Gate keeping is a necessity to keep a hobby good and fun. You don´t want sleazeballs coming in and destroying your hobby right ? One should be welcoming but still keep an eye out so you don´t let the wrong people in who´s only purpose is there to destroy.
It's fine as long as it isn't taken to a ridiculous extreme, expecting people to adhere to a set of standards the community agrees too and follow those rules isn't some kind of evil. That's the basis for any community. There's nothing worse (and more entitled) than someone that joins a hobby, club or even moves to another country then expects it to conform to them rather than conforming to what's already been established. And frankly I would rather live in well maintained village with friendly like minded people than an atomized mega city filled with indifferent strangers. If you want a nice community it has to be cultivated and looked after!
When it actually comes to video games I think that can only be achieved by the devs and their company, it does happen but it's rare. It's ultimately up to them if they want their game to stay niche or change it to have mass appeal to chase after money. Would it have been nice if Blizzard or Square adhered to an ethos just a little to stop their games degrading? Yes but ultimately that's their decision, as much as it sucks to see expansions like DT getting greenlit or people in WoW getting banned because of an automated report system it's their decision.
I don't even want to talk about people who 'got into gaming' to pervert it and have it serve their political causes. They were never gamers to begin with.
All in all, I don't like the idea of gatekeeping the hobby.
I just wanted to point out that you are actually gatekeeping here, and this is the negative kind.
There is nothing wrong with art getting political. George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Toni Morrison made art with politics in it, and they're considered to be some of the greatest writers in the history of the English language. The entire genre of cyberpunk, regardless of if it's in book, film, or game form, is political. Dystopian sci-fi is usually political (and tends to be kind of garbage when it isn't). Even superhero comics get political often; how do you write X-Men without politics? (Yes, I know about the pre-Claremont era, and nobody bought it then because X-Men sucked without politics. Even the non-political entries in the X-Men movie series usually suck.)
Granted, political art can suck. People who start at political grandstanding, don't even try to make good art because they never even studied art before making it, and just throw out a diatribe that they think will sell on nothing but the fact that it has their political ideology's brand on it, are just trash makers. But people who actually try to make art by learning how to do it first, working on an actual art project, and then add politics to it, are not necessarily making trash. (And note I'm not even saying they have to start off making non-political art before the political stuff; Orwell wasn't a fiction writer before he wrote his political novels.) There's a difference between political art and propaganda, and the former shouldn't be instantly discounted just because the latter exists.
So that takes us to "they were never gamers to begin with." This is toxic gatekeeping. You don't know the life stories of every single artist who has done work in the genre. You are just making a blanket statement about them just because you don't like a particular aspect of high art. (And yes, having political meaning actually is something that can separate high art from low art.) Chances are, they got into gaming because they were already into it. And they, like artists from other genres before them, decided to do something deeper than "save princess, get kiss." That's not a bad thing; the genre is never going to progress if we can't have anything new and thought-provoking done with it. There's no need for gaming to stay as low art just because some people don't like what can potentially be done with high art.
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Just to add a few things that came to mind: George Orwell was not a novelist, but a journalist who just happened to have a few really good metaphors for the things he wrote about. David Lynch was not a film maker, but a painter who realized his paintings would look better with motion and a theater sized canvas. Shigeru Miyamoto was a cup-and-ball style novelty toy designer who just thought "what if Popeye, but ape?" You don't have to begin with an art genre to succeed in it.
Gate keeping is a necessity to keep a hobby good and fun. You don´t want sleazeballs coming in and destroying your hobby right ? One should be welcoming but still keep an eye out so you don´t let the wrong people in who´s only purpose is there to destroy.
I just wanted to point out that you are actually gatekeeping here, and this is the negative kind.
There is nothing wrong with art getting political. George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Toni Morrison made art with politics in it, and they're considered to be some of the greatest writers in the history of the English language. The entire genre of cyberpunk, regardless of if it's in book, film, or game form, is political. Dystopian sci-fi is usually political (and tends to be kind of garbage when it isn't). Even superhero comics get political often; how do you write X-Men without politics? (Yes, I know about the pre-Claremont era, and nobody bought it then because X-Men sucked without politics. Even the non-political entries in the X-Men movie series usually suck.)
Granted, political art can suck. People who start at political grandstanding, don't even try to make good art because they never even studied art before making it, and just throw out a diatribe that they think will sell on nothing but the fact that it has their political ideology's brand on it, are just trash makers. But people who actually try to make art by learning how to do it first, working on an actual art project, and then add politics to it, are not necessarily making trash. (And note I'm not even saying they have to start off making non-political art before the political stuff; Orwell wasn't a fiction writer before he wrote his political novels.) There's a difference between political art and propaganda, and the former shouldn't be instantly discounted just because the latter exists.
So that takes us to "they were never gamers to begin with." This is toxic gatekeeping. You don't know the life stories of every single artist who has done work in the genre. You are just making a blanket statement about them just because you don't like a particular aspect of high art. (And yes, having political meaning actually is something that can separate high art from low art.) Chances are, they got into gaming because they were already into it. And they, like artists from other genres before them, decided to do something deeper than "save princess, get kiss." That's not a bad thing; the genre is never going to progress if we can't have anything new and thought-provoking done with it. There's no need for gaming to stay as low art just because some people don't like what can potentially be done with high art.
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Just to add a few things that came to mind: George Orwell was not a novelist, but a journalist who just happened to have a few really good metaphors for the things he wrote about. David Lynch was not a film maker, but a painter who realized his paintings would look better with motion and a theater sized canvas. Shigeru Miyamoto was a cup-and-ball style novelty toy designer who just thought "what if Popeye, but ape?" You don't have to begin with an art genre to succeed in it.
I know you're responding to Clippy but I think comparing the likes of George Orwell to people that regurgitate dialectic they don't even really understand, haven't studied and purposefully go out of their way to bastardize established franchises out of spite for a demopgrahic, "to own da chuds!" or something else is a bit silly. Them making their own games to promote their ideals or art isn't a problem, even if I think the Anarchs in VTMB are complete idiots or are imageboard parodies of left wing ideals that undermine them. The point really is that hijacking a franchise isn't the same thing as trying to interact with a medium, that's what most people are getting at. You can't just take an established setting, character etc, decide to bastardize him and then call your audience evil racist plebians because they don't agree with you. And that's the issue because that's what we see, it's slacktivism, it's not nuanced, it's not deep, it's not thoughtful, it's just hatemongering.
The people behind it are often as bland as the caricatures they try to portray their political enemies as, sheltered one dimensional people who think they're worldly because they've read Das Kapital and gone backpacking on daddies money. That's the issue. And more to the point, these same people try to cancel others for having political beliefs that don't agree with theirs, they don't hold you to the same standards they wish themselves to be held too because they act like zealots. Winning by any means, and we're supposed to pretend that we're meant to hold these people to higher standards than ourselves? If you want equal treatment you have to treat others equally.
They only believe in fairness, equality and equal application of the law when it suits their own agenda. These people are quite happy to stop games like KCD being made because god forbid 13th century Bohemia doesn't have the same demographics as modern California or adhere to Anglo American revisionism because these morons think the map of the world is America with "Here Be Dragons" written around it. They don't act with the logic of Orwell, they adhere to a dogma that says everything has to be their way, OR ELSE. They rewrite his books because they're "problematic". They take his ideas and change them to suit their needs, they act like the Ministries in 1984 which is a parody of the British governments MOI.
That's the issue. That's what people are fundamentally talking about, the elephant in the room everyone pretends isn't there.
Currently thinking about it with some relaxing gaming music in the background lmao. Anyways.
I think gatekeeping can be good and can be bad at the same time. There have been multiple times where great phenomenons of media either changed for the best or the worst, as they grew a wider audience. As per se, we can have a variety of exemples of how some medias changed on the course of time, due to their evolvement and demographic change. I think the ability of a media to gain a sort of agency and identity start when it's between the second and third chapter of it's main line of work. And I think that's where we'll see the difference between wanting to be niche and wanting to be appeasing to a wider audience. So what's the deal with that? The fans are the deal with gatekeeping an entertainment product. I think the sentiment of gatekeeping grew with time, as small communities grew larger and larger, to the point where the focal point of said community wasn't the same as it used to be.
Think about anime for a second. I was born in the early 2000s, I saw the towers fall, for how little I was of course, but I felt the way society slowly adapted to the anime world with time, since before it was more of a niche genre of entertainment, with it's own tropes and the way the stories gathered more to a "specific" demographic. I don't know about you, but I think the same kind of thing relies also on the world of hentai... for how embarassing it is to say. Not that I watch any of it as of now, I never got the appeal to it. Weird tangent aside, communities are the cause of gatekeeping, because some grew up with their idea of how their media of choice should be. It could be because of some idea of purity, in which case some audiences prefer to stick with the idea the media gave them and run to it, others may prefer a change of course, a change of ways, a way to define what that medium could be with each and every new iteration, while keeping the core values at it's form.
I think smaller communites should develop for themselves first, before delving into the rise of popularity that the world will give, because popularity will at times render the media either an advantage on the long term for it's community... or it will turn into a monster that will be far away from the very first concept that came to it, and that defined it.
I see culture as units, as cultural capital that can be quantified. Whether it's paintings, music, novels, movies, or video games, they're there to connect people to ideas.
Cultural capital naturally benefits people. On a basic level we can simply enjoy culture: play games, talk to friends, write fanfictions, make art and get inspired. You can also take culture and you can turn it into products to sell (as corporation often do, scooping out the heart of the franchises or whatever). You even have people who take culture and use it as their entire identity, be they gamers, Star Wars fans, hippies, fashionistas, or what have you.
When you let other people participate, they're supposed to participate. However, that's not what they're here to do. As many have already pointed out, we've seen people coming into our many hobbies demanding to be retroactively included. They don't actually care about the culture, they only want the prestige of the product, to have someone that represents their identity stamped on the cover. The more cultural capital you accrue, the stronger your ideals and presence is in the world. Worse yet, sometimes they don't even want the prestige; they just don't want you the active participant to be represented and have that prestige. They're not here to participate. They're here to say, "Your values are problematic. I want to remove the memory of all your culture from society so that no one will be influenced by it."
To me, indeed people shouldn't say, "No you can't play." That's not good. But gatekeeping is important to prevent those without good intentions from ever being able to touch upon the core of that culture, be they greedy capitalists or political malcontents.
There's naturally tons of gray area in between, such as people who are only interested in parts of gaming culture, like cosplayers or hentai artists. There was that infamous Tokimeki Memorial game in the 90s when Japan was up in arms about the hentai parody profaning their pure protagonist and actually sued the artist. Where do you draw the line? For me, you gatekeep all the people capable of fundamentally changing the culture so that future participants are no longer able to enjoy the original culture. 'Whether that's because they've influenced the new products of that culture in a way that does not allow new participants to connect to the old culture or because they've created a climate where attempting to enjoy the original culture is somehow unacceptable.
My reading of the comic is more about something like queer communities rather than something as trivial as a hobby so I fully agree with it using that reading only.
I don’t have a general opinion on gatekeeping. I do think everything should be available and open to people of all walks of life but I also believe a community should thoroughly weed out toxic people. It’s not gatekeeping to kick fascists out, it’s housecleaning
I just wanted to point out that you are actually gatekeeping here, and this is the negative kind.
There is nothing wrong with art getting political. George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, and Toni Morrison made art with politics in it, and they're considered to be some of the greatest writers in the history of the English language.
(And note I'm not even saying they have to start off making non-political art before the political stuff; Orwell wasn't a fiction writer before he wrote his political novels.) There's a difference between political art and propaganda, and the former shouldn't be instantly discounted just because the latter exists.
My reading of the comic is more about something like queer communities rather than something as trivial as a hobby so I fully agree with it using that reading only.
I think there are many different interpretations of the comic therefore I think only keeping one reading isn't the best for media analysis.
However: a more accurate comic would be having "tourists" (aka people who are only interested in some aspects of something or only the latest entry) begging the devs to change the game to fit how they want to consume a medium then telling they don't care about playing the game or watching anymore while the company spitted on the older fan's face.
Now I'd agree but only on the condition that "kicking fascists out" doesn't equate to "kicking out anyone who disagrees with me by painting them as the bad guys".
Now I'd agree but only on the condition that "kicking fascists out" doesn't equate to "kicking out anyone who disagrees with me by painting them as the bad guys".
The latter doesn’t really happen much though, now does it? In 99% of all cases where I’ve seen this accusation it came from fascists/racists etc that used it as a very weak defense against being called out for their awful opinions and worse actions. It’s really more of a meme at this point than anything.
as someone who's spent time with too many bland white girls who destroy everything they get interested in, YES. gatekeeping good. real world gatekeeping that is, cuz online gatekeeping doesn't work. "yeah bro where'd you get that watch." "oh this you dont know nothin bout this just a small lil sumn sumn yk got it as a gift"
As long as everyone is staying on topic and doesn't get into fights, I don't feel gate keeping is needed. But ultimately I feel people are drawn to gate keeping because as communities grow in size it's hard to keep track of people and feel you're part of the community. Cliques form and people feel left out and before you know it your small community is now a large community full of sub groups that know one knows how to enter into because the topic has gotten so far away from the original topic the community started around.
That said, people that watch anime with dubs don't actually count as fans.
Funny you say that, cause when I casually browse the internet that “elephant in the room” seems like the ONLY thing certain types want to talk about, and they never shut up, and they’re everywhere. Kinda like when comedians use their big streaming standup gigs to complain about getting cancelled. It’s a take predicated on a fundamental disconnect from reality, wrapped in of a sense of entitlement to being taken seriously regardless of merit, and being treated like a victim regardless of actual damage suffered, or prior damage inflicted on others.
I think the thing missing from most takes on what the current cultural/media landscape is, and WHY it is what it is, is the actual elephant in the room, though some here have already addressed it; MONEY. Profit. $$$. The actual motivation for pretty much every move a corporation makes, or has ever made. The attached ideologies are window dressing, always were, always will be under this economic model. As for artists and consumers taking up silly political positions, again, not new. If you didn’t notice them taking silly positions before, that just means they were taking up YOUR silly position.
I just remembered that one picture I saw a while ago (from around Lacrimosa of Dana's release):
While I don't fully agree with what's said I kinda understand the feeling seeing how Ys is slowly turning into Kiseki narratively speaking (because it's the most popular Falcom franchise before Ys) and the gameplay gets a bit too easy/automated (especially with X).
Bump combat is too niche to be done today and the Ark/Felghana/Origin gameplay in top down (like Seven and Celceta) is also quite archaic-looking.
Lacrimosa of Dana is very cool as a game but it also opened the Pandora's Box for making Ys much more streamlined.
I just remembered that one picture I saw a while ago (from around Lacrimosa of Dana's release): View attachment 19992
While I don't fully agree with what's said I kinda understand the feeling seeing how Ys is slowly turning into Kiseki narratively speaking (because it's the most popular Falcom franchise before Ys) and the gameplay gets a bit too easy/automated (especially with X).
Bump combat is too niche to be done today and the Ark/Felghana/Origin gameplay in top down (like Seven and Celceta) is also quite archaic-looking.
Lacrimosa of Dana is very cool as a game but it also opened the Pandora's Box for making Ys much more streamlined.
I’ve never played the Ys games, but it reminds me of how some people were super harsh on Monster Hunter World. You’d hear things like, ‘This isn’t a real MH game! You don’t know what a REAL MH game looks like! The PlayStation 2 MH was the best!’
I know you're responding to Clippy but I think comparing the likes of George Orwell to people that regurgitate dialectic they don't even really understand, haven't studied and purposefully go out of their way to bastardize established franchises out of spite for a demopgrahic, "to own da chuds!" or something else is a bit silly. Them making their own games to promote their ideals or art isn't a problem, even if I think the Anarchs in VTMB are complete idiots or are imageboard parodies of left wing ideals that undermine them. The point really is that hijacking a franchise isn't the same thing as trying to interact with a medium, that's what most people are getting at. You can't just take an established setting, character etc, decide to bastardize him and then call your audience evil racist plebians because they don't agree with you. And that's the issue because that's what we see, it's slacktivism, it's not nuanced, it's not deep, it's not thoughtful, it's just hatemongering.
The people behind it are often as bland as the caricatures they try to portray their political enemies as, sheltered one dimensional people who think they're worldly because they've read Das Kapital and gone backpacking on daddies money. That's the issue. And more to the point, these same people try to cancel others for having political beliefs that don't agree with theirs, they don't hold you to the same standards they wish themselves to be held too because they act like zealots. Winning by any means, and we're supposed to pretend that we're meant to hold these people to higher standards than ourselves? If you want equal treatment you have to treat others equally.
They only believe in fairness, equality and equal application of the law when it suits their own agenda. These people are quite happy to stop games like KCD being made because god forbid 13th century Bohemia doesn't have the same demographics as modern California or adhere to Anglo American revisionism because these morons think the map of the world is America with "Here Be Dragons" written around it. They don't act with the logic of Orwell, they adhere to a dogma that says everything has to be their way, OR ELSE. They rewrite his books because they're "problematic". They take his ideas and change them to suit their needs, they act like the Ministries in 1984 which is a parody of the British governments MOI.
That's the issue. That's what people are fundamentally talking about, the elephant in the room everyone pretends isn't there.
So I can kind of gleen what people you are referring to with this (not much examples given). From what I've seen, they fall into two categories: ① people with so little impact or influence that complaining about them is just making a mountain out of a molehill, and ② corporate cash-ins that end up failing anyways.
In the former case, those are only "threats" from the perspective of people who spend too much time on the internet. They are hyped up as "dangerous" by the dark corners that are trying to egg people on to acting irrationally. You can just ignore most of that stuff, as it is highly unlikely to ever destroy an industry much bigger than itself.
As for the latter case, those always fail anyways. Audiences can usually tell when something is an insincere follow-up to a franchise they've seen before. And even when they succeed, it doesn't last long. But more often, the writer shoots themselves in the foot during the press campaign by revealing they don't care about the franchise and look down on the audience, which wrecks sales when the release date comes along.
Funny you say that, cause when I casually browse the internet that “elephant in the room” seems like the ONLY thing certain types want to talk about, and they never shut up, and they’re everywhere. Kinda like when comedians use their big streaming standup gigs to complain about getting cancelled. It’s a take predicated on a fundamental disconnect from reality, wrapped in of a sense of entitlement to being taken seriously regardless of merit, and being treated like a victim regardless of actual damage suffered, or prior damage inflicted on others.
I think the thing missing from most takes on what the current cultural/media landscape is, and WHY it is what it is, is the actual elephant in the room, though some here have already addressed it; MONEY. Profit. $$$. The actual motivation for pretty much every move a corporation makes, or has ever made. The attached ideologies are window dressing, always were, always will be under this economic model. As for artists and consumers taking up silly political positions, again, not new. If you didn’t notice them taking silly positions before, that just means they were taking up YOUR silly position.
If we reverted copyright back to the original 14 years + 14 extra expansion on request model (or even just 28 without expansion), we would be able to drop this debate like a rock. Nobody would treat any new game in a 28+ year old franchise as anything more than a fan game, as that would be all that could be done with half (at minimum) of the games on the market now.
A lot of this debate comes down to 2 problems with "gamers": ① a lot of them are not well educated in the arts (lacking LA or VPA degrees, or even just Gen Ed from those fields) and ② a lot of them are young, and thus haven't had time to study the arts much. And the existence of fringe movements attempting to turn gamers into their "useful idiots" only makes it worse. So instead of having a calm debate about the artistic merits of new works that make an attempt to progress the genre, we end up with angry diatribes about how the [insert pseudo-shadow group here] are out to destroy gaming because one independent game was noticed to have existed by a Discord/Reddit/***** group.
Ultimately, my recommendation is to put the interweb debates aside, read up on the subject in print (in academic writings if possible), and try to approach it from a calm and objective perspective.
Wouldn’t copyright reform be amazing? But once again, the profit motive calls the tune. And I agree, any media literacy would go a long long way towards detox. I can’t help but think, though, that we’re purposefully trained not to do much critical thinking and get super invested in brands, because… Well, again, the profit motive calls the tune. And all the hubub, however deleterious to our souls, is lucrative engagement.
Just musing, but a lot of what I see in this thread is people complaining about perceived shifts in gaming industry/society as a whole, using that as a reason to say that gatekeeping is good, but failing to actually describe what steps would be taken for this "gatekeeping" and how it prevents the said creep that they perceive to be an issue in the games industry.
I'm getting the sense that a lot of it boils down to "don't talk about my favorite series outside of established in-groups so it can't get popular and be ruined" and "complain when people advocate for things I don't want included in MY game series"
I just remembered that one picture I saw a while ago (from around Lacrimosa of Dana's release): View attachment 19992
While I don't fully agree with what's said I kinda understand the feeling seeing how Ys is slowly turning into Kiseki narratively speaking (because it's the most popular Falcom franchise before Ys) and the gameplay gets a bit too easy/automated (especially with X).
Bump combat is too niche to be done today and the Ark/Felghana/Origin gameplay in top down (like Seven and Celceta) is also quite archaic-looking.
Lacrimosa of Dana is very cool as a game but it also opened the Pandora's Box for making Ys much more streamlined.
So I can kind of understand this argument despite disagreeing with the specifics of it. I actually really enjoyed Ys VIII and thought it was one of the best entries in the series. It seemed to be the natural evolution of where the series was going, taking the model from Ys Seven and changing the POV, the graphics (subtly), and some aspects of the gameplay (like how crafting was managed) in a way that was more incremental than revolutionary but still making just enough changes to create some noticeably better. And the story writing was very good for a traditional RPG series.
That said, Ys IX is the worst game in the series and on my list of worst RPGs ever. I will play Ys V 10 times before I touch that mind-numbingly repetitive cynical edgelord cash-in dumpster fire again. And weirdly enough, it fails for the same reason Ys VIII succeeds. It didn't make huge changes to the gameplay, but what it did change made playing a chore. And the graphics were changed from bright and fantastical to grimy grey and pseudo-realistic. (If that's what you think reality looks like, you have a problem, not reality.) And the writing took an utterly massive nosedive. We went from "let's explore multiple parts of this strange island and discover its secrets" to "let's break out of the impossible to break out of prison, then break into it, then repeat that over and over." (Note to writers: you never set your story in a prison if there's no commentary being made on the prison-industrial complex. Prisons are intentionally boring places; you audience will not be unaware of this.) And the rotten cherry on top was how they went from "the rich guy is a jerk" to "all poor people deserve to suffer." Seriously, the writer/director of Ys IX deserves to be fired; I don't care what else they contributed to the company.
So yes, Ys hasn't evolved perfectly. But I think it should evolve anyways. Getting the same game over and over again isn't going to be enjoyable. Something has to change to make the next ~$60 purchase worthwhile. Otherwise, we could just play the old entries instead.
I don't really understand what people mean by "gatekeeping" when they complain about it. If you're joining a tight-knight community that revolves around a hobby or interest, you can't expect to understand everything on day one. I wish the concept of "lurking" hadn't been lost.
The more I think about it, Star Wars is a really good case study in what a creator gatekeeping a popular IP actually looks like in practice, and how little it relates to the nebulous ideas of “quality” or even “faithfulness.” For over 30 years only the original creator(ish) had the final say in what was and was not Star Wars. That guy made the holiday special. The holiday special was only the second ever Star Wars thing. That guy also opened the floodgates for the toyification of movies. And do I even have to mention the prequels? A lot of folks, myself included, more or less jumped ship after Episode 2. Some folks acted like those movies were a personal betrayal. That’s silly, but they were really bad, and had none of the magic of the originals. But Lucas was still gatekeeping the shit out of his property then. He gate kept the original cuts away from everyone after the special editions came out, and those made at least one character breaking alteration. Maybe he was just a bad gatekeeper? Should that job have gone to the fans? Which fans? JJ was a fan. I bet most people at Disney are fans. I guarantee Rian Johnson saw the originals in theaters, had a bunch of toys, and has as much right as anyone to call himself a fan. Maybe his movie was shitty to Luke. (It was) Were Lucas’s last movies not shitty to Anakin? (They were) Obi-wan? (Yes) The Jedi and the force as concepts? (Very yes) The audience’s brains? (Yousa might’n be sayin dat)
“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” - a guy with a flowbee
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Kinda like when comedians use their big streaming standup gigs to complain about getting cancelled. It’s a take predicated on a fundamental disconnect from reality, wrapped in of a sense of entitlement to being taken seriously regardless of merit, and being treated like a victim regardless of actual damage suffered, or prior damage inflicted on others.
