The Bullshit Delivery Company

This post is not part of the series I've been writing, but does reflect on it.  Regarding categorising players, which has made the last seven posts something of a trial, I understand why the 4th edition writers tried it.  I did it myself in my book, How to Run, published seven years after the text I've been deconstructing.  At that time, I had read the 4th edition version of player categories, but I can't specifically remember thinking about it when I wrote my own book.

"The Players" is the 3rd chapter of How to Run, which begins,

"Any attempt to classify a player ‘type’ based upon their personality is an awful strategy. It doesn’t work. Players do not fit into artificial categories. However clever I might be in organizing patterns of behaviour, I promise the player sitting across the table right now will fit into none of them. 

"On the other hand, trying to explain how a DM should tailor the presentation of the campaign for every unique, individual person who might ever play is an impossible task. First of all, I haven’t met everyone. The interview process alone would probably require the rest of my life. So we are stuck with classifications. The reader should remember while reading through the list that our goal is to examine the players we know for expectations, which we can then fulfill. By looking at a set of mythical players – stereotypes – I hope to create a model from which readers should deviate in assessing their own players."

This may or may not have been the thinking behind these 4th edition categories, but it is the thinking behind psychological profiling, which never thinks that any individual fits a "type."

The thing I did not do was to present every possible character type as a positive one.  I included "predisposed," "disenchanted," "badly behaved" and "the guest"—this last being a person who knows nothing about the game but has come along to watch or merely because their significant other is playing.  I based my categories on psychological behaviour, not gaming ideals; and the psychological principles being used were not "positivist."

"Positivist psychology" is a philosophical approach to human behaviour that argues we should only discuss elements of knowledge that describes only positive approaches and experiences.  For example, if you try to search "health" online, you will find endless articles encouraging you to be healthy and methods of how to achieve health—but you will find very little or nothing at all towards a definition of how "healthy" or "unhealthy" is defined, or where the line exists between the two.  You will find very little on being unhealthy, except mostly to argue that you shouldn't be.

If you look up "rape" you will find endless articles, both political and psychological, explaining its wrongness and how to get over its effects.  You will only find a little about what those effects are, as no one wants to wallow in the negative description of the aftermath.  You will find even less online as to what motivates a rapist; and you will find nothing at all about what the after effects of rape are on the perpetrator.  That is because online is almost wholly positivist in its view; rape is wrong, therefore any discussion of actual rape is wrong, as is any discussion about rapists.  Psychologically, the rapist ceases to exist once the crime occurs.

This is fine for building a better society and encouraging us all to be empathic and responsible, but if we're arguing that psychology is a science, then it's ridiculous.  Of course, there are experts in psychology who investigate these things; they spend every day of their lives detailing at length how the body breaks down and in what ways, and there are endless statistics that describe your chances of survival depending on what collection of unhealthy characteristics you possess: but it isn't published on the internet, because it would be viewed very negatively by readers who haven't been educated and who would misunderstand the point.  For the lay person, what they understand about psychology, medicine, war, perversity—in short, anything bad—is only half the equation.  As far as the experts are concerned, the general public cannot handle the truth; and they're right.  There are reasons why the last many months of locating a vaccine have not gone into detail about the price that had to be paid getting it; there are reasons why we have death statistics from Covid, but specifics regarding those morbidity statistics are deliberately kept vague.  The less you know, the better is it for you.

Certain elements in society think that's wrong; they want transparency with everything.  That comes from trusting no one, and thinking that if we can see it, we can prove its credibility.  I am not one of these people.  Truth is inconceivably terrible; it needs to be parcelled out in small pieces to a large number of people.  Those people must spend years of dedication to open the series of doors, guarded by gatekeepers who know what's there, before they can enter.  They have to be made ready to enter.  The average, uneducated, unprepared person is a liability with regards to such knowledge.  In many fields, I am that uneducated person; and in other fields, I'm very much on the inside.  In other fields still, medical fields, my partner Tamara was once on the inside.  Some of my readers are military and they understand perfectly what I'm saying.  It is better that these things be kept from the general public.

All this aside, the greatest proponents for positivism in presentation are marketing companies.  For a games company anxious to make profits, we don't care how much the players enjoy the game, so long as they buy it.  We don't care if they learn how to play.  We don't care if the game sits on a shelf in their room, or goes in the trash.  Did they buy it?  Goal.

The 4th Edition DMG is the sort of positivism that tries to keep on selling you after you bought the game, even as you're reading the game, because it's known that a good experience for the purchaser translates to the purchaser's willingness to buy a game.  It contributes to a feeling on the purchaser's part, "If I don't get it, this must be my fault; the makers of the game seem very concerned about me; they seem like really nice people."  This strategy works.  You might be surprised.  Did you know you can get more donations for a political candidate if you ask people, "Do you want to get involved with my party?" than you will if you ask, "Do you want to help support my party?"  It's not even a little bit of difference.  You can go from getting two signees an hour to eighteen, boom.

Gygax didn't present the AD&D version with marketing language in mind.  For one thing, much of what we know today hadn't been tested and advanced in 1978; for another, Gygax wasn't concerned with sales.  Gygax, for all his flaws, saw the game as a message he wanted to relay.  Very often, in my opinion, his message was idiotic and wrong, but on the whole the message was "Here's how to play, if you don't do it this way it's all your fault if it goes wrong, in reality you're by yourself, dig in and work hard."  That message didn't resonate well with a lot of people, and didn't hold up once the message got muddied and fucked over by twenty other messages that frankly contradicted themselves.  Present day D&D has learned from that; the message is mostly bullshit, but everything published now stays on that message.

This is why, I grudgingly admit, Gygax was a man with vision, whereas Mearls and others who represent the present-day ideal are sausage-grinders.  Gygax gave advice which was intended to make DMs better at running the game.  Modern D&D says "You're fine, don't worry about it."  One says to play the game, you have to "give."  The other says you only have to be "involved."

So, it is the manner in which the players are being organised here, not that they are being organized.  The purpose is for you, the reader, to find the category you feel most appeals to you and then feel the positive language flow over you.  Of course, if you're fundamentally cynical, you've grown to recognize this writing when you see it and immediately begin to gnash your teeth.  Me too.

I know a bullshit delivery company when I smell one.

Truth Will Out

This is getting very interesting.

The Gentle Reader will note that I've been harping upon the organization, the Gamerati, for two whole days. This started Tuesday morning, when I stumbled across a link for a gamer, Joanna Gaskell, going on about her game in a way that suggested she was a poser, since she began with, "I am the Gamerati," a phrase I had never heard of before and which I considered pompous and, well, stupid.  I was quickly informed that her apparent pomposity was actually a collection of videos that had been created to promote gaming.

Understanding now that it was a marketing scheme, I found a number of videos on youtube and linked them on this blog, with the intention of disparaging them.  The first of those videos was that of a grognard, Stan Brown, talking about his experience organizing Magic the Gathering and other role-playing in Japan.  I stated that my impression was that he was a bit of a git.

Late last night I wrote a post about how I had jumped the numbers on Joanna Gaskell's youtube page, and that the Gamerati ought to be talking to me.

Not long after, I found myself approached by a girl on my facebook who wanted to know - on her friend's behalf, who was not a facebook friend of mine - why I had written the post disparaging gamer interviews. She happens to know Stan personally and she wanted me to know that he's really a great guy.

Then last night, I got a comment from a fellow, Stephen Radney-MacFarland, who wanted me to know that Stan Brown is a nice guy, and not a git at all.  At this point I became aware that when people who know Stan talk about Stan, they add an exclamation point to the end of Stan's name, like this:  Stan!

The reader can find other uses of this affectation on this youtube video.

I asked Stephen to explain the Gamerati to me (sell it to me, actually) in a kind of a dickish way (I don't mind the impressions I make so much, but then I don't adopt any affectations), and received this.  I want to post it up front, because I don't want it to be lost in one of the comments sections:

"Gamerati is about the fun of games. It is a celebration of that pastime in all its nuances--the fun, the "cool", the interesting, the silly. And as both a discipline and frivolity. They run a fantastic event in Tacoma that I can take my non-gamer girlfriend and her son to and we can all have a blast. They accept gamers of all types. Even freaky game designers with strange names."

Along with this admonition:

"What I do have to disagree with your assessment of Stan! as a person via this one bit of sound bite. Stan! is one of the nicest, warmest, and talented people I know. I'm not here to market. I'm no marketer. Spend some time with Stan! and you will find that he sells himself. But I am a friend of Stan!'s and I can tell you this. Your impression is just that and you are filling that impression with pretense that seems...well, overstated. Maybe because I've seen the animal, and your analysis comes from one mere fossil: a artifact you've found on the internet."

Finally, this morning, I found this on reddit:

"The whole 'I am the Gamerati' is the intro to Ed's videos, there is one of me on there somewhere. Joanna is a VERY passionate gamer, and also does a series of board game reviews for a game store online called Starlit Citadel, and a web series called Standard Action.  Her comments about the game show that she is a bit of a noob to running, but not a 'horror show.' "

I do not know if the reader is sensing a pattern here or not, but I'd like to make a few points.

My 'impression' is based on the video.  The video is a marketing tool.  If my impression was negative, then it was.  Want a different impression from me?  Market yourselves differently.  Don't avail yourselves of my approval by appealing to my needing to understand the actors' motivation.  Strangers whom I do not know who are connected to a marketing collective, telling me that these are nice people, who are sincere, passionate and so on, doesn't change my impression.  My impression is that 'Stan' (affectation not included) is self-important.  In fact, his name isn't even Stan.  That is an affectation too, and from Wikipedia, it looks like an affectation he has been using a long, long time.

If anything, I feel more certain of his being a git than I did last Tuesday, as Tuesday I did not know about the affectation, and I knew even less about the agenda of the Gamerati group.  The group, as near as I can tell, stands for everything this blog has been against since the day I started writing it.  It stands for everything that I myself have despised since the first time I witnessed the corporatism of D&D back in the early 80s, which I have written about many, many, many times.  As it happens, 'Stan' is an ex-employee of the WOTC, and author of quite a lot of - I'm sorry to be quite blunt about it, but honesty is the best policy, isn't it? - crap that been floating around for several decades.  If I'm going to stand by any of the things I have said on this blog since 2008, the one thing I have to stand behind is that the WOTC has done everything possible to fracture and dumb down the game of D&D . . . and here is one of the architects of that policy.

I don't really care that he is a nice guy.

Nor do I care that Joanna Gaskell is nice either, or that she has credentials that refer to nothing I've ever heard of or care about.  In the video, she appears to be promoting a mind set about role-playing that fundamentally opposes everything I believe.  She seems flighty and vapid.  She seems to think a great campaign happens despite her 'mistakes' (all of which would be principles upon which I run my game - player agency, player freedom).  Since she is part of a marketing scheme, the fact that she believes what she is saying, and that it isn't scripted - which I still don't believe, by the way, because this is a marketing scheme - actually doesn't make what she says any better for me.

Incidentally, for people who seem to think I know nothing about television, or marketing, or how it works, the fact that a person was captured gushing for three minutes on camera means very little.  What, I ask, was filmed that I didn't see?  How much was filmed?  Who CHOSE the film that was shown?  Who decided that THIS part of the video would be included?  Who made the decision about what would be said.  Why was this particular subject addressed, and not some other subject?

I love when I see someone say, "I thought it was very sincere," about a video that's part of a marketing scheme.  Right.  That is what you are meant to think.  You're meant to ignore the careful composite of phrases and words actually being said, while duped by the expressions and up-beat context, initiated by a happy fun phrase that loads you up with oxytocin before the commentary begins.  This is how marketing works.  It relies on the viewer being very, very ready to accept whatever is being said, because it is couched in words that appeal to your need to BELONG.

I have been behind the camera too, too many times to fall for it.  I have written this shit.  I know how the game works.

The reason why I am being approached and being told that these are nice people is because they presume that, being nice people, they are entitled to my approval.  Note that the game itself is, in every video, an afterthought.  What's important is that we belong, that we are part of a herd, that we enjoy being part of the herd, that the herd is good for our creativity, that the herd will make us 'cool' and that the herd is our friend. See?  Joanna and Stan are part of the herd, and they're nice people.

Uh, yeah.

Okay.  I don't play D&D in order to belong to a geek club.  I don't play it to relieve my stress (rather increases my stress, actually).  I don't look to game clubs in order to feel appreciated.  I don't give a shit if the game is cool or not, or if cool ravers play it on Sunday afternoons after raves.  And I don't care that people with agendas that I fundamentally disagree with are nice.

I do care that it's one more pile of bullshit being dumped on my doorstep, that people will point to as evidence of what the game is about - ie., that you're not a player if you're not part of this herd.  I do care that here is one more splinter group in the world to further fracture the game's following.  And I do care that many, many people who are silly enough to want to join a herd will happily march into this marketing business plan and be exploited there.

No News is Bad News

For those of you out there who may feel bad for the Gamerati, because I've been mean to it, or to Ms. Joanna Gaskell, look at this:

This is the stats bar on the youtube page of Ms. Gaskell's 'memories' - I couldn't help noticing yesterday that it had about 1,100 hits, gained since being posted on Apr 2.  The big green spike at the bottom right - that is from being mentioned and discussed on this blog.  It has gotten more page views in the last day than it gained on the day it was launched.

The staff at Gamerati ought to be noticing this, and they ought to be talking to me.  They ought to be asking me to be their next Gamerati spokesperson.

Think I should apologize to them and do it, when they call?

Gaming . . . There Be Money There

Stan Brown, Gamerati.  Key demographic: Grognard.  Synopsis: Originated game organization in Japan; after name dropping, makes claim to "the first sanctioned Magic Tournament in Japan, ever" - finishes with cute story about Japanese citizens confusing role-playing games with role-playing sex.  Impression: Kind of a self-important git.

Catherine Blessing, Gamerati.  Key demographic: Children, Cute.  Synopsis:  Describes principles of game she would like to create; occasionally in the background, sounds of an adult chuckling.  Impression: awwww . . .

Brent Newhall, Gamerati.  Key demographic: Man boys, programmer.  Synopsis:  Details war story with typical incomprehensible disconnected phrases gamers use when going on and on about their games when no one cares; includes demographic-focused references to smoking and drunkenness and the innocence of the 15-year-old girl role-player.  Impression: Carefully staged, seemed to have trouble remembering lines.

Rob Hunt, Gamerati.  Key demographic: Cool people.  Synopsis:  Leads with reminisces of dance parties - "raves" - drugs, "weird crazy stuff," getting killed, etc., moving onto how a group of these ravers would, on Sundays, play Dungeons & Dragons.  Impression:  Cool people play D&D.

Gail Simone, Gamerati.  Key demographic: Artist, writer.  Synopsis:  Following self-promotion, describes video games as means to relax when creativity-stressed; includes product placement before returning to self-promotion, followed by more self-promotion, ending with use of gaming strategy as a measurement of her value as a self-promoted product.  Impression:  Wouldn't read her comics.

Beth Martinez, Gamerati.  Key demographic:  Cosplayers, possibly Furries.  Synopsis:  Prefers to watch rather than personally role-play, but plays online MMOs, loves to meet people and make costumes, proud to be accepted for what she does.  Impression:  Mostly harmless.

Pedro Barrenchea, Gamerati.  Key demographic:  Hispanic, game designers.  Synopses:  Starts by showing stamps on nerd card (dyslexic, ADHD, fantasy novels), promotes healing powers of gaming, speaks of professional ambitions before gushing about the gaming universe.  Impression:  Will probably be the most successful ex-Gamerati in ten years.

There's more, but I'm a bit sick to my stomach now.

A lot of people will think that I'm being grossly unfair by scheduling these videos as directed towards a key demographic.  But, you know, this is why marketing works.