On Friday an article made waves through the WoW themed
twitter bases and as always I play catch up to these things because I follow
the very edges of this community having only really concerned myself with gold
making while I was in the game. The
article in question is obviously Polygon’s opinion piece Erasing
your audience isn't 'fun' written by Todd Harper. In the article he is
described as an MIT researcher in their Game Lab specializing in eSports and queer/gender
representation in games.
When I was going through the article and organizing what I
thought about this it became clear that I needed to separate my thoughts (and
now by extension my post) into my analysis of points and arguments brought up in
the source piece and then distant from that decide how I think this subject
matter in general affects games and ‘gaming culture’ so bear with me as I first
break down the article and then ramble through a much more generalized opinion
maybe later.
Analysis:
I preface by noting that I will focus mostly on the Blizzard
commentary in the article while trying to untangle what the author was saying
about Nintendo as they jumped back and forth between the issues in a manner
slightly confusing to me.
In the header of the article we start with a grand statement
and I will explain shortly why I do not agree that the point is as “very clear”
as he states it which will lead me into what I think is the biggest pitfall of
the article; the premise that will shape his piece was a false premise which
renders useless the resulting conclusions.
Rob Pardo of Blizzard gave a presentation at the MIT Media
Lab which is linked in the article and you can watch the whole thing like I did.
During the Q&A section Todd asks a question and this whole piece minus the
Nintendo afterthought was him combining this with a question asked to the
Heroes of the Storm game Game Designer on Rock,
Paper, Shotgun and forming a bleak representation of the industry from it.
During Rob’s presentation he notes that value number one for
Blizzard is ‘Gameplay’ and they often make sacrifices in other areas such as
story narrative for the sake of smooth and engaging gameplay. He contrasts this with studios he described
as being more story driven like Naughty Dog or Bioware. Todd frames this as
putting Blizzard “in opposition to” Bioware. He makes his next point that
Bioware was one of the only AAA studios attempting to diversify their games
with LGBTQ content while Blizzard struggles with representations of gender. This wording is deliberate so that he can
follow up with a key premise to this opinion piece, “Blizzard's Dustin Browder,
much like Nintendo in its statement regarding Tomodachi Life, positions
"gameplay" and "fun" in direct opposition to producing
socially-conscious content.” Rob Pardo
never says Blizzard is in opposition with Bioware only that one developer
focuses on simple gameplay and the other focuses on rich narrative stating that
both produce great games. Dustin by the same token never mentions gameplay in
his answer regarding Heroes of the Storm female models. This assertion that
they position ‘fun’/’gameplay’ in direct opposition to social content is produced
here by cobbling together partial statements made months apart by two different
men speaking on very different topics.
In the next paragraph they touch back on Dustin’s comments
saying that the message is “why can't we just have fun? Why do we have to be
responsible for being respectful?” I do find fault in the interview and the
dismissive manner of Dustin’s answering but this last statement begs the
question stating that they are not ‘being respectful’ by not addressing the
problematic characterization of females in comic books through their game. [It
has to be noted that the Blizzard quote is in response to a statement by the
interviewer saying comics are not a good reference point for character design
because they are notorious for ”sexing up” and putting females in “some fairly
gross situations”]
This paragraph is just noting what was said as a matter of
fact and reference for later; In the Q&A he asked Rob to talk about the
relationship between the company values and their ‘perceived audience’ and
Blizzard’s ability to add socially progressive content to their games. Rob
responds by asking if he means adding diversity in the story. Todd expands asking if Blizzard will “reflect
the experiences of their players, specifically diverse players … reflecting
their desires, experiences, and contexts in what you’re producing.” Rob replies
that while they are not against it, this is not a value or “something we're
trying to actively do.” He acknowledges this isn’t always the best choice -
Blizzard struggles with the portrayal of women for example by having design that
“is offensive to, I think, some women.” He notes the workplace are mostly men and
“"I just don't get the applications” referring to female designers.
The author finds it disappointing that Blizzard does not
focus on releasing socially progressive messages which I grant him and he
mentions the problem with too few female designers is one that can certainly be
fixed which I happen to agree with wholeheartedly. Where I start to seriously split
is under his “This is a wider issue” header. Here he uses what I can only describe as pure equivocation
to suggest “Blizzard, through Pardo, expressed really problematic notions of
what's "valuable" — and what isn't” and furthers this by stating, “But
what do you do when what they say all but outright says "we don't value
you?" How do you maintain hope when the industry says "we don't think
you're worthwhile?"” When Rob said something was a ‘Blizzard value’ it was
in context of a speech on how they prioritize game elements in development. The
term could have just as easily been “framework” (one way Todd references it in
the question), design goal, or any other term, but because they said ‘value’ now
we can equivocate that to mean they don’t find gay players or female players ‘valuable’
as a consumer base. These are simply two uses of the same word to describe
fundamentally different things – one Rob actually said and one meaning that was
forced onto him.
With the premises now set up that ‘fun’ and ‘socially
conscious’ are mutually exclusive opposing forces and players that identify with
various minority groups are ‘valueless/worthless’ to game companies – the rest
of the article just grabs onto these notions and rides them like a
rollercoaster down the slippery slope finally climaxing with the conclusion
that even acknowledging that these groups exist is the definition of “anti-fun”
and game companies think that only ruination will come from it – and ends with
the positive note that this is not actually the case.
Next I plan to deep dive into what I feel like are the real factors
and issues we can gather from these statements without having to
sensationalize.
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You can reach me here in the comments, on Twitter @formerruling, and on my YouTube channel FormerRuling
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