#dear god i just hashtagged gamergate

[bambamramfan]

____ aren’t fun

@oligopsalter mentioned the “games aren’t fun” thread from 2014, and that got me thinking on that topic again. When I first read SMG’s long takedown, I was very compelled by his arguments about fear, and capitalism, and consumption, but I didn’t really get his whole “games aren’t fun” thing. However since then, I’ve paid attention to that perspective and I’ve come around to it more, particularly as I’ve watched geek culture react to more games and more movies in a way that really disturbs me.

(An aside for a minute: when I say “geek culture” here I refer both to its left and right wings. While the incel types whining about Ghostbusters are more visible and more numerous, the social justice geek hype machine about the latest tabletop works in the same way.)

So the marketing departments of corporations and social media influencers have found a remarkable thing: if you get people talking a lot about a new product coming up, it will feed on itself and generate more chatter, and it will mildly boost sales. And due to the competition between “the ideal that’s in our heads” and “actual reality”, often it’s more fun to fantasize about what’s coming up. And this past decade, the “hype” for upcoming media has vastly outpaced anything like it before. I say this on the week a Star Wars trailer dropped over 8 months before the movie is coming out.

None of the above is new, but consider the way that reactions to major media properties can be broadly grouped into 3 categories (from smallest to biggest)

G1. The truly loved. These are games/movies that people like and genuinely stand the test of time. The boundary here is whether fans talk about them more after they come out than before, and whether discussions of them are about the actual work itself (quoting lines from the movie vs quoting box office stats.) This is rare for art overall, and only some works get this so the rarity of true quality isn’t a problem per se. In the geek sphere I am thinking of Fury Road, Overwatch, Breath of the Wild, Dark Knight, Star Trek (the initial reboot.) Of the MCU’s I would only count the first Iron Man and the first Avengers and Winter Soldier. Going back I would include the LOTR movies.

G2. The truly hated. These are games/movies that cause an explosion of outrage against them. (I’m not calling them bad necessarily; some of these are my favorite.) It’s not just that they fail to meet geek desire, but they also must bear the weight of months (years?) of anticipation by overly excited communities. The outrage against these failed products may be legitimate or not, but from an outsider it usually appears as grossly disproportionate. We’re talking the Diablo Immortal announcement, Endless Horizon, Duke Nukem Forever, Batman vs Superman, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and The Last Jedi. Going back I would include the Prequels. The extremely emotional nature of this reaction is what causes a lot of condescending analysis of “the geek community”, but that’s not what I am talking about today. At least it’s an emotion.

G3. The forgotten okay. Almost everything else falls into this middle ground. It would be wrong to call it mediocre - these are movies and games that when they come out are hailed as successes. They get positive reviews, big box offices, and the fans who see them are satisfied that “they got it right.” And then you barely ever hear from them again. No one ever talks about these “successful” properties. (Obviously not absolutely here, but relative to the above.) I’m talking about the majority of the MCU - including Black Panther, Captain Marvel, the other Iron Man movies, Infinity War, Spider-man Homecoming - but also Wonder Woman, the later seasons of Game of Thrones, the last book of Wheel of Time, and Star Trek: Beyond. (And videogames beyond counting, that after all was the purpose of the linked thread.) There’s always some pure plot-wiki-ization sifting of them (how will the Avengers defeat Thanos) in preparation for the next movie, but very little long term appreciation of it on its own. How quickly can you summon your favorite quote from Thor Ragnarok or even the Shape of Water?

This last group is becoming the majority of media produced for geeks. And there’s no explicit complaint about it. These products are in a constant state of being hyped, and once they happen, there is a very brief spurt of excitement, and then they go down the memory hole. Woops! It’s Tsathoggua, benign satisfaction and contentment with no epiphany. I’m not even blaming the works under discussion here - some of the “forgotten okay” can be very interesting with a proper reading, but who does that?

So when only talking about the last group, and seeing how it has come to dominate the marketplace, I understand what “games (and movies) aren’t fun” means. I can’t even convey it to you, just - pay attention to how much you see hype for upcoming products, how much discussion there is on reddit or other forums, and look at how often no one mentions even the “good” ones again mere weeks after their release. It’s actually upsetting, and you’ll wonder why all your time was wasted.

In the linked thread, SMG was theorizing that the constant agitation-and-emptiness of G3 leads to the emotional build up that explodes in G2, in a vicious cycle where the only visible solution is to ask capitalist industries to give us yet more G2 that never truly satisfies us.