This video game discussion begins, as you would expect, with a passage I was reading from Slavoj Zizek’s Looking Awry. He discusses a short story by Patricia Highsmith called “Black House”. In it, several men in a small town saloon are drinking and reminiscing about an old dilapidated mansion on the edge of the village. They wax nostalgic about sneaking around the place in their youth despite rumors of ghosts and psychopaths murdering innocents therein. Many of the men smoked their first cigarette in the Black House and many of them conducted their first sexual experiments there. Now, there is a tacit prohibition towards going there; it’s off-limits, it’s not safe.
A traveler passing through the town overhears this discussion and declares that he will go to the Black House to see for himself. He breaks into the house and nervously explores, not sure what to expect. He soon discovers that the house contains no ghosts, no psychopaths, just some dusty garbage and nothing else. He returns to the saloon and tells the men that their Black House is just an old uninteresting ruin. An argument breaks out, one of the men strikes the traveler, knocking him down and eventually killing him.
Zizek maintains that the men lash out at the traveler because, for them, the Black House was a fantasy space separated from reality, a canvas upon which the men could project their dreams and desires without reality intruding. The travelers crime was in breaching the sanctity of the fantasy space and dragging it back down to the level of mundane reality. As Zizek says, the traveler “deprived the men of the space in which they could articulate their desires.”
This immediately brought to mind the war happening on the geekier outskirts of social media. On one side fights the “SJW”, or, Social Justice Warrior. SJWs are concerned with the lack of woman and minority representation in video games (to say nothing of even polite treatment of trans people), as well as tropes and themes common to video games that are seen as socially problematic in the modern world. They are tired of seeing minorities reduced to stereotypes and women reduced to trophies or victims whose sole purpose is to motivate the white male protagonists. On the other side fights the Hardcore Gamer. For them, gaming is an escapist medium that allows them to engage in harmless power fantasies. They play video games as a respite from a cold & cruel world and resent SJWs trying to insert political issues into things that are supposed to just be for fun. They argue that the video game audience is predominantly white male, thus video game heroes are as well. Many argue that playing as a woman or a person of color would ruin their immersion in these fantasies and since games are “for them”, there is little reason to force the issue. They argue that if there’s a market for games about black lesbians, games will be created to serve that market. Since those games don’t really exist, the market must not exist either.
The battle is being waged in many different places online, from Facebook and Twitter to gaming magazines, online discussion boards, and developer websites. At times, it turns nasty, even dangerous. There have been several cases of hardcore gamer groups releasing the personal information of high profile figures in the SJW community, threatening to rape and kill female bloggers, even reports of real life harassment and stalking. Some women have left online communities or even moved homes because the harassment reached such a terrifying level. The gamer groups are quick to point out that only a few fringe elements are conducting these terror campaigns and that, besides, people say a lot of things from the comfort of anonymity they don’t really mean. The gamer groups often deny that the women are in any real danger, that it’s just kids on the internet blowing off steam. To my knowledge, the social justice movement has never threatened to rape or murder any members of the hardcore gaming community. The worst they can be accused of is contributing to bad reviews of certain games and the occasional calls for boycott. Why then the disproportionate response for the hardcore gamers?
I think it has a lot to do with the notion of video games as a modern analogue to the Black House. In this case, it’s not men in a small town tavern articulating their nostalgic fantasies, it’s men in the global village articulating power fantasies. Gaming has been historically tied to socially marginalized groups (nerds, geeks, loners) who’ve lacked standing in schools and businesses. Gaming provides worlds in which they wield unimaginable power, enjoy the respect of peers and the opposite sex, and generally have much more agency than in the halls of their schools or their homes. Video games provide a canvas upon which these people can fantasize freely. By breaking into the video game world and exposing its emptiness and its garbage, SJWs have “deprived the men of a space in which to articulate their desires.”
If this psychoanalytic analysis is correct about the cause of the outrage on the part of the hardcore gaming community, it may also provide insights on why this battle is all the more worthy of being fought. If video games (like film) shape consumers by not just giving them what they want but instead teaching them how to want, outmoded traditional video game tropes may be training a generation of people to want some unhelpful things in unhelpful ways. I’m not talking about ill-conceived attempts to link video game violence with school shootings and the like. Instead, I think it’s problematic enough to subtly reinforce notions that straight white men are the “default heroes” in the world and that we should want this to be upheld. It’s problematic enough that, in traditional video game narratives, women function without agency, sexual violence against women is a plot device to motivate a man, transgenderism is code for “creepy villain”, and the black male body is built purely for strength & violence in the video game world (while the black female body hardly even exists).
Ironically, it is precisely this harsh spotlight of criticism that serves as a beacon hope for the industry. Indeed, I’m glad video games are falling under the same scrutiny as other elements of pop culture because I want them to succeed as worthwhile art. I am someone who loves video games and who has been rewarded by them again and again. Video games taught me a love of music from an early age as well as gave me a thirst to be creative, to tell stories and build worlds out of words, images, and sounds. I don’t want to watch the industry stagnate and fade away, I want to see it tempered in the heat of criticism and made stronger. Straight white men will never want for suitable power fantasies; some of us merely want to open that playing field to people of color, to women, to gay & trans folk, and we want to do so in order to make all power fantasies a little healthier. If we can escape into dream worlds that don’t mindlessly harm or erase less-privileged members of the community, we can enjoy these vacations guilt-free and, more importantly, we can enjoy them together.
Video games are never going to be perfected and are never going to be without their sharp edges. The same is true of cinema, novels, oil paintings, and sea shanties. May it always be so! There is a place in the world for extreme art, for exploitation films, for death metal, for violent video games. For me, criticism isn’t about trying to smooth over every bump and corner until all art is a bland inoffensive gruel (which is a misconception animating otherwise good-hearted hardcore gamers). For me, criticism is simply a way to humble myself as a consumer, a way to interrogate my desires, and, when possible, a way for me to see new ways of loving my neighbor better through art or discussions thereof. I hope video games always push the envelope and challenge their consumers; I just hope they are as willing to challenge privileged “default” worldviews as much as they challenge hand-eye coordination.
A traveler passing through the town overhears this discussion and declares that he will go to the Black House to see for himself. He breaks into the house and nervously explores, not sure what to expect. He soon discovers that the house contains no ghosts, no psychopaths, just some dusty garbage and nothing else. He returns to the saloon and tells the men that their Black House is just an old uninteresting ruin. An argument breaks out, one of the men strikes the traveler, knocking him down and eventually killing him.
Zizek maintains that the men lash out at the traveler because, for them, the Black House was a fantasy space separated from reality, a canvas upon which the men could project their dreams and desires without reality intruding. The travelers crime was in breaching the sanctity of the fantasy space and dragging it back down to the level of mundane reality. As Zizek says, the traveler “deprived the men of the space in which they could articulate their desires.”
This immediately brought to mind the war happening on the geekier outskirts of social media. On one side fights the “SJW”, or, Social Justice Warrior. SJWs are concerned with the lack of woman and minority representation in video games (to say nothing of even polite treatment of trans people), as well as tropes and themes common to video games that are seen as socially problematic in the modern world. They are tired of seeing minorities reduced to stereotypes and women reduced to trophies or victims whose sole purpose is to motivate the white male protagonists. On the other side fights the Hardcore Gamer. For them, gaming is an escapist medium that allows them to engage in harmless power fantasies. They play video games as a respite from a cold & cruel world and resent SJWs trying to insert political issues into things that are supposed to just be for fun. They argue that the video game audience is predominantly white male, thus video game heroes are as well. Many argue that playing as a woman or a person of color would ruin their immersion in these fantasies and since games are “for them”, there is little reason to force the issue. They argue that if there’s a market for games about black lesbians, games will be created to serve that market. Since those games don’t really exist, the market must not exist either.
The battle is being waged in many different places online, from Facebook and Twitter to gaming magazines, online discussion boards, and developer websites. At times, it turns nasty, even dangerous. There have been several cases of hardcore gamer groups releasing the personal information of high profile figures in the SJW community, threatening to rape and kill female bloggers, even reports of real life harassment and stalking. Some women have left online communities or even moved homes because the harassment reached such a terrifying level. The gamer groups are quick to point out that only a few fringe elements are conducting these terror campaigns and that, besides, people say a lot of things from the comfort of anonymity they don’t really mean. The gamer groups often deny that the women are in any real danger, that it’s just kids on the internet blowing off steam. To my knowledge, the social justice movement has never threatened to rape or murder any members of the hardcore gaming community. The worst they can be accused of is contributing to bad reviews of certain games and the occasional calls for boycott. Why then the disproportionate response for the hardcore gamers?
I think it has a lot to do with the notion of video games as a modern analogue to the Black House. In this case, it’s not men in a small town tavern articulating their nostalgic fantasies, it’s men in the global village articulating power fantasies. Gaming has been historically tied to socially marginalized groups (nerds, geeks, loners) who’ve lacked standing in schools and businesses. Gaming provides worlds in which they wield unimaginable power, enjoy the respect of peers and the opposite sex, and generally have much more agency than in the halls of their schools or their homes. Video games provide a canvas upon which these people can fantasize freely. By breaking into the video game world and exposing its emptiness and its garbage, SJWs have “deprived the men of a space in which to articulate their desires.”
If this psychoanalytic analysis is correct about the cause of the outrage on the part of the hardcore gaming community, it may also provide insights on why this battle is all the more worthy of being fought. If video games (like film) shape consumers by not just giving them what they want but instead teaching them how to want, outmoded traditional video game tropes may be training a generation of people to want some unhelpful things in unhelpful ways. I’m not talking about ill-conceived attempts to link video game violence with school shootings and the like. Instead, I think it’s problematic enough to subtly reinforce notions that straight white men are the “default heroes” in the world and that we should want this to be upheld. It’s problematic enough that, in traditional video game narratives, women function without agency, sexual violence against women is a plot device to motivate a man, transgenderism is code for “creepy villain”, and the black male body is built purely for strength & violence in the video game world (while the black female body hardly even exists).
Ironically, it is precisely this harsh spotlight of criticism that serves as a beacon hope for the industry. Indeed, I’m glad video games are falling under the same scrutiny as other elements of pop culture because I want them to succeed as worthwhile art. I am someone who loves video games and who has been rewarded by them again and again. Video games taught me a love of music from an early age as well as gave me a thirst to be creative, to tell stories and build worlds out of words, images, and sounds. I don’t want to watch the industry stagnate and fade away, I want to see it tempered in the heat of criticism and made stronger. Straight white men will never want for suitable power fantasies; some of us merely want to open that playing field to people of color, to women, to gay & trans folk, and we want to do so in order to make all power fantasies a little healthier. If we can escape into dream worlds that don’t mindlessly harm or erase less-privileged members of the community, we can enjoy these vacations guilt-free and, more importantly, we can enjoy them together.
Video games are never going to be perfected and are never going to be without their sharp edges. The same is true of cinema, novels, oil paintings, and sea shanties. May it always be so! There is a place in the world for extreme art, for exploitation films, for death metal, for violent video games. For me, criticism isn’t about trying to smooth over every bump and corner until all art is a bland inoffensive gruel (which is a misconception animating otherwise good-hearted hardcore gamers). For me, criticism is simply a way to humble myself as a consumer, a way to interrogate my desires, and, when possible, a way for me to see new ways of loving my neighbor better through art or discussions thereof. I hope video games always push the envelope and challenge their consumers; I just hope they are as willing to challenge privileged “default” worldviews as much as they challenge hand-eye coordination.
7:19 PM
