Now that GDC is behind us and I'm back from vacation, I wanted to respond in particular to the rant by fellow Game Critics Rant panelist and Smartbomb co-author Heather Chaplin, by far the most controversial and the most-discussed.
Chaplin asserted that our familiar argument that games themselves are an adolescent medium -- one I recently trotted out myself -- is a straw man. We frequently cite the young age of video games, she says, but when film was this age, it was about to birth Citizen Kane. When popular music was this age, Chaplin said, it had its Beatles already.
She argued that medium's age is not the correct source of blame for the often insultingly juvenile nature of games, the tiresome prevalence of space marines, bikini girls and typified young male power fantasies. Her point: Games aren't adolescent. Game developers are a bunch of, in her words, "fucking adolescents."
If you were at that panel, then you probably saw my jaw on the floor at that. My first reaction was that I was simply so impressed that she had the stones to get up and say that to a room full of male developers. And she'd structured her argument such that I didn't immediately feel that she was wrong.
After all, I'm sick of seeing Lord of the Rings and Star Wars treated as if they are the absolute only two extant cultural sources for non-realistic narratives. Things that we hold up as groundbreaking in terms of story, immersion, emotion here in the West, are what -- Oblivion? Mass Effect? Half-Life? Let me be enormously clear, here: Those are great games, and I have the highest genuine respect for the teams behind them and the way in which they try to further human interaction in their very high-quality work.
But plainly: That's nerd stuff.
And hey. I'm a nerd. Just to be clear I'm not holier-than-thou here, I run a freaking video game blog in my spare time. But every time I hear a game designer talk about how they hope video games can be "sophisticated" and "reach broader audiences" the way that comic books can, I die a little inside. Comic books are cool and all, but if I thought video games would stay stuck in that niche, I'd quit writing. I agree with Chaplin: Tights-and-cape fantasies aimed at young men are not mature at all, and I want developers to do better.
Chaplin essentially maintained that this adolescent "guy culture" and the games it produces prevents development from diversifying -- it repels women who might bring alternate perspectives to the table, it repels, basically, everyone who isn't part of it, which means that games are in danger of staying stuck in this self-perpetuating rut.
The rut's real. She's right about that. And there may be some small holes in her argument: Music went through centuries of widespread cultural permeation before it could birth rock. By then, it was already a reflection of the human condition, a sign of the times. Film was much more widely respected as an entertainment medium right from its inception. And while on the timeline games should chronologically be ready to produce a Citizen Kane, the concept of game-as-art, as something other-than-toy, is much younger than the medium's overall age. Many of these possibilities are still new to us.
But where I take a sharp detour from her argument is where she accuses developers of arrested development. She says that true sophistication in games requires "responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery," traits she says "frighten men."
She even raised (and educated me in) the biology concept of neoteny, whereby new species begin to resemble the embryos of the animals from whence they evolved -- chihuahuas, for example, look like fetal wolves. The takeaway: Game developers are men who are so backward they're more like babies than adults.
According to Chaplin, these baby-dog developers are so childish the only material they're capable of manifesting creatively is the "adolescent power fantasies" they can't actualize in reality. Translated plain, she's calling them impotent.
Hold up. Chaplin wants more emotional maturity, more sophistication, and less adolescence for games -- I do, too. Seriously, let's all maybe read a few more books, guys, let's maybe watch a few more films, let's try to gain some further cultural sophistication. Let's try for real sexuality instead of just half-dressed celluloid constructs. Let's try for conflict that goes beyond the splattering headshot. Let's look at some more advanced examples of maturity in art than, say Watchmen, which is fine and all, but it ain't literature. Sorry.
But a dearth of cultural maturity -- and the social maturity that tends to go with that -- is a long, long way away from a lack of manhood. Okay, many game developers may be culturally unsophisticated, but challenging their human adulthood and masculinity is a really low blow. And blaming men's fabled "fear of intimacy" for just about everything is a chestnut as old as, well, Lord of the Rings.
I get comments, emails and correspondence with innumerable designers, writers, programmers, artists, producers, marketing folks, whatever you can name -- and to tell you the honest truth, I do not know anyone like the beastly children she described. Certainly, not a one of them would ever look me in the face and call me a "little girl." I'd sock 'em for that.
Despite ever-increasing progressiveness, I'd never be so naive as to claim there's absolutely no "guy culture" in games. There's "guy culture" everywhere. And yes, we want diversity on game teams. We want the traditional development base to become more open to new perspectives. We want more women on board.
As a woman, though, I never felt that emasculating men was the right way to get them to accept me.
More and more women are showing up at GDC every year. More and more of them are speaking at GDC. I hope next year they bring better ideas than kicking the boys in the nuts. That's neither constructive, relevant, healthy nor necessary, and I'd hate for that to be the industry's introduction to "girl culture."
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By the way, pseudonymous developer and friend of SVGL Spitfire has posted one of my favorite responses yet not only to Chaplin ("you can't blame us for chasing the market," et al), but to the rant panel overall -- and his is not just my favorite because he says mine was good. If you haven't seen any coverage, this is probably the best round-up I can point you to. I say 'probably,' because I tried not to read too much coverage -- sort of aware of the weaknesses in my own delivery. Not like my argument was anywhere near perfect, either.
UPDATE: I just found David Jaffe's response to the rant, too, if you're interested.
