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Blogs have a tendency now and then to focus on things that are negative, or to whine about a company (guilty). This is not one of those posts. I’m making an effort to talk about the good work games are doing when I see it, cause good work like that should be rewarded.

Onward!

GW2 has done some amazing work with the search interface on their trading post (TP). I notice this because it’s what I do for a living, and it’s so damn easy to use. Diane and I talked quite a long time ago about SWTOR and their (horrible) interface for their GTN, and I want to do something similar today, but highlight how awesome ArenaNet has been for their trading post.

Filters

SWTOR did these as well, and ANet did it the same as them (as they should have). This is all pretty standard, and works just how it should.

Sorting

GW2 also allows for sorting of search results by level, price, rarity, and # Available. The good news is, it sorts ALL of the search results, not just the ones on the page (like SWTOR did). Again, something small, but awesome.

Search as you Type

Everyone knows this, and uses it, and takes it for granted. ANet has done it right and done it well. It’s taken for granted in their game, and that means it works how it should.

Pretty awesome shit.

Good for them. It’s something that can be extremely difficult to implement, but they did a good job of implementing it well.

They even did the awesome thing of having search as you type work for words in the MIDDLE of a phrase, which is awesome. So, if you want a “Berserker’s Pistol of the Earth” you can search for “Pistol” and it will bring up search as you type options for all different kinds of pistols, not just the boring standard pistol with no stats.

Free Text Search

This might seem strange, but GW2 also does have a free text search. You can go in and type in a string of random words, and it will search on that and bring you some results. They might not be exactly what you want, but you’ll get results. Many search engines that have a controlled vocabulary (like items in a video game) won’t bring you any results unless you type the item name in EXACTLY. GW2 isn’t like that. You can have your free text search as well as your item specific name search. It’s good to have both for different types of users.

Again, good on ANet for this.

Web Interface

This part is pretty cool. They made the TP accessible to third parties through the web. It brings you such awesome things as the GW2 DB and GW2 Spidy.

What could they do to make the search better?

This is nitpicking because the search is pretty good already, but if they wanted their search to be downright sexy, they should add some facted searching.

Imagine using the GW2 TP like amazon. You search for a “pistol” and then you can use the filters AFTER you’ve searched. You can then narrow down search results by price, color, level, any of those attributes. That would be AWESOME. They are actually not too far away from it already, it’s just a matter of if they think it’s worth it or not. (They could hire me to help them out ).

Also, they could make their free text search a little bit better. It’s decent now, but it could get better. That’s just me nitpicking though.

tl-dr

GW2′s Trading Post is work of great searchability, others should take note. And then ArenaNet should add faceted search so they can be absolute pimps.

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I would love to not write about harassment, trolling, griefing, and racism anymore. It would be grand.

The good news is that, today, I get to write about a positive spin for it! This isn’t another “u fuked up” post, but a post giving kudos to a specific game: League of Legends.

There are two things they have implemented recently that have shown a positive affect on the community (both from a statistics perspective, and also from my personal perspective): Honor System, and ranked judging (or whatever they’re calling it officially).

The Honor System

Quick Overview.

And it works! Kind of crazy, but it does!

The Mary Sue did a write up about the honor system that says exactly what I want to, so I’ll just link you to over there. I’ll also throw in this quote to show why the honor initiative is so awesome:

I initially thought it would be a disaster. No rewards? Ha! Like that’s going to work!

This is where things get serious. Isn’t this what Scott has been talking about the whole time? The difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. People don’t need rewards to stop acting like assholes. They just need some intrinsic motivation to do so. In this case, it’s the honor system. Sure, you could argue that receiving honor is in itself a reward, but I see it as an almost intrinsic reward given from the community. It’s a recognition of “yeah, you do have the correct intrinsic motivation, keep it up big guy/gal!”

It sure works too. Before, when playing LoL, I would try and tune out all chat during a game. Now I actively try and participate because of the change to be a positive voice in the community. Before, chat only had the consequence of being trolled, harassed, or yelled at. Now, there’s an opportunity for honest to god human interaction! (inorite?)

So, Kudos to you Riot.

Justice Review

So it’s officially called Justice Review, and it’s basically a meta-game add on to the justice system that LoL has. Where the honor system is for those players that “done good”, the Justice Review is for the asshats, but it’s player run. Players (of a certain level), vote whether to “punish” or “pardon” an offender, then Riot hands out the final punishment. Pretty straightforward.

Now, they’ve added stats for the reviewers, % of cases judged the same as the majority (I won’t say correctly because I don’t think that’s always the case), # of Toxic Days prevented, # of players PermaBanned, and the coolest, in my mind, an honest to god ELO ranking system that mirrors the LoL in game (ranked) ranking system. It has definitely motivated me to participate more often (even though I was doing it quite often anyway).

Here’s a taste:

A quick screencap of what the Justice Review looks like

Again, pretty solid work on the part of Riot. I think my Accuracy is a bit lower than most people because I’m fast with the “punish” button for almost any offense.

Side note: I hope there’s a way for them to make sure no one is gaming this system to just get ranking points. I would like to see people voting how they think someone should be dealt with instead of “oh, this person is a dick, but everyone else will pardon him, so I will too.” 

tl-dr

Good on ya Riot, you’re implementing systems to get rid of trolling, griefing, harassment, racism, and many other bad things in your game. Keep it up.

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Madeline is currently a history and library science student at the University of Maryland, College Park; was formerly a sixth-grade teacher in California, and has always been a proud and nerdy Seattleite/Oregonian.

Portal, the popular FPS/puzzle game that has been the source of too many meme phrases since 2007, has a more serious side than we knew. For teacher-librarians, or anyone else who has ever had to teach anyone anything, Portal is an excellent example of good instruction methods. Nicholas Schiller made this argument in a 2008 Reference Services Review article called “A Portal to Student Learning”, and it’s a very interesting argument for anyone interested in gaming or teaching.

Librarians (especially academic librarians) are teachers, but we are often not trained as teachers. Therefore, when we must design lesson plans and work on lesson goals, it is often hard to get a handle on some of the trickier teaching concepts. Fortunately, Portal is an excellent teacher and can help teacher-librarians understand tricky concepts in a concrete way.

(I’m not going to describe how Portal works because if you haven’t played it, you really should. It costs $10 on Steam, goes on sale twice a year, and might change your life.  Also, if you are interested in the whole idea of video games as teachers, please read James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. It’s fantastic.)

Portal is a good example of two specific teaching practices: scaffolding and assessment.

Scaffolding instruction means to provide plenty of support as students are learning and then remove the support as they begin to master concepts and skills. The first room in Portal is empty except for a cube, a button, and a door, so it’s not too tricky to put those things together and beat the puzzle. Each new room you enter adds a new element- the portals, the portal gun, the sad turrets, the toxic slime. You learn about each element in a structured way and then have to apply in more complicated puzzles. A simple technique you learn for passing from portal to portal gets more complex when you have to chain portals or open new ones while soaring through the air.

Assessment means to test how well students have learned a concept. In Portal, game developers paired assessment with a concept they called “gating”; the doors on the rooms of the puzzles were gates that players could not pass beyond if they had not mastered the concepts of the last puzzle. For me, these two examples from Portal explain the concepts of scaffolding and assessment far more clearly than a technical definition in a teaching textbook. Because I have played Portal, I know how the scaffolding and gating feel.

So how could we apply scaffolding and gating to teaching?

In an information literacy instruction session it can be tempting to try and teach multiple skills at once. For example, we might try and teach advanced research skills using Boolean logic at the same time as we teach the basic interface of the discovery layer. This is probably not a well-scaffolded lesson; it’s not something that Portal would do.

In Portal we would first learn the basics with lots of support and then learn how to apply them.

In an information literacy session we would first learn how to use the interface, then learn how to use it to do serious research.

The same idea works for assessment and gating. The gating concept essentially says that there should be a check after every new lesson is taught. The game assesses how well you know the important skills by not letting you move on until you’ve mastered them. In the previous example, the teacher-librarian could make everyone find a simple item in the discovery layer to prove that they knew how to use the interface before moving on to new skills. This would be Portal-like “gating” in action.

Portal is a popular game partly because it is very good at teaching people how to play it. If you were thrown into the final levels without all the build-up and scaffolding, the game would be confusing, frustrating, and probably only really popular among a niche group of masochists. But because the game slowly introduces each new concept and makes sure you understand it before moving on, you feel successful at each step and more enthusiastic about learning what’s next. As teachers, we should try to give the same experience to our students.

tl-dr

When planning lessons we should always ask “what would Portal do?”

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In case you didn’t know – and you probably didn’t, unless you’re a librarian who has time to read – Saturday, November 3, is International Gaming Day @ Your Library. An American Library Association-organized event, this is THE day to go to your library and play library-sanctioned games with other patrons. That is, provided that your library is participating. And provided that you knew about it. Chances are, neither condition applies. According to ALA estimates, approximately 20,000 people will be Playing Games @ Their Library at around 1,200 participating libraries worldwide. Will you be one of them?

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wonderful that libraries offer these kinds of programs; they promote literacy and community and other positive things. Despite these benefits, not every library is on board with games (no pun intended). When many people hear the word “games” these days, they think about addicted 14-year-old boys sequestered in their parents’ basements to blow up things in front of a console or a PC who don’t quit playing until they are eventually inspired to kill people in real life. Of course, these awful stereotypes are largely unfounded, but they do unfortunately contribute to the reasons why many librarians are hesitant to participate in gaming programs. The odd thing: at the same time, librarians are proponents of reading banned books, and many banned books contain violence. I credit Jacob for unexpectedly pointing this out when he was a guest lecturer in my social media class last year.

Again, the libraries that do participate in gaming programs provide an amazing service. But I also see issues with the most common approaches. In my ideal world, every day is Games Day. I happen to have other plans this weekend that don’t involve games. Many programs focus on catering to teens, but since the average age of a video gamer is… well… closer to my age, and since nursing homes provide Wiis for their residents to get some exercise, we need to be more age-inclusive in our programming. Also, the public or academic library’s function as a community space is not in question here, but why does a library’s gaming program typically only consist of Game Things You Can Only Do If You Are @ Your Library? Let me explain a few of my ideas.

You don’t need games to have a gaming event.

Buying games – or at least buying enough games to have a decent-sized program – is expensive, and libraries are generally experiencing an increase in business with a decrease in funding. (no, I don’t get it either – but don’t ask me, ask @ Your Government). However, if one of our driving forces behind hosting game events is fostering community, then why not have a “gaming cafe” night in which people who play a certain game – or maybe even different games – can just hang out and talk about games? (I’ll grant extra XP to the librarians who decorate the tables with a d20 or a few Magic cards or something).

Metagaming resource provision ftw.

Talking about games, reading about games, trolling online discussion forums about games, collecting RL items that are related to games… Jacob and I call doing these and other things “metagaming.” But if you are new to a game, or even if you’re an experienced player, you need to find resources that can help you improve your playing. Be aware that compiling metagaming resources for gamers will require a certain amount of understanding about the games for which patrons want to metagame. For example, after the WoW MoP expansion, I wanted to find a good PvP spec for my frost mage’s newly reconfigured/epic fail of a talent tree, but it was difficult. If you didn’t understand that, you need to do a little WoW metagaming yourself before you provide metagaming resources to WoW players.

Also, while I’m on this rant, don’t just put up a page @ Your Library’s Website with links to metagaming resources, and expect gamers will find them. Unless it does better in search engine rankings than WoWWiki, they won’t come. Never once in my 30 years of video gaming have I heard a gamer say, “I think I’ll see what the library can tell me about my leveling my frost mage from 85 to 90″ or similar. No. It’s just not in the gamer’s metagaming vantage point. Which brings me to my third idea.

Embed yourself.

Librarians have been playing with this idea for a while now: go where they are rather than waiting for them to come to you. We see this in our attempts to run The Facebook Page @ Your Virtual Social Media-savvy Library, and in academic librarians’ away-from-the-library f2f office hours, for example. Gamers won’t metagame @ Your Library or @ Your Library’s Website as much you would like them to, but the interesting thing is that gamers have a constant need for information. My student Caroline Whippey is exploring this broader issue in her PhD thesis research: information seeking in games. A driving factor behind any game is simple: if you don’t learn, you don’t win. When you learn, you must process information by default. This fact should be taught on Day 1 @ Your Library School, right after the professor gives a stern “no, loving books in and of itself doesn’t properly justify your decision to become a librarian” lecture.

When I say “embed yourself,” I mean ***play the games***! Level a frost mage or a sylvari or something. Do lots of metagaming. Then when your fellow players are ready to metagame, you throw metagames at them. Not literally. Throwing things at patrons is bad service. Then again, metagaming without gaming is also a fail. You see my point.

Yep, this takes time and effort.

Gaming is not a resource-free diversion. Even an encounter with a new board game requires acquiring new knowledge, but we do it because it’s fun. We don’t realize we’re learning, or we don’t think about it that way. If you don’t think there’s learning involved in games, sit down with an FPS on an Xbox 360 for five minutes, or throw yourself into an RBG with somebody else’s character, and let me know if you win. But I already know the answer.

Again, about Saturday… I’m sure Games Day is fun and useful for the librarians and patrons who participate, but I wouldn’t exactly call 20,000/6,000,000,000 people a game-changing revolution. I hope ALA will think more creatively in the future about what gaming means in libraries as subsequent Games Days are planned. If nothing else, let’s think of every day as Games Day, because a day without games is… well, just a day, and we already have 364 of those every year. And it does not necessarily have to be a day @ Your Library for people to learn and have fun – or for librarians to help.

tl-dr

I’ll probably spend International Games Day @ Your Library outside enjoying the last of the fall foliage, but that doesn’t mean (1) I won’t be playing a game and (2) I have all the information and people I need to play that game.

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There’s always a discussion about how to find “non-violent video games” (which I have issues with), but I wanted to create a list of non-violent video games for people that I could refer to if needed. The list will be ongoing, and I’d be happy to add any other suggestions that people have.

Without further ado:

Animal Crossing

Bejeweled

Dance Dance Revolution

Fold-it

Garbage Truck Simulator

Glitch

Harvest Moon

Hidden Object Games (e.g. Mystery Case Files series)

Ilo Milo

The Incredible Machine (Might be dated)

The Island of Dr. Brain (Might be dated)

Journey

Monopoly

Professor Layton series

Rock Band/Guitar Hero

“Sports Games”

Skyrim and Skyrim for Children

(Almost any) Sim Game (e.g. Sim City, The Sims)

Time Management Games (e.g. Hotel Dash, Road to Rome)

Tetris

Trivia Games

What am I missing? Let me know in the comments and I’ll add to it.

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League of Legends

So, do you play LoL? According to this infographic, it’s a pretty good chance that you do.

Personally, I play a decent amount of LoL, less than I did before GW2 came out, but I still play a couple times of week at least. I probably will keep playing it for quite a long time, and I’ll keep playing MOBAs even after that I bet, since I’ve been playing DOTA since it was out for Warcraft III (pre-frozen throne).

But why? Why is LoL so popular? Why are MOBAs starting to take off?

I think it’s because of the competition that’s involved in it. Compared to RL sports, there are remarkable similarities.

1) The games are canned (i.e. you play one and it ends and resets), just like a tennis match, football game, or basketball game.

2) There is a large scale tracking system to determine how you fit globally (ELO ranked matches). Compare this to the many rec leagues and ladders that exist for most sports around the world.

3) There is a definite skill curve, and a very distinct path to getting better and improving.

Don’t discount #3, I think that one is the most important. Sure, playing and winning (for both sports and LoL) are important and fun, but what keeps people coming back is the competition with others, the desire to get better, and beat them in the future. The ability for growth and improvement, and a community/meta that allows for a distinct path for skills to learn is very desirable.

Brandon Beck, the CEO of Riot, in a statement for the Penny Arcade Report, even mentioned:

 There are a lot of skills to master and there’s a ton of depth to the experience. It’s also fun to watch for the same reason that any traditional sport might be, which is you can be in awe of the super human feats at the highest level of play.

Compare LoL to an MMORPG, and there’s a distinct difference in competition. Sure, the skill may be needed in an MMORPG, but it’s surrounded by dozens of skills, the need to level, and optimize gear before a match. There such a huge time investment required (usually PvE) that it dissuades many people who want to just compete. LoL breaks down many of those barriers.

I would make the same arguments for Star Craft 2, but I view LoL as more user friendly and “casual” friendly, which makes it easier for it to gain the large user base that it has.

What do you think? Is LoL here for the long haul, or is it just MOBAs in general?

Also, Teemo hasn’t died nearly enough. Keep it up.

tl-dr

I think LoL is the new king of the gaming world, especially for its competitive elements and eSport viability.

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About two weeks ago, this happened.

In case you’re feeling finger lazy today, the link leads to PETA’s (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) latest attempt at rallying the masses against animal abuse, an absolutely excellent and necessary cause mind you.

It’s an embedded game on their site called…

wait for it.

“Pokemon, Black and Blue” …clever right?!  The goal of said game is for the player to “Help Pikachu and his Pokemon friends as they struggle for Pokemon liberation!”

AND furthermore, from the official PETA press release:

“Games such as Pokémon send kids the wrong message that exploiting and abusing those who are defenseless is acceptable when it’s not,” says PETA Director of Marketing Innovations Joel Bartlett. “But with Pokémon Black and Blue, children can experience the great feeling that comes from saving others from harm.”

WTF

OOoooook.  So I realize this connects much more intensely with my generation than perhaps others, but there is a big BIG issue here for everyone.

This is a serious game.

It was made to deliberately address a very serious and prominent real world issue.

It was made to be “educational”.

It was made.  Period.  And while this last piece of “being made” doesn’t qualify it as a serious game like the two above, it’s the most alarming part here.  Time and time again people throw back to “with great power comes great responsibility” when talking about the future of serious games.  Well folks, I really didn’t expect it to come from PETA, to be honest I expected it to come from Wall Mart or Apple, a big profit driven corporation, but this is a serious game used wrongly none the less.

Now, before we move any further here, let’s quickly debunk any semblance of truth about what this game (and PETA) is claiming.  I grew up watching and playing Pokemon, and for many reasons I can honestly, whole-heatedly say doing both made me a better person, for the exact opposite reasons PETA states.  Countless times I would run desperately through a forest to get my Pokemon safely to the next town’s Nurse Joy.  Countless times I would make in-game special food and treats for my precious little pixelated friends.  Countless times I ran headlong into bad guy lairs to save other Pokemon in harms way.  Everything in those damn games is about saving Pokemon and helping humans live in harmony with their Pokemon friends.

How does PETA portray this?

Circus Pimp Ash Ketchum, well played PETA, I’m really on your side now!

Oh wat, emotions?  Love?  DOES NOT COMPUTE

And frankly, the number of Pokemon gifs I just found in the last 20 seconds of searching which show Pokemon snugling/playing/frolicking/loving people, and people returning those feelings.. it’s like over 50.

So whatever.  PETA is lying about fictional relationships between mutant animals and people.

OH WAIT.  An entire generation *raises hand* loves these creatures more intensely than the burning core of the Sun.  Pokemon, for many of us, is like purified childhood in a bottle.

And herein is the danger PETA unleashes upon its self, and the animals it cares about helping.  Until seeing this, I was another teen that doesn’t know much about PETA.  I knew what they stood for, and I have three pets I wouldn’t want to suffer so PETA seems like a legit cause, but I also knew they have an occasionally radical way of doing things.  By trying to reach out deliberately to me and my fellow millennials (alternatively called the Pokemon generation) with this game, PETA has thoroughly alienated me.  By creating a tool that can so widely reach and preach as this game does, many MANY others who love Pokemon, and what Pokemon are all about, will lose even more regard for PETA (as multiple reddit threads spreading the game revealed).  They used a game irresponsibly, and are hurting their own cause for it.  They send the message that animal rights advocates are a little bit psycho and more than a little bit out of touch.  This, in turn, can effect popular support for other legitimate animal rights pursuits PETA carries out, marginalizing their voice and ability to actually do good even more, as well as potentially dragging other lesser known advocacy groups down with it.

tl-dr:  Fighting animal abuse IS important, but when you jump on the crazy train you can’t expect everyone else to follow, and you can’t expect to get far without anyone else riding your train.  And dammit, this will NOT be the future of serious games.  (I don’t really think it will, but still).

And just for kicks..

Hey PETA!  Got a question for you.

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Back in July, I wrote a post about some of the concerns with reward-based BLAP gamification. The tl-dr of that post was that rewards used in a controlling  manner undermine internal motivation, and thus applications of gamification to create long-term change can do more harm than good in the long term.

One of my current areas of focus is on Meaningful Gamification, which is focused on preserving internal motivation by avoiding rewards, and instead, helping the player to find a personal connection with the non-game setting.   It’s not always needed – if the user starts with no internal motivation for the non-game setting, then there is no internal motivation to preserve.  If the goal is a short-term engagement, then rewards can work for that (although, as Alfie Kohn explores in his book, Punished by Rewards, offering rewards typically decreases the quality of the engagement.)  If, however, the goal is to preserve and even increase someone’s internal motivation for a non-game task, rewards are to be avoided.

Instead of focusing on rewards, the goal of Meaningful Gamification is to focus on the user, and helping that user find a meaningful connection to the real-world setting.  There are several theories that support this concept, above and beyond the Self-Determination Theory and Organismic Integration Theory presented in my previous post:

Situational Relevance (Schamber):  First, in order to be meaningful, something has to be relevant.   Decades of research on relevancy in LIS has led us to realize that there is no way to know what will be relevant for a specific user, and therefore, we need to provide a variety of gamification elements to raise the chance that each user will find something of value.

Universal Design for Learning (Rose & Myer): UDL is a theory from education that explores the importance of creating different types of content and providing learners with different ways to explore and demonstrate mastery of that content.  The model is focused on providing a variety of choices for the What (which aspects of the non-game systems are gamified), the How (how are gamification elements used for each selected aspect ), and the Why (how do users connect these selected aspects via game elements to their own interests and background).  Trying to create all of these different options, however, can be challenging.

Player-Generated Content(Djaouti et. al): Rather than try to develop options for each user, another strategy is to allow the users to create their own gamification goals or systems.  The designers can create a larger-scale system and boundaries, and then allow users to explore and create their own pathways.  Players can then share these pathways with other players, which provides a social connection between players with similar interests.

User-Centered Design (Norman): In order to create this system, every design decision needs to be focused on helping the player to find and develop meaningful connections.  Many current gamification systems are organization-centered, where players are being manipulated to benefit the organization.  Some current gamification-systems are mechanism-centered, where the creators have decided to focus on some “cool” mechanism or technology instead of choosing what is best for the player. Players that are inspired will end up engaging more deeply with the non-game setting, and this long-term connection is how the organization can be rewarded.

Putting these things together, meaningful gamfication systems are designed to help players find personal connections to a non-game setting.  To be successful, the systems must offer a variety of game elements and different ways that players can connect their own interests to different aspects of the non-game setting.  Players can create their own pathways through the system, and the game design elements selected for the system need to benefit the player instead of the organization.

Much more detail about these theories (and full citations) can be found in a paper and talk I put together called “A User-Centered Theoretical Framework for Meaningful Gamification“.

But just how does one create Meaningful Gamification?

That will be the subject of my next post!

tl-dr

Gamification is made more meaningful by putting the needs of the user ahead of the wants of the organization.

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Leodar and I had a good conversation over twitter the other day. The tl;dr of it was that we both felt the eSports community is seriously lacking in both maturity and role models. Leodar thought the role models could be fixed pretty easily, but the problem right now is twofold in my mind: lack of a “mentoring” community, and the gaming community as a whole needing maturing.

The reason he brought this up with me was because of the Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri incident. While what Stephano said can be debated, it brings for the wider problem of what needs to happen in the community. It will never be rid of problems like this (FIFA, the NBA, NFL, NHL, ATP, and all others still have problems like this), they can still hope to get better.

Lack of a Mentoring Community

For most professional sports, a mentoring community of some kind is generally in place to teach the rookies how to mature beyond high school or college. This is lacking for the eSports community for a couple reasons, the two biggest being: 1) The eSports community is pretty new, so there isn’t much depth of experience to bring in. 2) Many of the “pros” are still young. Younger than professional athletes. Some of the pros in the eSports community are still in high school, or even just starting high school. The public spotlight of being a professional gamer is beyond most mature adults, and it’s even harder the younger you go. Especially without guidance.

There needs to be some type of mentoring community for new pros that are joining eSports. No matter the game, no matter the age. There needs to be a “rookie training camp” of some kind to help players deal with the new stage. I’m not talking about playing the game either, I’m talking about how to deal with the PR, the media; how to be mature and present as a true professional.

The Gaming Community as a Whole

While I love the idea of a rookie training camp, it has one glaring problem, but I think the training camp will help fix that problem as well. The problem being how the gaming community acts. The “boys club” of the gaming community. The sexism, jokes, homophobia, trolling…everything. I’m not saying that it’s unique to eSports, because it’s not (I played varsity tennis in college, it’s pretty bad in every locker room), but the community needs to change and be changed before it starts getting more out of hand and gets even more ingrained into the culture. The suspension and fining of Stephano is a good step, but it’s an isolated incident and does nothing to create sustainable change. eSports as a whole need to be forward thinking and create the right environment for competition and sportsmanship. This, above all, is needed for eSports to gain acceptance for a wider audience (beyond gamers), and to also show the world that gamers are not violent assholes that preach homophobia, sexism, and racism.

Plus, it’s a trickle down effect. If the pros adopt these codes of behavior and are mature and sportsmanlike, people who admire and follow them will behave the same way. I think of professional tennis at these times, because it is generally held as an example of good sportsmanship, but high competition. Sure, there are problems, egos, and fights, but the sport of tennis is looked upon favorably by most people. How many non-tennis fans would think of tennis players as homophobes, violent, and racist? I’m not saying eSports has to become tennis, but it needs to move close to that side of the spectrum to gain more acceptance.

tl-dr

The eSports community needs to advance in perception, maturity, and sportsmanship, and it needs to start with its rookies.

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Maine is not a state I typically associate with controversy, but there is a current controversy in Maine politics that has made international news. Are you ready for it? Wait for it… Wait for it…

A Democratic candidate for Maine’s state Senate, Colleen Lachowicz, plays World of Warcraft.

Maine Republicans are arguing that because of this abominable pastime, she is in no way fit to be a politican, and they have set up this ridiculous website, called Colleen’s World, meant to prove her status as a horrible person. Their argument goes: a woman who plays an orc rogue – and, therefore, spends her free time stabbing everyone in the back – shouldn’t hold office.

This exemplifies so many things that make me really angry. I hate the negative political campaigns that Americans have grown accustomed to. In a way, maybe her mad virtual backstabbing skillz help her campaign because that’s all so many candidates do irl. American politics have become like a train wreck of a reality show that we can’t seem to look away from, such as Honey Boo Boo, or a bad song we can’t stop listening to, like “Call Me Maybe.” But I digress.

The negativity in the Maine Republicans’ attack plan is rooted in that famous media myth so many gamers love to hate: people who play video games are violent. They think they can prove Colleen is unfit for the Senate by highlighting things she’s posted on discussion forums – “crude, vicious and violent comments” as they call them on the website. They clearly have no understanding of gamer culture (nor do they want to); they highlight comments she makes about WoW play and jump to the conclusion that these comments can be somehow correlated to rl? What??? If people took seriously everything I’ve ever posted on gaming forums, I’d never land a full-time faculty position at a highly respected research university… oh wait… I already have one.

We’ve covered the “video games are violent” thing in previous posts on this blog, such as “Taking Aim at the Issue: Real World Guns and Games”, “Violence vs. Conflict in Video Games”, and “Violence and Video Games: Looking beyond the obvious”, so I’m not going to get into that discussion in too much detail in this post. But one part I’m alternatively annoyed with – and I want to explore this some more – is the idea that we have to hide our identities as gamers to be taken seriously in the world. Here is a quote from the BBC article I cited at the beginning in which a games researcher named Ladan Cockshut discusses gamers’ place in the world (I’ve never heard of this woman, and I couldn’t find her on Google Scholar, but whatever):

“In my work, I’ve spoken with many people who in their regular lives have roles of significant responsibility (as doctors, managers, or educators) but who choose carefully with whom they disclose their gaming activity,” she told the BBC. “And disclosing their gaming activity is often accompanied by a degree of apology or embarrassment.”

But, she added, having a gamer run for office was a “heartening” development.

“This would seem to run contrary to the other stereotypes that we love to assign to gamers: that they are lazy, antisocial people who don’t have a ‘real life’,” she said. “Maybe this will trigger some dialogue about our perceptions of gamers and the role that games can and should play in modern society.”

If us gamers do have to hide the fact that we’re gamers, then it’s no wonder why we want to hide from the real world! Seriously though, why is it that our society thinks some free time activities are acceptable and others are not? Have you ever heard of a person who hides the fact that they like watching football or baseball so others will respect them? Hell no – and, guess what people, football and baseball are games too!!!! And as for gamers wasting away all our free time on games… we’ve all known people who spend hours memorizing the RBIs or the ERAs or whatever of their favorite baseball players, and nobody thinks twice about it. But, obviously, if WoW players like Colleen are focused on improving their rogue’s Agility, they’re violent, lazy time-wasters.

I went to high school in Texas, in an area known for political and religious conservatism. (hint: America’s most recent past president lives there now). At our football games, they always said a (Christian) prayer before the game, right alongside the national anthem. I questioned how they could do that given potential separation of church and state issues. I also remember other people pointing out that it was odd how they could say a prayer before they went out on the field to kick the other team’s ass. It was ***real life game violence*** somehow made softer with pre-game prayer and the school’s participation in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I remember so many players getting hit so hard they couldn’t get off the field. There were even rituals in place for it: for example, the cheerleaders would get down on one knee until the player either stood up or was carried off the field. But would any of these football players, or the coaches and parents who directed them, ever have to answer questions about their participation in football before they could do something visible or important? No, and at least in Texas, this involvement would be a highlight of their qualifications.

So… why the split? Why does the media, and the people who are brainwashed by it, differentiate between “this kind of game is great” and “this kind of game is bad”? Virtual violence is more dangerous, and more telling about our characters, than rl violence? I’ve played video games since 1981, and I’ve blown up a lot of aliens and monsters and even a few rogues, but I’ve never hit a person in reality. Honestly, the most I’ve ever done wrong is park in the wrong space on campus – but I paid for the ticket. I might have said a few bad words when I found the ticket on my car, and it might have relieved my stress to run some bgs with my frost mage… but in reality, the ice stayed in my freezer. Throwing ice at campus police won’t get me tenure, but Frostbolting a freakin’ orc in Arathi Basin certainly makes me feel better. And I’ll proudly tell everyone that I did it.

tl-dr

Gamers are everywhere, and we do everything. Just like you muggles.

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