re the Herald Sun of gamer news. You can do better.
This is a Facebook message from one of the aforementioned guys I went to uni with – and unfriended – years ago. I have literally no response to this. I’m just pasting this here because I actually find it incredibly hilarious, and I really need the laughs. I couldn’t think of a better place for my article to have ended up but at Kotaku – I’m proud it’s generated so much discussion, and has affected as many people as it has.
I’m going to turn comments off on this post, as I don’t particularly want to have to stay up all night, jet-lagged, moderating things on my personal blog. I hope the above has cleared some things up for people. If you’d like to discuss anything, email or tweet at me.
[Originally in issue #5 of Ctrl+Alt+Defeat magazine, March 2012.]
I’m in Menethil Harbour. I’m fishing. It’s many hours past sundown, the dusky blue sky reflecting on the ocean, reflecting the shadows outside my bedroom window. The cataclysm is yet to rend this quiet harbour town, plunging its inhabitants and half its buildings beneath water. No one here knows their fate. I am yet to know mine.
I am a pretty night elf with a trademark bob of teal hair. I’m a rogue, a sneaky little slip of a thing with a mean temper.
And I’m standing on the docks, fishing.
I’m not sure why; I hate fishing, and I don’t think this harbour provides any of the kind of fish I particularly need at this time. Ships with full, golden sails arrive occasionally at the far pier, collecting or depositing passengers before they leave once again. I stand here, plucking fish off my line every now and then, for about fifteen minutes before another boat comes in from the city of Stormwind, dropping off a lone occupant.
Unlike the other travellers, he does not instantly summon a mount and race out of town. This little dwarf warrior, in the mid level 20s, is dressed in the drab kind of gear that signifies he’s new, if not to this game then at least to this realm. He’s American, I presume, given that most Australians like myself are asleep at this time. He doesn’t seem to own a mount yet; he jogs over to me on foot.
But before he even approaches I know what he’s going to ask. I sigh inwardly.
“hey” he says to me out loud, his imagined voice the only text in my otherwise empty chat box, the only sound in this town save the occasional bell of an arriving ship.
“Hi,” I venture, monosyllabically and noncommittally, waiting for him to make his request.
It takes a few seconds; I imagine him stabbing at his keyboard with two index fingers. “do u know how to get to arathi?”
“Leave this town, stick to the path, and follow it left when it forks,” I reply promptly. I reel in another fish, and I hope that the dwarf doesn’t need further explanation.
“k thanks” he says.
He’s about to leave, but I know he’s not done yet. And I’m right. He has another request.
“can u take me there?”
I feel myself physically bristling at this. I’m at the level cap, dressed in sleek, colourful gear attained from the current raid instances, and I am busy fishing, dammit. At this time, I’m one of the few people in the realm to own a two-seater motorbike, but I only allow friends to sit in its side-carriage. Not anyone like this lowbie. What makes him think I am going to make the time to ferry a stranger across half the continent? Why do lowbies, with their poor typing skills and irritating abbreviations, always feel entitled to ask favours of high-levelled players? I gave him directions – was that not enough?
So I simply say, “No.” And to prove how busy I am, I cast another line into the sea.
“k” he says passively, turning to leave.
He’s not far when he seems to change his mind yet again. I brace myself for another inane question, another unwarranted request for a favour.
But after hovering at my side a moment, instead of saying another word, he drops a small wooden chest, out of which springs a mirror ball that sways to and fro, casting small spinning shards of reflected light across the pier’s haphazard wooden planks. The night sky lights up in a kaleidoscope of colour; fast-paced music featuring the laughter of gnomes plays, and in a wondrous daze, I click on the ball to see what will happen. My rogue abandons her fishing rod and begins to dance.
And with that, the dwarf is off, out of sight and running out of town.
I later learn that what he has deployed is a D.I.S.C.O. Ball, a rare item presumably used to raise the spirits of jaded, impatient, high-level raiders.
As I find myself grinning at the absurdity of this mirror ball, I feel something in myself soften. It’s just me and the mirror ball here on this dock, and though it’s the middle of the night in both of my existences, my world is alight. I feel awful.
Thinking of that little dwarf navigating the Wetlands outside town by himself, I remember the first time I came to this harbour as a baby rogue. My brother, a rogue far more competent than I at the time, had been the one to protect me from the Wetlands’ crocodiles. I might have quit without his help, given up. Though the game has been nerfed and gone through numerous changes since, I wonder if I have just sent this little dwarf to his death.
Quickly, I type his name into my chatbox. “Wait,” I whisper to him desperately. “Do you still need me?”
“nahh” he says. “i’ll figure it out.”
“Well…” I say finally. “Let me know if you ever do need help.”
“k.”
The following morning, unable to stop thinking of the dwarf or his mirror ball, I add him to my contact list. The next time I see him online I message him immediately to ask how he’s doing, and to offer him a hand if it needs it.
He is as short with me and I was with him upon our first meeting. He politely declines my offers of help. We stop talking. I instead observe him through my contact list as he levels over the next few weeks, making it to the 60s before he stops logging on altogether. I never see him again after that.
He was right. He didn’t need me.
The game didn’t need people like me.
