Dear Game Journalists, Please Stop Writing Terrible 'Gamers Are Terrible' Articles
These outrage-bait pieces achieve nothing beyond feeding the very trolls they claim to be against. Stop feeding the trolls ffs.
Every now and then, an article pops up that decries ‘gamers’ for being terrible in one way or another. They are abusive, racist, sexist, materialistic, fanatical, shallow, stupid incels who live in their mom’s basement. They don’t deserve the video games they play. They don’t deserve the beauty and splendor that is the latest blog post at Kotaku or Polygon.
Oh, and they’re entitled, borderline fascist creeps also.
The latest of these deeply repetitive, wholly unoriginal pieces comes by way of TheGamer, in which Stacey Henley reminds us that gamers are literally the worst. “Gamers Are Terrible People And We Should Stop Being Okay With It” reads the headline.
It’s a baffling headline. I mean, aside from labeling all gamers as terrible (which is obviously not true given the sheer number of people who play games) in what sense are “we” okay with it? Who is “we” anyways? Surely after the many dozens upon dozens of similar articles at various gaming websites it is clear that game journalists are not okay with it. Countless people in forums and on social media have discussed bad behavior among their fellow gamers and they’re not “okay with it.” I am certainly not a fan of overzealous fandoms or harassment campaigns.
Game publishers and studios routinely call out toxic behavior (while sometimes turning a blind eye to the toxic crap that happens in their own companies) on Twitter and elsewhere. As far as I can tell, everyone who isn’t spending their day abusing people online is not okay with people who are. And the few people who chuckle and laugh at this abuse are not your target audience to begin with.
The problem I have with articles like this is that they don’t achieve any sort of goal other than to state the obvious and stir up flame wars. Do they convince assholes and degenerates online to stop making death threats against devs? Will Henley’s article convince even a single toxic gamer to stop harassing women? If anything, the kind of people who do this will just do it more when they see this kind of article—which isn’t bad for business if you’re a blogger or journalist since then you have more to write about!
This was the same thing I said, over and over again, during the heady days of 2014 when a parade of Gamers Are Dead™ articles popped up online and, along with a tweet from Adam Baldwin, essentially willed #GamerGate into existence. What we saw then, and what we still see from time to time, is an almost adversarial co-parasitism, where both sides feed on the other’s hate.
But I digress.
No well-adjusted human being thinks this kind of thing is okay:
This was one of several examples Henley uses in her piece to illustrate just how terrible gamers are.
What we don’t find in the piece is a solution of any kind, any sense of what might help prevent or alleviate these shitty behaviors.
By all means, show your support for Alanaha Pearce and others when you see this crap. Tell your friends to not act like jerks or use racist or homophobic slurs if they do (or find better friends!) But generic “Gamers are terrible” blog posts? You know how much they help ease suffering or end online abuse?
After talking about some ridiculous abuse that a female game-dev working on God Of War received and game director Cory Barlog’s response on Twitter, Henley concludes:
It’s monstrous that this happens and it’s ridiculous that we just toss these incidents on the pile of excuses and say “gamers will be gamers.” We should care more about gaming than to let this all slide, only interacting when we can get a cheap laugh out of a dunk tweet, all while the undercurrent of hatred and harassment swells stronger. Gamers will only be gamers when we stop them. It’s a start that Cory Barlog has repeatedly called out these God of War fans and publicly stood by his team (and unlike Druckmann, is less inclined to make it all about himself), but it’s only a start. All of us need to be aware that for all the progress on screen, too many in gaming’s audience have been allowed to stay safe and secure in the discrimination of the past.
Aside from being very confusing—what does “Gamers will only be gamers when we stop them” mean?—it’s also just a whole lot of words strung together that ultimately fail to say anything at all. Gamers have been “allowed to stay safe and secure in the discrimination of the past” Henley argues, but what meaningful steps is she proposing to bring about change?
Be outraged? Everybody’s already outraged most of the damn time online. Is that really going to change anything? I mean, I think maybe a radical rethinking of our entire economic and political system might have some impact on this shit in the long run, but even if I could enact the social and political changes I have in mind, and even if I ended up being right about how these changes would ameliorate mental health issues and social divisions, it would take decades.
“We should care more about gaming than to let this all slide,” Henley argues, but then what actual actions are you proposing that might stop it from sliding? We are not okay with this. Now what? Being ‘aware’ is not an action. It is not a positive step toward change. And frankly, I’m not sure that there are any beyond reporting people (or muting/blocking them, which I’ll talk about more in a moment)
Gamers are hardly the only “toxic fandom” either. Have you seen the way TV fans react to things? Have you ever encountered Ollicity fans on Twitter? Dear god. Or comic book fans? Or sports fans? Fans can be toxic. It’s short for fanatic after all.
Things have always been this way because this is human nature. The internet and multiplayer gaming simply magnify it, making it easier for the most noxious, loud people to get attention. Attention, I should add, that includes articles like this one where the worst behavior is no longer just on Twitter, it’s being written about in game publications. That’s a win for the trolls who, I should remind you, we are not supposed to be feeding.
Look, here’s another idea: Mute people. I mute people on Twitter all the time. If you show up on my feed and act like a prick, I mute you. When I play Call Of Duty or Apex Legends I don’t have voice chat turned on for everyone. I typically can only hear my party members who are almost always either my friends or kids, or friends of friends. I do this because I get riled up easily when people are annoying or rude and that is all too often the case. So I just take that out of the equation entirely. If I can’t hear you, you can’t say horrible things to me. Problem solved.
See that damn fine Modern Warfare scoreboard? My 34 kills? My 2:05 on the Hardpoint? My insanely awesome score? And . . . our devastating loss to a team that played the objective better? See how I have everybody muted?
I don’t always do that but if I show up in a lobby and dudes are dropping the “N” word and somebody’s listening to shitty music and a stupid ugly baby is wailing, I mute everybody. If just one dude is being a prick I’ll mute him. If I were harassed or called names, I’d mute my harassers and go about my day. I often play with my kids and then we almost always have everyone muted, because life is too short. And that’s a shame because a lot of people are also really friendly and funny. I’ve even had some good old-fashioned shit-talking with other players who are actually funny and we have a good time.
And hey, one time we were playing Gunfight against a couple and the chick was super toxic and awful and when we pointed out that it’s more fun to just be chill and have a good time, even her boyfriend was like “Yeah babe why are you being so mean?” And she got quiet for a minute and then had a totally different attitude. It was like she thought she had to be the most toxic person in the lobby just to fit in, and when we were like “Hey, it’s more fun to be cool to people” maybe that was new. Sometimes that actually works! Sometimes you can just talk to people and not call them names back and people listen. It’s rare, but it happens. I definitely recommend trying from time to time.
Granted, muting or cajoling people in a game doesn’t prevent the kind of hate mail and threats and other awfulness that’s far too common on social media—especially for women—but it’s one way to reduce the amount of noise in your life.
Here’s the thing—the rub—the stone-cold truth: human nature doesn’t have a quick fix. We can call this a variant on the ‘you can’t fix stupid’ rule. Bad apples have always and always will ruin it for the rest of us.
You can be “aware” until your face turns blue. You can complain that gamers are crappy. You can say “more should be done!” without proposing any actual solutions (because maybe you realize deep down that there aren’t many that will do much in the first place).
But maybe, maybe we would score a minor victory simply by not writing these types of articles ever, ever again. Or at the very least, just write up specific newsworthy instances of abuse, like the Return To Monkey Island dev who stopped posting entirely because of all the harassment he was getting. Write about that, don’t write sweeping generalizations that just fan the flames of the very behavior you’re so insistent you despise. I’m sure Henley means well. But you know where good intentions pave a road to, right? So let’s not do that.
Be excellent to each other, oh my droogies.
The article basically wants all of gaming-dom, from moderators to developers to players to publishers to whoever else I'm missing, to break their backs so that people don't receive any form of perceived negativity whatsoever. Like, of any kind. There's no personal agency anywhere to be found. She says, but if I go to this game, there might be something bad. And if I go over to this gaming space, there also might be something bad.
Ma'am...I honestly don't know what to tell you other than stop gaming period. Better yet, stop doing anything other than sitting in your home or apartment and consuming novels, TV shows and movies you've approved of prior so there's no chance it can hurt you.
This is absurdity.
"The exceptions are the less-combat focused games like Animal Crossing, although many toxic gamers will tell you they’re not real games anyway."
Who frickin' cares what other people think? I've played games using cheat codes. I've used strategy guides. I stay away from competitive games like CoD Warzone or Battlefield because I don't like how agitated I get when I play them. I don't expect competitive games to bend to my whims or fancies...if I don't like the food served at the restaurant, or the restaurant staff, or the patrons at the restaurant...I don't frickin' go to the restaurant.