From:
George Heingartner
To: randy@justadventure.com
Sent: Wednesday, March
21, 2001 12:37 AM
Subject: Great site... and some comments.
Mr. Slugansky,
I was directed to this site by a fellow adventure gamer, and I must say
I am delighted. I've been an "Adventure Gamer" since Mystery House on
my Apple ][+.
Regarding your (Not) Playing The Game pieces, it was nice
to finally see someone publicly take Next Generation magazine down to size. I've
been reading it since the first issue, and the quality of that once-superior magazine
has declined drastically. Good show.
I was a bit irked by your repeated
comments about the "whiteness" of the computer gaming industry and press.
Your points about creative tunnel-vision, sequel worship and pandering to the
lowest common denominator of violence and "shock" were well taken, but
what does anyone's skin color have to do with that?
Young white males do
not all think the same way and like the same things, nor is there any reason to
think non-whites would necessarily be different. Are first person shooters like
Quake "white male" territory? Let's recall that the two most famous
Quake players around are Dennis Fong (an Asian-American man) and Kornelia Takacs
(a Hungarian woman).
I think you've got your eye on the wrong ball; it's
not race, it's culture and youth.
Greg Costikyan, and old-school game designer,
wrote an opinion piece about computer game violence which, I thought, really nailed
this.
His words:
"The computer gaming industry is a monoculture:
It consists almost entirely of white, suburban males in their 20s. We're talking
the demographic that reads Maxim magazine. They're heavily into computer games,
almost completely ignorant of games from other media and almost equally ignorant
of computer games published longer than five years ago. Visiting a game development
firm is like walking into a strangely 1950s version of 1990s America; if any women
are on the premises, they're artists or marketing people. You may see some Asians,
you might see a programmer from India, but certainly nobody darker.
Developers
play the same games, they see the same movies, they fraternize with people like
themselves and they develop some pretty weird mind-sets. Violence is perceived
as cool -- no, not real violence, but violence in games."
Unless we're
willing to assign innate traits to people based on their skin color, I think you'd
agree with me that the "white" part of the designers' identity is the
least significant.
The factors that jump out at me are youth, cultural
ignorance and social insularity.
Costikyan's whole article is a good read,
btw. Here's the link:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/06/21/game_violence/index.html
Well,
I do not want to take too much of your time. Thanks for listening. Best of luck
with the site.
Regards,
George Heingartner
PS - Scorpia did
not leave CGW, she was "asked to cease submitting reviews" by the new
regime following Wilson's departure. She told me this directly when we met at
a mutual friend's house for a role-playing session. I've been reading CGW since
issue 1985, and she helped make it the New York - Zork? - Times of computer gaming.
It was an honor to meet her, and her absence from CGW's Special 200th Issue was
an appalling disgrace.
From:
George Heingartner
To: Randy Sluganski
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001
11:46 PM
Subject: RE: Great site... and some comments.
Randy,
(Is
'Randy' ok? Tell me if otherwise.)
If we are using whiteness as a shorthand
for the monoculture Costikyan wrote of, then I'm all for diversity - but staffing
game companies with a multi-racial assortment of QuAkE d00dz is not my idea of
progress...
Feel free to print my letter. Whatever flak you might get from
CGW, I can only say that what I wrote in my PS note is an accurate and truthful
recounting of what Scorpia herself told me both in person and in IRC conversation:
she did not leave the editorial/review staff of CGW voluntarily. After she was
shown the door, Scorpia chose to leave gracefully and not "make a scene,"
because she is a class act.
This information was not given to me in confidence
or bad faith, so I don't see any problem with me telling you. Nor am I the only
one who knows this.
Of course, there might be more to it than what she
told me, but of course this I wouldn't know.
You might be interested to
know that Scorpia holds an IRC chat every Thursday night, 9:30pm EST. You are
certainly welcome to drop in and talk with her about the past, gaming, interviews,
etc. She may not feel like rehashing it, but one never knows...
If you
are interested, let me know and I'll dig up the IRC specifics (I set them in my
MIRC client long ago and then forgot them).
Regards,
George Heingartner
PS - God Bless you for your blunt and point-blank declaration: "the
psychopaths have taken over." Exactly. I like a little run-and-gun action
now and then, but this celebration of violence and cruelty degrades us gamers
all.
