Harassment and casual trolling are two words that are consistently involved with each other, yet they’re both separated by a gray area because not all trolling can be harassment. However, they’re easily found in the same place, for instance GamerGate. GamerGate was an unexpected explosion in the online community that brought online trolling and harassment to the forefront of news. It started with a small, yet long 10,000 word manifesto of pure hate and invalid sources. It was posted on forums, which anonymous people jumped on the hate bandwagon or as Anita Sarkeesian called it, an online mob. In my opinion, a lot of the mob mentality within situations like GamerGate is instigated by trolling. Although trolling is defined more like minute negative acts, which aren’t as extreme as the horrific death threats towards Zoe Quinn, something could be said about the evolution of trolling. Some versions of trolling like body blocking and in-game obstruction can be semi harmless, but when done in bad taste, it’s detrimental. 

Insults are an example of harmful trolling. During GamerGate, users on anonymous forums, like 4chan, were the harassers and many 4chan users would categorize their own harassment as trolling, but this could be a harsher form. Other words like flaming and griefing are discussed as a variation of trolling instead, where they teeter on the edge of harassment and trolling. Regardless, trolling is a form of sadism (Cook). In the minds of the troll, there is almost no end to how far their sadism can go. Therefore, can trolling evolve into a form of sexual harassment or abuse? 

It could be the case, but what can be done to combat this? 

The Center for Solution of Violence demonstrates extreme promise. Not only does it provide resources for victims of harassment, but it informs potential abusers, which appear beneficial in fixing the root of a cause. Resources can be quite efficient, but stopping the problem at the source would end more need for resources. Not everyone starts off as a harasser. It could truly be anyone. Trolling can start as a game for many. The attention and reaction is one of the more popular reasons for trolling (Cook). Harmless actions, like blowing up your friend’s house in Minecraft, can be fun and games, but the reasons behind the actions determine the issue. If the person is doing it to see the reaction of the other person and the distraught they feel when all their hard work is lost, it could be a sign of something small or maybe nothing at all. Whatever the reason, informing others of how to nip these problems at the bud would be helpful for the possible abuser and victim.

In conclusion, harassment and casual trolling are once again similar. Trolling can appear harmless, yet become more than just a game. For some, it might start as a game and end much worse. With all this in mind, it’s up to us to report findings and take action before things get out of hand again, like GamerGate.

By: Samantha Reeb

Works Cited

Cook, Christine, et al. “Under the Bridge: An in-Depth Examination of Online Trolling in the Gaming Context.” New Media & Society, vol. 20, no. 9, Sept. 2018, pp. 3323–3340, doi:10.1177/1461444817748578.

FemTechNet, femtechnet.org/about/.

One extremely important thing that has been made apparent to me within this past week is that the differences between all of us is something that should be highlighted instead of looked down upon.  In the class activity where we looked through our personal gaming history for any trends in our past, I noticed that there weren’t many games that I have played where there was a character that represented myself.  I guess in the past it never really occurred to me that I was never truly represented in a character.  Sure, there were games in which female characters were present, but in many of them they were this socially idolized version of what a female should be.  Their attire was always way too revealing, and their bodies were always way too exaggerated in specific areas.  Even with those examples of female characters sprinkled throughout my gaming career, there were still very few games in which I was even given the option to play as a female or even have a game where there was a female protagonist.  Nowadays there is a bit more representation of females, along with the option to choose between a male and female character.  But I have noticed that it took a long time for this small addition to games to even be made, and it seems like such a trivial option to have.  I also see how underrepresented things like race, culture, sexuality, disabilities, class, religion, and many other things are within the gaming community.

This makes me think of the “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” article by Audre Lorde because she talks about how difference is not being viewed as a positive thing, but instead it is something people fear.  Within the article she states, “We have all been programmed to respond to the human differences between us with fear and loathing and to handle that difference in one of three ways: ignore it, and if that is not possible, copy it if we think it is dominant, or destroy it if we think it is subordinate” (Lorde, 115).  The mindset of fearing and loathing difference is the very reason for the underrepresentation of the majority of the world’s population.  Since society doesn’t like things that are different then that gears game developers to just create characters that have been successful and the same for generations.  It is even more disappointing that when people do speak up about these issues and do strive for accurate representations in the gaming industry, then they are seen as heretics who want to ruin the gaming experience for everyone.  The way society views difference just motivates the big brand gaming companies to keep making the same kinds of games with the same limited character representation because that is what people like.  I feel that in order to truly start making a difference within the gaming industry, we have to push and spread this idea that the difference between us is what makes the world an interesting place and it is what makes the world unique.  Risks need to be taken to show the world that difference is exciting and good and that we are all worth being represented in our favorite games.

Works Cited

“Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference.” Sister Outsider Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde, Ten Speed Press, 2016, pp. 114–123.

 

The class activity we did last week where we made a timeline of games we’ve played throughout our lives made me realize a few things about myself and the types of games I like. As I was frantically scribbling in games in tiny letters to fit them all in, some patterns jumped out to me.

The very beginning of my timeline is mostly solo card games (war, solitaire) and board games with my grandmother (Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, etc.). My grandma lived in the house with us as I was growing up and I loved nothing more than spending time with her. On the other side of the family, I was also very close with my grandpa. He was (and still is) the coolest grandpa around. He’s very into computers and technology and used to build his own PCs. When I got a little bit older, he was actually the one who first introduced me to my love of gaming. I vividly remember him sitting me down at his desk in his big comfy computer chair and teaching me the mechanics of Mech Warrior, Civilization III, and GTA 3. I was enamored. I would sit there and play for hours while my grandpa watched TV or quietly read a book.

This was the catalyst for me. I loved everything my grandpa loved and soon the love of games blossomed into something all my own. It was hard for me before to pinpoint when exactly I became a “gamer.” To be honest, I only in very recent years felt like a gamer. For me, it was less about being ostracized for being female, but being ostracized for the types of games I like and my tendency to enjoy a solitary or one-on-one experience. For a long time, other gamers made me feel like if I wasn’t playing multiplayer games like CoD, I wasn’t playing “real” games.

But the games I have played over the years have been extremely influential to me in developing my personality and fostering my friendships. Some of my favorite bonding moments with friends have been over trading a controller back and forth or even just simply watch a friend kick a hard boss’s butt. It took me a long time to realize I was internalizing elitist negativity. Just because I always hated games like CoD doesn’t mean that I’m less of a gamer. I’ve also come to realize that gaming doesn’t have to be an overly social activity to still be enjoyable and valid.

Another thing I noticed as I made my list is that video game music is way more important to me than I realized. As I was looking over the list and trying to pick out some notable things I remembered about each game and a common thread between them, I noticed that amazing music was a recurring theme. Sometimes it’s hard to notice how great the music is when you’re concentrating on a difficult platforming area or a mega hard boss, but it turns out the music is one of the things that sticks with me the most. It really adds to the immersion and the atmosphere of a game. I truly think that even if you don’t notice it in the moment, some of the best games wouldn’t be as great without their masterful scores. Immersion is definitely something I’m interested in learning more about in this class.

I think back to the first video game that I played. It’s hard to remember but I have fond memories of playing Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis. I would either play solo or co-op with my brothers. With the in class activity it brought back memories of all the games I have learned over my lifetime. There are countless games that I have played, but the best part of learning games is the experience you share with others. As we discussed in class, most games are inherently social even if they are intended to be a solo player experience. For me I find great comfort in playing video games with my friends and enjoy the shared time with them. It is through this time that I not only distress but also get to laugh and be more of myself. I don’t consider myself the most competitive per say, but at times I can be.

One of my fondest memories of a social game is playing Smash Bros Brawl with my younger brother and a school friend. In Brawl you can only do a four player fight. However, in later instalments you are able to play with eight people. Within Brawl there is a mode known as special smash, which allows you to modify the rules of smash and play however you wish. It is within this game mode, that me, my brother and my friend played smash. To a smash enthusiast, this would be an impure way of playing smash. A competitive player sees the pure way as 3 stock, a select amount of stages and using only the top characters. As stated by Payne and Huntemann, “Rules have a way of erasing that which lies beyond the field of play, just as it normalizes actions within the game space” (How to Play Video Games 48) For us, play smash meant, playing the most ridiculous way we could. To a bunch of 9-year-old kids we saw the game for what was given to us. A roster of characters and a list of stages that were meant to be played.

When you start the game, Smash bros doesn’t tell you the rules. Rather you are forced into the game and learn the controls as you go. Spending more time with the game you spend time learning combos. Eventually you learn one or two characters and advance with them, learning the ins and outs of their move set, kill percent and other jargon. With these basics rules we know the following that Payne and Huntemann state “The word rule possesses at least three definitional inflections: (1) a guideline, convention, standard, or regulation (“Whoever cheats, is out”), (2) a social regularity (“Don’t go to school naked”), and (3) a predictable phenomenon (“When you let go of this crate, it will fall to the ground”)” (How to Play Video Games 42) With these set of guidelines competitive players are able to play in tournaments and compete on a national level all across the globe for smash. The online community thrives and will continue to do so. Fan projects have been released such a project M as a way to improve the core mechanics of the game. To the game I feel in love as a child and I will continue to play, thank you for the memories you have given me.

Reflecting on this first week of DMS 448, I know that I will be enjoying my experience in this class. I’ve taken theory classes in film before, but this class reminds me the most of another I took in my first year at UB. It was ENG 258, and simply labelled ‘Mysteries’. In that class I spent a lot of time reading mystery literature and even watching mystery films, reflecting upon their narratives and thinking about how the situations in those stories imitated those in real life situations, and how that made me feel. Like, how does Edgar Allan Poe’s Mystery or Marie Roget represent real life murders of young girls at that time? How does Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon reflect attitudes towards women, mental illness, and the LGBT community that were present at the time? It led me to read many new books, some of which are now some of my absolute favorites of all time, such as Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neely (100% go read this it is so good), and we even discussed one of my favorite films of all time, 1991’s Silence of the Lambs. All of this is important because culture and ideas are almost always represented through media, no matter how far back you go. Whether or not topics of feminism, racism, or LGBT were discussed at all, you can tell a lot by how people are represented, or even if they aren’t there at all. In a way, I feel like video games as a medium heightens this.

I believe that sometimes it can be hard to separate yourself from the worlds you interact with, simply because they are interactive. While you do absorb information from any medium you participate in or experience, be it a painting, a film, or a book, you will probably never interact with it on the level that you do with videogames. Experiencing other mediums do not take as much time or as much concentration that playing video games require as a bare minimum, and it can become all too easy to lose track of time while playing one. This is something that I feel separates games from other media in ‘the magic circle’, the sheer amount of time and concentration you experience is vastly larger than that of other medium. Even then there is a myriad of different ways to experience a game. Watching my older brother Steve play Earthbound is very different from just playing Earthbound myself, even though it’s the exact same narrative I am witnessing. Playing Secret of Mana together is very different than playing it alone with CPU controlling the other characters. Playing Secret of Mana together is more fun than it is playing it alone.

So at this point in time I think I want to use DMS 448 to make my experience with games more enjoyable. When I took the ENG 258 class, I certainly did not enjoy all of the materials I experienced, but they did give me more insight on why I did not like certain things, and why I enjoyed others. Even then, discussing these narratives made me enjoy them much more than I did before, and I hope I get that experience in this class.

Existing behind every game is a magic circle. In games and digital media, the magic circle is the space where the rules of reality are suspended in place for the rules of the game world. We typically enter a magic circle when we play a game for the first time or log back into a game that we frequently play. The voluntary choice of picking up the game and playing it means that we are willing to drop the rules of reality that we are familiar with and choose to believe in the rules that are present in the virtual game or a real life sport. 

Magic circles in sports can be seen in virtually any sport. In volleyball, the main goal is to get the volleyball over the net and into the opposing team’s side. Realistically, the ball is just a ball. You probably wouldn’t use it for anything else. But while you are actively playing, it is the most important item to you. It’s how you score points. You need to have the ball touch the ground on your opponent’s side while also preventing the ball from touching the ground on your side. Players dive and jump to keep the ball in the air for as long as possible. This is because you agreed to the rules of volleyball and entered the magic circle. 

The magic circle takes a big part of video games in maintaining engagement and appeal to its audience. Magic circles are often found in the introductory sequences to help establish what the players will be seeing in the game’s world. I will give an example with one of the more recent games I have played: Red Dead Redemption 2 (RDR2). RDR2 is a narrative driven open world action adventure game with a focus on historical accuracy and realism. RDR2 begins in 1899 in the American Southwest with your protagonist: Arthur Morgan on the run from the police authorities with his gang of outlaws in the snowy northern states of the game’s setting. They talk about dreams of evading the police, running away to the West and how they need money to achieve all this. The player character, Arthur Morgan, is a hardened cowboy who cares about nothing other than the valuable ties he shares with his gang. Through this intro, the game’s magic circle has established that you play as an outlaw at the end of the wild west era in a world that is slowly embracing technology and industrialism as he fights to find a way for his gang to leave and find a way to live the life they choose to live. The rules in RDR2’s magic circle are more specific since they focus on a single character and take into account the games setting in defining the rules. Committing crimes results in your character being wanted and often being chased by bounty hunters. Act like a criminal and you will be treated as one. As a result, I found myself playing the game and making choices as Arthur’s character would, often thinking about how Arthur would respond to situations based on his ideals and flaws. An example would be how because the rules of the magic circle focused on realism, I was discouraged to solve problems guns blazing like in other action or western movies.

After one week of this course, I have to say, I found myself looking back at all of the video games that I have played or came across during my lifetime. To be more specific, I tried my best to recall the character representation in these games. I did this because we had some good discussions this week about the lack of representation of women and other groups of people in a substantial amount of games. This then led me to conduct some research on how the gaming world got to this point to even begin with. During my research, I encountered Dennis Scimeca’s article, “The Gender Inequality in Core Gaming is Worse Than You Think”. In his article, Scimeca gives an in-depth analysis of gender representation in various games across the gaming world. One creative point that he mentions deals with the people behind video game development. He states, “The overwhelming number of men in video game development is the ultimate cause of these concerns” (4). After I read this quote, I thought to myself, the title of this article is exactly on point. Let alone gender representation, we have a larger problem in the video gaming world. What I mean by this is, the lack of diversity around the people who create these games. To me, although men are more likely to be credited with game development, this does not mean that they are the only ones that can play the game or even be represented in the game. That being said, we must find a balance. This can even start by allowing everybody to have a say during the development of a game. If the people that feel like they are being left out of the gaming world took part in creating it, chances are they would include themselves, which could be a building block to resolving the issue of underrepresentation. 

On top of this, we can even draw a connection between this article and the Feminist Frequency video we watched on the first day of class. To go more into details, a part of the article mentions how economic success for video games never really strikes as a concern, but rather, the concerns are more on the surface of culture. This is also a point that is brought up in the video. The speaker mentioned a game that was actually rewritten and still succeeded. Even though the video focuses more on women not having the chance to be the “real hero” in most storylines, the main takeaway with my connection is that economic concerns of video games are usually the least of the worries. Games will sell. Games will be played. But the real question is, who are the people that are actually recognized in the game? 

All in all, these issues that we covered in the first week are often overlooked by people in both the real world and the gaming world. I really look forward to understanding the different viewpoints and perspectives that people have to offer about the various games out there. Hopefully, these issues are brought to the attention of the right people, this way, everybody can embrace the real joy that should come along with the idea and act of gaming.

-Andy Kissoon

Welcome to DMS 448: Games, Gender and Culture! Use this blog to post your weekly blog posts. Remember, you need to post a total of 10 blogs throughout the 15 week semester, and each post should be at least 500 words.