Unfettered Blather

Let’s get something out of the way. I know I can be a jerk sometimes. I don’t want to dwell on that right now, I don’t want anyone pointing it out. I know this, I’ve accepted it, I think we can agree on it and move on. Alright?

I think what makes my perspective of videogaming to be unique is that I am a long time enthusiast who also happens to be a professional software designer. I consider myself to be a hobbyist who also happens to understand more about the development process of software than most video game developers would be comfortable to confront. While I will admit that designing a game is different than designing a multi-tiered distributed enterprise level business application, I can assure you that there are some underlying computer science concepts that bind both to certain universal truths. I’ve also enjoyed close ties with Sierra On-Line before Vivendi injected it with liquid suck and Sir-Tech Canada before they were summarily executed for being too beautiful to exist. I’m not exactly a stranger to what goes on inside the industry, but I consider myself a hobbyist first and foremost. As a contrast you have Corvus of Man Bytes Blog who, while a gamer, is someone working in the industry and aspires to create games. He is not, by my definition, a “hobbyist”. He is too closely connected to the game industry to be a mere hobbyist anymore. Although he is still a gamer, as am I, and that is the common connection.

Gamers are like any other group primarily comprised of three types of members. You’re typical member just plays games. They may have strong opinions on a particular game, a specific type of game, or just what they consider fun in general, but they don’t spend a lot of time fretting the details. They may be casual, hardcore, average, fanbois, or any number of other adjectives you might apply to them, but I mostly consider them to be the core of the hobby.

On one side of these folks are the evangelists, the die-hards, the people who see games as something to be expanded and shared. People who want to talk about games and their good points. People who want to discuss if games should be considered art, what conventions are standard in genres, how can current design practices be improved, and what we can do to improve gaming in general. These people are inclusive. The discussion they foster may be deep, it may be shallow, but nearly everything they do is about advancing the hobby and encouraging people to join them. I want to be in this group, I try to keep myself in this group. I think of people like Nat and Tony who are really just all about the hobby or bs angel who is relentlessly about having fun and brings an unparalleled sense of enthusiasm to the table. Beyond hobbyists you have Bill Harris who has a genuine concern about videogames being fun and shares his excellent insight into the industry. I would even say that the infamous Tycho and Gabe are more about being inclusive than elitist. I think they just suffer from some of the same antisocial issues I do, if not more so.

On the other side are a group I can only label as pretentious dickheads. Most of these gamers have their heads so far up their asses that they see things from a perspective that most of us can’t relate to. They insist games must be art, that we must have criticism, and that gamers need to stop playing games for entertainment and start enjoying them as art instead. I don’t know that all of the blogs and websites I read that I think of this way intend to be so, they just work overtime to come across this way. What I find sad about the pretentious dickheads of our community is that they hurt the hobby, even though they may have good intentions. Honestly, I think I’d rather listen to another foul mouthed cretin then subject myself to yet another lengthy diatribe about how mass market is killing the hobby. These are probably the same people who smugly agree with the likes of Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw while completely missing his point. Just because you’re intelligent, or at least have aspirations to appear intelligent, doesn’t mean you have to get on the bus to Snootyville.

Time for sweeping generalizations!

I think if you love your hobby you’ll want to share it and see it grow. Not out of some altrusitic sense of expanding a person’s horizons, but even from a selfish standpoint that an expanding user base means more resources which brings more benefits back to you! At worst, maybe you just want to play games and adopt a live and let live mentality, that’s fine as well.

I don’t see pretentious dickheads, despite their claims about how important gaming (or any hobby) is to them, as people who love a hobby as much as they love feeling important. Maybe they will ultimately contribute something to the hobby, but they’ll do it in spite of themselves.

If you want to talk about games, that’s great. I’ll chat you up in a heartbeat. If you want to bore me, then by all means please start telling me about how important your opinions are. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking that you’re actually helping the hobby.

Also, if you want an example of how to discuss games intelligently without pretension, well, I already linked to Man Bytes Blog.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.