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sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Tuesday, October 28th, 2014 01:41 pm
If my (flawed and shallow) understanding of the history of novels (specifically scifi and YA), comics, and films is any guide, in 20 years:

Video games will be taken more seriously as an art.
There will be room in the marketplace for lots of healthy subgenres appealing to people from all walks of life.
There will still be heaps of cheesy AAA shooters because people like that sort of thing, but there'll also be cross pollination between genres to the betterment of all.
There will specifically be a thriving Indie Game subculture, Indie Game Makers who are taken seriously in mainstream culture and can make a comfortable living etc.
People will remember Gamergate, if they do at all, as a bunch of regressive moustache twirling Luddites who were too hidebound to accept progress and True Art etc.

And the heroes of this new movement, and of the history as people remember it, will be white dudes. They'll make a movie starring John Scalzi as the Brave Male Feminist and Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkesian as the thankful oppressed victims. Brianna Wu will have a cameo played by Dakota Fanning.
There'll be Best MOGAI Games Of 2034 Humble Bundle or whatever, but the Indie Game Artform will for the most part still be a bunch of stories about grizzled white dudes, just...artistically written ones. Maybe some tragic lesbians every now and then, and the Great Classics as taught will include a careful tokenistic sprinkling of games about and by POC, disabled people etc.

Genres outside the Indie Game Artform will be looked down on as Not Real Art, and this condescension will as it happens fall most severely on any genres which just happen to be more popular with women (AAA action games will alosbe dismissed, and middle aged gamergaters will mutter about how they warned everyone this was going to happen and how AAA action games these days lack the masculine energy of the old days. Female fans of AAA action games will mutter someting quite different). Dating sims, for example, will continue to be as looked down on as romance novels.
Independent games which care more about representing neglected POVs and being entertaining than hitting the current Art buttons will be vaguely respected but not paid much attention.

And we'll all keep making and playing the games we like regardless.

(I do actually consider this to be a mostly much better situation than what we have now. But I had a Vision Of The Future and felt like sharing it. Also, yeah, massive generalisations etc, I hope my basic point comes across)
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Sunday, October 19th, 2014 11:30 pm
Make no mistake: Gamergate condones harassment, of Zoe Quinn, and of others. And the thing is, Gamergate is not the first time people supporting a good cause have found themselevs associated with awful people. But usually what happens is people go "Wow that is AWFUL I really don't want to be associated with them" and they make a really clear strong break. Like, cis feminists who don't hate trans women pointedly and publically cutting ties with TERFS.

I reblogged and commented on a post about politisization which then led me to to I can tolerate anything but the outgroup. As he admits at the end, this purports to be an objective skewering of partisanship while deep down actually being incredibly partisan propoganda for centrism. And he is far less self aware about the MASSIVE CLASS ETC BIAS of his POV, even aside from the fact thast is US focused I'm pretty sure red vs blue looks pretty different to a disabled trans black street kid or even, like, Barack Obama. THAT SAID it still made some good points and made me think.

Like, the thing he's criticising is the way people turn every complex specific situation into "proof" that their pov is better, and that the other "side" are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers. But of course his moral often ends up being "not-being-too-political is the best pov, and overly political people are a bunch of selfish ignorant harmful losers" which is EXACTLY WHAT HE'S CRITICISING. It is not inherently bad to have strong, specific, and possibly extreme opinions on the world which mostly align with some existing politcal movement. That is not actually the problem. The problem is how you deal with people whose opinions of the world differ to yours.

I had more thoughts but they got incoherent. Maybe later.
sqbr: pretty purple pi (Default)
Friday, October 17th, 2014 10:51 pm
Of Gamers, Gates, and Disco Demolition: The Roots of Reactionary Rage Felt a little overly optimistic but that's a nice change in these dark times, and was an interesting read.

This really irritated me. Ursula K. Le Guin on Being a Man, a snarky essay riffing on the ~hilarious~ idea that she is a "poor imitation or substitute man" with no mention of the fact that, you know, she could actually identify as male if she wanted. This is a thing afab people do sometimes, and they are not "poor imitations" of men. I mean I haven't read the full essay being quoted, maybe she really does identify as male to some extent, and the article is glossing over that. But either way, it annoyed me as presented, and Le Guin should know better. She could very easily have made the same point without erasing trans people.

Strips and Pieces, a really good comic (with transcript!) about men's resentment of sex workers.