Not the Problem You Are Looking For: “Nerds” are Not Game Culture’s Problem

22 Jan

Gaming culture – particularly in its pseudo-journalistic internet form – has problems. A lot of them. Some of them are problems it shares with every other culture on the planet and are a simple byproduct of being human. Some of them are particular to the First World comprised mostly of North America and Europe with a dose of East Asia. Some of them are the project of a previously homogenous straight white male demographic derived from the US military industrial complex of privilege. And some of them are the result of a demographic that is, by and large, educated and wealthy and interested in esoteric subjects, technologies, and fantasies – otherwise known as “nerds.”

But “nerds” are not the biggest problem in gaming culture, contrary to an opinion piece published by Destructoid which claims that “nerds” are the problem with gaming journalism. The piece suggests that

1) nerds care about shit that is completely unimportant to everyone else, and 2) nerds want other people to see how important this unimportant shit actually is. A nerd is a guy who can’t help spend hours trying to convince his loathing in-laws that The Game Grumps are way funnier than Mel Brooks. A nerd is a girl who sits you down in the middle of a hurricane and babbles about how the latest Legend of Zelda game completely sucks compared to the prior, nearly identical Legend of Zelda game. A nerd is in their own world. A nerd wants you to be in that world with them.

Although I suppose this is the point where a responsible blogger admits to being a nerd  (and I am), I take exception with the suggestion that nerds only care about “unimportant shit.” Sure, relative to starvation or global war or sex trafficking, games may be “unimportant shit,” but within the confines of a First World audience who does not face those problems on a daily basis, games are not “unimportant shit.” Games are very important shit.

Here’s why.

Games, and videogames in particular, are a rising form of consumer media that comprises one of the fundamental cornerstones of twenty-first century popular culture. More people in North America, Japan, and South Korea own or have regular access to videogame systems (PCs, consoles, handheld devices) than don’t. Videogames (esports, in specific) are rapidly becoming professionalized, and have international competitions from which players earn a living. Colleges are giving scholarships to esports players. There are classes taught on games, people earn a livelihood making games, and the games industry has a higher gross budget than Hollywood.

Do not tell me that’s “unimportant shit.”

Now this doesn’t invalidate the other main point of the article, which is that journalists are swayed by a kind of rabid fan-boy- and fan-girl-ism which enables AAA developers to manipulate (some of) them into giving rave reviews on games that don’t fully deserve them, while causing indie games to be criticized viciously because they don’t conform to the so-called industry standards. Developers with reputations become demigods who cannot be criticized (Peter Molyneux or Ken Levine, for example), even when they deserve it.

Yes, there are industry parties designed to cater to reviewers in an effort to garner positive reviews in exchange for swag. Yes, there are “journalists” who actually work for publishers and developers (and some companies release their own “magazines,” whose articles are obviously going to be biased if one thinks about it for five seconds). There are blogs that are little more than shill-sites for companies which tout the latest “great” games, all of which just happen to be made by the same people.

But “nerd-dom” is not the cause of these problems. Nor are they as wide-spread as the author seems to think. There are a LOT of journalists – many of whom have, admittedly, been attacked for their opinions in recent months – and critics whose work attempts to maintain that mysterious thing called “integrity” or “critical distance.” A lot of people working within the industry, within journalism, and within academia who believe in doing a service to their readers and to the industry by criticizing it for the things which deserve criticism.

And those people don’t do what they do because games are “unimportant shit.” They do what they do because games and the gaming industry are very important shit, and because that shit reflects and informs our broader cultural milieu. Because our culture is our past, present, and future, and it’s very important that we engage with it in a thoughtful and critical way.