thoughts on revisionist history and fascist narratives in videogame commentary
hey, so i wanted to get down some things iâve been thinking about a lot lately real quickly. these are inspired by a tweet thread made by @rainworlds on twitter:Â https://twitter.com/rainworlds/status/932350899720253440
i think itâs pretty safe to say that commentary about games (both writing and in video format) is driven by novelty. itâs hard to trace any sort of through-line or establish a solid conversation in talk about games. instead, talk about games tends to function as a vessel for personality on the part of the commenter and a narrative about their own personal experience. because of this, there tend to be so many different game writers/commentators who think they're the first to come up with an idea - either because theyâre simply not aware someone else has come up with that idea, or they donât care. why would they not care? well, research isnât really encouraged or necessary at all, because the personal experience of the game is the default language for the culture. and so it's hard to trace any context. we know little about who made games, and what we do know tends to just be the same gamer platitudes that get repeated over and over again. and there is no real pressure to challenge that.
basically, the game commentary landscape tends to be just a bunch of people playing to their own disparate audiences. and it's often a survival of the fittest - where those who know how best to play to an audience consistently talk over (whether or not they get that this is what they're doing) people who might actually understand the context and have something new and insightful to add. youtubers who might have something insightful to say have a fraction of the following that someone who repeats the party line about games. the culture is defined by whatâs new, and itâs defined by signifiers and personal gamer cred instead of trying to a need to find some sort of deeper insight inside the experience. gaming is presented another kind of lifestyle brand - that aggressively tries to argue for itself as more than just a lifestyle brand. this is especially ironic when people who present themselves as âoutsidersâ and normal people e.g. Penny Arcade, PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, etc have a tremendous amount more power in that landscape that anyone else.Â
the games landscape is also huge. itâs spread across so many different outlets and avenues. and there tends to be very little interest, both from institutions and from audiences, in trying to bring those conversations together and draw a larger picture.Â
why is this? well, games academia tends to be very new, and driven by the demands of whatâs already popular. because of this, most games academics and people more seriously engaged with games donât want to risk alienating the kids who are coming into their programs by challenging the notions of the media that those kids identify with. they want to be a part of that culture, not against that. and because of that, they are pretty content to just let the wisdom of the market decide what commentary is generated about games. thereâs no real way for them to challenge that, because thereâs no resources or institutions interested in talking about games that arenât highly market-driven.
this just means that any gaming personality who can speak the right language and market themselves in the right way has a tremendous amount of power and advantage in driving the conversation about games. of course, they can hide behind the lens of personal experience, or their gamer cred as a way to justify it. and that will usually be enough - even if they are being challenged by factual claims, games are a realm of fantasy. people donât care much about who actually made them, or all the things that went behind them. theyâre a vessel to talk over.Â
this one of the things that fan culture and a cultural landscape of games built so much around personal consumer choice has wrought. something outside your sphere of interest might as well not exist, and there's no reason to engage with it if it doesn't check your boxes, and it might as well not be made by real people with real experiences and feelings.
i shouldnât have to say that this is a VERY BAD THING and i wish more people like, understood that and tried to do anything to bring it to light and acknowledge it. it's a big reason why we have loud, ignorant mediocrity gaining so much of a platform in game culture. most people who seriously follow games have some awareness of this now, but there seems to be a larger attitude of powerlessness about trying to change any of it.
if you want to fight against your medium being used as a way to recruit fascists, you have to fight for establishing a solid, consistent narrative that is based in truth against all the strains of revisionist history that dominate the commentary sphere around games. you have to fight for all the voices that have gone unrecognized and crushed by corporations and media outlets that serve as mouthpieces for those corporations. you canât let the conventional gamer wisdom decide when the conventional wisdom is highly toxic.
the fact of the matter is game culture is NOT okay. it's really fucked up. and something better needs to be fought for. if you look at something like gamergate and trace its role in our current political climate - and pretend that there still isn't a disease at the heart of games culture, iâm sorry, but youâre out of your mind. we canât let whatâs popular decide the culture, especially when what is popular is so toxic. we have to fight for what is right, and complicate that narrative in any way we can.
itâs not even that people arenât doing that too! iâve found so many interesting and unusual games have come out this year alone that challenge the usual game conventional wisdom - particularly in the indie space, but even outside of that to some extent. hopefully i will have a chance to talk more about that in the future. the point is that it seems like the culture has a potential to shift in a different direction. but it wonât do anything if there isnât a consistent, strong, and powerful effort put behind bringing these conversations together. like listening to the people who actually worked on games and giving them a voice. and challenging the gamer conventional wisdom of pro-corporate revisionist history with something better and more factual, that canât be used as a venue for reactionary right-wing ideologies.
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