Category Archives: Leadership Studies

Class Play

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My freshmen class has been playingBioshock for the past several classes, so we’ve been discussing game mechanics, ethics, and the viability of utopian ideals. One of the essential characteristics of a utopia, naturally enough, is exclusivity, and so rather than us “Olympus Heights” and “Apollo Square” to discuss issues of class exclusivity in the way we’ve been doing with the other levels, I thought I’d use a game to teach a game.

The game is simple, and modded from an ethics and racism course I found on Learning from a Legacy of Hate.

First, I asked them if Andrew Ryan had approached them in 1946 and said “Would you like to join Rapture?” whether they would choose to go or not. Each student was then asked to fill out an application to join Rapture (in the original, it’s a generic “application for membership”). Some students were serious about it, some were not, but that wasn’t the point.

As they were filling it out (you can see the “generic” application at the above link), they asked questions about it: “Why does Ryan need to know my religion? Doesn’t he not believe in religion?” “Why is my eye color important?” “Why does he care where I live now?” and so on.

When they were done, I asked them what their instincts told them about the application. One said it was “for a cult.” Another said it came from the university. Others didn’t like being asked about their beliefs or where their parents were born.

I then went through the criteria listed in the assignment guide, and asked everyone born in the US to stand up. Then all non-Caucasians had to sit. Then non-Christians. I had four students left. Then people who didn’t have an allegiance to something higher than the US. Only two.

Then I asked them how they felt. The two were happy. The others seemed dubious. I asked them if they would change anything if they could to be standing. Most said no. A couple said maybe. We talked about exclusivity.

I then congratulated the two still standing on their eligibility for the KKK (which is what the application originally came from). They were understandably horrified – which led to some really interesting discussions about the value of elitism in convincing people that something is “good” – whether it really is or not.

Now Rapture doesn’t discriminate based on race – but it does exclude religion, the uneducated, and (whether intentionally or not) the under-privileged. And it’s important to recognize that any form of exclusivity, whether racially or otherwise motivated, necessarily excludes people based on criteria other than those put forth – in the case of Rapture, class. There simply aren’t any truly poor in Rapture – not even the brilliant poor – just as there aren’t any truly poor in Ayn Rand’s Galt’s Gulch (on which Rapture is loosely based).

And class is important because it dictates so much more than just the amount of money in our pockets or bank accounts. It grants or denies us privilege, education, and status from the beginning of our lives, and takes away or gives opportunities that we have not earned or deserved. It’s important for us to recognize that, to take even a brief moment to realize that no one likes to be excluded, particularly on the basis of something over which we have no control, be it ethnicity, gender, or class. In the case of class, it’s even more important to understand that it is out of our control for at least part of our lives – and that exclusivity based on class is just as harmful as any other form of bigotry or discrimination.

Tag, You’re It!

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The last five years or so have seen an increase in crowd-sourcing (from places like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo) and crowd-source gaming (like Improv Anywhere or city-wide scavenger hunts, like those sponsored by SVNGR). Today I received a tweet from KindnessGirl in Richmond for Tag, You’re It!

It’s a different kind of tag, and it’s a part of crowd-source gaming that seeks not only to involve a community, but to involve a community in something good – in this case, in committing acts of kindness. The game works like this: you find a “kindness tag,” and you are IT. You then have to perform an act of kindness and then leave the tag to “tag” someone else. It then passes on.

Tag, You’re It! is a game that’s participating in what Jane McGonigal calls “happiness engineering” – a way to make ourselves and our society happier. Performing acts of kindness and receiving them make us feel happier – therefore, Tag, You’re It! is helping us to “engineer” a little more happiness into our community… both short term and, hopefully, long term.

This kind of game is a form of guerrilla leadership (I’m not sure if that’s actually a leadership term, but I’m going to use it as one) in which leadership is being enacted (in this case, by the mechanics of the game) on individuals mostly without their awareness. They’re playing a game, but in the process of interacting with its mechanics – performing an act of kindness, in this case – they’re transmitting a transformative ideology (of kindness).

The aim of these games is dual: first, to cause people to “engineer happiness,” and, second, to cause people to transform their lives long-term to be a little (or a lot) kinder to the people around them. The ultimate aim of a game like Tag, You’re It! is to make people want to continue the mechanic (a random act of kindness) even outside of the scope of gameplay. By making it a part of a game, that mechanic (the act of kindness) becomes autotelic – fun for its own sake. And once the mechanic becomes fun, then it no longer needs the framework of the game (or such is the hope) in order to remain a positive influence on the life of the player.

The Cost of Play

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Today, Kotaku linked to a New York Times article by one of its own, or, rather, a debate between Kotaku’s Stephen Totilo and Yahoo‘s Chris Suellentrop on the fiscal future of gaming. A part of this discussion was the assertion that “it was possible that 2012 would be the worst year for retail video game software and hardware sales since 2005.”

This financial hit is brought to us in part because of the general economic downturn, and in part because of the popularity of handheld phone games, which are free or astonishingly cheap (Angry Birds, for instance). I would argue that part of it is the lack of a next-generation console for the last several years. The Xbox 360 is the oldest, followed by the Wii, then the PS3, and even the PS3 is several years old at this point. People aren’t buying new hardware because they already have the hardware. Software purchases have decreased in retail stores because many of the games are available for download online through Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, or Steam, and they’re sometimes cheaper to buy without the box. Games are also getting more longevity out of the added replay value of multiplayer modes and downloadable content.

Totilo also points out that many industry games and hardware releases in 2012 – with a few notable exceptions – have been uninspiring. The Kinect, for instance, is interesting, but amounts to, he says, “a watered-down repeat of the Wii phenomenon.” Similar problems have faced Blizzard’s Diablo III: “How very 2012 it was for the vaunted hit-maker Blizzard to release a game, Diablo III, that was 11 years in the making and then have to repeatedly apologize for its shortcomings.” Games haven’t done well because they haven’t been well-crafted. D3 in particular was buggy, poorly written, and demanded almost as much time downloading patches as it did playtime (at least for me, and I admittedly gave up in disgust partway through chapter two).

Suellentrop points out that gaming is an expensive hobby – consoles cost in excess of $250, new-release games cost $60, and DLC tacks on $5 and $10 at every available opportunity. And if you want to play with friends, everyone needs a copy, meaning a layout of quite a bit of capital – especially if you compare it to the equipment needed to play Risk or soccer. But one $60 game can keep a player entertained for 40 hours… the first playthrough (unless it’s Skyrim, in which case I’m at about 50 hours and nowhere near halfway through the main plot). I have friends who have logged more than 100 hours in a single game – which ultimately makes that game (hour-by-hour) cheaper than most movies, and more stimulating. [Note: I do have to love him for suggesting that a book costs less than $25, new, and can provide many hours of entertainment and reread value.]

What I find more interesting is Suellentrop’s argument that this isn’t a problem exclusive to the gaming industry: “The nation is facing nothing less than a fiction crisis.” In short, while some indie developers have done some interesting things in 2012, the nation as a whole is producing crap for fictional media – videogames included. Totilo says – with a caveat to BioWare game players (like me) – that “few people play video games for the story,” arguing that a failure in fiction doesn’t account for the widespread failure of the gaming industry.

But I find myself agreeing with Suellentrop. Sure, people don’t, as Totilo says, play Angry Birds “for the story,” but we’re not talking about Angry Birds. Yes, that game will occupy tens of thousands of people on the subway, but that’s just it. They’re bored and confined and will do whatever it takes to keep themselves from punching the person next to them on a subway car. I’ve been there. You’ll play solitaire to keep from going mad on a subway, and it has even less of a story than Angry Birds.

But if you had a good book, a game with a good story, you’d rather be playing that. What you do when you get home from that hellish subway trip is not play more Angry Birds – you want to watch something, read something, or play something with a story that has intrinsic meaning and value. And here is where we need leadership in the entertainment industry: literary, cinema, television, and gaming. We need innovators not only in mechanics and technology, but in story development. Twilight should not be the closest thing to popular quality literature produced in this decade. Please.

Vote Shepard

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So IGN has been holding a presidential election with videogame characters as the candidates. Each candidate represents a platform – not a party platform, but a gaming platform. For Xbox 360, Commander Shepard (Mass Effect) has just narrowly edged out his competitors. Apparently the Nintendo (Link from Legend of Zelda) and Playstation (Nathan Drake from Uncharted) primary elections did not have the same level of tension. The PC candidate is yet to be determined (you can see Duke Nukem’s campaign commercial here). But, Gameranx reports, as in real elections, there is some controversy surrounding the election of Commander Shepard as the primary winner for Xbox 360.

So what has people upset about Shepard’s primary nomination? A couple of things. First, there is a strong backing for Master Chief (Halo). Second, there is the suggestion that Xbox really doesn’t have that many good potential candidates, since only Xbox exclusive-release characters are eligible. Third, Mass Effect is available on PC, as well, and some argue that “contaminates” Shepard’s candidacy. Fourth, some people were upset that the male Shepard was the candidate put forth, instead of the female avatar (in their defense, male Shepard is on the box). Finally, Shepard is a “blank slate,” to quote Gameranx. In short, Shepard isn’t a set character with specific traits. He (or she) is whatever the player chooses, unlike, say, Master Chief.

The videogame-and-leadership scholar in me is positively giggling with delight and hopping up and down in her chair. I could not have paid IGN to do something more relevant. What’s great about the closeness of Shepard’s primary win is that it demonstrates that gamers become invested in the qualities and ideologies represented by their player-avatars. It demonstrates that how we design our characters and our games in the videogame industry really matters to the players in the gaming community. They are invested in who those characters represent and they understand that, as players, they are partly responsible for shaping them through gameplay.

That last part is, I think, why Shepard won the primary. While every player’s Shepard is a bit different (in appearance, attitude, style, etc.), Master Chief is much more of a tabula rasa, an “empty uniform,” to quote Band of Brothers. Shepard is as much a person as a videogame character can be, precisely because he or she is created by the player to reflect some level of personhood that Master Chief can’t capture – precisely because Master Chief has to be baseline accessible to all players sans customization.

But this election reflects on the way in which games are intertwined with cultural ideology, with politics, and even with our understanding of heroism and war. That the final two candidates were both war heroes (and that war heroes, like Grant or Eisenhower, tend to do well in real US Presidential elections) expresses our desire to be represented by men and women willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and for what they (we) believe to be right. We want leaders who are both transactional and transformational – we want them to represent our views and ideologies (which Shepard does, because we as players create those ideologies), but we also want them to be transformational, capable of changing their world (our world) for the better.

In short, players are choosing the characters they wish they could be, and a character like Shepard does that better than most because of the level of control the player has over his design. We’ll see where the election ends up, but the fact that so many people care so much about this single character – whether because of the ending of Mass Effect 3 or this election or the “open vote” method BioWare used to choose the appearance of its standard female Shepard – says to me that we want our characters to, in some way, be better versions of ourselves. I think that, ultimately, that’s a hopeful sign that we possess the capacity for change, just as our characters do. And in this world, that’s a very good thing.

Save the Trolls?

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So today’s post is the consequence not of someone’s blog post, but of an email sent out to the Digital Games Research Association list. Apparently, the emailer (Jason Wilson) notes, there has been recent concern in Australia with trolling, which, given the media attention being paid to it here is probably unsurprising. After a fairly comprehensive definition of what a troll is and an analysis of how trolls interact with – and are even produced by – the “desire for deliberative democracy” that characterizes much of the online community.

And this is where things got interesting.

Trolls are usually someone else, defined from our own position and interests. When they are not, and we inhabit trolling, we discover that trolling requires know-how, close reading, experience, sometimes sympathy with those we would disrupt.

 What are the consequences to seeing trolling and other forms of affective behaviour as the norm, rather than the aberrant? The discourse of digital art has long since told this story, but the intellectual desire for open and constitutive democracy has overridden the ‘actually existing democracy’ of bullying, trolling, threats, inane memes and low signal-to-noise ratios. What would happen if we started to think of trolling as the central practice in online discourse? What if trolling is the Internet’s signature mode of discursive politics? What if we started to think about trolling as a practice which is generative rather than destructive?

Having heard the “confessions of an ex-troll” at SMCRVA last month, the idea that trolls might actually be contributing to the production and continuation of online community came as something of a surprise. But the sense that trolls are the perpetual Other – and almost never ourselves – raises some interesting questions. Are we trolling, for example, when we make arguments against a position with which we disagree when we know the other person cannot be persuaded? Is there anything wrong with perpetuating an argument just for the sake of perpetuating the argument? Is a devil’s advocate really a troll?

But I like the question, “What if we started to think about trolling as a practice which is generative rather than destructive?” Because when you stop to think about it, (some) trolling can be generative. For example, Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter project probably would not have garnered the attention, the funding, and the national awareness that it now has were it not for trolls. (That said, I would not wish their treatment of her on anyone, and I stand by my assertion that much of what was said and sent to her should never have happened.)

Trolling can draw attention to those issues that we take for granted but aren’t motivated enough to do something about. Online bullying. Sexism. Homophobia. Bigotry. By hyperemphasizing the accepted and tolerated low-level intolerance that is part and parcel of Western society, trolls are actually making a demand (whether on purpose or by counter-point) that we reexamine the mores that make up our dominant and sub-cultures to see why behavior like theirs is possible. Whether intentionally or not, trolling actually permits the kind of “deliberative democracy,” even though, as Wilson remarks, “Trolls are not interested in redeeming democracy through deliberation, and they mock attempts to do so.”

In short, in order for our society to be motivated enough to make a change, we need to recognize that our ideology is permissive of a degree of behavior that crosses a line. We are willing – whether ethically or not – to tolerate a certain level of bigotry because it doesn’t inconvenience us; trolls raise that level to the point where we are no longer willing to tolerate it, thus actually catalyzing systemic change.

I’m not sure I would call a troll a leader in the sense that we typically mean in leadership studies. Perhaps the internet age requires a new term to describe such leadership (although “troll leadership” just doesn’t sound right for so many reasons), or perhaps this is simply a new form of social satire produced by technological progress. Whatever the cause, perhaps Wilson is right that trolls aren’t all bad, and that maybe we need to leave one or two of the more innocuous ones under a few choice bridges.

 

[Note: For members of DiGRA, the original email can be accessed here.]

When the GM goes a little crazy…

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I‘ve posted about Junta before. But this time, things are a bit different and infinitely more awesome.

Most of the time, when the game ends, someone wins. That’s how games work.

Sometimes, the GM goes a little crazy, develops a god-complex, and decides to unleash a zombie horde on the players. And suddenly a competitive game rather instantly becomes cooperative. This makes the leadership studies professor inside me squeal with delight.

Two days ago, this group of ten people was lying to each other, backstabbing each other, and generally trying to get everyone else killed so that they could walk away with the most money. Insert a zombie invasion, and all of a sudden those ten people become compatriots in arms, best friends (which some of us were already outside of the game), and more than willing to cede authority to anyone who has a halfway decent plan for survival.

The dynamic of this sudden and immediate change reminds me considerably of the phenomenon we’ve been talking about in one of my classes – that crisis makes people immediately band together. Now in certain situations, crisis can permit the rise of a single charismatic leader behind whom the people will rally (for good or ill). In the case of our game, however, there is no single charismatic leader because, well, we’re all potential leaders (that is half the point of the game). What it produced in us was the sudden urge to collaborate.

And here’s the thing – the game also suddenly became a lot more fun. I think this is due to two factors. 1) This was totally unexpected. Novelty will produce a sense of elation that increases enjoyment. 2) Collaboration is naturally fun. We’ve learned this from horde modes, from Team Fortress 2‘s “Mann vs. Machine,” from Yggdrasil and Pandemic. Collaboration is just more fun because there is no enemy in the room – the Other (in this case, zombies) is a universal evil that we can all agree needs to be destroyed. (It helps that the Other is mindless and brain-eating so we don’t have to suppress any empathy.)

Essentially, by dropping a zombie apocalypse on us, our GM has given us a reason to unite with one another in a way which would never be possible in the “everyday” of the game. We’ve been given a common goal (“survive”) which we all want to achieve. It’s drastically changed the ludics of the game without actually needing to alter the mechanics themselves.

Best of all, perhaps, is that the game has ceased to be at all predictable. We no longer know the way things go – how long it will go on, what it takes to win, anything. In that sense, it mimics life much more truly than it ever can again (since we will know, in the next zombie apocalypse, how it works). And it’s amazing.

Boyhood, Manhood, and Why I’d Like to Hit Something

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This was sent to me by a colleague’s husband, who I’m sure realizes that it’s going to end up on this blog: “A Call to Arms for Decent Men” by Ernest W. Adams. At the top of the article on its original page is this line: “Gamasutra declined to run this column, but I still consider it to be part of the Designer’s Notebook series. Contains strong language.”

My guess is that strong language is not why Gamasutra declined to run it. Despite purportedly encouraging politeness and fair play, Adams’ article is actually a prime example of misogyny at its nefarious best.

To be fair to Adams, his intentions are good. However, what he is doing falls within the same umbrella of misogyny as the behaviors he’s criticizing. For example, while he says that “boys” who engage in online harassment are immature and need to grow up, the way in which he phrases their responsibility to act as decent human beings leaves a bit to be desired on the egalitarian front:

Men have more power than women: financially, politically, and physically. What distinguishes a real man from a boy is that a man takes responsibility for his actions and does not abuse this power. If you don’t treat women with courtesy and respect –- if you’re still stuck in that “I hate girls” phase –- then no matter what age you are, you are a boy and not entitled to the privileges of adulthood.

While biology may generally dictate that women are in fact physically weaker than their male counterparts most of the time, the presumption that physical strength is tantamount to financial and political power is insulting. The entirety of the feminist movement has been spent to disabuse people of the idea that men are inherently superior and more deserving of money and power, and Adams has simply accepted that the old Victorian mores are in fact truisms.

In essence, Adams’s article panders directly to the attitude that women are inferior beings and that “real men” don’t need to abuse women just because they can. In fact, by Adams’s logic, “real men” should protect and stand up for women because they are inferior and, by extension, apparently incapable of standing up for themselves. That’s not what he’s saying, exactly, but that is the attitude he’s created here.

The statement “A grown-up man has no problem being in the company of women. He knows he’s a man” presumes the same ideological framework as the “boys” to whom Adams is writing. He defends this position, stating that he has to assume this attitude in order to reach his audience:

Some of you might think it’s sexist that I’m dumping this problem on us men. It isn’t; it’s just pragmatic. Women can not solve this problem. A boy who hates girls and women simply isn’t going to pay attention to a woman’s opinion. The only people who can ensure that boys are taught, or if necessary forced, to grow up into men are other men.

It is sexist. It’s absolutely sexist to assume that only men can teach boys to behave like responsible adults. It’s sexist to suggest that responsible adults of either gender have a specific set of behaviors coded to that gender that aren’t universal to all human beings. Men and women alike have the responsibility as human beings to treat all other people with the respect accorded them simply by virtue of being alive, regardless of gender (or age, wealth, creed, etc.). So long as we accept that “men” have different responsibilities or sets of behavior than “women,” we are perpetuating a sexist attitude in which one gender (or the other) is dominant.

Suggesting that “men” need to teach “boys” to grow up and behave treats the symptoms, not the disease. Both chivalry (in the modern and medieval sense) and sexist harassment are symptoms of the same social disease, and by attempting to eliminate only the symptoms, Adams does not recognize that his prescription is contributing to the problem. We – both men and women – have to eradicate the attitude that presumes a fiction of superiority, and the elimination of symptoms will follow.

Finally, Adams offers a list of things “real men” should do to curtail the behavior of the “boys,” and then a list of ostensible counter-arguments from those “boys,” including this sparkling gem of classist sexism:

 “Women are always getting special privileges.” Freedom from bullying is a right, not a privilege, and anyway, that’s bullshit. Males are the dominant sex in almost every single activity on the planet. The only areas that we do not rule are dirty, underpaid jobs like nursing and teaching. Do you want to swap? I didn’t think so.

This paragraph makes me want to run out of my dirty, underpaid office – in a row of offices that belong to men who are (by Adams’s logic) also apparently dirty and underpaid – and use my feminine fists to demonstrate just how “inferior” my physical strength actually is. I’m not going to, but that’s the level of frustration I’ve reached with this article, which engages in the worst sort of chivalric fantasy in which Adams, the white-clad paladin, rides in on his shining stallion to defend the honor of delicate flowers offended by the malodorous hordes of the trollish unwashed. Women don’t need men to defend their honor. Women need to be accepted as human beings, the same as all other human beings, regardless of race, gender, sex, creed, or orientation.

To be fair, Adams does close with perhaps the only truly egalitarian sentence of the piece: “Let’s stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the women we love, and work with, and game with, and say, ‘We’re with you. And we’re going to win.’” With this statement, I agree wholeheartedly, but that’s not what the article has spent most of its time saying.

Which brings me to another, more difficult point. I live in the South, but I’m from the upper Midwest and arrived here by way of Boston. I’m used to opening my own doors, to holding the door for whomever I’m with, male or female. Here, that gets me funny looks and even causes consternation among men who don’t know what to do with a woman who holds the door. My point is that women need to be willing to do the work, to get dirty, to accept that in order to achieve equality, we have to put in the same effort as men and not expect chivalry if we aren’t going to give it. And men have to let us do it.

Playing Nice!

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So an article that grabbed my attention yesterday is actually on how playing games can make us nicer – specifically, “Forget violence: Do co-op games make us less aggressive?” by Jamie Madigan on Gamasutra.

I’ve mentioned co-op games on this blog before, although specifically in reference to board games. Madigan’s article is talking specifically about videogames and psychology studies. Apparently, recent studies from 2010 onwards have found that players show fewer violent impulses, make fewer connections to violent language, and are generally more cooperative with others after playing a game in co-op mode. Basically, cooperative play produces a cooperative mindset that then translates into other behaviors.

I do not in the least find this surprising, nor do I imagine most people do. If you’ve just spent several hours trying to help other people accomplish something, you’re in a completely different mental space than if you’ve just spent several hours trying desperately to kill more people than anyone else.

Here’s something that the article doesn’t mention, but that I’ve noticed from a lot of play-time (electronic and tabletop). Your lexicon is totally different. When you are playing cooperatively – in Team Fortress 2‘s new “Mann vs. Machine” mode, say – the other people on your team are “dudes,” are referred to by “name,” or by their character class. The people or bots you’re competing against are usually some sort of expletive or insult. In-group vs. out-group, as I talked about today with my students.

“Mann vs. Machine” actually has raised several of these issues for me recently. As a long-time TF2 player, I was fully expecting to see a leaderboard when I loaded up “MvM.” I didn’t. At first, I was disappointed. I wanted to see that board – to know where I was on it and how well I was doing. Even though TF2 has always been cooperative to an extent (your team versus another team), there was always a leaderboard and therefore a level of competition. But not in “MvM.” And it makes people better team players.

There’s no competitive pressure to do better than your teammates (to say nothing of the other players), but there is pressure to help your teammates and the team as a whole. Pressure is exerted if you aren’t contributing to the collective goal by showboating or running off to kill everything yourself. And people are nicer to each other – fewer insults, more helpful suggestions, and even the tone of comments telling people they don’t know what they’re doing are constructive rather than offensive.

Maybe there’s something to the idea that we don’t always have to be individuals. We can be a useful member of a team and have value there without always having to be praised individually for being special. Sometimes, sure, individuality is important, vital, even. But sometimes, it’s better to play Engineer and support your team, to play Medic and keep everyone alive rather than just trying to rack up points by following the one Heavy who shoots everything.

And cooperative play – whether Yggdrasil or Pandemic or TF2 - puts us in a better state of mind overall when it doesn’t also pit us against one another. Games like Modern Warfare produce animosity within teams because they force players to measure one another rather than encourage team play. And the deep irony is that if players work together (rather than each striving for individual top score), their team does better. Leadership isn’t just about who kills the most enemies or steals the most intels. Leadership can also be about teamwork, and the leaderboard actually hinders that process in online play.

And, really, I’m all for anything that makes people be nicer to each other in the online gaming community.

Moral Games

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Since at present I’m both replaying and revising a paper on Dragon Age II, when I saw Tom Biggs’s article on morality and gaming at IGN, I was intrigued, and then a bit annoyed. Biggs argues that “real-world morals” have no place in videogaming. On the one hand, his point that games are not reality and the moral choices one makes in a game do not directly correspond to the way one would make those same moral choices in the real world is true. One might play a game as a criminal, as in Grand Theft Auto, or a “renegade” in Mass Effect, or by harvesting the Little Sisters in Bioshock without actually being the type of person who would do those things in the real world (not that we have Little Sisters in the real world…).

However, that doesn’t mean that real-world morals are not applicable to videogames. What it means is that the process by which one applies them is different. Our ethics are our ethics, whether we are playing a game or functioning in the real world. We may be more inclined to choose to go against those ethics when we’re in a simulated or virtual world – like that of a game, whether video or role-playing or otherwise – but that doesn’t mean those morals aren’t a part of the gameplay experience.

For instance, when my students have played through Bioshock and faced the choice of saving or harvesting the first Little Sister, with Atlas and Tennenbaum both exhorting them in different directions, they fell back on their own ethical bent in order to make the decision. Some said, “it’s a child, I can’t kill it.” Some said, “it isn’t human anymore, I can kill it because that’s to my benefit.” Some said, “it’s creepy – make it go away.” Some were influenced by the fact that Atlas had been helping them navigate the world. Some were influenced by the fact that Tennenbaum is female, others by the fact that they knew her background as a scientist who experimented on human beings, or by the fact that she had a German accent and was thereby affiliated with Nazism in their minds.

But no matter what decision they made, their ethics were a part of that decision, even if they chose to go against those ethics, just to see what would happen. And that’s the key to all this. While Biggs suggests that real-world morality and ethics aren’t relevant, what he’s really saying is that those ethics need not limit a player’s decisions in gamespace because the consequences aren’t as fully enacted – they’re virtual, for the most part. The consequences that remain are game-related, but they are also emotional. Some people just can’t bring themselves to harvest a digital little girl with glowing eyes because she’s still a little girl – their real-world ethics win out over their curiosity or their revulsion.

Now the anecdote with which Biggs opens is a prime example of this:

While playing The Godfather back in 2007, my friend’s father walked into the room just in time to see my character ‘Aldo’ throw a random passer-by against a wall and beat him senseless. The old man was outraged by this, lecturing us about the ‘junk’ we were playing. His reaction is not uncommon, I fear, as evidenced by the long and vitriolic history our hobby has with moral outrage.

The father in this story was not able to separate his real-world ethics from what he saw the boys playing. But the boys, as gamers, were able to construct a secondary set of ethical drives. They recognized, as Biggs says, that “every game has its own internal logic – separate from the real world – that governs the play, informs your decisions and dictates what’s acceptable within the system.”

And he’s right. The ethos that governs a game is not the same ethos that governs our real-world lives. But it does overlap, and we are being encouraged to examine the ethics that cause us to make the decisions we make, both in the real world and in gamespace. GTA and Saint’s Row have systems where crime is not only permissible, but encouraged, but that doesn’t mean that our real-world ethics aren’t relevant – it just means that they come into play (pun intended) in a different way. We are meant to consider our own ethics – why we make the ethical decisions that we do – based on our willingness to bend those ethics in a virtual environment. We’re meant to think about whether we would make the same decisions in the real world, and why or why not.

That doesn’t sound like irrelevance to me. It’s a different way of applying ethics and morals, yes, but it’s a way that is every bit as relevant and valid as making a real-world decision. So when Biggs says “What it cannot do is make the internal logical and moral systems of a game have any bearing on the morality of the everyday,” he’s wrong. Gaming – play – does have a very real bearing on the morality of the everyday, just not in the way that the father of his story might have believed.

Games and play help us consider not only what our morals are, but where they come from and how they are shaped. Games and play let us experiment with those ethics, examine their validity in a variety of situations without the stress of real-world consequences. Games and play enable us to reexamine not only our ethos and morality, but the ideological foundations that underpin them – and allow us to consider and reconsider the reasons why be believe in the things we believe in, and to reevaluate when necessary. Not only do real-world ethics have a huge place in videogames, but games and play of all kinds have a huge place in forming those ethics to begin with, from the time we are children through to the games we play as adults.

What we need to be cautious about – and Biggs is as guilty of this as the father in his story – is assuming that we need to behave in games as we would in real life in order to be moral. Children pretend to be people they are not, in situations in which they are not, in order to test out their ethical development. Adult play – video- and other games – does the same thing. It’s actually vital to our continued development as a society that our ethics continue to evolve with changing technology and ideologies, and continued play (whether in virtual or real space) is an essential part of that.

I Play Halo on Legendary

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Yesterday a Border House article popped up on my twitter feed that sent me into fits. Gunthera1 from Border House reported on the new announcement that Borderlands 2 will have a casual mode for inexperienced players, followed up this morning by a second Border House post by Cuppycake. The story was repeated on gameranx. Great. What does this have to do with my ability to play Halo on Legendary? Because the lead designer, John Hemingway, said the following:

“The design team was looking at the concept art and thought, you know what, this is actually the cutest character we’ve ever had. I want to make, for the lack of a better term, the girlfriend skill tree. This is, I love Borderlands and I want to share it with someone, but they suck at first-person shooters. Can we make a skill tree that actually allows them to understand the game and to play the game? That’s what our attempt with the Best Friends Forever skill tree is.”

The presumption of the idea that “Easy” or “Casual” mode in a game is “Girlfriend Mode” is not only misogynistic, but both insulting and personally offensive. As a gamer – and a female – I should have the ability to choose my level of difficulty without being condemned for doing so. As a woman, I should not be relegated to the role of “girlfriend” or “wife” for playing on casual. Also, the idea that I’m not capable of playing at “Normal” or “Difficult” or “Legendary” (which, yes, I have done) is demeaning and sexist.

I have plenty of male friends who “suck” at gaming. I have plenty of female friends who also “suck” at gaming. I also have friends of both genders who do not. In fact, the group I play with most often is a set of four of us, two men, two women, and the woman I play with is perhaps more bloodthirsty than the rest of us. But that’s neither here nor there.

As Gunthera1 says,

So he used a phrase similar to Girlfriend Mode in the interview because of a ‘lack of a better term’? I disagree with Hemingway on this point. This phrase implies that women don’t play video games and therefore the easiest modes in a game exist so that they can play a game with their boyfriends or significant others. It is heteronormative and sexist in its roots. The industry keeps using the term as if its prevalence makes it okay. Whether it is used one or one thousand times, it is problematic.

She suggests “New Player mode.” Fine. There’s also “Casual,” which is common, or Deus X‘s “Tell me a story” mode. There are innumerable ways to say what they need to say without bringing in a pejorative slight on women who game. Maybe Hemingway isn’t actually sexist, but his use of “girlfriend mode” is. The fact that his term is being defended says something more about the community and the industry – it may not even realize the degree to which it is actively hostile to women (and other marginalized groups). The language, the images, the terms they use alienate us and make us feel unwelcome, even by members of the community who have no active issue with women being gamers.

In essence, we need to think about how we use our terms. Calling it “girlfriend mode,” gameranx‘s Ian Miles Cheong suggests, is both offensive and counterproductive: “The ironic thing about “girlfriend mode” is that it’s designed to make games more accessible to non-gamers. Instead, the term alienates.” Gunthera1 says:

But instead of using a term that doesn’t alienate women and paint them as the lesser players, some gamers and the industry itself continue to use “Girlfriend Mode”. Every time it is used we are putting out a sign on the clubhouse door that says “No Girls Allowed”. It is one of many subtle indicators that video games are made ONLY FOR men. If women play games they are viewed as interlopers. They are the girlfriends dragged to the media by their partners. They are not there because of their own desires and interests. They are deemed Girlfriends, not Gamers.

In short, we need to reevaluate the way we talk about games and gamers. We need to consider the sexist, racist, and homophobic terms and images we use in games and think about the atmosphere that those things create. Cheong made use of an excellent metaphor: “when terms like those go unaddressed, it allows sexist stereotypes to blossom like big smelly rafflesia flowers, stinking up the place. Have you ever smelt a rafflesia? They’re called corpse flowers, and for good reason.”

If we expected Hemingway to apologize, or his company to apologize and say “Gee, we’re sorry, that was thoughtless,” we were apparently wrong. In fact, IGN‘s Colin Moriarty published a piece decrying objections to “girlfriend mode.” Why?

Remember, Mr. Hemingway didn’t actually say anything offensive. People wanting to be offended are simply looking for anything to jump on, consequences for anyone and anything be damned. So expect to hear a lot less from developers in the future because of episodes like this, and a lot more canned responses from PR as a result.

All because Mr. Hemingway dared say “girlfriend mode.” The horror.

Mr. Moriarty, I beg to differ. The reason people are offended is because Hemingway most certainly did say something offensive. In the grand scheme of things, there are many things that are much more offensive, yes, but it was still offensive. It was also a public declaration that the industry doesn’t think about women as gamers, but as “girlfriends of gamers.” Does that mean he’s a sexist pig? Almost certainly not. But if it isn’t called “girlfriend mode” (it isn’t), then don’t call it that, especially not in public where people will be offended by it.

Mr. Moriarty, we don’t use certain terms and phrases not simply because they aren’t politically correct, but because they are demeaning. To insinuate that because I am female I must not be good at shooters (your girlfriend is not all people’s girlfriend, and yes, I managed to both obtain a PhD and become good at shooters at the same time) is a product of the same ideology that says that because I am female I must spend my life in a kitchen, not use power tools, and enjoy pink and frills. The words we use can be hurtful, but even when they aren’t (as even I would not suggest that “girlfriend mode” is “hurtful,” exactly), they can still be dangerous when they perpetuate an outmoded ideal that marginalizes or diminishes someone due to their genetics or gender.

Edit: And Brandon Sheffield from Gamasutra agrees:

I do believe that the mode is a good idea, and I also believe that Hemingway didn’t mean any offense to women. Still, simply saying something is not sexist doesn’t make it not sexist.

I’ve addressed this problem before, but the issue I find is that “girlfriend mode” made it into Hemingway’s lexicon at all. It’s not an official mode name, but it rolled off the tongue so easily. Developers don’t head into press meetups completely unprepared – he must have thought of this term before. It was said without malice, but also without really thinking about it might mean to some people. It was unconscious.

Sheffield goes on to point out that women make up at least 42% of gamers (as of a 2011 ESA survey) and therefore deserve to get more credit than they’re receiving because they make up almost half of the gaming community, and much less than half its voice, and only 10% of the industry creating it. But he also says that “the digital women’s movement” is making progress, and “growing pains” like this one are a part of that progress. Maybe so. But we still need to make sure that we don’t allow comments like Hemingway’s to be swept aside, “growing pains” or not. They’re important because they need to be recognized for what they are. /Edit

Words and images are far more important than we give them credit for most of the time. They are the foundation of our cultural understanding of people – and when we allow terms and images that are demeaning to others, we hurt our culture and society as a whole. When we use “girlfriend mode” we diminish women as inept. When our videogames contain women who wear little to no practical clothing, we assume that women’s value is based on their sex appeal. When we suggest that “rape” is akin to defeat in a game, we minimize the traumatic impact it has on a person’s life. When we call something we don’t like “gay,” we demean the LGBTQ community as deviant and shameful. Words and images matter, and it’s important to take the time to choose them carefully so that they reflect the kind of community we want to form and the society we want to become.