Ignite your passion for gaming...and...drinking?

Gaming is an expansive hobby among both children and adults, yet at least in the United States, there has historically not been a lot of places for adults interested in gaming and other forms of geek culture to congregate and socialize. In the past there were arcades but with gaming shifting to home gaming consoles and personal computers, the need and desire to go out to play dwindled. In some developing countries, internet cafes had large rises to popularity with limited internet access and computers at home, with their popularity often persisting even after homes were brought online. 

”Speed Show: Drifting Internet Café,“ created and directed by Sun Xiaoxing, 2016. Photo credits: Zhou Nengneng

While internet cafes have seen fewer successes in the United States, gaming bars have found a few hits of success just like the arcade bars before and alongside them. The split focus allows for a community of adults to form who may not necessarily feel as comfortable in other social drinking venues or who just prefer to game and want to get together with friends. Beyond that, the drinks can be used as an alternative form of income rather than hourly charges which customers may not be as willing to pay if they already have the games at home. There’s also unique opportunities for combining the characteristics of bars and games and simply working to bring together a community.

Ignite Gaming Lounge

There has been a successful gaming lounge in Chicago for over 10 years, Ignite Gaming Lounge, which offers many types of games alongside basic snacks. It brought together the local gaming community, gathering many loyal fans, hosting events, and providing a place for gamers to connect. It has done well enough to open up a second, much larger, location in Skokie, IL, which added proper food and a full bar to their menu. This second location also has dedicated rooms for larger events, helping to further grow the local LAN and other meetup community. 

There are a lot of challenges to opening and running a gaming bar or lounge, but with the right amount of work, the rewards of doing so can quickly be seen. In the PAX East 2014 Panel, “The Rise of the Geek Bar”, the panelists shared their experiences with drinks and the interesting connections that can be made, with the possibilities being endless. The Ignite Gaming Lounge’s Skokie menu is the perfect example of this, not only being composed of low-poly pixel art depictions, but having cocktails like “Nuka Cola Quantum”, “Metroid Margarita”, “Ignite Potions”, and more. They have also expanded this to food items like the “Triple Kill” and “Mushroom Kingdom” pizzas or the “Buffalo Chocobo” sandwich. Everyone can appreciate creative drinks and food, but when it connects to a subculture you’re interested in, especially if it’s not commonplace, it can be quite exciting to see. As the panelists discussed, some customers would always come and try every drink when the menu changed. It also seems these creative concoctions may help broaden the scope of the bar to even larger audiences as one Google review for the Skokie location mentioned, “friends liked the gimmicky alcoholic drinks they served and had a great time”, helping to indicate the combination is key to the location’s success.

Excerpt from Ignite Gaming Lounge's drink menu 

The panelists also mentioned the enthusiasm they found patrons having when opening or with every event and how they all had ideas to share. The feedback on Ignite Gaming Lounge has been consistent with this, with people super excited when they see the venues, wanting to try everything out. This showcases the desire for these communities to form. The Attendee on Youtube created a video about their experience at Ignite Gaming Lounge in Skokie and offered insights into gaming lounges, explaining how they appreciate the local meetups and connections these types of venues enable. It seems this deep sense of a “geek” community has proved successful, with a panelist in the panel mentioning how he has never had a fight break or a controller stolen. 

Example event hosted at Ignite Gaming Lounge

In the end, it may be easy to leave games in the living room or office and just not partake in bar or club culture, but it would be great to not have to miss out on both. Gaming bars and lounges like Ignite Gaming Lounge and those owned by the panelists can help bridge these two previously separate worlds, providing new exciting and accepting spaces for not only gamers and geeks, but others as well. The excitement is there, as seen by Google reviews like “i really love ignite the vibe is just so chill” and “It's the best place to hang and geek out about your favorite whatever”. Just like the panelists said, start with your passion and what you feel comfortable with, “do that thing” and you will find other people that enjoy that thing as well. In this case, it’s a bunch of gamers and geeks also looking for a place to fit in.

Bloch, Matt, “PAX East 2014 Panel - The Rise of the Geek Bar” YouTube Video, 1:04:10, April 18, 2014, https://youtu.be/RDTjWGaaUfg

Alcohol and Video Games: A Cocktail of Potential

 The popular social settings have changed for every era in time, and all have tried to cater to universal audiences. Over the years, places such as diners, discotheques, jazz clubs, and raves have been the hot places to go to and socialize, especially at night when the younger demographic is raring to explore and have a good time. When it comes to popular spaces for geek culture, however, choices have remained overall limited. Back in the era of arcade cabinets, when Galaga and Miss Pac-Man dominated the market, the most exciting places for gamers and geeks to hang out with other like-minded individuals were in arcades, which luckily were all the rage at the time, so gamers had many choices of where they could go and play and meet new people. However, since then, even with the decline of arcade games, arcades still remained one of the only large public spaces where anyone could go in and play video games with friends or strangers. The introduction of home consoles also contributed to this in a big way, to the point where the best way to play games with friends was to get a multiplayer console and simply invite people over. After that, online compatibility was introduced, and gamers no longer had to be in the same room to play games with each other. Although an admittedly incredible feat which revolutionized multiplayer gaming and interaction, this did make for even more stagnation when it came to developing large public spaces for gamers. Going from arcades to split-screen co-op to online co-op made it so the only remaining spaces were either specifically organized gaming events, such as conventions or tournaments, or arcade sections of bowling alleys usually containing only Dance Dance Revolution or Pac-Man.

This does not even bring into consideration the tabletop RPG community, who have unfortunately been confined to private sessions in their own homes or the basements of their local game shop.

    In recent years, however, a new space has been created that attempts to combine the social pastimes of the general public and the gaming community: gaming bars. One of the most popular social lubricants for decades has been alcohol, and regardless of your stance on that, it is impossible to deny that much of the success of raves, clubs, and obviously bars is the combination of a fun social atmosphere and drinking. With the ever rising popularity of bars, especially with the current generation, some sought out to create bars with heavy gaming focus and elements, to give a newfound sense of community for this generation of gamers and geeks while keeping the mass appeal of a late-night bar.

This is not to say that video games have not existed in bars before. In 1971, an arcade game was installed in a bar near Stanford University, and Goldie’s Bar in 1981 had a test cabinet of Donkey Kong that ended up working majorly to its advantage after the massive success of the game. However, those were just bars with one or two arcade cabinets installed in the corner, where a patron could walk on over and play a game in relative solitude from the rest of the crowd. These new gaming bars fully embrace the theme of gaming, with it being not just the focus, but the main appeal. One gaming bar, 42 Lounge in Milwaukee, went even further by not just including several popular games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros, but also holding events for other facets of geek culture, like tabletop gaming, e-sports, and nights centered around shows and movies like Doctor Who, Harry Potter, or Star Wars.

Most of the owners of these arcade bars were inspired by all the things I mentioned above: creating a social space for a gaming audience but making it accessible to a wider demographic. One owner in particular mentioned the stereotypes surrounding gaming culture and nerdy spaces, and how adding the appeal of a bar to them would help to normalize them in today’s society and make them mainstays in social culture.

Regarding the stereotypes, they do absolutely have a point. Before, since arcades were obviously meant to serve a single purpose—house arcade games—only gamers (mostly boys) were expected to be populating them. Gaming culture as a whole being considered a breeding ground for lonely male misogynists by the general public has understandably damaged the general outlook on gaming spaces, and it is obviously not a completely misguided point of view considering the toxicity pervasive in the culture. However, these new gaming bars work to create a more accepting space for gamers and non-gamers alike, focusing more on the more socially comfortable environment that a bar provides for many and letting people explore their interests with like-minded people they are likely to get along with. One owner described it as a “showcase of how far the gaming community has come, where stereotypical and non-stereotypical gamers could coexist with each other and have a good time bonding over shared interests.”

Unsurprisingly, reception for most of these gaming bars has been overwhelmingly positive. Adult gamers seem to be very satisfied with having a new, hot social location where they can hang out on a Friday night, drink, and meet new people, while also being able to partake in an activity that is more comfortable for them. Most gaming bar owners were surprised by the popularity of their bars, especially with most of their advertising being done through word of mouth in the beginning. All patrons, regardless of if they chose to game or not, were welcomed as long as they were somehow contributing to the revenue of the bar through drinks or beverages.

It seems as though the gaming bar has in many ways accomplished what it set out to do, create a common safe space for gamers and non-gamers to interact and explore new interests. More and more of these bars are opening up in cities, with more entrepreneurs wanting to explore their own vision of an adult gaming space for the masses.

Works Cited

Bloch, Matt, “PAX East 2014 Panel - The Rise of the Geek Bar,” YouTube Video, 1:04:10, April 18, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDTjWGaaUfg.

Bass, Penelope. “The Evolution of Arcade Bars.” Imbibe Magazine, August 26, 2020. https://imbibemagazine.com/arcade-bars/.

Followers from one streaming platform don’t always mix well with another

In August 2019, a little over two years ago, streamers Ninja and Shroud signed an exclusive contract with the Microsoft-owned streaming platform Mixer. Their contracts were rumored to be $30 million and $10 million respectively (Patel 2020). On July 22nd, 2020, about a year later, Mixer shut down services. Insiders claimed that the two pushed for and received a full payout for their contracts, though I could not find a credible source for this claim. What I can verify is that these contracted streamers were able to move on to other platforms with relative ease and began negotiations for new exclusive-contracts.

This happy ending does not extend to everyone who was a streamer on Mixer. Leckakay, who now streams on Twitch, was in the middle of streaming on Mixer when she received the news that Mixer was shutting down (D’Anastasio 2020). In fact, the majority of Mixer partners, streamers, and viewers found out at the same time. It was in the form of a tweet sent out on June 22nd, 2020 by Mixer’s official account. They gave streamers a one month warning that they either had to move to their new partner, Facebook Gaming, or figure something else out.

(An picture of a red stand-mixer)

Streaming in Character

               The article The Affective Labor and Performance of Live Streaming on Twitch.tv looks at some of what streaming entails, from how streamers interact with their audience, to the basic idea of doing something that, in theory, is simply intended as entertainment for work and labor.

“The mere presence of their marginalized bodies disrupts the norm”: The Twitch Hate Raids and Discursive Resistance from Black Streamers

 

Overcoming The Odds: "When Rivers Were Trails and Indigenous Storytelling

An important point we’ve been discussing is Native American representation in modern game culture, and just in general. In the American games industry especially, the library of games containing genuine representation designed by indigenous people is unfortunately scarce and overlooked due to the low participation of indigenous people in the games industry and the hugely oversaturated market of indie games. As we talked about before as well, a lot of times when a game with an indigenous focus and background is envisioned, the lack of resources can stand in the way of aspiring indigenous creators from finding each other and being able to support the grueling process of game development long-term.

However, the indie games that have been fully developed by indigenous lead designers and developers have sought out and to capture and immerse a player in an experience that captures the Native American lifestyle and history as accurately as possible, and in most cases are successful in that goal. Such is the case in When Rivers Were Trails, a 2D point-and-click game exploring the journey of an Anishinaabe tribe moving from Minnesota to California due to the Native American displacement and land allotment laws set in place in the 1890s.

The game was created as a collaboration with the Indian Land Tenure Foundation and Michigan State University’s Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab specifically to create a game where the Native American experience in the old Midwest could be accurately showcased and taught. The project was able to successfully see itself to completion thanks to over 30 indigenous creators ranging from writers, artists, and musicians contributing to give the game authentic Native American representation from all angles. The game was creatively led and designed by two Indigenous individuals, and the gameplay and art was led by an Anishinaabe game designer.

The game contains lots of familiar gameplay elements to other point and click predecessors, most notably The Oregon Trail, having minigames for fishing, travelling, hunting, and canoeing. In addition however, as a point-and-click, When Rivers Were Trails relies heavily on its storytelling and dialogue to weave interesting stories for players to engage in. The game has several different stories for players to play through, and new stories are unlocked through gameplay and player progression. Over 30 indigenous writers contributed to the creation of the historical stories, with each one giving a fun and informative (and most importantly, accurate) glimpse into the life of indigenous tribes in the US as the Anishinaabe tribe travelled across the country and overcame several obstacles on their way. As well as progressing the overall plot of the game, each story would often seek to encapsulate and illustrate an aspect of indigenous living at the time, such as gathering, hunting, intertribal relations, illnesses, and their vibrant culture. Dialogue frequently includes indigenous language, which is not often represented in video games, even those that feature indigenous characters in their plot.

       
        With a majority of the game’s direction being decided by Indigenous creators, the game manages to keep established gameplay elements engaging while delivering several stories that stay heavily grounded in realism, most likely due to the fact that most may very well have been based directly on real events. That being said, as we have talked about earlier on this blog, there can be a huge benefit to also having non-indigenous creators on the team, as they could learn more about how to design an inclusive game by working firsthand with the lead designers and cooperating with them. When Rivers Were Trails does indeed include a diverse team of several ethnicities and backgrounds in order to positively represent an environment with an indigenous creative team at the helm. All workers were paid industry standard rates as well, and were given equal spaces in which to create their combined vision, which is a huge deal in the games industry. When Rivers Were Trails is a stellar example of an environment where indigenous creators were able to finally take the reins and create a work of art that tells legitimate stories about their cultures and past, and should be considered a huge symbolic step for the games industry.

Works Used:

LaPensée, Elizabeth A, Outi Laiti, and Maize Longboat. “Towards Sovereign Games.” Games and Culture, (June 2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120211029195.

“When Rivers Were Trails by Indianlandtenure.” itch.io. Accessed October 24, 2021. https://indianlandtenure.itch.io/when-rivers-were-trails. 

“Historical Stories.” When Rivers Were Trails Wiki. Accessed October 24, 2021. https://whenriversweretrails.fandom.com/wiki/Historical_stories. 

Indigenous Futurism, New Worlds for Future Generations

The Haudenosaunee have a core value they call the Seventh Generation. Their philosophy is that the decisions we make today ought to result in a sustainable world seven generations into the future, taking into consideration those who will one day inherit our world. Integral to this value is the protection of cultural practices, ceremonies, and languages, which can then be passed down through generations [1]. But when faced with headlines like “Two Indigenous languages are dying every month” [2], the question of how current and future generations will uphold Indigenous cultures teachings and customs becomes imperative.

Digital media, including games, may be a space to explore answers to such a question. Not only does digital media offer a way to look back on the histories of indigenous cultures around the world, they also are a space to imagine the future (see Figure 1). Indigenous futurism, inspired by the Afrofuturism movement, reimagines stereotypical tropes of indigenous peoples and explores alternate histories and futures in a variety of mediums. The indigenous game designer Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée, a scholar of Anishinaabe and Métis descent, describes indigenous futurism as “[looking] to those who came before us to inform the present with hope for future generations” [3].

Figure 1. The animated film "She Falls for Ages" by artist Skawennati is an example of Indigenous Futurism. It is a science-fiction retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story, reimagining Sky World as a futuristic utopia with Sky Woman as a world-builder (Vimeo).

Dr. Grace Dillon, Anishinaabe scholar and Dr. LaPensée’s mother, coined the term Indigenous Futurism. In her edited anthology of Indigenous science fiction, Dillon describes Indigenous futurism as “… narratives of biskaabiiyang, an Anishinaabemowin word connoting the process of ‘returning to ourselves,’ which involves discovering how personally one is affected by colonization, discarding the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovering ancestral traditions in order to adapt in our post-Native Apocalypse world”[4]. Integral to Indigenous Futurism are Indigenous creators, because the concept requires Indigenous perspectives to create awareness of how tribal philosophies and cultural knowledge are connected to science, the universe, and the future.

Figure 2. Diné artist Ryan Singer's "Sand People, Sand Painting" depicts characters from the Star Wars movies inside a Navajo hogan, while taking part in a traditional healing ceremony. The work is part of an online exhibit “Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future” at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

Indigenous video games are one medium in which Indigenous Futurism can be explored.  Achimostawinan Games is an Indigenous (Métis and Néhiyaw) owned indie game studio in Canada. The studio strives to have a team of 51% or more Indigenous staff. Their current project is Hill Agency, an Indigenous cybernoir detective game. The world within Hill Agency looks at the critical question: “what would our world look like on the brink of freedom from colonial oppression?” [5]. In the game, the main character is Meeygun Hill, a Private Investigator in the slums of one of the last major cities in North America, Akâmaskiy, who is charged by her client Mary LaPensée to solve her sisters’ murderer. Hill Agency’s story follows the genre of narrative detective games where the player interviews witnesses and suspects, collects evidence for the case, and makes accusations.

Figure 3. Meeygun Hill (left) and her client Mary LaPensée (Kickstarter)

All characters in the game are Indigenous, and to prevent cultural and cross-nation appropriation, the team at Achimostawinan Games pledge to only design characters representing their own nations (if they find representing other nations/communities is necessary, they will reach out to ensure appropriate representation within the design of the game) [6]. Their advisory council are Indigenous creatives who work within the realms of digital and fine art. The design team also pledged to follow the On-Screen Protocols & Pathways Guide [7], a media production guide to working with Métis, Inuit, and First Nations communities, narratives, and concepts.

Figure 4. The metropolis of Akâmaskiy (Kickstarter)

Hill Agency started as a DMG Feb Fatale Game Jam prototype, first shown at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, but a polished prototype (retitled Hill Agency: BARK & byte) and the full production of the game requires $660,000 CAD in funding. Achimostawinan Games is currently trying to obtain funding streams, including grants, but has also placed the game description and breakdown of associated costs on Kickstarter [6] to hopefully bring the game to life for wider audiences. The latest update showed that they received that funding (though not through Kickstarter) and will be creating the whole game for release in Fall 2022! [8]

As conversations about Indigenous futurism continue to gain traction, it is essential to support initiatives that emphasize the revival of Indigenous languages, histories, and futurism within Indigenous cultures and challenge the structural hegemony within the status quo, especially in digital media and games.

-Sarah

[1]. https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com/values/

[2]. https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/12/1053711

[3]. https://achimogames.ca/about/exploring-indigenous-futurism/

[4]. Dillon, G.L. (2012). Walking the clouds: An anthology of indigenous science fiction.

[5]. https://achimogames.ca/about/exploring-indigenous-futurism/

[6]. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1678114327/hill-agency-bark-and-byte

[7].https://www.creativebc.com/database/files/library/imagineNATIVE_on_screen_protocols_and_pathways_5_15_2019.pdf

[8]. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1678114327/hill-agency-bark-and-byte/posts/3182241

The hegemonic colonizers and the silenced indigenous

 We've been talking about how the current game industry is a hegemony that marginalizes racial, gender and sexual minorities and those with disabilities because of its composition of primary white males. In Land (2020), the author extends this discussion about hegemony onto the topic of representations of indigenous people in games. Similar to the previous discussions, a common issue for representations of indigenous cultures in games is that it still is limited to small communities who share the interests in this topic, such as Native Twitter, Native news sites and Indigenous events such as Indigenous Comic Con, but it fails to be channeled upwards so that it becomes a center of discussion among the industry leaders. Therefore, just like gender or race representation we talked about before, indigenous culture tends to be invisible, or poorly represented in the industry to make any meaningful change for the equality for the native populations.

In a 2018 survey for the International Game Developers, the most ideal individual to be working in the game industry is "a 32 year old white male with a university degree who lives in North America can who does not have children" (the living in NA condition is especially ironic as the indigenous people are the ones living for the longest time in NA), and Aboriginals or Indigenous people only constitute 2% of the total amount of people working in games. With such a low participation of Indigenous people in the game industry, the normative valuation within digital games culture is by nature exclusive of indigenous games, and the educational, diverse and multicultural "serious" games are often seen as an illegitimate presence, giving way to those stereotypical "white" games that entails casual misogyny, racism and imperialism/colonialism, and whose representations of the indigenous people are either stereotypically written as savage, backwards and unintelligent, or written in a way that has no relevance to the indigenous population today.

This situation has created a systematic meritocracy for the indigenous population who lacked resources, education and training in this field and therefore need to put much more effort into making games than white males. However, this is not to say that there are no efforts to represent the indigenous populations in games. The standard practice in the non-indigenous game industry is to hire individuals from those indigenous population as long-term consultants to contribute to the story or the aesthetic details for the games. Though this method has created some representative works that does reveal some authentic aspects of indigenous cultures such as Thunderbird Strike and Never Alone, they are often held to a double-standard when assessed by the gaming community, or even the political discourse in general who tend to dismiss or even criticize this type of games as "threats for the nation-state". For instance, the game Thunderbird Strike in 2017 that represents a deity in the Anishinaabe culture that protects the natural world was criticized as "an eco-terrorist version of Angry Birds." Therefore, the simple theme of a deity protecting the environment has to be distorted into a bullet for the political war of discourse in terms of environmentalism. In addition, besides the contested field of environmentalism, it is also possible that the reason this particular game receives such large-scale criticism has something to do with the toxic white-supremacism, because the mainstream culture of the west is marginalizing the cultures and the voices of the non-white population, and the cultural heritage of them always ends up being the target of attack, and environmentalism has merely been an excuse for that.

In addition, indigenous videogames have been out of the public field of vision also as a result of a lack of technological and financial resources flowing into the industry. This shortage results in low qualities among such games which tend to be poorly coded and uncreative when it comes to gameplay. For example, the game Never Alone (2014) by Upper One Games tells a story of "Kunuksaayuka," a traditional Inupiat story about a young man discovering the source of a blizzard, and adapts it into a puzzle game based in Arctic landscape to discover pieces of cultural insights, with the collaboration of Alaskan native elders and storytellers. However, despite the intention, the game received very complicated evaluations across the internet, people understand that the game is crucial and has an important story to tell and a community of marginalized people to represent, but they hesitate to give this game high scores and evaluations because of its mechanical flaws and poor design decisions that make the game less playable or fun.

In sum, there isn't a lack of good stories to tell from the communities of Indigenous peoples, nor is there a lack of people who is willing to put in the efforts to tell them. The obstacles of delivering these stories and representations to the public are two-fold. First, such games are often scrutinized under a double-standard scope where the marginalized communities are seen as a "illegitimate presence" in an industry dominated by white males, and their identities embodies in the games can often be used as tools for political interests and gains. Second,  there are not enough resources or money distributed to those groups who are willing to engage with indigenous people to tell their stories, resulting in poorly made games that are not able to penetrate the hegemony of the "mainstream" game industry. Ultimately, it still aligns with our previous discussion about how we make these voices heard by those who get to allocate resources, and modify the ways in which decisions are made in the industry by giving more power to those on the ground who has the knowledge and the intention to push the industry to a more inclusive future. 

Yuheng

References 

Land, J. (2020). Indigenous video games. In L. K. Lopez (Ed.), Race and Media: Critical Approaches (pp. 92–100). NYU Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11vcbrf.11

Geek Identity and the Danger of Insular Subcultures

 It is no secret that many areas of ‘geek culture’ house varying amounts of misogyny, racism, and a general disdain for those whose identity deviates from the perceived norm of straight, white, cis male. In Chapter 1 of Toxic Geek Masculinity, Anastasia Salter and Bridget Blodgett expand on many of the reasons for this, laying the groundwork for a discussion on the artifacts of modern geek culture, the harmful assumptions built into them, and the ways these artifacts feed into continued marginalization of identities outside of the perceived norm.

One of the first results of a google image search for gamer. Most images, like this one, portray that perceived norm of a white man.

Geeks were, at one point, a cultural out-group. The term was used in an insulting fashion to refer to people who engaged with things like computers, games or comics. This created a group of people who felt attacked on all sides for enjoying hobbies. Media reinforced this, portraying geeks as socially inept or otherwise disadvantaged among the non-geeks. One of the most popular ways in which this occurred was through presenting conflicts between ‘geeks’ and ‘jocks’. Binaries like this combined with the existing ostracism to create a very insular culture. Ideas within these circles were often shared in spaces where only other members of the subculture would have access, and these ideas lacked outside viewpoints, serving only to reinforce the isolation felt by members of the culture. At some point, the term geek became something one would claim. To be a geek, well still existing on the margins of what was considered ‘normal’ was something to be proud of in their eyes. Things like the geek purity test would crystalize this feeling into a solid form, and provide a template for how the geek identity would be treated by geeks going forward. These purity tests were often incredibly skewed towards masculine traits and interpretations and the cultural conception of a geek reinforced this, often portraying geeks as white and male. This meant those who existed within the geek space, but beyond the stereotypes would often be left without a means to elevate their voices and become a seen part of the identity.

Salter and Blodgett talk about the mainstreaming of nerd culture. Eventually, with the integration of technology into everyday life, things like movies, games and other parts of what used to be ‘geek culture’ gradually became the norm. Geek culture, however, would not integrate itself. The culture was formed around ostracism and created an identity for itself built around separating themselves from other cultures. Even with the acceptance of geek activities into the norm, the culture wasn’t willing to accept the norm into itself. This blended with the established binaries and the lack of voice for members of non-white, non-male groups within to create a group which refused to allow anyone who deviated from the perceived norm without passing walls of purity tests, and even then, they had to exist within contexts that were acceptable to the masculine viewpoint of that perceived norm.

Perhaps as a continued holdover from that opposition to out-groups, geek culture is incredibly resistant to change. This has manifested within the culture in several ways, with some members identifying themselves in opposition to movements like feminism, seeing the push for a more inclusive geek culture as one which seeks to destroy that space. Furthermore, events like gamergate, one of the most recent crystallizations of the hatred that the culture holds for other identities, have ties to incredibly harmful places on the internet where the worst parts of toxic masculinity have had time to fester. These places in turn are deeply rooted in racism and misogyny, and some even have ties to political ideologies like fascism. This has created a close tie between a specific subset of geek culture and these ideas.

The Protagonists from Assassin's Creed, Fitting, Breaking, Yet Still Fitting the Default

     Looking at the evolution of the protagonists in the Assassin’s Creed games is quite interesting, especially while considering the perspective of A. Salter and B. Blodgett’s Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media. The older games especially fit many of their descriptions to a T. Looking specifically at Ezio Auditore, the protagonist in the most individual games of the series, is a womanizer who is defending his family, and the world, from the far-reaching secret society of the Templars. The fact that he does this by joining a similar secret society is rarely touched on. In some ways, this game at least avoids the “worst” of the issues. There are women characters who are portrayed as competent and effective, but they are frequently regulated to roles such as running brothels (as spies, but still), and very rarely do their actions affect the plot as a whole. Both of Ezio’s main love interests are placed in the Damsel in Distress role at least once, and neither are much in the way of characterization or meaning outside of “main character’s love interest”.

(Pictured: Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed, image from Wikipedia)

What is a "Gamer": Defining Masculinity in Video Games

Despite the wide range of people that enjoy video games, the default “face” of a gamer has historically been the straight, white male. The fourth chapter of A. Salter and B. Blodgett’s book Toxic Geek Masculinity in Media explores the dangers of this microculture, primarily through their perceptions of and interactions with women. 

Penny Arcade comic denouncing criticism of Duke Nukem

Science fiction author John Scalzi’s 2012 piece aimed to address male privilege in the gaming community by equating identities to difficulty settings -- a straight, white male, as he describes, is playing life on easy mode. Marginalized groups are the truly “hardcore” players, as they aren’t born with the starting bonuses or privileges that the aforementioned male is. The backlash Scalzi received from the gaming community after publishing this piece is only a taste of the hostility many male gamers secrete when their position in the community is threatened or censured. Salter and Blodgett, in arguing the dangers of the traditionally hegemonic gaming community, provide many similar examples of male gamers lashing out at criticism, the most infamous being Gamergate. 

In 2014, the Gamergate movement was born out of the doxxing of game developer Zoey Quinn. Its proponents threatened and harassed Zoey and any woman who spoke out against them, causing many women to flee their homes due to serious safety concerns. Anita Sarkeesian was one of the women doxxed for bringing feminist views into gaming. Sarkeesian created a popular YouTube series titled Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, which aimed to explore the stereotypical “damsel in distress” role women are assigned in most games. Not only was she doxxed and threatened to a point where she had to relocate, but the game “Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian” was published online where, yes, the point of the game was to beat Sarkeesian’s face to the point of bruising and bleeding.

These are only a small portion of the events that defined Gamergate. While the driving force behind the movement appears to be a reaction to feminist conjecture entering the gaming sphere, links between Gamergate and the alt-right movement shouldn’t be ignored. The pervasiveness of white supremacist ideals in many deep gaming microcultures is what allowed for this movement to take root so quickly. 

Salter and Blodgett also examine the aspects within games themselves that create such defensiveness among many male players. Historically, video game rhetoric has put the straight, white male in the role of a hero. They claim that games preach a dangerous form of masculinity, despite their smokescreen of diversity among male playable characters. For example, Mario and Link represent different levels of masculinity in their physical appearances -- Mario being a stout, mustached plumber and Link being a long-haired, more feminine looking character. Despite their physicalities, Mario and Link share the same goal in the end: save the girl. The authors argue that this “white, male savior narrative” is harmful because it perpetuates the toxic misconception that these people are being marginalized by some outsider, when, in reality, they hold the majority of privilege in society. 

Duke Nukem

Another dichotomic pair of male characters Salter and Blodgett use to support their argument is Duke N
ukem and Leisure Suit Larry. Duke Nukem from the 1991 game of the same title, is hyper-masculine in appearance to an extreme level. His game offers no sense of irony in his masculinity. For example, some of his voice lines include “Nobody steals our chicks...and lives!” and “Shake it, baby,” directed at strippers he faces throughout the game. He follows up these words with actions that objectify women and glorify violence, so the character can’t even be dismissed as satirical. The game ended up being a representation of the white male’s self-identified struggles. Alternatively, Leisure Suit Larry is an entire game focused on the

Leisure Suit Larry

commodification of women. Larry’s goal throughout the game is to get laid, yet he still fails if the woman he has sex with is “sexually ‘flawed’ in some way that thwarts his conquest.” While Larry and Nukem
represent different physical levels of masculinity, the way their games preach dominance and superiority over women is almost exactly the same.

The authors also cite the dramatic overrepresentation of males in video games as another factor reinforcing toxic masculinity in the community. Even in places where gender representation should be theoretically balanced, such as virtual worlds with character creators, studies showed 86.09% of playable characters being men in 150 games in 2009. Coupled with the fact that males are more likely to perceive spaces as containing more women than are actually present, they often feel threatened by a rising female presence in video games.

Games are growing in diversity and accessibility as of 2021. However, the face of the game industry and the prominent figure behind the word “gamer” remains the straight, white male. As games and players continue to diversify, Salter and Blodgett argue that the hostility emerging from male spaces will keep existing as a response to the “gamer” identity disappearing.

Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2017). Come Get Some: Damsels in Distress and the Male Default Avatar in Video Games. In Toxic geek masculinity in media: Sexism, trolling, and identity policing. essay, Springer International Publishing.

Sterling, J. (2012, July 6). New Game invites players to beat up Anita Sarkeesian. Destructoid. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.destructoid.com/new-game-invites-players-to-beat-up-anita-sarkeesian/.

Stuart, K. (2014, December 3). Zoe Quinn: 'all Gamergate has done is ruin people's lives'. The Guardian. Retrieved October 16, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/03/zoe-quinn-gamergate-interview.

Geek Masculinity in the Asian Context Represented in Neon Genesis Evangelion

As talked about in Salter & Blodgett (2017), the term "geek" is a very US-centric term which refers to STEM-oriented adolescents or young adults who stereotypically are socially awkward, timid and unconfident, as typically opposed to a "jock," who is masculine, popular and athletic. However, the negative connotations of "geek" slowly become more complicated and is shifting towards a neutral meaning with the expansion of technology and the emergence of figures like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, who have been enjoying more fame and reputation for "pushing the development" of technology in the modern world. On the other hand, the stigmatization of geeks are not entirely removed by such figures. The geeks' own struggles with their identities and their ideal "heroes" in games, manga and movies who are masculine still is very much present in their communities as well as in their age groups, as people are expected to be mature, sociable and confident as they grow up into adulthood. This struggle of geek masculinity is not limited to America, despite its US-centric nature, but expands into parts of the world where technology has become the primary source of production and entertainment, such as Asia. The predicaments of the Asian version of geeks, or "otaku," is very well represented in the classic Japanese anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

First, the concept of an "Otaku" is even with more negative connotations than a "geek." The word "Otaku" inherently has an implication of being a awkward and socially inept social outcast who is obsessed with the virtual world with gaming, manga and anime, while some (but not all) dedicate themselves to technology. The story of Neon Genesis Evangelion depicts such a timid, unconfident character named Shinji with a weak and insecure personality, who in the original project was more mature, robust, and less introverted than the final version; he should also have been portrayed as a studious boy, a "quiet A-student". His scholastic conduct would not be seen in a positive light, but as a sign of passivity.

The story is essentially about his forced growth into a masculine and skillful mecha pilot who needs to defend the world from invasion (which is another stereotypically hyper-masculine mission). This mission of growth into a warrior does relate to the point that the "heroes" for geeky or otaku characters being masculine. In this sense, though not a typical American "jock," the ideal model for Shinji also focuses on hyper-masculine features such as battles, bravery, and technological skills (as represented as mecha-piloting). This struggle to become more masculine and mature and the sufferings it induces is depicted with much dedication, so much so that the anime was seen as a psychological analysis more than a adrenaline-inducing mecha anime, and it is deemed a deconstruction of mecha anime by its fandom. The series is dedicated to the geek or the otaku community about this inevitable struggle that they often have to endure which is that they are bound to be forced to be mature enough to be integrated into the mainstream society, and they have to one day face the darkness and arbitrariness of the society despite their comfort and sense of control in their virtual worlds and technologies. This work magnifies the anxiety that geeks and otakus together face in front of the gaze of the society which expects them to be masculine, mature, and sociable, and this expectation is brilliantly exaggerated to be the need to fight monsters and to pilot mechas that are hundreds of times larger than their bodies.

Female characters in Neon Genesis Evangelion are also examples of how females can be portrayed as equals to the male, geeky protagonists but at the same time serve only as typical peripheral characters as suggested in Salter & Blodgett (2017). In a general sense, they exist as motivations and lessons to be learned by Shinji instead of having their own agency to be at the center stage. Though there is no direct harm done to the women by the protagonist per se, Shinji’s growth is often accompanied by the deaths of the female characters that he develops transference or affections to. In this sense, though Rei and Asuka are both able to pilot the mechas as well as Shinji could (i.e. as technologically and mentally capable), they still seem to serve as subservient, peripheral, stereotypical female characters that do not really share equality with Shinji.

Neon Genesis Evangelion takes the gaze of society upon geeks and otakus and makes it a tangible crisis to be perceived and suffered from by a typical geeky character. The forcible growth of Shinji is also what is forced on every person who resembles him in real life. However, the idea of becoming mature, masculine and competitive may be an important motif for stories in 1995 when Neon Genesis Evangelion first came out when the narrative competition equals good were rampant with the rise of neoliberalism and fierce economic competition, but is it necessarily as threatening now in 2021 with tolerance as one of the most desired quality? In an era when geeks can be at the center stage of TV shows and technologies are creating more values than physical manpower ever could, maybe there is no longer any monsters out there for people like Shinji to fight, and the gaze of society for geeks to be more masculine and athletic is merely Don Quixote charging at the windmill.

Yuheng

References

Salter, A., & Blodgett, B. (2017). Introduction: Actually, it's about toxic geek masculinity.... Toxic Geek

         Masculinity in Media. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-66077-6_1.

Wikipedia contributors. (2021, October 15). Neon Genesis Evangelion. In Wikipedia, The Free 

         Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:15, October 16, 2021, from         

        https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.phptitle=Neon_Genesis_Evangelion&oldid=10501242,31

From “Margin to Center” to Marginalizing

The dominant discourse in gaming culture sustains the identity of gamer and game designer/producer as white, male, and “geek”. Gaming industries are complicit in normalizing this framing by producing and marketing content towards this community, in large part because the industry is composed of folks who identify with said community. Jonathan Dovey and Helen W. Kennedy in their 2007 chapter “From Margin to Center: Biographies of Technicity and the Construction of Hegemonic Games Culture” suggest the characteristic homogeneity in gaming culture, dictated by an exclusive set of tastes and sensibilities, exercises hegemonic influence on the games that are created and how they are received. The ensuing vicious cycle within gaming culture marginalizes and “others” those who do not identify as white men – women, people of color, queer, and differently abled folks. Fascinatingly, what Dovey and Kennedy reveal is the early adopters and “founding fathers” of gaming culture were once, or at least perceived themselves as, on the margins themselves.

Figure 1. The Hacker (Pixabay)

Dovey and Kennedy identify the idealized subject within gaming culture through conceptualizing “technicity,” defined as the interconnection of technological competence and identity (133). They frame technicity through two dominant tropes doubling as subjectivities in game culture development – the hacker and the cyborg. The hacker is characterized by technological “edge,” the combination of possessing cutting-edge tech and sophisticated ability in adapting technologies to perform functions outside of their normative purpose. In our collective imagination hackers can either be heroes or villains but are branded by their skills and relative anonymity and loner status (see Figure 1). However, the hacker identity is reliant on access to computers, a resource which is attainable to some, but inaccessible to others on the basis of class, race, and gender. A cursory analysis easily reveals the hacker as the white male idealized subject. Though hackers with identities outside of white and masculine exist, they are not included in the prevailing mythos of gaming culture (Dovey and Kennedy 2007, 136).                          

Figure 2. The Cyborg (Pixabay)

The origin of the cyborg figure was developed as a response to the novel integration between humans and machines (see Figure 2). The ensuing connection held promise of a conglomerate identity which would encourage the marginalized to embrace their connection with technology and form a radical subjectivity, aligning with feminist thought. Though a noble notion, the concept of the cyborg was ultimately co-opted by “…militarized masculinity in Terminator form…” (Dovey and Kennedy 2007, 137). Cyborgs were immortalized in popular culture by their inhumanness and machine-like qualities and not for their potential to generate experimental subjectivities that would challenge the corporate domination over technology.Dovey and Kennedy suggest the hacker and cyborg mythos are integral to understanding the development of gaming culture, since they are the preferred subjectivities apparent in the biographies of the “founding fathers” who maintain a specific form of dominant technicity. Their interrogation reveals those who are placed as the founders of gaming culture in the prevailing imagination of the industry are an extraordinarily homogeneous group, with the following characteristics and backgrounds:

• Early access and engagement with technology and computer games
• Early engagement with tabletop games
• Interest in mathematics and engineering
• Masculine identity
• Perhaps predispositions with obsessive and asocial behavior (cyborgian & hacker qualities)
• Disapproval or rebelliousness against authority

Their experiences in playing and programming from an early stage may have been a method to “stick it to the man,” i.e. corporate systems, but in so doing they received the technical skills which became commercially valuable and mainstream. The resultant emergence of a dominant technicity and version of gaming culture repositioned the programmer/designer/hacker from margin to center.

The outcome of this transposition had consequences for folks who did not fit into the homogenous mold, who subsequently (and likely were already) excluded from the dominant culture. As are most social and cultural artifacts and systems, technology is highly racialized and gendered. The techno-artifact of the computer itself is associated with power and thus masculinity (Dovey and Kennedy 2007, 146). Cyberculture does offer opportunities through which identities of the “othered” can both be expressed in a radical way, where their stories can be rendered visible through disruption and counternarratives to the dominant culture. But this is often done within the confines of platforms and systems that fully intend to preserve their cultural capital and maintain the hegemonic power structures by circulating existing norms, (re)marginalizing the “othered.” It is essential to interrogate what is normalized within the dominant gaming culture to understand the asymmetrical power structures at play and identify ways in which to challenge those norms. Dovey and Kennedy offer a look into the socio-history of the construction of the dominant gaming culture, in which those who considered themselves on the margins gained the cultural capital to convert to the center, (re)marginalizing those who did not fit the mold.

Sarah

Sources: 

Dovey, J., & Kennedy, H. W. (2007). From margin to center: Biographies of technicity and the construction of hegemonic games culture. The players’ realm: Studies on the culture of video games and gaming, 131-153.