Garwulf’s Corner #29: Emails from the Edge IV: The Continuing Insane Refusal to Use “Forum Posts from the Edge”

Originally published March 16, 2016

“One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”
— Doctor Who, William Hartnell

IT IS GARWULF #29, and that means it’s time for a brand new “Emails from the Edge,” with even more lampshading of the fact that no actual emails are involved. However, it’s also the last regular Garwulf’s Corner that will be appearing here on the pages of The Escapist…which means that there is some housekeeping to do.

Garwulf’s Corner over the last year has been one of those projects where every minute was a joy (even the ones where I had to sift through the many layers of the Puppy Wars, or read up on outrage culture). And, now that we come to the end of this chapter of the column’s life, there are some people to recognize and thank.

First, the editor-in-chief, Josh Vanderwall. Not only did he acquire the column, he trusted me to take it wherever I felt it needed to go, and ran interference for me when it became necessary — and that’s what a good editor does. Let me put it this way: I never received instructions from higher up telling me what to write, or demanding that I follow a particular editorial policy. Everything you read was all me.

Next, there are the section editors I worked with on Garwulf’s Corner: John Keefer, Jonathan Bolding, and Ron Whittaker. Jonathan Bolding in particular helped out with what proved to be the most difficult installment of the lot: the first column on the Hugo Awards. The initial drafts had to undergo update after update in a constantly changing situation, and a week before the installment went up, it was a mess. If it hadn’t been for Jonathan’s editorial passes and comments, it would not have come out even close to decent.

And last, but not least, there’s you. Yes, you — my readers. You see, the thing about this column is that it is the first voice in the discussion, and the victory condition has always been an active back and forth in the forums, with people throwing ideas around and coming up with new ones. And you have never disappointed — even if it only lasted a year here, you proved that we really can have a true marketplace of ideas, if only we will take the time to reach for it. So, without further ado, it’s time to finish up with your words.

Garwulf #22, “Just What Is The Genre Killer?” generated one of the smaller discussions over the history of the column. Albino boo disagreed with my assessment, suggesting that instead we were seeing the games industry in its mature form:

Gaming has the benefit of falling real terms prices and increasing consumers. Hardware and software price point have stayed the same while inflation has cut the real terms cost, meaning there are more people that can afford to buy hardware and games now than 25 years ago. If you go back to the games crash of the 80s sales where limited to western Europe, North America and Japan. Due to the political and economic changes since then there are literally 100s of millions more people that can afford to game.[…]Some franchise might go into abeyance for a while, but like movies, someone will do a reboot or sequel sooner or later.

Imperioratorex Caprae suggested that while the games industry may have reached maturity, a crash is still likely coming:

More likely the industry will change sooner than later, and these larger than life type publishers may just start to fail, or at least severely cut back their sizes. Like the recording industry, independent folks are becoming more and more able to produce their own works and get them out with relatively tiny budgets (Five Nights at Freddies for example). Its not walled off by huge budgets any longer, you don’t need the machine to drive your budget (crowdfunding)… Publishers aren’t going to go away, neither is the AAA market but the shift from dominance is coming and I’m sure more than a few large scale pubs are not going to make it intact.

Garwulf #23, “Memories of Doom,” went up a week early due to an interesting quirk of fate, and generated a interesting discussion and a lot of nostalgic reminiscing across Facebook and the forums. First-time poster Kevin Theiss disagreed with my feelings about the new Doom, writing on Facebook that:

I was an attendee at QuakeCon 2015, and I got to try out the multiplayer alpha of the Doom reboot. I didn’t know what to expect going in, since the I knew that the reboot had gone through a troubling development cycle prior to this. It was better than I could have imagined. I mean, I can see your point that it probably won’t change the industry like the original did, but in an era where the FPS genre has become dominated by Call of Duty-style military shooters, this was an extreme breath of fresh air. It erased all my doubts, and went from “wait and see how it turns out” to “I need this game NOW!”

Imperioratorex Caprae recalled that:

DOOM was a virus. At least in the eyes of my middle school. It kept “infecting” the school computers somehow despite all attempts at wiping the drives (a time consuming task in that day). It was in no way shape or form due to my “teaching” kids how to install DOOM… nope, no way.

Garwulf #24, “A Few Words About ‘Checking Privilege’” managed to start one of the best discussions I’ve ever seen on the topic. On Facebook, Michael R. Navas wrote:

Merely framing human rights as some baseline it in practice isn’t doesn’t invalidate the truth that out in the real world, having those rights respected is something you are lucky, or privileged, to have. It is a factually reasonable position.

That you see some political good to be had from framing it differently is something else than this being a problematic position on its own.

Using men’s privilege as an example, Gethsemani pointed out that privilege still needs to be discussed for change to happen:

The problem is that many women’s issues are dictated by male privilege. Things like the glass ceiling, the wage gap, sexual harassment and many other things are contingent on men having the privilege to discriminate against women or just act like total dicks against women. That’s why male privilege has to be discussed, because until it is address women can not be equal to men.

[…]It will suck for some men, those that don’t want to see all their (hidden) benefits go, but you need to break some eggs to make an omelette, especially if that omelette is equality.

But the last word should really go to Callate, who pointed out that:

Hatred comes very naturally to us. All of us. To be an “enlightened” human being in a diverse setting is a balancing act, a constant re-assertion that the ways others are different is acceptable.

But we trip. And some of us, rather than admitting that we indulge in that hatred, choose instead to re-define it, to attempt to claim that our hatred is something else, something righteous- resistance to the status quo, backlash to an oppressor, rebellion against a tyrannical regime. “Afflicting the comfortable”. “Punching up.”

…Which is still punching. Hatred is hatred. And if you broaden things enough — and unless you watch carefully, you will — you will target someone unfairly. It says something to me that I see a lot of discussions that want to “move the goalposts” as far as what and who is acceptable now… but no one wants to remove the posts entirely. We want to reserve the right to hate those guys who really, really deserve it, to continue to act as judge, jury, and executioner.

Garwulf #25, “The New Exodus from Video Gaming, Revisited,” provoked very little discussion (much to my surprise). Paradoxrifts noted about the Pew study:

The study would’ve been more useful if it had it tracked the frequency, circumstances and severity of the harassment. Whether the harassment was conducted anonymously, via an online pseudonym, or through a social networking account linked to the presumed legal identity of the harasser would also be useful information to know. Not to mention how often online harassment escalates into more serious types of offline harassment, and vice versa.

And Random Gamer finished the conversation off by adding:

We can’t have accurate data on the harassers right now because a lot of it is basically anonymous — and I don’t think a survey/poll of internet denizens asking them if they’ve ever harassed someone online would have reliable results.

Garwulf #26, “Credo,” was quite well received, but also generated surprisingly little discussion. Thunderous Cacophony wrote:

One of the things that I always try to impress upon the children (and now adults) who have grown up without a significant print media presence in their lives is how valuable it was not to be topical. When you’d get Time weekly and [National Geographic] once a month, and the articles were mostly pieces that had been pitched and researched, edited and rewritten for several weeks before, they weren’t so concerned with always riding the very crest of the water cooler conversation. You might get a flashy cover with an catchy story, but inside the pages were overwhelmingly dominated by actual, sober, intelligent, honest-to-God journalism.

UberPubert, on the other hand, expressed concern about the practicality of the change I was pushing for:

I would absolutely love if these “culture wars” were between otherwise rational, well-meaning people who were open to facts and dialogue, but that’s just not the case, and it’s not going to be. The poisonous ideology behind these culture wars is being fueled by politically motivated media and new outlets and they purposefully cultivate a loyal audience of extremists who hang on their every word — and that is what they are. […]Extremists don’t want feel-good, they want the fear and outrage that justifies their narrow view of the world.

The last word, though, really should go to remnant_phoenix:

Here I thought that the internet was always like the Thunderdome, as I’m younger than you and didn’t get involved on forums and such until 2010. I have long-desired a marketplace of ideas and long-lamented the battlegrounds and echo-chambers I’ve seen. It’s encouraging to know that it wasn’t always like this.

Garwulf #27, “Revisiting the Night the Hugo Awards Burned,” generated an active discussion. Gethsemani provided one of the better insights in the entire affair:

The whole debacle leaves me with the distinct feeling that the culture war wasn’t fought over the Hugos as much as the Hugos became the battleground of choice for people who were already deeply engaged in a culture war (Rabid Puppies in particular). The result was that the Hugos got caught up in something that had, until then, largely been a fairly harmless, if unusually toxic, internet slap fight.

On Facebook, Austin Manning raised a point about language:

God, I hate the term “culture war.” It’s just a needlessly melodramatic term used by the self righteous to make it seem like typing angrily for a couple minutes equates to an epic battle with the fate of humanity at stake.

Albino Boo suggested that even with all the discussion and controversies, the Hugo Awards just don’t matter anymore:

The quality in Sci Fi as genre has fallen over the years. Gone are the days of Asimov, Blish, Anderson and Pohl. […]As to the politics of this mess it’s yet another case of total lack of perspective. Who cares that much over an award that means nothing now. There are 1000s of things in this world that legitimate anger should be expressed that are being ignored in favor of trivialities like this. We live in world where Russia is trying to redraw the borders of Europe by force, the Middle East stands on the brink of a full scale Sunni-Shia war and China is locking up the South China Sea using extremely debatable claims to sovereignty. And yet people are spending time and energy on getting the right sort of politics to win an award in genre fiction.

Garwulf #28, a bonus installment named “Playing with Death,” created a fascinating discussion. Thunderous Cacophony disagreed that the best way to make a video game character death powerful was to use a cut scene:

When you choose to take that character moment out of the interactive part and place it in a cutscene, you are taking away the very value of playing a game as opposed to watching a movie or reading a book. […]If your story requires the death of a character, the best thing I’ve found from PnP games is to avoid placing them in a situation where they can die until that moment. Maybe it’s a belt of stoneskin with an unknown amount of charges, maybe they run out of ammunition or bodyguards at the wrong time, or maybe they just lived at home, far from the battlefield, until one day the characters come home to see the ruins still smoldering. The players are not told, ‘No, you can’t do anything,’ but behind the screen whatever they try is unlikely to work. Managing this is a tricky balancing act to avoid the dreaded railroad, but it’s better to put up a couple of shields around people who (for one reason or another) you think should have a better than average chance at surviving and allow everyone else to die as the dice will.

Xsjadoblayde took a different approach, suggesting that characterization is king:

I guess the closest way to feeling an NPC’s death hit home is to characterise them strongly enough, deep enough while making their company an appreciated escape from the terrors of whatever and wherever you happen to be stuck fighting and surviving. So that if or when you do fuck up, you will feel the void that exists in their absence. This would of course require some thoughtful writing and coding that doesn’t turn the NPCs into broken-record drones repeating the same lines constantly *cough* Dragon’s Dogma *unconvincing cough*. Perhaps with enough effort, their death could trigger a specific death cutscene or choice of actions for you to choose if you want to give them a last symbolic goodbye. That way the agency is still in the player’s hands and they choose their own level of commitment to their NPC friend/s.

The last word, however, goes to KissingSunlight, who mused on the best balance of story versus gameplay:

…story based games (walking simulators) having been receiving a lot of praise. However there is no gameplay value from them. Compare them to the games I enjoyed when I was young. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Tetris have no story or characters at all. Yet, they are all classic games that have high game-play value. I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that maybe story is over-rated when it comes to videogames.

And this is the end, my dear readers…at least for the moment. It has been an honour and a privilege, and I can’t wait to see you all again on the next project!