Two recent twitter storms have led to death threats for one game
designer and the cancellation of a new project for another. Is this
just the way things are in the video game community now?
Last week, David Vonderhaar, the game design director at development studio Treyarch, announced that his team had made some minor adjustments to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. Now there are people online who want him dead. I don't have to list the vile threats that have bombarded his Twitter account - they are handily recorded on the Tumblr, Gamer Fury. All we really need to know is that Vonderhaar and his team tweaked some weapon statistics in the game's multiplayer mode to re-balance the experience, and that some members of the community responded by wishing rape and cancer on his family.
A few days later, indie developer Phil Fish announced that he was abandoning the sequel to his critically acclaimed platformer Fez, because he couldn't cope with the games industry anymore. The announcement came after a raging Twitter argument with games writer Marcus Beer, who had referred to Fish as a tosspot and an asshole during the GameTrailers show, Invisible Walls. Fish is no shrinking innocent; he has actively engaged in social media storms in the past, and his Twitter comment to Beer in which he directed the journalist to "compare your life to mine and then kill yourself" was repellent. But it seems there will be no Fez II now, so, yeah, well played everyone.
These are, of course, familiar tales in the modern games industry, and indeed, they reflect patterns of online behaviour that now exist throughout culture and society. In the Guardian today, we can read about the 21-year-old man who has been arrested for threatening feminist Caroline Criado-Perez after she successfully campaigned to have Jane Austen's picture on the ten pound note. "It's sadly not unusual to get this kind of abuse but I've never seen it get as intense or aggressive as this," said Criado-Perez. "It's infuriating that the price you pay for standing up for women is 24 hours of rape threats."
Yet somehow, this is where we are now.
Naturally, there are a range of theories to explain this bizarre and sickening behaviour. The psychologist John Suler refers to the online disinhibition effect: the way that the anonymity of cyberspace frees us to say and do things that we would ever consider in face-to-face communication. In his 2004 essay, CyberPsychology and Behaviour, there is a theory with particular relevance to the Vonderhaar situation. Suler writes that some people consciously inhabit different characters while online, like actors taking on a role, and that they dissociate the actions of this 'character' from themselves and from real-life consequence:
People may feel that the imaginary characters they "created" exist in a different space, that one's online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, a dream world, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world. They split or "dissociate" online fiction from offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer studying identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested that some people see their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that don't apply to everyday living (pers. comm., 2002). Once they turn off the computer and return to their daily routine, they believe they can leave that game and their game-identity behind. Why should they be held responsible for what happens in that make-believe play world that has nothing to do with reality? After all, it isn't that different than blasting away at your pals in a shoot-em up video game... or so some people might think, perhaps unconsciously.In this sense, the mindless hatred directed toward Vonderhaarr could be seen as a warped extension of the 'trash talk' many gamers indulge in during multiplayer deathmatches – Twitter becomes a part of the experience of Black Ops, and engaging in online bullying is a sort of tribal affirmation with other players. Similarly, the controversial theory of deindividuation, which seeks to explain why normal individuals become unruly and violent in a crowd, may well show parallels between Twitter abuse and football hooliganism: both are about taking on and representing a collective identity which has nothing to do with 'real-life'. Both are about showing off how hard you are to your peers. And in the leveling confines of the online comments section or Twitter feed, the only way to be heard – to be 'admired' – is to be the most extreme.
The problem is, the games community has found ways to explain away abominable online behaviour. You know, "Call of Duty is a horrible game so it gets the fans it deserves"; "Phil Fish is an argumentative guy so he should expect to attract Twitter hatred"; "these nutters are a tiny minority of gamers". But by excusing all this crap, surely we're perpetuating it; we're complicit. And we shouldn't be. It is repulsive.
Game design is a creative endeavour and its proponents, like the great novelists, the great film makers, the great artists, are often introverted and sensitive people. Do we really want to create an environment in which online abuse is accepted as inevitable? Where does that stop? Suggesting that young designers stay off Twitter or remain aloof from communities is not practical – in the digital era, maintaining close ties with your 'user-base' is vital. After all, Valve's Greenlight system has turned community into a financial model; popularity, or at least notoriety, has become a prerequisite to success. It is not realistic to just stay out of the social media milieu.
And ultimately, it doesn't matter what you think about games like Call of Duty, you have to think about David Vonderhaar going home to his family one night last week and explaining to them that dozens of people want him to die in the most graphic ways possible because of a decision he made about a game he loves. All developers understand that their audiences are passionate and engaged, but is hate an inevitable by-product of that?
As for the Phil Fish situation, well, it is more complex – he has courted controversy, he has played that game. But I'm not sure he knew the maelstrom of invective he would bring down upon himself. And if he did, does that make it acceptable? That's an honest question. Does it?
Bullies rely on a status quo that subtly excuses and normalises their behaviour. It doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of excuses to be an idiot online, but the excuses not to be are always more compelling and enriching. I'm not imagining some sort of happy-clappy pacifist fantasy land here; full-bloodied criticism, satire and argument are vital. I'm just talking about a games culture in which a developer doesn't get death threats for changing an imaginary weapon.
Is it okay to think about that? Is it okay to want it?
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