The article here: http://www.nichegamer.net/2014/10/on-gamers-culture-and-gamergate/
This is also a comment to the blogpost, can be found here: http://www.nichegamer.net/2014/10/on-gamers-culture-and-gamergate/#comment-1635054737
This is an amazing article. The account of #GamerGate being a postmodern movement, fighting against an imposed narrative from remnants of old modernity is indeed pretty good.
However, i invite the author to consider this.
It is entirely possible to have a "modern" mind that both maintains the core History narrative, but also embraces the totality of postmodern experiences, accumulates them inside a single picture, and empowers them towards a shared brilliant goal.
I know this may seem hard to imagine. After all, the core premise of postmodernity is that there is no such thing as a single unifying "objective" point of view. But i personally seem to be repeatedly successful at finding this point of view in all the increasingly "postmodern" scenarios my life has thrown at me so far. Find them without disrespecting individual experiences of "postmodern"-minded people, mind you.
In privacy of my own mind, i call this state of philosophical being "supermodern". I also well and truly feel that games as a medium offer the best opportunity to explore this "supermodern" approach, because the essence of a great game is to embrace the multitude of ways in which players are able to play it, while still guiding them along a core narrative.
Therefore, my frame for #GamerGate conflict is this.
There is a truly "postmodern" unity of gamers.
There is a "modern" side of game professionals, - their modernity defined largely by the current production needs of game industry. There is no such thing as "postmodern programming", after all :D
Some examples include:
- James Portnow and Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits
- Sid Meier, trucking along with Civilizations, his work proving to be an invincible testament to the sheer mechanical scale of game experiences
- Nintendo in general, and Miyamoto in particular, that managed to not only rise above the whole #GamerGate thing simply by communicating its values directly to its customers, but also preserved their core ethics and aesthetics against all financial pressures
Among game professionals, there are some that feel the untapped potential of "modern" transforming into "supermodern", but they are unable to articulate this transformation, being stuck in their invdividual narratives. Still, they feel this untapped potential and this drives them to demand more of games and gamers. Drives them to refuse the "no, i just want to play" answers.
The answer to the plight of this group of game professionals seems to lie in figuring out what is it exactly that all games share that seems to bind gamers together as an identity - and building a supermodern structure around it.
However, this group of professionals finds itself unable to properly function when faced with some of postmodernity's uglier sides such as harrassment and death threats. Having been forced to deal with innate "postmodern" state of gamers for decades, they have finally given up trying to understand us and codified this in "gamers are dead" articles. In which, they pretty much consigned themselves to slow professional demise.
All the while, the ones who prove most successful in terms of aggregated respect of the industry, are those who succeed in figuring out how to carry on their own core narratives not in opposition to postmodern state of gamer societies, but drawing upon it and empowering it.
- John "TotalBiscuit" Bain
These are just the biggest examples. There are plenty more.
The "surface only" state of postmodernity is its big strength against classic modernity. But it is also its biggest weakness, because "surface only" affords all sorts of ugly internal structures to flourish. It is because of postmodernity that we have such unhealthy climate in our industry and such frustrating lack of progress on games-as-an-artform front.
What will allow us to overcome this postmodernity, tame it and put it to good use, is a very special supermodern thinking. Not the Social Justice dictatorship of common modernity, but actual understanding of truth, beauty and justice inherent to games as a medium.
This is also a comment to the blogpost, can be found here: http://www.nichegamer.net/2014/10/on-gamers-culture-and-gamergate/#comment-1635054737
This is an amazing article. The account of #GamerGate being a postmodern movement, fighting against an imposed narrative from remnants of old modernity is indeed pretty good.
However, i invite the author to consider this.
It is entirely possible to have a "modern" mind that both maintains the core History narrative, but also embraces the totality of postmodern experiences, accumulates them inside a single picture, and empowers them towards a shared brilliant goal.
I know this may seem hard to imagine. After all, the core premise of postmodernity is that there is no such thing as a single unifying "objective" point of view. But i personally seem to be repeatedly successful at finding this point of view in all the increasingly "postmodern" scenarios my life has thrown at me so far. Find them without disrespecting individual experiences of "postmodern"-minded people, mind you.
In privacy of my own mind, i call this state of philosophical being "supermodern". I also well and truly feel that games as a medium offer the best opportunity to explore this "supermodern" approach, because the essence of a great game is to embrace the multitude of ways in which players are able to play it, while still guiding them along a core narrative.
Therefore, my frame for #GamerGate conflict is this.
There is a truly "postmodern" unity of gamers.
There is a "modern" side of game professionals, - their modernity defined largely by the current production needs of game industry. There is no such thing as "postmodern programming", after all :D
Some examples include:
- James Portnow and Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits
- Sid Meier, trucking along with Civilizations, his work proving to be an invincible testament to the sheer mechanical scale of game experiences
- Nintendo in general, and Miyamoto in particular, that managed to not only rise above the whole #GamerGate thing simply by communicating its values directly to its customers, but also preserved their core ethics and aesthetics against all financial pressures
Among game professionals, there are some that feel the untapped potential of "modern" transforming into "supermodern", but they are unable to articulate this transformation, being stuck in their invdividual narratives. Still, they feel this untapped potential and this drives them to demand more of games and gamers. Drives them to refuse the "no, i just want to play" answers.
The answer to the plight of this group of game professionals seems to lie in figuring out what is it exactly that all games share that seems to bind gamers together as an identity - and building a supermodern structure around it.
However, this group of professionals finds itself unable to properly function when faced with some of postmodernity's uglier sides such as harrassment and death threats. Having been forced to deal with innate "postmodern" state of gamers for decades, they have finally given up trying to understand us and codified this in "gamers are dead" articles. In which, they pretty much consigned themselves to slow professional demise.
All the while, the ones who prove most successful in terms of aggregated respect of the industry, are those who succeed in figuring out how to carry on their own core narratives not in opposition to postmodern state of gamer societies, but drawing upon it and empowering it.
- John "TotalBiscuit" Bain
These are just the biggest examples. There are plenty more.
The "surface only" state of postmodernity is its big strength against classic modernity. But it is also its biggest weakness, because "surface only" affords all sorts of ugly internal structures to flourish. It is because of postmodernity that we have such unhealthy climate in our industry and such frustrating lack of progress on games-as-an-artform front.
What will allow us to overcome this postmodernity, tame it and put it to good use, is a very special supermodern thinking. Not the Social Justice dictatorship of common modernity, but actual understanding of truth, beauty and justice inherent to games as a medium.
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