Re: 9 Things Straight White Guys Won’t Understand About Gaming

Hello everyone, it seems that I’ll take a break for my long and disjointed Bloodborne posts and do something a little more causal: an answer to a Buzzfeed article.
For the purposes of this answer, I’ve grew a penis and you shall address me as Ayo.

If you want to know, it was written by Dan Golding a white and possibly straight male whose only contribution to the world was writing a Gamers Are Dead post on tumblr way back when.
Whenever I see a male doing this sort of post I can only feel pity because someone to write this sort of articles must have such a misunderstanding of what he’s writing about that I can only feel pity. There is this sort of feeling that I get that people who write these things hate the idea that others are having fun with this they don’t like or/and don’t understand and as such they want to end them for good or think that their ideas are better for this brave new world. It’s quite sad to see this.
Everyone has better ideas, everyone can think better, but nobody does anything. They write long articles and lists but I see little actually done or well done. If you’re asking, no, I don’t think writing long articles will achieve anything significant nor I think I’m doing anything significant. Come on, I’m the dude answering to a long Buzzfeed list of nothing on a blog nobody reads. Of course I’m doing absolutely nothing. Dan Golding isn’t doing anything either because he’s not going to change the minds of gamers (or players, call it whatever the fuck you want) with lists and cute little references to Top Gun. It’s not with buzz words that you change the minds of those who have been doing this for fun, for a job, because they enjoy it over the past 3 or 4 decades.

1. The gamer who just kicked your arse at Assassins Creed is probably a 33-year-old lesbian from Wollongong.

Wollongong is an Australian city for those who don’t know. I googled it because I had no idea either. Because you know, an Australian city in the middle of New South Wales is an example that everyone absolutely gets.

Badajoz works like wonders.

Also for those who don’t know, arse is British slag for ass. I heard it on an Arctic Monkeys song once.

Talking a little more seriously now, I don’t think anyone kicks anyone’s ass at Assassin’s Creed because I barely know anyone who plays Assassin’s Creed for the multiplayer. Sure, Revelations had a fun multiplayer, but AC is a mostly story driven saga and most people praise it and not the multiplayer.

Multiplayer characters for Revelations

AC is, for the most part, known for its fun gameplay and somewhat engaging short that may or may not shit on real life History. If the author really wanted to hit the jackpot, he might have listed something like DOTA, League of Legends or maybe even Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead. Using AC as an example is almost like praising Witcher 3 for Geralt’s amazing cosplay of Micolash, the Host of the Nightmare from Bloodborne.

Pretty much every survey of players in Australia has shown that a massive proportion of videogame players are women. The last major survey had women making up 47% of the game playing population. Game players are from all age groups, too, with the average Australian player being 33 years old.

My question, however, is if women are playing the same games as men. It is extremely hard to find any material on this matter, but I reckon that they don’t simply because they don’t like the same things. Even in the gaming community, I find myself seeing that women enjoy games that are puzzle driven or have stories driven by feelings such as love, while men prefer more violent games like shooters and enjoy the thrill of survival immensely.
Personally speaking, when I talk about Dark Souls I talk about the lore of the game, while a lot of males seem to focus on how hard it is. Surely, there are many men who enjoy the lore and many have shown it, like VaatiVydia, but at large it seems like they focus on the fact that it’s a very hard game not the fact that has a great lore and story.
Yet, everything is relative and I’m 100% sure that are people break these “rules”.

But, I do agree on the age part. Not just in Australia, but in most of the world, gamers are now around 20 and 40 because most of us started to play video games during the 80s and 90s. Do a little Math and you’ll know, you don’t even need a fancy study to know that.

2. Gaming has never been the sole domain of the straight, white dude.

Of course it hasn’t because tomboys exist.

Although all sorts of different people happily think of themselves as gamers, over the years we’ve also seen the rise of sub-identities. The “girl gamer”. The “gaymer”.

I hate these gamer girl (or girl gamer, it’s the same shit) and gaymer labels that everyone decided to wear during the 2010s because it eliminates one of the most amazing things about gaming: the fact that we are all faceless.

As gamers, we’re all gamers, nothing more and nothing else. Our political ideologies, our incomes, our genders and sexualities all vanish and we become adventures discussing worlds that mirror our own. None of this matter because the time was strange for women to play video games is long gone (it has been 10 years if not more since I last heard that) and this small community were we were taken seriously by our skills and by what we said was created. But these labels of gamer girls and gaymers create a brand new rift between the gamers, as if being a homosexual or a girl who plays these games makes you superior deserving of a medal for such an achievement.

You deserve it because you’re a gamer wounded in a non existent war.

These are telling because they show us that even though lots of people play videogames, there’s certain assumptions about who our culture most easily accepts as a gamer.

I blame this on shows like The Big Bang Theory, which constantly pushes old stereotypes about nerds, geeks and gamers. We can only be these handful of stereotypes because no normal functioning people are gamers or like Star Trek. This the big issue with our society, we allow things like this show to exist and then a bunch of people comes and points the finger at gamers not allowing others to come into the community.
Of course there are assholes in the community, there are assholes everywhere, but it’s not the whole gaming community that is holding signs saying that homosexuals or women can’t play, mainstream culture is. Remember this, because gamers did not make The Big Bang Theory.

3. Creativity, not masculinity, drove the early gamers.

Gaming was never considered a manly activity in the 80s or 90s, it was the work of Satan and basement dwellers much like Dungeons & Dragons.
Remember who was bullied in movies? The nerds and geeks. And who are gamers? Nerds and geeks. Being called a nerd or geek used to be an insult and only recently it became something fashionable and something to be proud of.

4. Indie developers are putting the gay in gaymer, and the mainstream is taking notice.

And who cares? I don’t.

In various talks with someone close to me, I was questioned about my desire to play with females like me, bisexual characters like me or even characters with the same disabilities as I have. While that would be cool and I would enjoy it, I don’t require it.
While it’s cool and good to have different characters doing the same things, I honestly don’t care if they’re not different. With this I don’t mean that I want 10.000 Geralts and 5.000 Solaries in copies of their respective games, but that I don’t mind if they’re heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual or if their favourite chocolate brand is Milka or Nestle.

Though everyone knows that Milka is the superior brand.

But the fact that I think that Milka is the superior brand doesn’t mean that everyone else can’t think that Ferrero Rocher isn’t the superior brand and  it’s their right to hold such an opinion.
My point is, just because it’s better doesn’t mean it’s right or we should all do it.  I know this sounds very confusing but it’s like chocolate, just because Milka is better doesn’t mean that I should force everyone to eat it or even to eat chocolate.

It’s good to have more and better LGBT characters in gaming, because stories evolve in time and reflect the time they were written in, but it isn’t good to force anyone to have token gay characters in their games just because you want a false sense of equality and representation. We should get away from the token gay (or any other minority) character and allow to people to write human beings were their sexuality, skin colour or gender is the sole definer of their character unless the story requires it.

Meanwhile, American designer Robert Yang manages to explore homoeroticism in intelligent, funny, and deeply NSFW ways. His amazing games so far include a dick pic game, a scrubbing-a-dude-in-the-shower simulator, and Succulent, a “small 2-4 minute game about watching a dude slowly / erotically stick a thing in his mouth”.

1. I don’t think watching someone stick something in their mouth qualifies as a game.
2. I don’t know if I want the things bellow me to represent the LGBT (which I’m a part of not technically)

Even in 2015, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, one of the biggest videogames of the year, included a bisexual protagonist and a minor supporting character who is transgender.

They don’t do it because it’s right, they do it because it sells. They want to please you to suck out your money better than the guy in Succulent sucks a dick.

5. The girl gamer is now the game maker.

I think they have been for a while. At least in Japan.

And outside of Japan.

6. Black space warrior goddesses are a thing, but visibility is still an issue.

Make more games with black space warrior goddesses.

Despite some isolated advances in mainstream videogames recently, the default character is still definitely the straight white guy. Even if a game allows you to play as an amazing black space warrior goddess, like in Mass Effect 3, it’s still the crew-cut white space marine who gets to be the front cover.

Kevin Levine, a game developer known for System Shock and BioShock, talked about this back when BioShock: Infinite came out. He talked about how he wanted Elizabeth on the cover but he was informed that wouldn’t sell and he had to put Booker on the cover  because the people who play shooters like to see a man with a gun, something they can relate.

Elizabeth

Booker

This is a problem of marketing and how scared companies are to put a female on the front cover when most people who buy in their minds are young males.

7. LBGTIQ games have a loyal following, but there’s still more work to be done.

I don’t know how to answer to this because I don’t feel the need for LBGTwhatever games. This is my personal feeling because I’m person who wants good stories, no matter the subject.

8. Games can offer a representation of love and sexuality as diverse as real life.

And of many other things so get work! The sky is limit!

9. LGBTIQ players need a space to call their own.

Everyone needs such a place and we’re all looking for it, not just you.