GamerGate's Lasting Effects & How To Fight Back

As the widespread use of the Internet took off in the late '90s and early 2000s, gamers started to form communities. With those communities were norms and rules both written and unwritten than began to coalesce with what those communities did and did not find acceptable. These were mostly-male dominated spaces, with the norms and rules functioning as gate-keeping tactics-- first to keep out those that might have reminded the gate-keepers of bullies, but expanded to be anyone that could be treated as an outsider or an other. This was especially true for women and other minorities. Trash talking was sen as "part of the game", even when it led to rape jokes and threats, for example.

Harassment of women and the marginalized in gaming communities in specific and online in general didn't beging with GamerGate. GamerGate just gave a collective name to what had been lurking under the surface of gaming culture for a long time. It just was now too big to willfully ignore. As I wrote last year, the more virulent influence of GamerGaters seemed prime to make hardcore gamers the new conservative reactionaries-- and this was before Trump was elected on a wave of dank 4chan memes, racism, and twitter rants.

Writing for Bitch Media, Sam Riedel reflects on the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the GamerGate movement. She also talks about the effect it's had on her as a gamer, and the frustration that many companies that pride themselves on building gaming communities still stand by and don't seem to do much in her essay "No Girls Allowed: The Lasting Rules of GamerGate and Toxic Misogyny":

[Many of the PAX East] show’s panels that touched on harassment and abuse did so in a way that was only marginally helpful.. The Diverse Gaming Coalition held a panel on stopping online bullying, and concluded that “fixing” people who want to cause harm “is our goal” but is “not realistic,” ending 20 minutes early after focusing primarily on hawking T-shirts and signing up new partners. 

The It Gets Better Project’s panel immediately followed and was even more frustrating... When asked what should be done to fight this abuse, panelist Leslie Pirritano recommended that victims reach out to the Online SOS Network—but when it came to reducing instances of harassment, the It Gets Better panel could only spout platitudes; Huertas referenced Game of Thrones’ Tyrian Lannister, saying victims should “wear [their abuse] like armor.” 

Most disappointingly, it doesn’t seem like community managers... seem that concerned with ending the problem. At a panel entitled “Community Management 101”... Devin Connors of game studio Psyonix said CMs can try to “remold their behavior” but should try not to engage. That sort of corporate non-answer, which prioritizes companies over lives, is especially distressing when you consider that Connors is in charge of maintaining the Rocket League community as Corsair Media’s Global Social Media and Community Manager.

As Riedel points out, women play games just as much as men, but cis men hold the majority of jobs in gaming.

Take a look at the numbers: Even though Pew Research Center finds that women play games just as much as men, and "There are no differences by race or ethnicity in who plays video games," the International Game Developers Association reports that over 75% of those working in the games industry are straight, white cisgender men... gaming culture as a whole is still nightmarishly toxic for people who aren't cisgender men, and even for some who are.

This circles back to my earlier posts on diversity in the tech sector. Those in positions of power need to prioritize marginalized voices, and that means hiring more women and people of color and LGBT+ people-- not just as token hires but with real responsibility, As for those not in hiring positions, but positions of societal power, we need to prioritize amplify marginalized voices instead of talking over them, and when they talk, we NEED to listen.

Searching For The Very First Easter Egg In Video Games

This Easter week, I wanted to share a fascinating story of the search for the very first Easter Egg in video game history. Steve Wright, director of software development for Atari's Consumer Division coined the term to describe hidden undocumented features in a video game, like hidden programmer credits or power ups or in-jokes. Atari had a policy of not crediting programmers that worked on their games, developers from their products, as the company believed doing so would prevent competitors from identifying and luring away Atari's best programmers.

In protest against this policy, programmer Warren Robinett devised an obscure series of circumstances in the1979 Atari game Adventure that, when executed correctly would take the player to an otherwise-inaccessible room that displayed the text "Programmed by Warren Robinett". When a curious teenager stumbled upon the hidden credit in the game and notified Atari, the company found that going back and changing the code and issuing new game cartridges would be prohibitively expensive, so the credit stayed. Wright dubbed it an Easter Egg, and Atari turned the act of rebellion into a company feature, making programmer credit Easter Eggs a de-facto company standard.

While Adventure has arguably the most well-known video game Easter Egg, it is not the very first Easter Egg in a video game. That particular honor went to the video game Video Whizball released in 1978 for the Fairchild Channel F home gaming system. Or so it was thought.

Enter video game historian Ed Fries and pioneering Atari employee Ron Milner. During the course of an interview Fries was conduction with Milner about the very first racing car video games, Milner's work on the video game Starship 1 came up. And what Milner said was mind-blower and history-changing. As Fries relates:

“That was the first and only game that I ever programmed and I think it was maybe one of the first games with a backdoor in it," [said Milner]. "I didn’t tell people about this, even within Atari, for at least 30 years, but I had some code in there that if you did a certain sequence of controls it would say ‘Hi Ron!‘ and give you 10 free games.”
I was kind of stunned. If this was true it would certainly predate the earliest video game Easter egg that I knew of and the one that is most often cited as being the first: “Adventure” for the Atari 2600 from 1979. I did a little searching online and found that there was an even earlier Easter egg in the game “Video Whizball” which was released in 1978 for the Fairchild Channel F game console.
But there was a problem. Ron didn’t remember exactly how to bring up the Easter egg. He remembered showing it off to some buddies at a county fair when the game first came out, but that was 40 years ago!

The story of the research into finding and rediscovering this hidden part of gaming history is a super fascinating read, so read the whole thing!

Knit 1, Pwn 2: Learning Programming Via Knitting Games

Description: Illustration of a knitting work in progress of a heart
pattern using a knitting guide. Illustration courtesy Idea Studios.

Writing for Vice.com's Waypoint section, Nicole Carpenter muses on how knitting has connected her with two things very important to her: her grandmother, and computer programming. It's not as unlikely a connection as one might think, As she explains:

Knitting is an exercise of binary code: knit or purl. One or zero. Knitting patterns—and patterns for other yarn crafts—can be considered some of the first programming languages. 

"Computers ultimately started off partially inspired by weaving and the Jacquard loom," electrical engineering professor Karen Shoop of Queen Mary University in London told Mind/Shift in 2013. "Arguably, some of the earliest programmers were the people making paper punch hole patterns for weaving patterns."

While yarn and its aesthetics have been a part of video games over the years, present in titles like Yoshi's Woolly World or the more recent Unraveled, Carpenter explores designer April Grow's work  on two games that center on yarncrafting as actual game mechanics: Pattern and Threadsteading.

Both games use craft in its literal sense—the act of making something—as well as as a storytelling theme, in a more abstract way. They bridge the perceived gap between technology and craft, a perception that Shoop discusses, too: "I loved the fact that there is a perception—usually wrong—that there's a world of computer (soulless, technical, 'geeky') and a completely different domain such as knitting (traditional, 'female', craft)—yet there is a clear overlap." 

Pattern is knitting as binary made literal, using crochet as the craft of choice. Like knitting, crochet uses patterns. Grow's game intends to teach players to decipher a pattern's programming-like expressions; she wanted to highlight the math, systems, and equations she saw in crochet—the ones and the zeroes.

The entire article is an interesting exploration of the way knitting as a mechanic bridges the gap between technology, craft, code and personal memories. Read the whole article here.
dddd

Empowering Roles With Dice Rolls: D&D, Women & Feminism

Rat Queens fan art. Illustration courtesy of nebezial at nebezial.deviantart.com

The notion of women finding empowerment through media and entertainment isn’t new, but the way a new generation of women are finding it through D&D has been.

As Canadian author and movie critic Tina Hassannia started playing Dungeons & Dragons and was surprised to find it an extremely empowering experience. She wrote in a National Post article that “Nerd culture, of which I count myself a member, has long been dominated by men, but playing D&D left me feeling empowered in a way that watching Beyoncé videos never has. Instead of looking up to a role model, the game prompted me to discover the badass warrior within.”

Jen Luneau, writing for The Mary Sue, talks about how being in an all-women D&D group has been fun and empowering for her because she gets to decide what it means for her: "Because we’re surrounded by other women, we’re OK. Because we’re taking a traditionally male-dominated thing and making it whatever the hell we want it to be, we’re OK. And because the six of us have created a safe environment where we can be ourselves, I can’t wait until our next meeting."

One great ongoing look at women exploring D&D and other tabletop systems is She's A Geek. The latest episode goes over The Witch Is Dead and regularly covers campaigns, post-mortems and all sorts of great gaming discussion. Check it out!

WLW Ask: Where Are Queer Butch Women In Video Games?

In the media landscape of video games, there has been a noticeable rise in the amount of visible queer characters in everything from indie games to AAA big-budget titles. Queer men have a number of different types and portrayals, from Grand Theft Auto's Gay Tony and Dragon Age's Iron Bull, to Mortal Kombat's Kung Jin and Dremfall Chapter's Kian Alvane.

But when it comes to queer women, Femme Hype's Aria argues that there is much less diversity of representation, and that that women who love women are the poorer for it. As Aria explains:

As much as gamers should applaud the industry as a whole making those steady strides to create women who are not sexualized for men, one of the hard points of women that have yet to be presented in games at all is ardent female masculinity, especially within the context of butchness as a trait in women... we have very few characters in the gaming industry who would fit a description of “butch.”  

Though their butch-ish coding may be recognizable to many players, these women are not in games that explore their characters’ stories or personalities, much less their sexualities, leaving any possible hope of butchness up to speculation and easily written off due to their environments and not their specific expression of their sexuality. Indeed, in may of the games in the FPS genre where some of these more “masculine” women exist, players can only speculate about the romantic and sexual modalities of these women—if their lives are explored at all—as the main men usually have their romantic lives explored.

Some would argue (though it's an argument I've only seen put forward by men-- well-meaning or otherwise-- that explicitly coding a woman character as butch could be reinforcing stereotypes. As Aria points out, however, this argument is rather lacking:

The absence of these types of women is not a testament to the gaming industry being uncharacteristically sensitive to queer stereotypes, it’s a testament to how female masculinity is rarely presented at all—and that, in fact, it must be overcompensated through clear heterosexuality. Not only does this prevent diverse representations of women, it upholds standards of women made for consumption by men. Having more butch bisexual or lesbian characters would subvert those standards and create a wider landscape of women for everyone to enjoy and admire.

SO I turn this over to you, dear readers. DO you have any game recommendations, indie, AAA or in-between, that feature butch heroes?

Leading Pinball Maker Still Crafts Cabinets By Hand

Description: A row of pre-assembled pinball board for Stern Pinball's Ghostbusters cabinet await assembly. Photo courtesy of Brian Crecente & Polygon.

Earlier this year, Stern Pinball celebrated its 30th anniversary of making pinball machines, and Brian Crecente of Polygon was given a rare, detailed behind the scenes look on all of the delicate assembly and intricate craft work that goes into making a pinball table. The most important ingredient for assembling a pinball machine, as it turns out-- is hand-crafted, human touch.

Dankberg, Stern's director of marketing and licensing, comes by to walk me through the assembly process. [We] marvel at the process of turning reels of fine wires into the wiring harnesses that bring pinball machines to life.
"We can't really automate this stuff," he said. "It has to be done by people.
“Steve Ritchie is the king of flow,” Dankberg said. “He’s there with a ruler measuring angles, making sure everything fits. Some people like to build it out and see how it plays first.”
The initial board designs are build on a white-wood, or an unpainted wood play field. We’ll cut a table, make some prototype parts,” Dankberg said. “Then they’ll test it. The white-wood stage could be really short or really iterative. If they hit a homer un at first, how great is that? But a lot of times they like to change things. It’s like a first draft.”

The rest of the article features tons of behind the scenes assembly pictures and offers a fascinating look at how pinball machines are crafted by hand in 2016.

Quick Shots: Fact-Checking RPS, Arcade Treasure & LoL Pro Pwns Self

Hey all. Feeling pretty awful today, so here's a few quick newsbits instead of something long.

1) J. Walker of "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" didn't just screw up, he lied by omission and follow some twisted logic on top of it for his Review In Progress of Mafia 3. Of  the game's title card, of which he calls "strange... paranoid... odd," he says:

Description: Partial opening card from Mafia 3 that reads "“Mafia III takes place in a fictionalized version of the American South in 1968. We sought to create an authentic and immersive experience that captures this very turbulent time and place, including depictions of racism. We find the racist beliefs, language, and behaviors of some characters in the game abhorrent, but believe it is vital to include these depictions in order to tell Lincoln Clay’s story.”

“We find the racist beliefs, language, and behaviors of some of the characters in the game abhorrent, but believe it is vital to include these depictions in order to tell Lincoln Clay’s story.” Which is, well, a pretty odd way of putting it.“It’s vital to include these depictions in order to tell the story of this era of this nation’s history,” would have been equally unnecessary and paranoid, but at least made a lick of sense. Lincoln Clay isn’t real, the city is fictional, and his is not a story that was going untold until some people in a room invented it. 

Aside from ignoring that fiction doesn't take place n a vacuum (and leaving out his bizzarre "I watched Luke Cage on Netflix" tangent), he also left off the full text. Below is a screenshot of the FULL opening card, including the final paragraph he left off, emphasis mine:

Description: The full opening card to Mafia 3 including the text that J. Walker cut off in his review, which reads: "“Most importantly, we felt that to not include this very real and shameful part of our history would have been offensive to the millions who faced - and still face - bigotry, discrimination, prejudice, and racism in all its forms.” Screenshot courtesy of Nikki Kendall.

C'mon, Walker, get it together.

2) Tim Nichols recently launched a treasure trove of a reference site. If you're trying to fix or restore an old arcade machine, or you're just interested in some classic arcade history, he has over 2,400 arcade cabinet manuals available for free download now online at arcadertfm.com.  Check out this cover for OutRun:

And finally, pro League of Legends gamer Road of team I May has been suspended and fined for harassment and racially charged remarks. Kotaku has the full details.

Are Hardcore Gamers The New Right Wing Conservatives?

Description: Stephen Colbert, dressed in a business suit &
seated at a desk, raising a pitchfork. the caption reads "Unleash
Nerd Fury!"

 In the mid-to-late 90s up to the the early 2000s, there was a lot of sound and fury and fear about censoring video games, worries about the resultant effect on free speech and the possibility of strangling video games as an art-form before it even left the cradle. There were Congressional hearings on video game violence, pundits bloviating in newspapers, magazines and online, and reactionary conservatives seemingly pinning blame for video games on everything from the Columbine massacre to the collapse of the nuclear family. But for all the sturm und drang, all the worries about legislators attempting to legislate morality... nothing really came of it. As the Houston Chronicle's Jeff Rouner outlines in "Have Gamers Become The New Religious Right?":

However, though there was a lot of talk about official censorship there was never really any serious chance it would happen in America. Video games were declared free speech by the Supreme Court in 2005 in a 7 – 2 decision, and Nintendo had given up their dream of completely family-friendly entertainment by 1994. Mature content became a badge of honor to the gamer community. It was proof that the medium couldn’t be stopped by moralistic thugs determined to protect us from ourselves.

So what happened?

Journalists like Leigh Alexander and Mattie Bryce as well as YouTubers like Anita Sarkeesian began looking at game content, both narrative and mechanical, and examining what that content said about us. It was not, as a lot of gamers like to claim, a call to censor or ban that content. It was just looking at it in a more thoughtful and nuanced way. With games now protected by all the power of the First Amendment, you would think that discussion over them could flourish more freely since they were in no danger of being taken away. 

That’s not what happened, though. Organized retaliation against the concept of conversation and dialogue in the form of 4chan ops and GamerGate happened instead. Sarkeesian’s videos were constantly flagged on YouTube in an attempt to take them down and online campaigns to have various journalists discredited or fired became a new way of life for anyone who dared deconstructing games from a social justice perspective... Criticism of the status quo, no matter how mild, is felt like an attack on a person’s morality. Religious people in the ‘80s who were comfortable with traditional gender roles took the idea of someone else rejecting those roles as a judgment. Likewise, players who are perfectly happy with a white, male-centric, violent, heteronormative status quo in gaming feel judged for that happiness when marginalized people and their allies speak up about how it affects them.

How bad has it gotten? A couple worked together for a year on a game called "That Dragon, Cancer" as a way to help process and explore their grief as well as the boundaries of games as an interactive medium. And hardcore gamers howled with outrage. Over a game a couple made born from their experiences of watching their infant son wrestle with cancer.

Unfortunately, Feminist Frequency gave the game a good review, and so of course the horde has descended on Steam to flood the forums with cries of “feels-marketing” and saying the Greens immoral for not donating profits to cancer research. Bear in mind, none of these people have actually played That Dragon, Cancer. They just hate it because a bunch of other people they normally pick on all got together and said it made them feel something.

So readers, I ask you: what are moderate gamers to do? Sound off in the comments below.

Video: Diversity Makes Cooler Games For Everyone

Youtuber MrBtoungue took a break from his usual fare to expound upon the biggest complaint had had about gaming in 2015: it wasn't diverse enough. How did that affect him, a dude who described himself as "a comfortable cis white male with a lump of coal where my heart should be"?

Part of the reason is that two of his favorite games of the year, the Witcher 3 and Bloodbourne, could only have happened as unique products of their respective developer's times and culture. As he puts it, diversity is an asset:

I see something like an undiscovered country's worth of talent. Right here, within our own borders, a country full of people who want to make and play games-- and would be making and playing games in greater numbers if we didn't keep throwing obstacles in their path. I always wonder over the years how many From-Soft's-worth of talent we've driven off by us constantly asking to see their tits. How many projects' worth of creativity have we driven off with behavior that's racist or homophobic and transphobic or just generally abusive?
The cost of unequal representation and games is not only unfairness but wastedpotential.

You can watch the entire video below:

Jonathan Blow (Maybe) Peed In A Jug To Make A Point?

(or: Jon Blow, You Know Nothing)

(or: Jonathan Blow? MORE LIKE JONATHAN PEE AM I RIGHT GUYS)

So, noted indie game developer Jonathan Blow (whom you may know from the game Braid, from the movie about indie games ) took to twitter today and posted a picture that thanks to Blogger's Terms of Serivces I can't re-post but I can describe. With the tweet "Here is another thing I helped make, to help finish The Witness" he attached a picture of a clear jug with a tube attached at the top that was either his actual pee, or something faked to look like he'd peed in a jug. Twitter collectively reeled in shock.

Why would he do this? Was it making a point about how dedicated he was to finishing The Witness (even though he's just a consultant)? No, apparently it was to make a point that we are all shocked when a grown professional adult posts a picture of maybe-a-jug-of-his-own-urine instead of being shocked at the plight of indie game studios.

No, really.

Description: screenshot of a series of tweets. The first two, from Jonathan Blow, read: "Wow this tweet seemed to upset people. I meant it as a joke, but...it is also kinda true, you know? If y'all were as interested in new indie games as yo seem to in that picture I just posted, more indie developers would survive!" The 3rd post, re-tweeted by Blow from the user bombsfall reads "But once you recognize the secret reason for the pee bottle, you will be ashamed for your words and deeds".

Now bombsfall was referencing another tweet by a famous developer responding to criticism: Hideo Kojima responding to criticism of sniper the Quiet's male-gazey design. All kidding aside, does Mssr. Blow maybe have a point?

No, not really.

Friend of the blog Daphny (full disclosure: she's also linked on my sidebar, contributes to my patreon, sent me homemade muffins and is my friend) addressed this in a great blog entry titled
"IF JON BLOW WAS INTERESTED IN HELPING PEOPLE SURVIVE WE WOULDNT HAVE TO JOKE ABOUT HIS PISS" and while I'm tempted to let that mic drop and call it a day, you should really read the whole thing. Some choice excerpts:

[Jonathan Blow has] said on twitter if you dont have 100 dollars to spend on greenlight your game isnt worth being on greenlight, and in an interview with kotaku australia said that its *~*~HARD FOR HIM TO THINK*~*~* ABOUT SOMEONE HAVING A HARD TIME COMING UP WITH 100 DOLLARS which displays his lack of awareness of what its like to not have 100 dollars to INVEST because all of your money is going to IMMEDIATE survival needs (food, shelter, bills)...
his indie fund is such an insular money making scheme, indie fund pours TONS OF MONEY into huge boring investments instead of paying smaller projects for actual ambitious and unique creative work. of course this isnt ALWAYS TRUE but they gauge what they fund on GUARANTEED SUCCESS not ARTISTIC POTENTIAL. its not a fund for people who are breaking out, its a fund for those who want to GET RICH. thats a fine goal to have, but the lack of transparency with indie fund should really set off any outsiders red flags
AAA indie indeed. but GOTTA SUPPORT THE ‘COMMUNITY

Seriously, go read the entire thing. It's short, devastating, hilarious, and has two Vines.

Libraries Have Reference Books, So Where's The D&D?

In theory, Dungeons & Dragons and local libraries are a perfect fit. Both libraries and D&D attract people who love reading, imagining new vistas, poring through books, reading and creating stories, and looking up lore. In fact, the earliest D&D game books directed readers to libraries for research and recommended reading. Many libraries even have extensive graphic novel sections, comic book clubs, or provide meeting space for tabletop gaming groups. In practice, finding D&D rulebooks-- or any sort of tabletop gaming resource is well-nigh impossible, even though Dungeons and Dragons have influenced an entire generation of today's writers. Why is that?

Edward Schneider is a professor who studies how media and information is used and how it's organized. Brian Hutchison is not only a lifelong Dungeons & Dragons player, but also an librarian and information specialist. They were fascinated by the disconnect between the potential fit between D&D in libraries and how thin on the ground the availability was, and decided to conduct a study tracking role playing gamebooks in libraries around the country. The study, entitled "Referencing the Imaginary: An Analysis of Library Collection of Role-Playing Game Materials" was recently published in the journal The Reference Librarian and Schneider explained a little bit about the study in an article for Gizmodo:

The most commonly held book was the 2008 edition of the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, with 327 copies worldwide — almost 50 fewer copies than the sequel to Snooki’s opus! If you like irony, there are 70 copies of the world’s most depressing cookbook,Microwave Cooking for One, on library shelves, and 21 copies of Heroes of Horror.Heroes of Horror is the Dungeons & Dragons book that allows you to play as an Archivist — a magical librarian. 

...There is no sign that popular interest in fantasy and science fiction is subsiding. Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, HP Lovecraft, and Star Wars all have direct links to the role playing game genre. An increasing number of universities offer video game design and development programs, and Dungeons & Dragons has been extremely influential in the history of video games, especially in Japanese RPG’s. D&D games are natural tools for libraries to use in community building in public libraries, but they also belong in academic libraries; the academic study of games has steadily increased.

We heard many different reasons why libraries might not stock these materials widely, but none of them made much sense.

The materials were not more prone to theft, not more or less checked out or circulated then comparable volumes, and had plenty of positive reviews from a variety of sources. So why the scarcity? The author theorized anti-D&D hysteria from the 80s and 90s, as a possible idea that has taken hold. What does this mean for the future of these resources and local libraries, though? Schneider is hopeful, concluding that there was

...a huge opportunity for librarians to connect with a different part of their community. Librarians seek to serve their patron communities, and it is time they considered adding more from the RPG genre to collections... I encourage genre fans to talk to their local librarians. A few vocal patrons can make a big difference, give your local library an excuse to collect and display these materials. Give them some friendly guidance, and make sure to speak up for your favorite publishers!

What You Know About The Death of Point & Click Games Is Wrong

The popular narrative about the history of point and click adventure games goes a little something like this: they were invented in the mid-80s with the rise of VGA graphics and mouse-based navigation and GUIs. Seirra On-Line pioneered the genre. LucasArts was responsible for the genre's golden age, starting with Maniac Mansion and ending with the released of Grim Fandango. then the genre lay dormant for a decade and a half until Telltale games single-handedly revived and rescued the genre,bringing it back from the dead and introducing a new generation to the joys of point and click, puzzle solving and managing inventory systems.

The problem with that notion? It's completely wrong. It ignores reality? Why? Penguin King Games' David J Prokopetz points out that some of it is tied to sexism in the video game press:

The fact of the matter is that point-and-click adventure games never died.
The chronology just doesn’t add up. To pose a few obvious examples:

• The Nancy Drew series, a point-and-click adventure franchise as old-school as they come, put out over a dozen titles during the early 00s. 

• Funcom’s Dreamfall: The Longest Journey was enormously successful, both critically and commercially, during a period when the gaming press would have us believe the genre was almost wholly moribund. 

• Likewise, the Dream Chronicles series managed three sequels during a period when point-and-click adventure games allegedly weren’t a thing... 

When FPSes began to dominate the young male gaming audience in the mid 90s, point-and-click adventure games saw the writing on the wall, and shifted their target audience en masse to young girls. And it worked fantastically - but as far as the gaming press was concerned, that was high treason.

The Father of the Roguelike: Hack-ing the System

Gamasutura recently posted a chapter from David L. Craddick's book, "Dungeon Hacks" and it offers a tantalizing glimpse into the history, culture and the beginnings of one man's idea for a game that ended up inspiring a genre that live on to this day-- the roguelike. An excerpt:

Drawing on the eight or so hours he had spent playing Rogue at UCB, Fenlason laid groundwork in San Francisco. His intention, more or less, was to recreate Rogue as he remembered it: the dungeon layouts, the monsters, and the items. Fenlason dubbed his clone Hack for two reasons: "One definition was 'a quick [computer] hack because I don't have access to Rogue'. The other was 'hack-n-slash', a reference to one of the styles of playing Dungeons and Dragons." 

Thus the roguelike, a game clearly inspired by Rogue rather than coincidentally exhibiting similar game systems and features, was born. 

Fenlason composed a wish list of features he felt Rogue lacked, as well as those which Rogue could have implemented better. Level design, for instance, had been too simplistic; it would be more fun if players could explore dungeons that spanned more than a single screen. Monsters posed another shortcoming. There were only twenty-six, one per capital letter—far fewer than the text symbols available. More egregious was that they all attacked in the same way, making a beeline for the player instead of, say, maneuvering around for a sneak attack or standing in place—perhaps blocking a doorway—and forcing the "@" avatar to venture closer.

The entire sneak  peek is available here, and is well worth your time to read.

Why Are MMORPG Players Dying So Suddenly?

The Guardian presents an in-depth article on the curious case of Chen Rong-yu, a League of Legends layer who spent nearly a full day at a Taiwanese internet cafe, playing nearly non-stop before he slumped over at his keyboard, dead of an apparent heart attack. Chen's unfortunate demise seems to be part of a marked uptick in many hardcore players of MMO games quite literally playing a game until they drop. And the causes leading to this alarming increase in player deaths have many different causes and complications all intermingling together. As The Guardian writes in its feature article:

It’s not a crime that can be easily pinned on any one person or thing. There’s Taiwan’s local economy and infrastructure, which promote the extended use of internet cafes. There are the natural conditions of the country’s humid climate. There’s the lack of regulation with regard to how long people can use these cafes and, of course, there are the video games themselves, which promote prolonged engagement through their elegant, compelling design. 

But there is another, more pressing, more interesting question that arches over all of these, one that is, perhaps, more relevant to the billions of people around the world who play video games and don’t wind up dead from doing so: why? 

What is it about this medium that encourages some people to play games to the extremes of their physical wellbeing and beyond? Why do video games inspire such monumental acts of obsession? Is it something within the game’s reality that proves so appealing or is it external circumstances that push certain people to take refuge in a cosy unreality? 

The entire article is a well researched peice, and offers an intriguing, if also perplexing and disturbing look at the darker side of risk-reward centered game design along with MMOs and isolation.

Gatekeeper Geeks Don't Get Diversity

A large sticker echoing the parental advisory labels on records that reads "Fandom Advisory: Fake Geek Girl"

Sheva wrote an essay earlier in the month called "Fight Club: How Masculine Fragility is Limiting Innovation in Video Games", which ruminated on why so many video games have some sort of violence-as-gameplay-mechanic baked right into them. The responses she read lead to her writing a follow-up, entitled "Exclusionary Geek Culture Misunderstands Diversity On A Fundamental Level". Sheva writes that some of the responses...

that kind of blew my mind. “I actually prefer violent video games,” wrote one. “It’s a great way to blow off steam after a stressful day at work. Completely doing away with violence in video games would make them really boring.” That’s all well and good, I think … except that I never suggested completely doing away with violence in video games. In fact, I didn’t really decry violence in video games at all, except to mention that there’s a lot of it, and it isn’t the most efficient vehicle for storytelling, and that maybe we should think about making new games with new mechanics that aren’t violence. So where were [they] getting this ridiculous interpretation from?

The source, as Sheva outlines, is rooted in a sort of reflexive idea that any changes that would make gaming more accessible to a broader audience would mean that gaming as a hobby might be taken away from a group or maybe it would take something away some how. Sheva contends that :

...there’s this weird thing about the gaming community that’s a part of most permutations of geek culture: it’s incredibly exclusionary. There’s a lot of weird gatekeeping and geek policing that goes on; there’s a ton of unspoken expectations and rules for this behavior about who can be a part of the community and who can’t. If you’re a woman—and especially if you’re a queer woman, a woman of color, or both—you probably experience a lot of this firsthand... This gatekeeping behavior is rooted in the idea of women as interlopers and invaders. People love to act as if gaming was a boys-only treehouse by design... when we start talking about opening the gate—expanding the criteria by which we classify “gamers” to include everyone in the community the gate never opened wide enough to accommodate—people get uncomfortable. There seems to be this mentality that if the gaming community changes (that is, if it changes to acknowledge how diverse it’s actually always been) it will cease to be a space of belonging for those who have always belonged in it.

In this article, by the way, you should actually read the comments because there's a lot of great discourse going on, too.

Put An Awesome Podcast On Video Game Music In Your Ears Now!

Description: A silhouette of a video game control pad
with a stylized logo that reads "Top Score with Emily Reese"

Top Score is a podcast that is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and features interviews and discussions with video game music composers. It strikes a good balance between aiming for an audience that understands video games as much as an audience that understands music. The podcast's production values are INCREDIBLE, mostly due to the associate with a radio broadcast station. You can find a full archive of the show's Minnesota Public Radio website. The show has talked with a who's who of video game composers of games from Skyrim to Arkham Knight and lots of games in between.

Austin Walker On Video Game Critics & Influence

Description: The word JUDGE looms over a stick figure drawing
of a person frowning at a computer monitor, hands steepled.

Austin Walker has been a hot new hire for video game website Giant Bomb,and with his latest essay for the site, it's not hard to see why. In his latest editorial in the "Why We Write Series", he tackles the importance of critique, the reasons behind it and the influence of games criticism and games as entertainment.

First of all, he wants to dispel the notion of critics trying to "force changes" on unwary developers:

So, what if instead of thinking about all of this in terms of a binary relationship (either a critic forces someone to do something or they don’t), we thought about this on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is absolute disconnect from influence: A writer pens long form essays about how developers should always do whatever they want. On the other end of the spectrum is critical work demanding that devs actually be “forced” to do things. But most critique exists in between those two extremes. 

He also puts the boots to two other ideas behind pulling punches when it comes to criticism of games-- targeting and timing:

When we note that a game is filled with slurs and offensive caricatures, we’re told that we should be less offended because, hey, it's just satire. When we point out how a game leverages a history of racialized, coded imagery to elicit fear, people link us to wiki articles and explain the deep lore as justification. When a game made me spend a half hour of my real time every day just to keep my skin color on point, I was told that, no no, of course games have a problem with race, but why did I have to go after Animal Crossing...

Yes, writing about diversity and The Witcher 3 is especially complicated because of the perspectives involved. Polish history is filled with outsider groups minimizing, controlling, ignoring, and erasing the nation's unique ethnic and cultural character. At the same time, people of color in white-dominant spaces have struggled to develop the vocabularies of critical race studies and post-colonialism only to then be told to mind their tone. These things mix here in an especially volatile way. But this doesn't mean that we should shy away from addressing it, afraid of stepping on toes, afraid of what we don't know. It means we step forward in good faith, with sympathy for the other perspective, and with a willingness to incorporate the complexities of someone else's view.

He also covers ideas of American standards, media influencers, and the emotional core that drives him to write. A great read.

Sherlock, Watson & Chainmail Bikinis

Description: A red-haired woman warrior locked in combat
with a lizard monster taller than she is. She holds a shield
to defend against attacks, sword ready to strike.  The armor
she is wearing is a chain mail bikini, leaving much of her body
exposed to attack.

There are two terms in literary criticism that have been used in the wider world of media fandom and fiction critiques: Watsonian and Doylian. Watsonian means looking at something from an in-universe perspective. For example: "Sherlock Holmes died in that story because he fell off a cliff," would be a Watsonian explanation. "Sherlock Holmes died because the author was sick of writing stories about the detective and wanted to start something new," would be a Doylian perspective, named after the author of the Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first used on a Bujold-Master fan discussion list and spread from there. It's basically making a difference between talking about something a character says or does and how it fits with the character's fictional world, and why or how the writer's choices fit into our real life life culture, society and circumstances.

There can be a bit of a problem in discussions of fiction when a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective is used to dismiss a Doylian (real world) criticism, and nowhere is that more apparent in both tabletop and gaming circles than the trope of the Warrior Woman Who Fights In A Chainmail Bikini.

The chainmail bikini has been a staple of pulp fantasy art since the 1930s, and has appeared in one form or another in the art and character designs of fantasy novels,tabletop games and video games ever since. Take the cover art for Runequest up there. An in-universe explanation for why the character chooses to wear a chainmail bikini because she feels powerful, almost invincible in battle, and doesn't think she really needs to wear practical armor, so what's the big deal? That would be a Watsonian view.

Description: Video game renders of characters in
armor.On the left,a woman wears armor that covers
armor covering her hands, feet, legs& shoulders while
barely covering her crotch and breasts & exposed
midriff. At right, a male character in armor leaving
nothing exposed but his head.

But the artist or character designer choosing to draw her or portray her that way isn't a value-neutral choice when you look at it in a Doylist (real world) sense. Sure, in the fictional world the story takes place she's Druscilla the Invincible and her bikini symbolizes her fearlessness. But the character also exists as part of a whole trope of chainmail bikini women in fantasy battlefields that have the men warriors decked out in armor from head to toe. And THAT exists among a tradition and media landscape showing women dressed like that merely acting as decoration for men who look like the traditional badass power fantasy. In-universe, the chainmail bikini could represent the character's choice to show fearlessness. In the real world, it is the artist who is choosing to create this look for a character, and those depictions mean something else entirely.

So yes, you can totally appreciate and acknowledge just how awesome Druscilla is in her story
setting. You can't, however, make the context for her portrayal and her appearance vanish or ignore it just because you happen to like her story or her character. So if someone points out how that portrayal in the wider world is sexist, and you counter with "This armor has a practical advantage and it's the character herself choosing to wear it!" you are trying to counter a Doylian crtique with a Watsonian explanation, and that doesn't quite work. Someone pointing out the inherent sexism in chainmail bikini art and representation is also about everything else in fiction in specific and society in general that that bikini can represent. If you're bombarded with those images and these portrayals amongst the constant sea of objectification of women, and you're a woman, you can't just not exists in the world you're living in and you can't just un-see it.


When someone points out issues with sexism in a game, it doesn't make the people who play it bad people. It doesn't make the artists or writers bad people either (though it might show them to be making lazy decisions). Critiquing elements of a game isn't an attack on the game or an attack on people playing it. Criticism of something you like isn't an attack on you. And this isn't just limited to video games.As recently as 2013, the The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's (SFWA) magazine The Bulletin generated controversy with its cheesecake cover of a woman in a chainmail bikini...on the heels of editorials and columns written talking about "lady editors" and rating women solely on attractiveness and how Barbie should be a role model to women in sci-fi and fantasy because she was "dignified".

Most people protesting what they see as gratuitous elements don't want to see things banned and certainly aren't trying to censor anybody (besides, censorship is something only a government body can do)-- they'd just like it to not be the default. It would be cool to have the default be something other that just skimpy or revealing attire. It'd be nice to get a break from the constant objectification. And these critiques can open up the door to considering other things we take for granted. Why not a lithe man calling himself Dru the Invincible wading into battle in naught but a thong? Does that seem silly to you, but not so much if it were Drucilla in her chainmail bikini? Why not?

Inaugural Video Game Hall Of Fame Inductees Announced

The Nation Museum of Play announced the formal formation of the World Video Game Hall of Fame in Rochester, NY last year. This week, they announced the first inductees into the World Video Game Hall of Fame, and the games chosen for the very first inductees are certainly trail-blazers each in their own way.

At left are the games chosen: Pong, Pac-Man, Tetris, Super Mario Bros., DOOM, and World of Warcraft. These games beat out others in a finalists' field of 15 video games.

I think the Museum picked a great series of games to start out with. All of these had a significant impact on the industry, and were all game-changers (pardon the pun). However, I really feel like they should have allowed more than 6 for the inaugural session-- if for no other reason than help shore up the displays in the hall a little, and then fall back to six for every year after that. The pulled froma lot of history, especially for an inaugural year. I think that of the other announced finalists-- Angry Birds, FIFA, The Legend of Zelda, Minecraft, The Oregon Trail, Pokémon, The Sims, Sonic the Hedgehog and Space Invaders-- will be future inductees to the Hall of Fame.

What do you think, readers?

Second Quest-ions: New Comic Examines Game Culture

In 2013, the FPS BioShock Infinite was released to widespread accolades and high reviews at nearly every major gaming website and publication. Many of the reviews talked about how Bioshock Infinite not just met, but exceeded expectations for a sequel... without really asking questions about what shaped those expectation in the first place. Tevi Thompson published a piece called "On Videogame Reviews" where he used the accolades and acclaim the game was given in reviews to function as a jumping off point for a critique of gaming culture, video game narratives, and the culture in society in general and gaming in particular and the narratives they present at large. Near the midpoint, he observes that:

“The straight white male gamers so untroubled by BioShock Infinite, whose ideology and privilege are in fact perfectly reflected in it, are just not up to the task of reviewing on their own. Their subjectivities betray complicity. It’s a dead end, the good old boys speaking to their bros, and only by diversifying in every way possible can the review community thrive... This means more women, more people of color, more queer and transgender folks, more reviewers from diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds that don’t neatly fit the lifelong gamer mold. Not simply because we need reviewers to match the shifting demographics of those playing games, but because diversity is of clear and obvious value to any community and any discourse.”

These are obviously questions and observations that stuck with Thompson, and it's evident in his comic Second Quest, which combines Thompson's writing with the art of video game Braid and the webcomic "A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible" David Hellman. It's a love letter to the Legend of Zelda mythos, with lush visuals and writing that makes some sharp insights, too. The narrative arc of the comic tells a story that also asks us to reflect on What is the how being told that the hero is a guy rescuing a girl, how the hero is always just, how systems perpetuate themselves even as they try and follow a world narrative. As they put it, Second Quest aims to be a "...tale of enchanting surfaces and not-so-secret darkness, one that questions the common legends we tell about our kingdoms, our people, ourselves".

It was crowdfunded successfully and released recently and between the engaging story and the evocative art, is definitely a recommended read-- whether you're into video games, Zelda, sociological narratives or even just really well-drawn comic art. You can read samples, find out more about the comic, and buy it here.

What do you think, readers?