Re: ExtraCredits Dan Fw: Leigh Alexander's greatest work

A copy of this TwitLonger: https://twitter.com/ec_maxi/status/517715504031858688

@EC_DanielFloyd @ExtraCreditz
This is a response to Dan retweeting what Leigh Alexander considers her "greatest work".

I am writing this because i feel that your show - Extra Credits - is effectively the best thing to happen to this industry since ... Mario 64? I feel that way because your show addresses the things that make games a true art form. Your show addresses this in a consistent and convincing form and has been an inspiration for me in my own game industry work.

I am not aware of any other show in the industry that does what you do on the level that you do. TotalBiscuit's shows occasionally come close, but even he lacks a certain aesthetic sense that you guys over at Extra Credits succeed to manifest regularly.

Extra Credits addresses things that made me a gamer and helped me figure out what my identity as a gamer means. I am a big fan of Extra Credits and i've been happily recommending this show to all my friends.

At this point, you might already have an incling of what all of this unreserved flattery i have been showering upon you has to to with Leigh Alexander. Let me explain either way.

I strongly feel that, in writing her "Gamers are over" article - http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.php - Leigh Alexander painted herself into an enemy of everything that makes me a gamer. And thus an enemy of everything that makes games true. I am using the word "enemy" deliberately here, exactly to highlight how deeply her written word has offended me.

I understand that there is a possibility that this might not have been her intention. There is a lot of verbal excrement being dumped on her right now - she is being accused of "pushing feminist agenda", " being a corrupt journalist" and all the other stuff by folks over at GamerGate. Their version paints her as some sort of enemy mastermind seeking to subvert all the good things in gaming.
Me? I'm unconvinced on the account of all of this being her deliberate intention.

However much "evidence" GamerGate unearths, it is still entirely possible that, in her mind, Leigh Alexander sincerely might have just been trying to get across the idea that "gamer" is some kind of limited minority of people enjoying a dying strand of game, the existence of which holds the industry back.

However, there are two problems.

First problem is that i am convinced that this is simply wrong.

Leigh's core assertion seems to be that gamer culture is about excluding people from the fun. I don't see that. Instead, to me, game culture has been the most connecting and inclusive of experiences. Of course, i have encountered my share of ... dinkheads, for the lack of better word ... in the gaming scene. However, in every single instance of me encountering said dinkheads, i found one simple thing.

The things that make a person act like a dinkhead have nothing at all to do with games. These things are insecurities - about oneself, people of other gender, one's place in the world and future. It is these things that drive a person to act in exclusive manner. And, ultimately, a person like that turns to games because - behind all the insecurities - he still wants to feel connected to someone. And in the glorious experience of fun in gaming, he actually can. And, if he is just a bit lucky, a person like that is then able to find the experiences that let him get over the insecurities, grow as a person and learn to include people in his life.

If games matter at all, this is how.

Leigh Alexander denies all that. She was quickly to brand all gamers "obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers", unable to appreciate her vision of games as "tragicomedy, vignette, musicals, dream worlds, family tales, ethnographies, abstract art". Apparently, for her, there is no such thing as a powerful unifying transformative experience that is unique to games and is uniquely powerful because of that. Instead, she laments the fact that gaming experience does not incorporate what she considers more worthy artforms to a degree she'd like.

This alone wouldn't be a problem. This disdain for human beings that enjoy games for what they are and not as a "tragicomedy" or "vignette" wouldn't make Leigh Alexander my enemy. I would simply dismiss her, having decided that she is simply a person projecting her feeling of superior exlusivity upon others.

However, she then takes it just one step further. She says
"they are not my audience. They don’t have to be yours. There is no ‘side’ to be on, there is no ‘debate’ to be had.
There is what’s past and there is what’s now. There is the role you choose to play in what’s ahead.".

I have read this passage multiple times. I gave all the benefit of the doubt i could. But the only conclusion i can come out of it is that this is a straight political challenge, rooted in ideological differences.

She wants to take the games in a different direction, away from the people that is not "her audience" that does not immediately appreciate her "musicals and abstract art". She is not willing to hear out the other side or work to make her ideas understandable, because there is "no 'debate' to be had". And she is openly challenging the reader to pick a role.

Well, here is my answer.
I feel that games have their own unique value as an art medium, that is entirely separate from "vignettes and musicals".
I feel the the very inclusivity that games afford is the result of this unique value of games as an art medium.
I feel that Leigh Alexander wants to exploit that inclusivity to propagate something that has nothing at all to do with games, but is rather a reduction of games to other art mediums.
She does not appreciate the extremely diverse group of people who have been both the fans and creators of the art medium of games up until now.
She is not giving proper respect to unique values of games that makes this inclusivity possible.
In wanting to exploit the inclusivity of games while defying its source, she will inevitably act as the source of self-contradiction that, if allowed to infiltrate games too deeply, will destroy them.

My role prior to Leigh Alexander's article was to simply study games as an art medium, explore the messages of game mechanics and make games.
Now i will make a point of being extra careful to make sure that any game i'm making won't become a "vignette" devoid of interactive agency of games, and to caution everyone else from falling into the same trap.

Which brings me back to Extra Credits.

Dan

I understand you think highly of Leigh Alexander. I have been following Extra Credits for long enough to know that she was your inspiration for more than one episode of the show. For that, i hold nothing but respect.

That being said, i implore you to ...

Do a single thought experiment. It shouldn't take much of your time or effort. But it may let you feel better where i'm coming from here.

Imagine for a second not Leigh Alexander's horrific vision of a group of boys that tells her she can't play, but rather a completely different vision of an otherwise isolated child (of any gender you like) finding friends to play with through games.

Imagine this child growing up to feel that it is important to not just be a passive "player" of games, but to be an involved and appreciative "gamer". Try to get in the mindset of this child as he walks through school, puberty, youth, all the way up to his 30s, always finding games as his spiritual home to return to for contemplation, recuperation, communion. Seeing more and more people embrace the medium that is game for the same things that he came to love in it. And, ultimately, always finding in games the energy and meaning that would propel him actually improve both his own life and life of others.

And, now that you are in the mindset of said child, please read the "Gamers are over" article of Leigh Alexander.

If the things i've been getting out of your Extra Credits show have anything to do with what you've been putting in it, you should feel some of what i've described above. That feeling of something truly sacred being touched with hands that hold no love for it.

Everything that comes after that i will leave to your discretion.
Including the possibility that what i've been getting out of Extra Credits was not what you put in it.

With best regards and utter respect
Maxim Preobrazhenskiy