Punching Snakes Gaming shouldn't be a grind

Will someone define “gamer culture” for me?

I asked Wil Wheaton to say hello to my wife from PAX East 2010. The Boston Globe caught it on camera, and this picture ran in the paper.

Prior to 2010 I didn’t know I was a gamer. I knew I was someone who loved video games, much more than other pursuits like comic books and science-fiction and anime and toy collecting, but I never thought of my love for video games as something that could define me. In April of that year I attended my first PAX and heard Wil Wheaton’s keynote speech.

He talked about how playing Dungeons and Dragons had created deep friendships that lasted him to the present day, and how anyone who thought video games weren’t as good as movies should look at Heavy Rain, and he ended with a crescendo of identity citations – black, white, Christian, Jew, male, female, etc. and et. al. – punctuated by “We are all gamers!” Cue wild applause. That was the day I accepted the appellation gamer and assigned a lion’s share of my identity to the word.

Fast-forward to the present. I read a thing about Kotaku representing a gamer culture that someone didn't feel was inclusive, and another thing about when gamer culture was going to grow up regarding gender issues. They both hinged in part on the idea of video games having a culture whose members were being addressed, and I'm not entirely convinced there is a culture around video games. I think there's nerd culture, and there's internet culture, but I think game culture may be an artifact of a psychology that we really don't need anymore, and which probably doesn't serve us.

Penny Arcade Explains Why We Deserve The VGAs

Welcome to Gamer Culture, ladies and gents!

I've been working on a piece about questioning the existence of gamer culture, mostly because no one seems able to define it, and when I think of "culture" I think of an all-encompassing something that binds a people together. I don't feel bound to other people who play video games just because they play video games any more than I feel bound to other people who also like cats or enjoy writing.

My frame of reference for defining the term comes from things like complaints about the Spike TV Video Game Awards "misrepresenting gamer culture." That's what I read on the twitter feeds and blogs of some of my colleagues the night of the VGAs and the day following, and when I wrote a First Person column on The Escapist about why I am patient with the VGAs many responses from the readers were along the same lines. They were angry about the way the award show "misrepresented gamer culture."

Prior to PAX East 2010 I had never thought about the idea of gamer culture much less considered that I might have been a part of it, so Penny Arcade will, for me, stand as a bastion of this amorphous thing we call gamer culture until such time as I have a cogent definition. Watching the drama over Paul Christoforo over the last few days has taught me a lot about gamer culture, as said drama is emerging largely in response to the actions of Mike Krahulik from PA and it seems like "gamers" are right on board.

Advice to aspiring game journos: competition is good

First I'm going to plug this thing I wrote for G4, because I received a lot of positive feedback on it from working, freelance video game journalists, which tells me I nailed it: How To Become A Video Game Journalist. That piece is a completely accurate and honest retelling of how I broke into the game journalism industry. I also took at look at Meagan Marie's FAQ that a friend mentioned on Twitter today, which talks about how to break in to video game journalism and I see many of the same points I made repeated.

My G4 post was about how to land paying freelance work in video game journalism because I wanted to focus on how one gets their foot in the door. I feel like that should be the beginning and end of all advice columns on the subject of "how to become a video game journo" because advice columns should focus on actionable advice, in my opinion. "Move to San Francisco" and "Learn how to deal with human beings better," which was some of the info contained in this response/addendum to my column from Joystiq writer Arthur Giles, ARE things that would help someone become a full-time video game journalist, but I don't know how realistic they are, and therefore whether that's actionable advice.

I often focus on the importance of getting paid when speaking to people who want to write about video games, but what I've never made clear is that it isn't actually about the money for its own sake, especially if we're talking about writing online because the pay sucks. I have an outlet that will pay me $50 for a "Top 10" list. Freelance writers should be prepared to pay 40% taxes right off the top of any money they make, so I'd only actually be receiving $30 from that article. I'm also going to have to wait up to 90 days for that $30. Writing that article is hardly worth my time financially. It's valuable to me as a clip, and as experience working with a editor, and as part of learning how to run my books, but it's not really about the money because the money is terrible and slow in getting into my pocket.

The reason why writing for money is important is related to something that Mr. Giles said in his response to my G4 piece:

First Person Shooter Stories Matter: Modern Warfare 3

Military first person shooters are only allowed to be so smart by the marketplace, but that doesn't mean they have to be, or are, stupid by default

This may be the most self-indulgent thing I've written in a long time, but I really care about first person shooters, and I can't stand it when they aren't taken seriously whether it's by developers, critics, or fans. First person shooters do not have to be exercises in meatheadedness. Valve and Irrational Games have proven that first person shooters are perfectly valid vehicles for solid narrative.

The military-FPS sub-genre takes a beating by critics for playing host to stupid stories, and that grates on me as well. Developers have tried to plan for more serious mil-FPS tales and had their projects altered or shut down (look up Six Days in Fallujah). Attempts at serious consideration of the nature of war in mil-FPS games don't seem viable in the marketplace for the time being. Mil-FPS games are therefore limited either to historical reference, or Tom Clancy-esque plotlines.

The Call of Duty franchise has done the latter quite well since the fourth game in the series, and considering all the talk I hear from video game journalists and pundits about wanting more criticism in their game reviews, I’m plenty disappointed that no one called out Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3’s campaign for the banal exercise in stupidity that it was.

Video Game Violence And Our Shadow Selves

I like my peanut butter and my zombies chunky

Bitmob community writer Jonas Jurgens had an article promoted today entitled "Dead Island and indiscriminate violence." Jurgens talks about how he is made to feel uncomfortable by video games which make gore and violence the focal point of the design.

The kind of outrageous video game gore and violence that Jurgens writes about serves me as a release. It's an opportunity to do something which is verboten in civilized society, and therefore has an innate attractiveness like many other taboos. The virtuality of the experience makes it acceptable, or even humorous, which is one of the points Leigh Alexander makes in her Gamasutra opinion piece "On Making Game Violence Work."