Will [insert geeky medium] ever grow up?

Posted on Posted in Comics, Games10 Comments

Kotaku recently compiled a bunch of articles and quotes from critics in a debate about whether games would ever “grow up.” To summarize, some arguments include:

  1. Comics and games are “infantilized” because artsy content is the exception, with most of these media targeted to teenage boys;
  2. But games “have more to achieve” as a medium, and some creators are pushing for that;
  3. Moreover, dominance of the low-brow “isn’t inherent” to these media, but actually is common across all entertainment media;
  4. And in the meantime, part of the problem is that consumers “expect too little” of games (as evidenced by Bioshock, which is not nearly as sophisticated as its reception might have suggested).

My response to this is sort of a follow-up to recent posts addressing the perceived immaturity or unmasculinity of geeky pursuits like games and comics. In short, I agree with just about all of these to some extent, but I’d contend that these stereotypes can be escaped through creative and marketing efforts. Just look at the “graphic novel.”

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D&D “Nerdrage”

Posted on Posted in Games9 Comments

Slashdot recently posted a Q&A between its readers and the designers of the upcoming 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Several of the questions are irritable in tone, especially as many feel this comes hot on the heels of the last major D&D overhaul. (The post is tagged with: “rpg, nerds, complaining, nerdrage, greed.”)

The only question which didn’t get an answer, though, was the one that I found most interesting, especially given the talk I’m delivering next week on the relative acceptability/respectability of geeky interests:

Short intro, I read a lot of fantasy and sci-fi. Play a lot of computer games. Enjoy reading up on lore and the like. But I never got into D&D. I had friends that played it but I was never into it. I tried playing it a few times and had some fun experiences. But there’s always been a sort of negative stigma associated with it among … well, the general populace. What are you doing to break free of this? Or do you embrace it? What are your thoughts & opinions on this strange negative publicity that popular movies push onto D&D players? Do you ever try to break free of that?

WotC:
(Note from Gamer_Zer0: Sorry Zonk, I tried my best to get this question answered for you, but apparently the Sci-Fi channel was having an original Battlestar Galactica marathon and the entire D&D team was no where to be found!)

… Is that a joke? Some sort of glib suggestion that geeky pursuits are cool enough to be mainstream now (though the original question certainly singled out D&D as especially stigmatized)? From a business standpoint, I guess I can understand why Wizards of the Coast might want its employees to dodge such a question, but I’d surely be interested in how the stigma of role-playing games figures into marketing (and perhaps even design) decisions.

What Does Bill Gates Have to Do with the Revenge of the Nerds?

Posted on Posted in Miscellanea18 Comments

I’m giving a talk on my dissertation research soon, which means figuring out how to distill a few years and a few hundred pages of work into a 40-minute presentation. Kicking around ideas with my advisor about how to do this, he suggested that I post a super-concise core argument for the talk here on the blog just to see what you all think of it. This is what we last discussed:

People have often told me in interviews that it’s “cool” to be geek ever since Bill Gates demonstrated that geeks can be rich—echoing, as it turns out, earlier research that has suggested the same. This may make sense coming from a computer programmer, but for whatever reason, I also hear it from comic book fans, gamers, and plenty of other geeks and nerds who make no claim to computer skill or a lucrative job. The prevailing assumptions of “geek chic” being rooted in economic power, then, may be an oversimplified reflection of a new value accorded to what “geek pride” is really rooted in: intellectual curiosity, on a continuum between the technical and the playful.

What do you think? Is “geeks aren’t rich (and therefore shouldn’t be considered cool because they are rich)” an aha! kind of statement to you? Should the above argument imply (as one person I discussed this with suggested) that geeks are just as powerless as ever if they’re not really making more money than before? Please let me know your thoughts, whether kind or brutally honest. (I do have other parts of the dissertation to draw from, after all.) Thanks!

A Couple Brief Notes

Posted on Posted in Games, Miscellanea2 Comments

Posting has been sparse here as I take care of a series of important tasks and imminent deadlines. I hope to report some good news soon, at least, about some ongoing research efforts. (Plus, I have about a thousand links to share with you over here.) In the meantime, I wanted to just jot a couple brief notes on things I was afraid I might forget otherwise.

What I Learned from Kane & Lynch: I played Kane & Lynch: Dead Men for the Xbox 360 a few weeks back, and I realized I learned some things about my own tastes in gaming from it.

  1. I don’t mind repetitive gameplay if there is really interesting dialog over it; the shooting makes the dialog feel more intense.
  2. While I enjoy Halo 3, Half Life 2, and certain other games where you save the world/galaxy/universe, in general, I am tired of playing the messiah, and glad to play another sort of character.

  3. I find myself disappointed by games—like Kane & Lynch—that set up a grand plot and then only deliver on half of it. Movies are generally no more than two hours, and games are generally between twice and forty times as long as that. Why can games not tell a complete story in that time span?

Jedis in the Park: While wandering around Rittenhouse Square last night, pondering over how to phrase something I am writing, I came upon a group of people swinging around light sabers. I asked if they were part of some organized light saber group or if they were just, you know, random light saber enthusiasts. They immediately held out the handle of a light saber, inviting me to join, and gave me a colorful flyer, directing me to PAjedi.com. I was too busy to join, but they were so friendly (and strong with the Force) that I wanted to give them a link.

Links: Geek Shame, the Lulz, and Two Meanings for “Hardcore”

Posted on Posted in Anime & Manga, Books, Computers, Games, Miscellanea, Movies5 Comments

This weekend’s link drop is brought to you by Church, Jordan, Cabral, various Gawker blogs, and the letter Q.

Confessions of a Sci-Fi Addict:
Let’s start with this link-ful post from the Website at the End of the Universe, brought to us courtesy Church. The main link is to a newspaper column titled “Admitting addiction to fantasy, sci-fi books” (“after years secreted in the book closet”). I was just as interested in the links that accompanied this on the referring site, though (such as these great old Worldcon photos), and the claim that “While not exactly in leauge with the civil rights or suffragette movements, geek acceptance has come a long way from the early days of fandom.”

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Geek Weekend

Posted on Posted in Conventions, Games, Miscellanea

The problem with being a lone ethnographer working on a multi-site project is that you can only be in one place at a time. This weekend is an exciting and devastating example of that problem, as a number of geeky events are going down around the various places I frequent (and beyond).

Make:Philly: Philadelphia, PA. This Sunday, Make:Philly will be doing an intro to NES video graphics. The Maker Challenge will involve hacking a NES ROM to alter its graphics. It hurts my soul to know that I will miss this. Tune in to Geekadelphia to find out how it goes if you can’t make it, either.

Geek Week: Utica, NY. Church emails me to let me know that this is “Geek Week” at SUNYIT. Lots of gaming, science-fiction, and rocket-building will ensue.

“The idea is to bring people together to enjoy the things they’re passionate about,” Brenda Dow, alumni and advancement services officer, said in a news release.
“Everyone has a hobby or a pastime they engage in to the point of ‘geekiness,’ whether it’s technology, sci-fi movies, gaming or something else.”

Arisia 2008: Boston, MA. In Boston, this weekend hosts Arisia, which happens to be the first science-fiction convention I ever attended. The panel I most regret having to miss this year is titled, “What am I? A fan? A geek? A nerd?” Check it out Sunday at 7:00:

What is a geek? A nerd? A fan? A hardcore fan? Which one are you? What does it mean, and should you even care? Discuss how labels affect fandom and what can be done to benefit from or break down the structures that distinguish us.

MIT Mystery Hunt: Cambridge, MA. My time, however, will be spent at the MIT Mystery Hunt, which I have been meaning to (and unable to) attend in person for several years in a row. Depending on where I get a job after I graduate this year, I figure it may be my last chance to attend it for awhile (or at all), and my last chance to get in some time at MIT before I finish the dissertation.

I am also remiss in my blogging duties as of late, thanks to all my recent travels and other work duties. In the coming days/weeks, anyway, expect some updates and photos from the last Make:Philly, Nerd Nite Boston, the Consumer Electronics Show, and the Mystery Hunt.

From the Floor of CES

Posted on Posted in Conventions, Toys3 Comments

Yesterday I was walking through the exhibitors’ booths in the Sands hotel in Las Vegas, carrying a colorful box with large, plastic toys inside. The toys—a giveaway by Cartoon Network to promote a new show—had been distributed at a panel I attended in the morning on “new frontiers of play.” The charmingly bizarre design aesthetic prompted me to take one, unsure of what I would do with it later, so I had to lug it around for a few hours.

Somewhere near the life-size toy Halo guns and the “Air Guitar Hero” booth, a woman gasped with delight upon seeing the box under my arm. “Where did you get this?” she asked. She seemed East Asian, somewhere between her late 20s and mid 30s.

I explained which room the toys were at, and said there were probably many left, based on how fast they were being taken. “Are you a collector?” I asked.

“No,” she said, still smiling, “I have a three-year-old who would love this, though.”

Though they are both comparably large conventions that look pretty similar from the show floor, the Consumer Electronics Show is very different from Comic Con International. This was my favorite example illustrating this point, but it’s certainly not the most extreme example. I’ll be writing about this (and some other recent research excursions) once I get back home to Philadelphia this week. In the meantime, go check out the still ongoing conversation about geek music which I blogged about the other day. I just realized there’s a whole second page (and maybe more) of posts which I completely missed, so I need to return to that soon, too.