Gaming

An essential look at the racist underpinnings of nonhumans in roleplaying games.

In the last game I worked on, I actually had some room to run with on the nonhuman species, and I very specifically tried to make them challenge these kind of tropes. The elves were (with some exceptions) irrational to the point of insanity, angular and ugly; the kobolds were far more technologically and sociologically advanced then their human adversaries and viewed them with a sort of pity. (One kobold will lecture the player on how human sexuality is related to human overconsumption and ends with a simple command: “Stop breeding, human.”)

Players seemed to enjoy the kobolds, and they hated, HATED the elves. They wanted the pretty faerie master-race archetype.

And we had no orcs.

Top Streamers Said to Earn $50,000 Per Hour Playing New Games – Kotaku

When I wrote my gaming blog in the far mists of prehistory (1998-2001) and it became popular, I started flying out to game companies to do developer interviews. I paid my own way out of pocket, because I just assumed that was the correct thing to do.

Yeah. About that. (In case it’s not clear, that $50k/hr is direct payola from companies with games being shown.)

My first gaming guild, I joined because I was reading guides for Everquest. The class I was playing, there were a few really boring guides and there was one really kickass one that made me actually want to play.

And I did.

I sent the author an email as a thank you and he said I seemed like a cool guy unlike most of the people around, maybe log in on his server and see how people are.

I did. I rolled up a monk, the class guide he was known for. Called the monk Whiff (because I missed every time I tried to hit anything) Dirtnap (because I always ended up dead).

That monk never went anywhere because I had terminal alt-itis. Whiff is still on the Erollisi Marr server sitting at level 37 or whatever other insulting level it was. The toon was unimportant. The friendships I made most definitely were not.

A few years later I went to Las Vegas for a guild meetup. It was exactly as legendary as such things would expect – I have an epic story I retell to this day of a Russian gangster and my total inability to throw a roll of craps – but my patron was not there. He sat it out – he was busy. I never met him.

I never will.

We make contacts through these pipes that carry an absolutely insignificant amount of emotion. Do not ever let anyone tell you they have no meaning. Do not ever let anyone tell you the friendships you make are not real. My only contact with Richard Stark was through his online postings and his tales of online gaming and stock trades. We never met in person. And we are all diminished with his passing.

(I still absolutely am horrible at playing MMOs. That I started making them doesn’t change this.)

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Guild Wars Studio Fires Two Employees After Clash With Streamer – The Verge

HI FRIENDS THIS IS WHY LUMTHEMAD.NET WILL NEVER EVER COME BACK

This incident may have been the first time that particular streamer felt the need to jump in with his opinion, but for Price, it was just the latest in a long-running stream of interactions with the fan community that she felt consistently demeaned her expertise. “By the time that guy came along, I was so tired of having random people explain my job to me… where I had to just smile and nod that it was like, ‘No. Not here. Not in my space,’” she says.

Price adds that she believes her firing was an emotional reaction on the part of ArenaNet co-founder Mike O’Brien. “He fired me personally, and the meeting was mostly him venting his feelings at me,” she says. “I understand being afraid when you see the Reddit mob coming for you, but if people with less power can weather it — and we do, regularly — so can he.”

Price says that prior to being fired, the company had never discussed her social media presence with her or issued a warning for anything she had posted. “If it was covered in orientation, I wouldn’t know. I got pulled out of orientation to jump into rebreaking the story arc for this season of Living World.”

Furthermore, ArenaNet was not only aware of her outspoken approach to discussing similar issues on social media but encouraging of it. During a job interview with the company, she had told them she was “loud about these issues on social media and had no intention of shutting up. They reassured me that they ‘admired [my] willingness to speak truth to power.’”

Your boss will never have your back.

Your social media will kill you.

I am unemployed and interviewing and terrified.

This is not the future we wanted.