I'm slowing working my way through the last Prince of Persia game. It's very different to play a game for fun than it is to play a game for work. I'm working with a walkthrough just so that I don't spend an exorbitant amount of time trying to figure out my next move. It doesn't cut down on the pressure I feel when I accidentally run off a ledge or miss a jump, though. In fact playing the game for research and analysis makes those mistakes even worse because I don't have all the time in the world to figure out the game naturally or stop and come back to a boss fight later, when I've cleared my head about it. It's pretty stressful. Also, the Shadow Prince is a huge nag.
A few days ago I posted a link on Twitter to an article on Racialicious about “Nerds of Color”. I'm not sure how many people read it but I really, really like and appreciate this article. It articulates a lot of things that I've felt over the years but never really knew how to express. When Bao Phi asked the question, “But then how do nerds of color like me fit in, and how do we deal with fellow nerds who don’t want to talk about things like race and class in comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies?” I jumped up in my chair, pumped my fist in the air, and yelled, “YES! THIS! Thank you!” It's always bothered me how we, as a group of nerds, can talk about what it's like to be picked on and ignored for liking video games, Dungeons & Dragons, science fiction and/or fantasy, etc but when someone wants to bring up how the nerd community still sometimes reinforces gender, racial, class, and sexuality norms no one understands how any of those issues can be connected with nerd culture. Progressives, and I include myself in this group, don't really like to be reminded of the ways they're less than progressive.
I got one direct message from a fellow geek on Twitter thanking me for posting the article. She brought of the issue of the difference between criticism and critical thinking and how often people just want to hear the criticism. She is completely right. One of the biggest problems in trying to talk about RCGS issues within communities is that there's often a misunderstanding between criticism and critical thinking on both sides of the conversation. I've often seen people opt for criticism of something (“Resident Evil 5 is stupid and offensive because you kill black people!”) rather than aiming for critical thought (“Setting the game in a poor, rural village set somewhere in the 'generic' vastness of Africa reinforces the notion that Africa is desert, rural and monolithic, not a continent made up of many vastly different countries and communities. Also, there are some racist implications in the fact that the only zombies you, as the white player character, kill are ethnically African. A different way the game could have been set up was to set it in an urban city and have zombies of various ethnicities. The game isn't inherently racist but does reinforce some stereotypes we think we 'know' about Africa – it's the same terrain no matter where you go, the only people who live there are poor, rural blacks, and that it's a place that Europeans or people who are ethnically European need to save.”). I've more than often seen people opt for assuming critical thought equals criticism, however, and shut down the entire conversation (“You want to talk about some of the implications about race in Resident Evil 5! So YOU'RE the racist! I'm not racist for playing the game! I have black friends! It's just a game!”). I'm not sure what to do about this tendency in us, as a society, to opt for criticism over critical thought.
Criticism is easy. Thinking takes work. It takes less thought to call something stupid or to shut down someone else's opinion by assuming they're calling something stupid than it does to hold a deep, detailed conversation. It takes slowing down and truly thinking about a subject and the willingness to truly listen to others to have a useful conversation about these issues. It seems like such a simple concept but I think it's one that not everyone works under. That's a little depressing but that's why we keep writing articles and keep starting new conversations about these issues in media and other aspects of society.
In totally unrelated news, did you know that I won the internets yesterday? I did. It's official because it comes from the Secretary of Geek Affairs and everything. Why? Because I make weird things.
Okay, that's all for me for today. I'm going to keep reading old Questionable Content comics and throw myself even further into Northanger Abbey. Mmm... Gothic literature.
Disclaimer: I have yet to play Resident Evil 5 so neither of my criticism/critical thought examples are true. I'll play it when I upgrade my gaming systems.
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