Fans in Rebellion: The Link Between the NFL and the Game Industry

“Sports are supposed to be an escape, not a reminder of everything that’s unfair and hypocritical everywhere else.” If you interchange the world “sports” with the word “games” in that sentence, doesn’t it sound a lot like a complaint about socially conscious game coverage? Although the original sentence came from an excellent article on Roger Goodell and his continued mismanagement of the NFL, couldn’t it be readily applied to the current issues that are swirling around in the game industry? For years the target audiences of professional sports and video games have been publicly perceived as mortal enemies: videogame nerds and the jocks who abuse them. They couldn’t be any more different. The public perception is that one group dwells in man caves full of TVs, Doritos, Mtn Dew, beer, and sports paraphernalia, while the other lives in man caves full of TVs, Doritos, Mtn Dew, beer, and videogame swag … wait a second. The overlap in targeted advertising doesn’t end there; I mean, the Xbox One is the official console of the NFL for a reason. Both the game industry and the NFL have spent decades dealing escapism and fantasy to a largely white, male audience, often by selling a socially acceptable form of abstracted violence. In games, the abstraction is done through an avatar in a virtual space. The NFL instead implores its fans to identify with and live through the experiences of their favorite athletes. In each case we are meant to emotionally associate with our avatar or player of choice, yet ultimately divorce ourselves from the pain they receive or cause and from the moral questions they raise. It is all just a game, or at least it was.

Currently, the NFL and the game industry are both under increased moral scrutiny, the likes of which neither group has seen before. The NFL’s issues are largely self-inflicted black eyes. The concussion cover-up, Washington ***skins name controversy, Ray Rice debacle, bounty-gate, and annual off-season parade of arrests and suspensions have caused socially conscious viewers to wonder if the NFL is worth all of the societal problems that seem to follow the league. The former bastions of gridiron knowledge like Sunday morning pregame shows and player interviews are turning into forums for social commentary as a result. Even Phil Sims has to have a public opinion on domestic violence now. Meanwhile, in the background of all of this social saber-rattling, there is a segment of the fan-base that just wants to re-focus on the games (if you want to see those fans in the wild, just look in the comments of any socially minded football article on ESPN). Sound familiar?

While NFL coverage is largely reacting to the controversies that the league is constantly introducing, increasingly nuanced game criticism is the culprit driving the social discussion of video games. Game reviews simply are not selling the way they used to, and traditional reviewers are treading water on a sinking ship. On top of the decreased demand, the reviewers who have spent years supplying straightforward purchasing guides are now mature and skilled enough to want to write the type of critiques that occur in literally every other form of media. They want to write deep social critiques if a game warrants such a thing. They want to discuss industry wide trends and studio biases. They want to write like the critics that they read and look up to. This has introduced a schism between writers with increased authorial voices and their audience that has grown to expect “objective” reviews (which never existed because every review is predicated on a reviewer’s subjective experience, but whatever). In videogames we are also seeing a segment of the fan base rebelling against this new social commentary.

These two separate loci of fan rebellion are centered on the same issue: escapism. Football fandom and videogame playing have largely been refuges from the banality of the real world. For most fans, they are bubbles that protect from “everything that’s unfair and hypocritical everywhere else.” Thus, when journalists and critics come along pointing out why a particular escapist hobby is problematic or exclusionary, fans react by defending their hobby. They try to silence criticism that might expose the faults within their hidey-hole. Both fan bases are not used to the new discussions that are springing up, and they would really prefer if those discussions stopped. They want to just get back to the games and stay in their comfort zones. I think Charles P. Pierce says it best when he commented on the defensiveness of football fans by saying, “There are only two possible approaches to these issues. You can answer them honestly, or you can duck them entirely.” I’m afraid that too many of both groups are attempting to silence discussion, and in doing so are preventing meaningful progress. If questions like, “Why are women being forced out of the game industry?” and “Why are there convicted domestic abusers playing in the NFL right now?” don’t get answered, each of these hobbies will become even less inviting to women and drive away the women that are already a part of the fan base. If questions like, “Why are there so few protagonists of color?” and “Why is the Washington team’s name a slur?” don’t get answered, then these hobbies will do the same to some minorities. The last thing the NFL and the game industry want are consumers that are constantly questioning the morality of their own fandom. Football and videogame fandom will never reach their widest level of acceptance without engaging with these questions and finding meaningful answers. Neither the NFL nor the game industry can survive a constant critical shelling by the media and the damage that would cause to public perception. In short, dealing with increased scrutiny is only an issue if you ignore valid criticism and do not adapt. Just ask the NFL.

Game criticism with a social element is much more nuanced and deep than the old star systems and consumer guide style reviews that people churned out. Those critiques might not be perfect yet, but they are certainly deeper than the reviews of yore.

As for the "doesn't matter what dangly bits they have" I can't think of one male member of the industry, other than Phil Fish, that has been chased out of the industry by fans. I can't remember one of these smear campaigns ever targeting a white male, other than Phil Fish. And I don't see the social critiques in this industry varying so wildly as to explain this disparity. I don't want to have the "whose fault is it" fight about people getting run out of the industry because the fault doesn't matter. The perception that this industry is unfriendly to women is real and it is a problem.

The more critically minded sports writers tend to go after NFL and not its fans, but when a shooting at a stadium or something happens they will talk about the fans. Like they will criticize tailgate culture and drinking at the stadiums. Most fans don't have a problem with these columns because they have enough perspective to realize that when a writer calls out belligerent fans they don't mean all fans.

I don't have a problem blocking out the noise in either videogames or the NFL. Videogame journalism may be more nuanced but at the end of the day it's only as present as you allow it to be. If all you want are review scores, then just seek that out. Problem solved.

And not all entertainment is escapism. Sometimes it's just entertainment for entertainment's sake. This may surprise some people that don't follow the NFL in any more than a cursory manner (but have lots to say about it): the crime rates in the NFL are lower than that of the general populace. It may not seem like it because when John Q. Public down the street beats his wife or gets a DUI it isn't front page news.

I would use many words to describe modern games criticism, but "nuanced" isn't really among them. There's nothing all that nuanced to a video that grabs scenes of battered female corpses and parades it around like it's the norm. There's nothing very nuanced about "Persona 4 sends the message that homosexuality is shameful and should not be accepted." Or threatening boycotts for the use of certain words in localizations. Or "you only hate him because of the new hair." Or saying "I think chemical weapons dealers have a more tolerable consumer base than videogames." Or that "gamers are dead." Hell, let's just say there's nothing very nuanced about Twitter.

I'm all for nuance. I welcome nuanced criticism and debate. I love digging in to the nitty gritty details, of hashing out the boring and complicated stuff that other people shy from. But therein lies the rub, of course: Nuance is boring. Laying out nuance requires casting aside certain preconceived notions. Nuanced criticism is bookish, unartful. There's grey areas, and back and forths. Very little of modern games criticism is like this. Many well known individuals often use pushy, in-your-face language to get attention, to cause a ruckus. Bold, declarative statements made in under 140 characters. Actual nuanced criticism is not like this. This is political campaigning. These are tactics that protesters and activists use as a means to an end, and tend to end discussion before it begins.

If you're starting from the outset with the belief that you're right, everyone else is wrong, and there's no need to get into any other details or solicit anyone else's opinion, you're not being nuanced, you're being a hack. A partisan. This is nuanced and constructive. This is not. This blog entry is genuine and introspective. This one is condescending and divisive.

The response to most criticism of individual pieces of games writing is to double down and circle the wagons. I want games criticism, but I want the bookish, contemplative sort. The kind that seeks out all possible information before coming to a conclusion. That kind isn't very sexy, but it's often the most honest and comprehensive. The games criticism we have now is more from people who act as little more than pundits, who have already come to their conclusion and view their job as a way to just beat the same drum over and over and over.

Study incidents like the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, or DmC: Devil May Cry, or any other given issue where press was pitted against consumer or vice-versa. If you rooted out everyone who just reflexively shat on people who had comprehensive criticisms of those games, and kept everyone who reached out to those who were criticizing it to understand exactly why, in the hope of coming to a more informed conclusion, you would have a better industry. It doesn't even have anything to do with "agreeing with my point of view." Merely displaying the intellectual curiosity to understand another point of view and publicly reach outside their comfort zone.

I definitely agree with curating your own consumption. One of the flimsiest arguments about more socially focused game coverage is that is should not exist at all because the coverage is not [whatever the person's problem is]. if you don't like a review or reviewer then just don't read them. That has a larger effect than negative comments.

I think entertainment does not have to be escapist, but NFL fandom and most games are escapist entertainment. As far as the crime rates go, that doesn't surprise me at all. But the perception of the NFL as having a crime problem definitely exists. The NFL has a perception problem right now more than a crime problem (but it also has some very real crime problems when it comes to its discipline policy).

It's a novel, albeit superficial, association between football fans and video game fans that is quaint given the stereotypical views of those fanbases. Still I think we may be seeing things that are only correlated and spurious in the way that it may reflect something larger about the way our society is talking about these issues and its apparent frequency. I think it's hazy to conclude that escapism is the factor and that subsequently that informs some amount of immaturity when it's probably more related to insular concern over a subcultural way of things. I'm sure the demographic distribution is also a factor but without that data in hand I'd hold off myself.

Where my mind tends to go on this is that if someone fundamentally, or at least seems to, undermine something about the cultural thing in question, then the natural implication is that it's invalid or would otherwise require a complete destruction to repair it as the "other" sees fit. Whether or not this is an intention, all that's necessary is the assumption or projection that that is going on and soon after this quick mental assessment on the part of the fanbase, I suspect, there follows a cognitive dissonance which tends to be reconciled. That reconciliation often involves people neutralizing their negative behavior or those of others as part of closing that dissonance between that they accepted as before and the precarious position it was placed by someone.

Although the above is effectively observed inductively. If we see people doing that neutralization that there's good reason to verify that there existed this cognitive dissonance and therefore reflect someone who embodies this dynamic from one side. Because we often have fans who love parts of something but are critical of others or what have you and so it's not a model that adequately explains all "fans" of something.

@marokai: I don't consider any twitter comments to be real criticism. The format just doesn't allow for it. As far as the Persona 4 essay Carolyn wrote, I don't agree with her conclusion but to say her multi-page argument wasn't nuanced is just false. She wrote an essay that was ambitious and flawed, but it was not pandering or trite. You can disagree with those arguments by saying you disagree with their logic instead of questioning their quality.

Like @bacongames did. He points out some potential oversights in my argument and posits an alternate argument without condemning my writing.

@bacongames:

Where my mind tends to go on this is that if someone fundamentally, or at least seems to, undermine something about the cultural thing in question, then the natural implication is that it's invalid or would otherwise require a complete destruction to repair it as the "other" sees fit. Whether or not this is an intention, all that's necessary is the assumption or projection that that is going on and soon after this quick mental assessment on the part of the fanbase, I suspect, there follows a cognitive dissonance which tends to be reconciled. That reconciliation often involves people neutralizing their negative behavior or those of others as part of closing that dissonance between that they accepted as before and the precarious position it was placed by someone.

I don't agree with the idea that criticism requires either a rejection or a complete restructuring of a cultural object. You can make small tweaks, maintain the essence of a work, and still learn from feedback.

@thatpinguino said:

I agree with you on that and I want to just clarify that my view focuses more any wholesale resistance or projection of attack onto a critique, particularly as it seems to happen around social identity and representation. Mostly in understanding the mechanics of how that resistance happens and what social science concepts are useful to understanding it (at least without doing any research of my own on it and just theorizing). It's something that has been brewing in the back of my mind as to how I would react using my background in social science to the reactions fanbases can have and how we can explain what seem like extreme behaviors and apparent cultural conflicts.

@bacongames: Most of my argument about criticism threatening a sense of escapism is from my own personal experience playing games and watching sports with friends. Once someone who is not participating in the game or the viewing enters the scene and critiques what is going on the usual response is arguing that the critic just doesn't understand and that they should just go away. Even if the person is perceived to be an outsider, the response is usually defensive and authoritarian. "You don't know [escapist thing]. You just don't get it. So who are you to criticize."

@thatpinguino:

It's interestinga dn thought provoking comparison, even if I'm not totally on board with it.

Well Roger Goodell is succeeding wildly in his one and only job, which is to make the league Mad Money. Anybody who thinks the owners care about anything else are very blind to the history of professional sports.

I'm not sure why anyone

• a) is surprised they didn't do crap to a star like Ray Rice until they were caught red-handed (it wasn't Ray Rice who was caught here, he told the Ravens the truth day 1, it was Goodell). The ban is all about PR, nothing else.
• b) seriously believes this will somehow cost Roger Goodell his job. Unless ticket sales are impacted or ad revenue drops meaningfully, owners could scarcely care about domestic violence. These are the same people who allegedly have been actively hindering concussion Medical research for decades. If they don't care about their players/employees well being, why would they remotely care about the wives & girlfriends of said players?

The NFL has always been the coverup league, as long as I've been alive there's always been violence around every aspect of the game. All a person needs to do is go sit in these nosebleeds at Pro game wearing the rival team's jersey and see what happens to see how much the NFL really care about basic decency surrounding their product. I've seen people thrown down flights of concrete steps, given swirlies in bathrooms and once I was even urinated on in my seat (and crap I was wearing the hometeam jersey that time). The NFL could care less about morality or decency as long as they are making bank.

I remember back when I played Football (not at the pro level of course) my old ball coaches used to tell us all the time to enjoy the game while it lasted, they were utterly convinced the game itself would be banned in our lifetimes. We laughed it off then, but I now suspect my old coaches were on to something. I suspect the league has known for a very very long time just how dangerous this game is, how deranged a portion of its players are, and how the sport can ruin lives. It would not surprise me at all that Ray Rice has some mild brain damage that broke some crucial inhibitions that would have prevented him from acting so monstrously. And it would not surprise me either if maybe he's just always been that dude, the higher you go in the game the more psychos you seem to encounter.

And perhaps most tellingly of all, I think even if that was all on the table most folks would still play and go to games.

I do see the similarities you see between the two,a lot of people don't want to hear these things about something they love. Some Fans will delude themselves rather than confront the truth, especially if the truth implies they may have unwittingly played a part in aiding a bad thing. Especially if said thing is their emotional release from similar issues in their personal lives.

but here is where your comparison breaks down imo, I don't think most NFL fans are rebelling. As far as I know ratings & attendance have not taken a hit at all. There have been several women's groups etc understandably furious with them, but it's yet to embroil the fandom the way the videogame community has been embroiled.

I also don't think nuanced criticism really has the same kind of place in a sport the way it does in an artform like video games. Certainly there's discussion around people of the sport and the rights and wrongs within the bounds of said sports. But there's no deeper philosophical meaning in the latest Packers game. It's pure entertainment.

Another key difference is the NFL is a protected monopoly, video games are not remotely. The NFL doesn't have to listen to people nor do they usually, they have no serious competition to the point that they can almost extort cities into building their massive infrastructure for them. The only real damage a critical shelling can do to them is something that can turn Washington DC on them to the point it would threaten their anti-trust exemption. That seems like less likely than ever threat considering congressional districts are so gerrymandered that folks get re-elected to Washington regularly despite congress having an approval rating in the teens. History has repeatedly shown the "we just want to watch football" crowd is devoted and large enough that attendance and TV ratings barely dip when these controversies happen. The NFL is nearly bullet proof atm.

The Video game Industry on the other hand is perhaps never been as competitive and fragmented as it is now, certainly this is the most it's been since the mid 80's. There is a tangible potential benefit for a publisher or developer to listen and reacting to criticism, done adroitly it can give the open minded company an avenue to acquire a neglected audience's loyalty.

In fact I think we've seen one major game company attempt to capitalize on the issues of the day this year, that being Double Fine with Broken Age. Perhaps their attempt is a little subtle, but there is some pretty obvious commentary in that game if you know what to look for.\

And lastly there is a tremendous difference in accessibility of targets. Roger Goodell took home over $44 Million last year, most of the female journalists hounded out in recent months I doubt even make $20K. I don't think your average upset NFL fan thinks they can do anything so they don't bother, the people harassing writers get instant gratification for their efforts and get emboldened by it.

@slag: I would say much of the rebellion in NFL is less visible than in games, since the war around game coverage is fought in public forums and on twitter feeds. There are plenty of people lobbing complaints at the NFL and there are people complaining that the games are being lost in the social uproar. I would say that the fans that are actively opposing the social discussion are vocal minorities in both cases, but the forums for NFL outrage are limited to the bottoms of stories and occasionally twitter. The vocal minority in games is quite tech savvy and skilled at making their voice heard in the din. The NFL does have to worry in the long term about their public image or else their talent base will start to dry up as parents pull kids from football. All of the bad press does add up. Not immediately, but the damage that has been done over the last 10 years could really hurt the league in the next 20.

In terms of Goodell, I question what he is doing well that another person couldn't do as well or better. The league keeps increasing its revenue almost despite his management. The players openly disdain him and hate his personal conduct policies. The NFL- No Fun League thing is at an all time high. He isn't actually negotiating the stadium deals and the CBA negotiations are not solely his doing. The downside of his PR bungling seems to not be worth the potential upside of some of his player conduct policies. Who knows? Maybe he is a killer manager behind the scenes with a great 10 year plan for the league, but his public facing image could not be much worse.

And lastly there is a tremendous difference in accessibility of targets. Roger Goodell took home over $44 Million last year, most of the female journalists hounded out in recent months I doubt even make $20K. I don't think your average upset NFL fan thinks they can do anything so they don't bother, the people harassing writers get instant gratification for their efforts and get emboldened by it.

I think this is the biggest difference between the level of revolt. Game fans can reach out and hurt someone and the NFL fans can't touch the league or the journalists that cover it in the same way.

In fact I think we've seen one major game company attempt to capitalize on the issues of the day this year, that being Double Fine with Broken Age. Perhaps their attempt is a little subtle, but there is some pretty obvious commentary in that game if you know what to look for.\

Oh my goodness! I didn't make that connection! It looks like other people have wrote about that reading already. Boo. I can't believe I missed that.

@thatpinguino said:

Including this image in your original post seems unfortunately a little prophetic now given today's news.

I still disagree on the actual impact of his job performance.

Well here's the thing to remember about Goodell's job security. It isn't what you or I might think, it's what 32 really old really rich white dudes think. Very few of those men are likely going to be around in 20 years, I don't think the future of the sport is their top concern. Ca$h money now is.

Maybe less kids will play the game and schools will start dropping football (it is really expensive) but I doubt enough will to actually really harm the NFL. For too many folks, the NFL is perceived as their best shot to generational wealth.

Given the record setting TV ratings for the Ravens-Steelers Thrusday night game, a game if any you'd think would be the most affected by recent events, I think Goodell's in zero jeopardy. Yes he's bungling, yes he is doing things I personally find extremely reprehensible, but what has his bungling actually done to the league? What is the actual downside? Nothing as far as I can tell. It's done horrible things to select individuals and perhaps to the sport itself, but the business of the NFL seems completely unaffected.

Now maybe if Ray Rice sues the league and wins (and as much as I intensely dislike what Ray Rice did, I think he has a near slam dunk case against the NFL if he wants to pursue one), Goodell has a problem to the point the owners will drop him. But all this going on right now? The Media will be done with this topic by week 5-6. ESPN certainly can't afford to keep gabbing about it for much longer, the NFL is too important to them. And virtually every major news network is in bed with the league to some extent (ABC through ESPN, NBC Sunday night football, CBS & Fox weekend games), they aren't going to talk this up to the point of damaging their own massive investment.

Because of their complete control over their market and the intense unconditional passion many casual fans have for their product, the NFL is virtually untouchable, that's why that outrage is limited to the comments at the bottom of stories and twitter as you pointed out.

Game makers don't have that kind of luxury, heck look at the Xbox One launch, A few bad press conferences and suddenly a console which is basically just a souped up version of the PS3 with a controller tweak gets a major lead in this round of the console wars just by their company not being as completely tone deaf as the other guys. Consumer anger has real power in the gaming world because consumers have choices. In the NFL world consumer anger is toothless.