The whole Gamergate thing has been going on for some time now, and it
shows no sign of dissipating any time soon, to the point at which it’s spilling
over into RPG’s and tabletop games and people are asking what we need to do
about it.
I have little experience in online gaming, I enjoy playing games, not seeking with lunatic intent to kill and win
against the other players, or building unassailable positions so I can sit
behind the shields and laugh, or camp in a tower fifteen miles up so I can
snipe at people and send “Lolz” down the comms at them, so I’ve stayed out of
Gamergate because I don’t really have the perspective with which to talk about
it.
However...
I’ve been involved in Tabletop and RPG for years, and I do have a
singular perspective when it comes to the games I play and the hobby I
love. A lot of the problem with
Gamergate seems to be the anonymity with which people can throw nasty comments
and stupidity around, if you get banned from a server, you make a new identity
and you’re back on in minutes talking the same shit, and you can keep doing
that as long as there’s letters in the alphabet. There’s IP banning and other things that can
be done, but for the most part, short of some ethereal Banhammer I don’t know
about, the idiots preaching the idiocy can keep coming back (and if there is
some ethereal Banhammer, why isn’t anyone using it...).
Not so much the case with Tabletop games, particularly those where you’re
all at the same table, because the point of bullying is that you’re going after
an easy target, something weaker than you, and you’re not expecting it really
to fight back. Or even better, you’re
expecting to say whatever you want and get away with it because no one really
knows who you are...
That’s not so easy at a tabletop game when the whole table can see
you...
I went to Gencon last year, ran a few games, played in one, and came to
the conclusion that gamers are gamers the world over, there wasn’t really too
much difference in how people played, only different accents around the
table. When I went to Worldcon, same
thing, just more Europeans than Americans, and to be honest, none of us was
having a problem, people of every gender, race, and creed all playing
together. In all the years I’ve played,
I’ve never seen someone cause a problem at a table by being sexist or racist, I’ve
seen people cause problems by being idiots, such as turning up drunk to the
table and falling off their chair a few times, or just turning up and being a
howling arsehole, but that was to the whole table, not any one person in
particular.
Stupidity exists, but for the most part, it’s like orbital artillery,
it lands on everyone and lands equal, doesn’t matter who or what you are, it’ll
land on you along with everyone else.
Targetted maliciousness, which is what I feel we’re dealing with here, is
something that (for my own experience) doesn’t appear at the table much because
a smack in the mouth often offends, and if the person being offended doesn’t do
the smacking, someone else at the table or the GM usually does because what we
do in Tabletop Gaming is a social activity, and social activities are no fun
when there’s an atmosphere at the table.
I’m told by many that there are problems in the RPG world, and given
that I’m white and a man, it could be that I don’t see them because my skin
colour and gender has blinded me to them, but I don’t think that’s the case
(but then I would think that, wouldn’t I?), but when I ask if I can help, I’m
told no, that people have to sort these things out and not have me charging in
there to “Rescue” them.
Fine...
I’m lying if I say that, because it’s not fine for people to have
problems and not have others on hand to help them, I was brought up in the
shadow of the Coal War, when my country was split into factions and everyone
was at each others throat and the only thing that we had was our
community.
Our next door neighbours organised a village fair every year and the
streets around all came to it and had a good time because that’s what
communities do, and I learned that you should help all the people you can when
you can, because there may come a time when you can’t, and you’ll be looking to
them for help. This in turn fostered in
me a need to help others, and I didn’t always get it right, sometimes I did it
for them when what I should have done was just help them to do it themselves,
but I was younger then, and I didn’t know enough to know that sometimes people
just needed to get on with it by themselves, and stand ready to help them back
up if they fell.
Sometimes today I still don’t, because the need to help people is
strong for me, it’s one of the guiding principles that I live by, and I can’t
just turn that off like a switch. I was
bullied my whole school life, and I can’t stand by while the same is happening
to others, even those I’ve never met before.
I suspect the same is true of many who started playing when they were
younger, particularly those of my age group, who would have encountered the
same sorts of bastardry that I did and in the same quantities because there was
no one there to stop it happening to them.
So here’s my quandary, I don’t think there’s too much of a problem in
Tabletop, but perhaps I don’t have the whole picture. I can’t make a good plan without a whole
picture, but I’m in a position to make things better at the biggest tabletop convention
in England, I can make things better at the biggest RPG convention in London,
and as I take on more conventions, I can make things better at them too.
What I need from everyone else are the things that could be improved, I’m
not saying I can immediately do them all, I’m saying that if I know about
something, I can try to do something about
it. I don’t want to know what’s happened
in the past unless people want to tell me, I don’t want to probe into painful
memories, that’s just pouring iodine on open wounds, I want to know what would
have improved things, what could have prevented it in the first place, I want
to know what would have made it better.
I can’t do anything about anonymous
idiots, but in the places where I work, I can make that difference.
I will make that difference
I’ve been hearing about this for weeks, and I want to do what I can, because
what I see are a lot of people shouting about what’s wrong and very few asking what they can do, and I can stand here
and call the idiots out all day long, but they won’t go for me because I’m no
longer the easy target I once was, and because they won’t go for me, it makes
it difficult for me to see the problem that everyone else faces, so help me
understand what the problems are, don’t look at my gender or my skin colour and
tell me that it’s not my problem to solve, give me the same courtesy that
everyone else is after, treat me like just another human and let me help...
Please...
