Playing Social Justice WarriorReclaiming Games through Cultural Revolution

Anastasia Salter@anasalter

DEFINING A SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR

Urban Dictionary(as of March 2016)

“Social Justice Warriors and the New Culture War”

Laurie PennyBoing Boing

This is a culture war. The right side is winning, at great cost…We are winning. We are winning because we are more resourceful, more compassionate, more culturally aware. We're winning because we know what it's like to fight through adversity, through shame and pain and constant reminders of our own worthlessness, and come up punching. We know we're winning because the terrified rage of a million mouthbreathing manchild misogynists is thick as nerve gas in the air right now.

Us Social Justice Warriors—this is me, stealing that word in order to use it against my enemies- are winning the culture war by tearing up the rulebook, and there's nothing the sad, mad little boys who hate women and queers and people of colour can do about it. Nothing, at least, that doesn't sabotage their strategy, because they can win their game from day to day, but they're losing the war. They can punish me for writing this, and I'm sure they will, but that will only prove my point. I'm not afraid anymore.

Social Justice Warriors, Nonadecimal Creative 2014

AN INDUSTRY IN CRISIS

Women in the Games Industry

Programmers and Engineers: 5% Artists and Animators: 9%Game Designers: 13%Producers: 22%Audio Professionals: 9%QA Testers: 12%Business and Management: 21%

Gamasutra Salary Survey 2014

#1ReasonWhy Tweet Themes

Gendered Assumptions

Rape and Sexual Harassment

Overt Sexualization

Silencing

Harassment

7,780 tweets (November 26-30 2012) collected and analyzed with Bridget Blodgett

#1reasonwhy because a boss interchanged the terms ‘configure’ and ‘rape.’ So every morning we met to plan

how we would rape the computers

#1ReasonWhy Because there’s only so many times you can get hit on, propositioned, or inappropriately touched before it wears you

down.

#1ReasonWhy An Art Lead for a BIG title said in a meeting full of character artists (all men) that “She needs to be fuckable. No,

rapeable.”

Women represent less than 10% of the writers I have published, yet have received more than 90% of the hate mail. #1ReasonWhy

#1Reasonwhy Because whenever any writer, female or male, highlights the issue we hear “Can’t we get back to just enjoying the

games?!”

Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian, Benjamin Daniel 2012

#DEATHEATERS

Although feminist game scholars follow, research, and sympathize with the targets of this kind of coordinated hate campaign, it is rare that academic work becomes a target itself. That is why we were surprised that a conference event we organized became linked to conspiracy theories about Zoe Quinn and journalistic ethics. We, of course, have made similar arguments to those offered by what GamerGate calls Social Justice Warriors (SJWs).

Moreover, we have shared some of their experiences in our own fields. Academic conferences often marginalize discussions of videogames and diversity, and women’s studies in particular are regularly on the chopping block when budget cuts force universities to downsize.

“A Conspiracy of Fishes, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying about #GamerGate and Embrace Hegemonic Masculinity”

Shira Chess and Adrienne ShawJournal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 59:1, 2015

I and many of the other academics who have been attacked or criticised by GamerGate are not opposed to fact checking or peer review. It's part of our daily lives. The many people in GamerGate who have caricatured me and others as hyperbolically "turning a fact check into a witch hunt" appear to have deliberately misunderstood our criticism, and ignored what GGers themselves are saying about the digging-DiGRA project.

For all the reasons I described and more, it is not simply a neutral assessment of facts. It is a deeply antagonistic, even spiteful crowdsourcing of people to comb through papers to pluck things they may not fully understand out of context. Indeed, the way they speak of feminists and feminist academics is proof enough of bad faith. No peer review is ever conducted in that way.

“On Digging Digra”

Katherine Crosshttps://storify.com/Quinnae_Moon/on-digging-digra

GAMES FOR RESISTANCE?

Quing’s Quest VII: The Death of Videogames, Dietrich Squinkifer, 2014

GAMES FOR EMPATHY?

Gender Swap BeAnotherLab 2014

merritt kopas 2014

dys4iaAnna Anthropy

2012

You could say that Empathy Game is a deeply cynical piece that suggests art (or at least games) are incapable of

communicating meaningful information and experiences. In fact, the opposite is true. I respect games too much to see

them relegated to a way for the privileged to opt out of their

responsibilities, to allow them to become the trendy new format for

afterschool specials.

Anna Anthropy, 2015

GAMES…?

S: Videogames evaluate performance.G: [Silence.]G: And?S: That is it.G: That’s it?S: That is it.G: That’s no definition.S: I confess it may need some development.

“Defining the Video Game”Veli-Matti Karhulahti, Game Studies 15.2

Driven by its suspicion of other media studies, the central question of game studies has, to this point, been: “How are videogames different?” That they are different from other forms is without question -- but, again, neither is there any doubt that novels are different from films. Amidst understandable concern for the things that made videogames unique, game studies tends to lump other media together as “representational” or, more often, “narrative” media such that the prospect of studying narrative in games has seemed to threaten the loss of medium specificity as well.

“A Too-Coherent World: Game Studies and the Myth of Narrative Media”Edward Wesp, Game Studies 14.2

Porpentine, “Creation Under Capitalism,” 2012

Porpentine, “Everything You Swallow Will One Day Come Up Like A Stone,” 2014

Procedural rhetoric affords a new and promising way to make claims about how things work…video games do not simply distract or entertain with empty, meaningless content. Rather, video games can make claims about the world.

But when they do so, they do it not with oral speech, nor in writing, nor even with images. Rather, video games make argument with processes.

“The Rhetoric of Video Games”Ian Bogost, 2008

OWNERSHIP OF “GAMES” MATTERS

Thank you!

Anastasia Salter@anasalter

http://anastasiasalter.net