A bit over three years ago, I had my heart set on being a food critic and mystery novelist. I learned about my latent talent in cooking doing school projects in high school, and it took having a little more income and dinners with my good friend to find out that I had more than a knack, I had taste. I also remember finishing Persona 4 when it first came out and loving how it treated mystery. How characters unfolded and evolved over the course of the story; it was less about who did it, rather about who we are when we find out. By chance of transferring schools, I was required to take courses in critical theory and literature, which at the time I didn’t think would really be of much use to me. There I learned about the many ways to read, and that you can read anything, not just texts.
So came video games.
It started because I wanted to practice writing regularly. I figured I knew a lot about video games, and people seem to have opinions about them on the internet, so why not me? I wasn’t expecting much from it, just to be an exercise while I waited on grad school applications. But things took off in a way I didn’t expect: I started to regularly appear on Critical Distance, got a couple of columnist gigs, and found myself in lots of arguments on this thing called Twitter that I never used before. Half a year later, people on this Twitter donated money for me to attend the most central games conference in the industry. I was asked to speak at events before I was writing for even a year, and my alma mater asked me to do a keynote about activism. I was shocked to learn I became an activist.
Thinking about this reminds me that there isn’t really a profession of activism. The closest would be a lobbyist, and I don’t think that’s what I or others are like. Activism is something we all do, we take what we’re good at and use it for social justice causes. If me blogging and speaking on social media made some sort of difference, it means I must have been doing other things unconsciously that were activism before all this. It’s much more personal and micro than we give it credit for. Many people who stand out as activists, they are just living their lives and often the focus of circumstance. They are speaking their truths, doing what little they can. I know I was only an activist and a critic, and now developer and theorist, because others called me those things.
Three years after I put up my first post, I’ve decided to not participate in the video games industry anymore. A lot of people treat this as a loss, or quitting, giving up. Video games came as a freight train into my life, an unexpected opportunity I wasn’t planning on taking anywhere for a while. I feel like that’s what it’s like for many people who speak out about important issues in games. The attention of the internet is capricious, and it just takes one viral tweet to become an activist, thinker, public figure, or what have you. Meaning, even when this focus goes away, it might seem like I’m not an activist anymore, but I will be doing a lot of work, just in different ways.
What I think is most important is figuring out what every single person contributes. If I never intended to be an expert or authority, just chugging on posting thoughts until it was time for school again, what stops you from doing activism? It’s entirely possible that you are, and you’re not recognizing it. I think because I was put into the spotlight, I was forced to examine my actions and intentions, which may be why to the less vocal person it seems like there’s so little that they do compared to me. As we see, that’s probably not true. There’s space in your life for concrete action for what you want, if you allow yourself to open up the definition of activism.
This is a good exercise to decrease celebrity mentality we often put on people; while at times flattering, it’s extremely stressful. People assume you’re more stable and secure in life than you actually are, more well off, more connected. Fan culture hands all the responsibility to the person on the pedestal, with the expectation that they will be on 24/7 and the audience can be passive and are doing something by just being there to bear witness. This is why there’s such a burnout rate for media activists in games, people, typically women, just can’t handle the pressure over long periods of time without the proper sustenance. This happened to people before me, and now it’s my turn. I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.
There are other effects of this fan culture, such as prioritizing the individual over the community, whitewashing the diverse range of thought and action with a few people’s politics. This past year, a lot of work and events that I was a part of a team on were solely attributed to me, because this culture wants a clean narrative. We have to resist these motions, and recognizing our individual part in community building is the first step. What are you doing? If you don’t know, don’t you think it’s about time you figured it out?
It’s been a long time coming, but it’s obvious the games industry isn’t the place for me. It is too narrow and slow moving for the ideas and needs I have. There’s a reason why my only income is coming from readers, not corporations or customers. A place that has such a rigid view on how to be successful is going to exclude a lot of people, and I’m one of those. There are many other people who might fit into this, though, that can be loud voices while they game the system. I think of Leigh, Zoe, or Anita, or many of the newer voices that will crop up now that larger ones are moving out of the way. They really care about video games as a medium and industry, and want to make it a better place. I’ve found out that I really care about the expansion and reclaiming of play as a medium, bringing new forms of expression to people who didn’t know they had it. To be honest, talking about the video games industry is boring for me now; we’ve had the same problems, just with varying scales of drama and mainstream attention. I don’t want to be treated like a victim, and it’s only when I’m abused that people will listen. I’m more proactive, generative, and loving; this just isn’t the place for me.
My time writing about video games culture isn’t for naught. I didn’t know that I would become so fascinated with play as a concept. I ditched design early in life and this was a reminder that, yeah, I can definitely do this, I’m good at it. I will be returning to older hobbies and incorporating them into my newfound interest in play and what play can do to change how we view life. I’m looking back at fiction, mystery, taste, smell, ritual, interpretation, relationships, expression. These are great topics and I hope you all will stick around to explore these with me.
I haven’t decided how I will incorporate digital games into my writing and practice just yet. I’m going to continue engaging with video game art scenes and try to get more writing on those. I have made friends with many interesting thinkers and creators in games, and I imagine they will rope me into things so I won’t completely disappear. Ultimately, my aim is to get people to think of more than video games when we evoke play, to de-emphasize technology, and to imbue the way people look at life with the potential for play. I think we could use more people doing this sort of work, and I now have the chance to focus on that mission.
Thanks to everyone who’s ever supported me and continues to. This isn’t goodbye. It’s going to be even more interesting from here on out!
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