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[Reelya]

Also, if you think that the article makes a good point, what are you even doing here?
I mean, Dwarf Fortress is pretty much the most nerdy game there is. The people ruining Leigh Alexander's day, these horrible despicable losers who get all their social interaction in Call of Duty, look down on Dwarf Fortress players as some kind of twisted, mutated sub-basement dwellers, hideous troglodytes that scrape together a pitiful existence somewhere in the dungeons underneath the CoD basement. I'm not saying that everyone on the Bay12Games forums should think of themselves as gamers, but most of us are definitely nerds.

The article isn't referring to nerds, its referring to the kind of person who would define themselves by their hobby. I play a lot of video games but I also do other things. I'm a nerd but I'm not a gamer.

Doing other things doesn't mean people don't adopt labels or congregate with those with similar interests. I play games, and I play guitar and like punk music, amongst other things, like reading sci fi novels. I can self-identify with all those things without any problem. Gamer, rocker, punk, sci-fi fan, anime fan. I can see how I could accept all those labels. A blanket demonization of any of those things or their fans in general is something I would find personally offensive.

Who exactly are these people who only identify as one label? Do they actually exist? I personally don't believe there are a large number of people or a significant chunk of the gamer demographic who are "just a gamer". Real people live in multiple overlapping identity groups.

It kind of seems fishy to single out some hypothetical "gamers" who are pure evil (according to the articles, not singling out people here) and then to say, "I'm merely someone who plays a lot of video games, I'm not one of those dreadful gamers".

[Neonivek]

Who exactly are these people who only identify as one label? Do they actually exist? I personally don't believe there are a large number of people or a significant chunk of the gamer demographic who are "just a gamer". Real people live in multiple overlapping identity groups.

Ehh a lot of people have a "prime identity".

There are gamers who consider themselves gamers and though they have other interests and ARE part of other groups... only identify themselves as gamers because it just doesn't occur to them that there is anything else OR that it isn't what they consider an important part of their identity.

[Cheeetar]

I've seen a lot of people who identify or did identify as as 'gamers' singularly (as in, that's the only label they'd ascribe themselves), some of whom I've known in real life. These people exist, and it is odd, but it's a real thing.

[Stuebi]

I dunno. I allways went with "Nerd", because I think it sums my freetime up nicely. I casually observe the whole GG thing here and there, and I gotta say that I understand the "Gamer" side on this one a lot more than I do the other side. Stuff like this:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

And other insults hurled around by certain sites offends me, because even if you disregard the label "gamer" entirely, I know it's aimed at people like me. And I cant stand Dev's and marketeers that insult and disregard their customers/readers/whatever either way.

[alway]

this "gamer" demographic the article bashes is pretty much supposed to be Gamasutra's target audience.

No it isn't.

Gamasutra is an industry website. As its tagline reads, "The Art and Business of Making Games." It's blogs and post-mortems by and for game developers; it's also a fairly healthy job board last I checked a couple years back. It's not writing about games, it's writing about making games. Usually with whatever wildly editorial bent the random blog writer is fond of; and which is usually contradictory because not all people agree on things. It's even got self-parody of this fact, in the form of articles like these: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TanyaXShort/20131010/201752/50_Easy_Steps_to_Indie_Success.php

[DJ]

EDIT: I found this comment on the Slate article and it pretty much sums up my opinion on the matter:

No one but the most poorly calculating commenters were calling people anything because they play videogames. The point was overwhelmingly that understanding "gamers" as an identity built around certain common characteristics and attitudes is a thing that is dying, because the people who play games are basically everyone at this point.
It's like trying to define an identity around "movie watchers" -- people who watch movies are diverse enough in their attitudes that there aren't a lot of common characteristics that identify them. The same is true of "people who play games", as popular as that's become. So "gamers" *as a distinct subculture* ARE dying, because a subculture of almost everyone isn't an actual subculture anymore.

[/quote]
You do know that movie buffs are a thing? There are degrees of things, and if yo're going to claim that an identity doesn't exist just because almost everyone does it on small scale, then pretty much no identities exist. I mean, everyone doodles, or at least did in school, so there's no such thing as artists. And everyone has seen a game or two, so there are no sports fans.

[Antsan]

I dunno. I allways went with "Nerd", because I think it sums my freetime up nicely. I casually observe the whole GG thing here and there, and I gotta say that I understand the "Gamer" side on this one a lot more than I do the other side. Stuff like this:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

And other insults hurled around by certain sites offends me, because even if you disregard the label "gamer" entirely, I know it's aimed at people like me. And I cant stand Dev's and marketeers that insult and disregard their customers/readers/whatever either way.

I actually like that article. Defending your right to be treated like a human being is a good thing to do. It's quite a bit of entitlement to expect to be treated like a king for spending a few bucks - if you don't actually act like the people they are describing there, the article is not directed at you. And if you are like the people they complain about, in my eyes you deserve what you get.

[Phmcw]

What is true, however, is that gamer is a pretty fragmented identity. Poeples that play AAA games and peoples that play Dwarf fortress and related games (thinking about Crusader Kings) for instance are a wholly different public.

The only thing you can say for very sucessfull AAA games is that they tend to be extremely consensual eye candy based games.

I'm thinking bout skyrim (pretty but shallow "do what you want we don't care" rpg), CoD (action movies on a console + competitive multiplayer).

Wow and mmorpg are another buisness model, and seems to be out of the debate entirely, for some reason.

>And if you are like the people they complain about, in my eyes you deserve what you get.

Fanatism peoples. That mentality kills.

[Antsan]

>And if you are like the people they complain about, in my eyes you deserve what you get.

Fanatism peoples. That mentality kills.

Uhm...
How is it fanatism if I think people deserve being called out on their shit?

[Stuebi]

I dunno. I allways went with "Nerd", because I think it sums my freetime up nicely. I casually observe the whole GG thing here and there, and I gotta say that I understand the "Gamer" side on this one a lot more than I do the other side. Stuff like this:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

And other insults hurled around by certain sites offends me, because even if you disregard the label "gamer" entirely, I know it's aimed at people like me. And I cant stand Dev's and marketeers that insult and disregard their customers/readers/whatever either way.

I actually like that article. Defending your right to be treated like a human being is a good thing to do. It's quite a bit of entitlement to expect to be treated like a king for spending a few bucks - if you don't actually act like the people they are describing there, the article is not directed at you. And if you are like the people they complain about, in my eyes you deserve what you get.

Except for the fact that the author throws the people insulting him and the regular customers into the same bucket, calls his customers "worthless" because appearantly their only worth one Dollar, and then mentions Phil Fish of all people as someone who did it right. It's basically one big "fuck you", probably born out of frustration.

There is not one word in the article about people not doing that, the supporters who give constructive critiques, the people who support indiecompanies with money, more often than not for a game that does not exist yet or is only in a barely playable state.

If the author wanted to point out only one specific type of people, the ones that insult an degrade people Online, he did a VERY poor job at it. And it's becoming common place with stuff like this.

I'm not expecting to be treated like a king, when I buy a product. But I expect to be treated with the same respect I treat the company or dev with. And after an article like this, I dont think that guy deserves money from anyone, and why would he want it? We're worthless to him anyway.

[Phmcw]

Uhm...
How is it fanatism if I think people deserve being called out on their shit?

"If you're not with me, you're against me, and you thus deserve what you're getting."

And what he's doing is a classic "false unity" strawman. It's something I noticed a lot on reddit, like an inverted "no true scotman".

"Some feminist thing sex while drunk is rape" => "feminist think sex while drunk is rape"
"Some MRA are mysoginist and conservative" => "Mra are mysoginist and conservative"

Which en up with the following "debate":
- "feminists want to make sex while drunk rape."
- "MRA hate women and want to be able to rape them freely"


Gamers are sick and tired to be "cathered" by things that don't interest them, villified for things they don't do, and misrepresented by the media as potential violent criminal, terrorist trainee, sexual offender and generally retarded man-childs.

The gamer communities I know are left leaning, Feminist, and more educated than average. The interest in hypersexualised characters is rather low, and pretty much only cather to teens/pre teens. Not that a good romance (final fantasy 7) or well done eroticism cannot enhance a plot, but the first time I saw it, it was in the Witcher 2. And that's still a gimmick, like a sex scene in an action movie.

Overall gamers are an easy target, already picked on relentlessly by the media, and the betrayal of a big part of the specialized press is thus very, very badly seen. It feel like they are bandwagonning on the hate directed to us by traditional media.

Suddently, every female character is suspect, analysed, her qualities disragarded, constructed as "an object feeding the ego of the white male gamer". Game "have to be feminist" and "should punish attacking women", gamer, developers, writers are under scrutincy. After the violence debate, after the addiction debate, after the debate wether or not playing an hacker make you an hacker, they are debating whether playing a mysoginist make you a mysoginist.

Ironically, peoples that where screaming that GTA didn't make you a cop killer because you kill cop, now says that it make you a women killer because you kill women. Articles are written complaining that the tutorial for stealh in shadow on morder is stealthily kissing your wife.

In fives words, "Another hysteria wave targeting gamers". Fuck them, we strike back. I'll only be happy when Kotaku close.

[Stuebi]

*snip*

Thank you for that, it sums up my feelings very nicely.

Also, the complaints about the SoM Tutorial... I cant believe that's a thing. I mean, really?

[Phmcw]

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/1/6880061/shadow-mordor-kissing-design

Here you are. I won't even link the tweet equating Gamers and ISIS.

[Antsan]

@Stuebi:
You freely admit that you understand that they probably are frustrated. I assume that you, as a fellow human being, understand frustration and have experienced it yourself. If you don't understand frustration, I won't be able to explain to you why I think they are perfectly justified in writing that article.

That person probably didn't sit down and write that with the intent to piss off as many people as possible. It is also very likely that they didn't actually sit down with the idea that all gamers are insufferable assholes. They probably even were and are aware that there are gamers out there who are downright awesome people.
But in this moment it doesn't matter. You know, it's not like they're trying to even argue that point.

Their point is something entirely else: There are a lot of gamers out there who act like entitled assholes and then feel like kings when they threaten someone to "take their business elsewhere (hah, that'll show you to stand up for yourself!)".
Are you one of those people? I guess you're not. Even if they didn't say so explicitly, in this case this article isn't directed at you.

Now there are a lot of people who go all like "Yeah, but they didn't write that, so clearly they are assholes who don't care about all the other people they are insulting."
Uhm, you see, no. If someone is writing like that, they normally assume that normal people like you and me are
1. capable of empathy (and you demonstrated as much)
2. intelligence (which you also demonstrated)
3. the willingness to use their empathy and intelligence
Now, that third point is crucial. You already understood they were frustrated. You probably would have had an easy time to realize they were talkng about entitled assholes specifically, but you didn't even bother to go that far.
For some people "that guy/gal is frustrated" is an immediate free card to shut off their brains, not even try to understand what they are saying and instead be offended. It's not like they are too exhausted or riled up to be able to bother, no, it's just that they are too damn lazy to even consider that they maybe could take a step back, switch on their brain and take the time to first realize what that other person must feel like to write that and then extract what they are actually trying to say.

In this case it was: "Dude, if you first go on being all demanding and act like an entitled asshole and then take your business elsewhere when we don't take it then you didn't 'show us' at all."
It's not even like that message is somehow buried under a pile of insults. The only insults I could find was "you're worthless" and "the average gamer is an entitled asshole".
The first one is part of the message, even if you might need to do a bit of interpretation to get what it actually means. I mean, they even explain why you are worthless to them: The money you pay is in most cases totally worthless. It doesn't cover their costs. So, actually they are saying "Your money is worthless" - they take "you" as a stand-in for "your money" and in this context that is quite justified, as the people they are targeting are actually of the same opinion - "I give you monay so you owe me!"
The second one, yes, that might be a bit harsh. That's the point where you might want to switch on your empathy, because, well, they're frustrated, right? Using hyperbole is something like the best literary device to express frustration. But it's just that - a literary device, not a statement of fact. I'm not saying they were using it consciously with the intent to signal frustration, but they certainly did subconsciously.

Of course you can make an argument about how what they are doing might be bad communication or whatever, but why the need to feel insulted?
It's not like they used their frustration to hide what they actually think.

@Phmcw:
I was specifically referring to the article that was linked by Stuebi. I did not refer to anything in relation to the whole feminism-vs-gamers mess. I apologize if I made the impression I was talking about that and would like to know how I did that.
What the linked article says when one applies the power of interpretation is, in my eyes, right. Everything else above.

[Stuebi]

I get what you're saying, but its not an excuse for me.

The thing is, all that you said MIGHT be true. Yes, maybe he only aimed this at the people spewing toxin at him, maybe he expects the readers to make the automatic conclusion "This is not aimed at me.", and maybe this is just a frustrated rant about the usual trolls the guy has to deal with.

But that would require me to know the guy, or at least have good faith in him. But I have none of these things, and I think when putting up a Blogpost, you should be aware that quite a lot of readers might take your article entirely at face value. I'm pretty sure this guy was well aware that a lot of people would read it, not only that, the article outright states that some of the statements will be met by anger. Taking a step back and then going "Oh no no, that was not aimed at YOU." is just cheap. It implies that you specifically wanted to go with a post that was as provocative as possible, instead of clearly seperating the bad people from the people that actually like your work and appreciate it.

With the current movement going, people should know better than pulling stuff like this. It comes over as clickbait.