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OrangePylon

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Why I think it's hard for GB to diversify the staff.

By OrangePylon 191 Comments

It looks like Giant Bomb's new hires are turning into a bit of an issue, and not because of their unspellable last names.

So Dan and Jason are white dudes. Lots of folks were hoping that the new hire would be a woman or a member of a minority group. Patrick Klepek's interest in the polarizing "feminism and minority representation in gaming" debate has, in turn, cultivated a crowd of duders and duderettes who want to see more diversity in the Giant Bomb cast of characters. With all of the gaming diversity debate shitstorms on GB, it might seem hypocritical that they ended up hiring two white dudes anyway. Since this is a personality-driven website, it's natural for people to want someone they can identify with for the sake of discussions and reviews/quick looks, so I fully understand the desire to see a female or minority staff member. However, I also think this view is misguided and shows a lack of understanding of the range of abilities a person needs to have in order to do what Giant Bomb does.

Giant Bomb needed to hire people who are well-established, experienced, and skilled in this weird on-camera video game personality field. They needed people who can produce high-quality content without a long gestation period to learn the craft. Otherwise you're just asking for shitty, boring, awkward, meandering content. There are very very few people in the world who have that kind of experience, who have proven themselves capable of producing great off-the-cuff content and discussion about video game bullshit. Out of that already narrow pool, how many are women or minority? It's probably not a lot. That's a sad fact of this subculture, it happened to start with nerdy white dudes, then stereotyped as something that only white guys did for so long that the scene has become extremely protective of its demographic. In this kind of environment, it makes sense that the most able candidates for something like a Giant Bomb staffer would end up being white dudes. It's incredibly unfortunate, but that's the world we live in.

You could argue that maybe they could hire a less experienced or skilled candidate for the sake of an alternate perspective, and maybe grow their skills from there. I don't think Giant Bomb can afford to do that with its paid full-time employees. The value of this site's content rests in how well you know these people and their quirks, so the site needs to stay somewhat "small" in order to retain the audience familiarity. Because the staff needs to remain small, yet still consistently produce interesting and popular content, every single member of the staff needs to be at the top of their game. It's not the kind of place that can act as a proving ground for the inexperienced, unless CBSi wants to bring in some interns (which would be great!), but every paid full-time employee of this ramshackle operation needs to be pretty damn good, because every weakness will chase off subscribers and further polarize the community. Youtube and Twitch are the proving grounds, the place for the inexperienced to hone their skills and hopefully make connections. Giant Bomb just can't afford to take on an inexperienced unskilled candidate no matter how interesting their background might be, because an alternate viewpoint is worthless if the person isn't able to articulate it well on camera/microphone, or slows down the workflow behind the scenes.

Furthermore, I don't think you need someone with a particular skin color or sex organs in order to discuss and point out issues of gender or racial stereotyping or discrimination. I think you're gravely underestimating the intelligence and awareness of the GB staff if you think they're part of the gender or racial inequality problem in gaming culture. They're not just "white guys", they're also adult humans with fully-functional brains, and they work very hard to make this website and its content inclusive, so it can be enjoyed by everybody. For example, I think the way they react to stereotypical depictions of women in video games is the right way for this website: they mock it, they treat it with sarcasm and ridiculousness, with maybe brief discussion about what's wrong. They usually do not get too serious or overly "political" (for lack of a better word), because that is not the tone that brings people to Giant Bomb. Patrick catches a lot of shit for mentioning and discussing the issues, but that's mainly because the issues themselves are controversial, he doesn't actually focus on that stuff much more than the other serious topics he discusses. Anyway, the staff's race and gender aren't preventing them from keeping this site inclusive (Jeff's rap lyrics notwithstanding).

On a side note, I bet someone's gonna make the argument that a female or minority staff member would make the rest of the staff far too guarded and careful on anything involving gender or race, and the content would become more awkward and stilted as a result. That kind of thing only really happens with people you don't know very well, GB is close-knit by nature so I don't think that kind of guardedness would happen. You can cross certain barriers around friends that you wouldn't cross around acquaintances.

My point is, Giant Bomb can't just "hire a woman" or "hire a black guy" or "hire a genderless purple thought entity". Above all else, they need people with mastery of a certain rare combination of abilities, which gives them such a narrow pool to draw from that requiring a particular combo of genes would just not work. GB is still expanding, maybe in the future they can find someone who comes from a more interesting background and possesses the skills they need to grow the site into something even dumber.

I'm speculating a lot here, though. What do you folks think?

191 Comments

Settle The Art Debate, Now

By OrangePylon 1 Comments

 We all know about Roger Ebert's articles over the past few years about how video games are not art. They've attracted a lot of attention, and it's a good thing. When push comes to shove, we hardcore geeks do not want to see our favorite pastime marginalized and kept by the critics from exploiting its full potential. Just look at what happened to comics. Comics promised to use pictures and words to tell innovative stories in an entirely new way, and what happened? Critical marginalization and government regulation in the United States. The same is constantly threatened for video games, and I'm glad that gamers are fighting back. But I'm also ashamed. We gamers are stereotyped to be hyper-nerds with big brains, and the best response we can come up with is either hurling insults and death threats at critics or defending our art with weak, nebulous logic. We need to do better than that. We can't just wait for Ebert to die, because we're not just threatened by elderly critics and congressmen, but a huge society of people who have zero understanding of why video games should be considered Art in the first place. 
 
And before we even should attempt to convince people that we have a medium worth protecting here, we need to quit the "art is different for all of us!" nonsense and nail down exactly what the hell that word means. Let's get started! 
 

What Does "art" Mean, Anyway?

 
Time to dust off those dictionaries, kids. Here's Merriam-Webster's take (the definition relevant to our argument, anyhow): 
  
4 a : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : fine arts (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art 
 
So, in order for something to be art, it needs to be a combination of creative imagination and a skill. This is a good, solid, and broad definition of art. It can be applied to movies, paintings, music, even documentaries (the creativity of which comes from shot composition, how it is edited to express an idea, etc.). Now let's play Super Mario Bros. It takes a lot of skill to program the graphics, gameplay mechanics, sound, etc. of a video game. And here you're playing a video game about a plumber jumping on turtles and travelling through pipes in an effort to rescue a princess from the clutches of a bigger, spikier turtle. Also, lots of mushrooms involved. If that's not creative, I don't know what is. Therefore, Super Mario Bros. is art by the Merriam-Webster definition. 
 

What About "Art" With A Capital A? Fine Art?

 
Let's go back to our good friend Mr. Webster: 
  
1 a : art (as painting, sculpture, or music) concerned primarily with the creation of beautiful objects  
 
This one's a bit more exclusive, but not really. The sticking point here is the word "beautiful". Let's get Webster's take on "beauty" for good measure.
 
1 : the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit 
 
In order for something to be a "Fine Art", it needs to be concerned with the creation of something of beauty. I present to you Flower. Play it for 30 seconds and tell me that it wasn't created with the express intention of making something pleasing to the senses. Ico too. Shadow of the Colossus. Audiosurf for crying out loud. All of these games, and many others, prove that the medium is capable of producing works with the express intent of creating something beautiful. Video games are easily capable of being a fine art. 
 

Doesn't Calling Something "Art" Judge Its Value?

 
HELL NO. 
 
This is the single most common fallacy in ANY art debate on the planet. The word "Art" does NOT imply a value-judgement of any kind. Also take note of the definition of Fine Art above, particularly the use of the words "concerned primarily with the creation of beautiful objects". This does not mean that the product has to be beautiful, just the intention of the product's creator. Which means the value-judgement is left out of the semantics entirely, as it should be. The semantic argument is settled, and the verdict is: video games are art. So why, then, do people not want to see video games defined as art? 
 
Simply because they think that the video games themselves are of poor value. And because they consider all video games to be of poor value, they figure that the medium has no potential, and should be excluded from fine arts discussions in any way possible. Removing them from the blanket definition of "art" is just another way to put a moat around the ivory tower, so to speak.  
 

Wait, Hasn't This Happened Before?

 
Oh yeah, lots of times. Movies weren't widely considered to be an artform until at least the 1940s. Comics... well, they're still not there yet. Rock and Roll songs are often adapted to be performed by Symphony Orchestras, so obviously the ivory tower has some respect for that. And speaking of symphonies, the forms of "classical" music, such as symphony, string quartet, concerto, etc. weren't originally the type of thing you'd just sit in a seat and watch an orchestra perform. All of that brilliance and understanding of music theory was mostly background noise for halls where people would drink beer and play card games and chess, as if the orchestra or quartet was an expensive human-powered jukebox. If my understanding is correct, this didn't really change until Richard Wagner came around. 
 
And that's not to even mention painting and sculpture, which thanks to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries finally blasted off the doors of the definition of what art could be. Paintings became stranger and more abstract, and Marcel Duchamp signed a fake name on a urinal and called it a sculpture. By my definitions above, you could call that art. Fine art might be stretching it a bit, but think about it: the purpose of the artists from this era was sort of a rebellion against a history of haughty, severely strict guidelines for what Art should be. If we really wanted to go by the old high standards of Art, as Ebert seems to think we need to, all music, painting, and even video games need to be glorifying Our Lord Jesus Christ. Anyone up for some Bible Adventures? 
  
That early-20th-century era of art didn't produce a lot of pieces that I'm fond of, but here's the point: these were considered to be horrible trash by the critics of the day, but the lasting legacy of artists like Duchamp is allowing art to be more than music or paintings about nature or Jesus. And in today's visual art, you see that legacy being used to create all kinds of cool things, not for the glorification of God or not necessarily promoting a physical ideal, but because it looks cool or has a funny idea behind it.  
 
But I'm sidestepping the issue by appealing to history here. Can/Do video games have value as an art form?  
 

How Do You Determine If An Artwork Has "Value"?

 
Here's where things get very messy, and where the art debate turns into a bunch of people throwing curses at each other. You've got a big-ass war right here. The war between "Art Is Objective" and "Art Is Subjective". I saw this flare up pretty recently with that video of the hipster chick pissing in a soup can (or whatever she was doing, I didn't watch the whole thing) as an Art Exhibition in a Forever 21 store. "That's gross! That's not art, that's just some stupid bitch pissing into a can! What's the meaning behind that?" vs. "Hey man, Art is Subjective. You either like it or you don't. And if you don't like it, go away!". Man, that was fun. 
 
The "Art is Subjective" crowd tend to argue that a work's value should be judged differently from person to person. For the purposes of discussion, we'll assume that "Art" implies "Fine Art". Go to my definition of Fine Art above. Now look at the definition of Beauty. Pleasing to the senses? Exaltation of the mind and spirit? Well, we each have those (spirit's debatable), right? We have different brains, and we all have our particular philosophy for how we look at and judge things. Are there universally appealing characteristics of beauty? Maybe. We haven't really scientifically confirmed them yet, but one thing we do know is that certain crowds like certain things. 
 
Now for the "Art is Objective" side. Here you'll see art judged more by its effect than anything else. What kind of influence has this piece had? What is its significance? What does it say about society as a whole? Often the Objective side of the debate will either declare that something is "objectively beautiful" with no basis, or judge quality by what can, in some way, be measured. Influence. Societal reflection/impact. The sheer effort of the achievement.Things like that.  
 
So which is it? Is art best measured Subjectively or Objectively? 
 
...Why not both? 
 
I propose that artworks can have two dimensions of value: personal significance (subjective) and measurable impact (objective). I propose that a piece can be valuable in one, both, or neither of these dimensions. You can respect the amount of work and crafting that went into a piece, and its influence, and still not like it. You can also like a piece because maybe it has narrative moments that strike a personal chord with you, or visual elements that you can't stop looking at, even though it took almost no originality or effort to make and is another slight variation on a "significant" work from the past. Or you can have both. Why not?  
 
I realize this isn't nearly a complete list of things that can be objectively or subjectively good about an art work, but it's good enough for my purposes here.
 

What Does This Mean For Video Games?

  
It means that, lying at the heart of the critics' argument that games are not art is the idea that, objectively, games are bad art. Let's look at those objective qualities again, shall we? 
 
  • Influence
  • Reflection of society/philosophy
  • The effort that went into it
 
There are probably more that I can't think of right now, but these three will be good enough. Let's look at them individually in the context of video games.  
   
 Influence: Video games are everywhere. Gamers are everywhere. You can't escape us. Additionally, science keeps popping up with evidence for the positive effects of regular video game playing (a mental exercise, stronger hand-eye coordination, better reaction time) ...much faster, I might add, than they can prove any negative effects.  I'd say, thus far, video games have had a huge, and a good, influence. It's another form of entertainment, one that brings people together.  How is that bad?  
 
Reflection of Society/Philosophy: Here's where the true potential of video games lies. In video games with good choice systems, what we choose can say more about us, the players, than it can about our fantasy characters. Rather than having set narratives, which reflect society in a certain time, video games can give you a space and some compelling choices, and who YOU are, what YOUR philosophy is, affects the work DIRECTLY. I can't put into words how exciting this idea is for me. Video games can be an almost direct reflection of a society's attitude and philosophy, because people interact DIRECTLY with the games. Now, this isn't in every game, but the potential is there. And besides, the current video game market says a whole lot about what society wants to do in its spare time. 
 
Effort: Making a bunch of solid gold statues would be cheaper and easier than making even a crappy video game. Symphonies are cheaper, too. Games take large teams YEARS to develop, and cost millions of dollars. And it's not easy work. You have to manage the application of multiple artistic disciplines, both artistic and technical, over a period of years, and still somehow manage to make it fun and marketable enough to survive in this asinine no-profit industry we have here. 
 
Give me another objective quality of art, and I will tell you how it can be applied to video games. 
 
Care To Wrap It Up? 
 
With pleasure. 
 
So, by definition, video games are art. Also by definition, video games are capable of being Fine Art. This isn't the first time that critics have blasted a rising medium, and it won't be the last. The word "art" doesn't imply a value-judgement, but objectively speaking, games ARE valuable at present and have massive potential to be MORE valuable. Now that we've gone into all of that, why for the love of God would you not consider games Art? 
 
I know Ebert doesn't want to see Movies, his favorite medium, overtaken by the video game. I wouldn't want to see that either; I think there's a place for both to coexist. Gamers are also afraid that more action-oriented genres would fade in favor of artistic wankery. I respect that too. Nobody wants to see their favorite things fade away. I don't like the path JRPGs have been going down this past decade, but that doesn't mean I would want to stifle first-person shooters or MMOs from becoming more innovative or interesting in their own rights. 
 
So tell me, should you want to marginalize the potential of a new medium because it may threaten the prosperity of your own, personal favorite? Because, really, that's the only reason left for not calling Video Games an art.
1 Comments