Part 2: Gamers Get What They Deserve
 |
| Fanboyism: n. the act of corporate fellatio. |
I'm going to have to tread carefully
here. There is a perilous possibility of being (never mind merely
appearing to be) the very kind of ridiculous nonsense that I wish to
decry in this chapter. The picture above nods to the sentiment, as I
sit here, six lengthy diatribes in, bemoaning the simplicity agenda
GW has adopted that, coincidentally enough, has been the principle
welcoming factor for many more casual, younger and less stereotypical
gamers. It would be easy to devolve into a twitchy, cynical and
hateful neckbeard: throwing angry rants from my carefully constructed
dice fort, most likely onto the sweaty corners of the internet, such
as Dakka, Reddit, and 1D4. Mercifully I do still have some
self-respect, or at least, enough of it to not go on Dakka. Anyway, I
think it is worth dwelling on the problems gamers create for
themselves, for it is not GW's sole responsibility for what
gaming has become, irrespective of whether you view what it has come
to be as the irrepressible shitshow that I see it as. Whilst GW far
too often ducks even a fraction of the blame deserving of their
corporate objectives via many, many Apologists giving them too much
of the benefit of the doubt (or being too keen to offhand
responsibility onto anything else), it still seems likely that the
principle reason that this situation wont save itself is that far too
many apologists seem to think the Gamers themselves have any hope of
fixing it themselves.
And that's bollocks, because
Gamers are fucking idiots.
I mean, most of us old farts have
plenty of reasons to believe this of the average gamer. After all, we
lived through the days of Rules As Written, 6th-7th
Edition's open hostility to its own audience being defended by its
audience as if it was Rynn's World or something, and right up to the
problem we have today, of the new agenda of “GW's better now, no
more bitching ever” that stultifies the debate into the loyalists
and the traitors. I suppose that sort of sentiment is weirdly on
point for a bunch of Internet Edgelords obsessed with the homoerotic
cyclejerk of the Horus Heresy and it's ten-millennia fallout. At this
point I had hoped this realisation would be obvious, but if I have
learned one thing from discourse on the internet it's that fandoms
are the entrenched, hate-filled decriers they accuse everyone else of
being. Nevertheless, I am being quite overly mean about not just GW
but also it's fanbase. Obviously, the situation is far more nuanced
and convoluted than such a sweeping statement would suggest.
Obviously, gamers aren't that stupid, they just frequently
act like they are (and some of them just are, but it's unfair to
conflate a minority with a totality) and much like any flawed aspect
of humanity, they end up often fanatically supporting a cause working
to undermine their own interests, marginalise their autonomy and
generally shape their character, tastes and desires into the kind of
space for a small, fantastically rich elite to farm for their own
interests. Naturally, those implications are wider, but in a nutshell
the Corporate mentality is devotion to presentation of an idea
that costs far more than it's worth to line the pockets of a handful
of people who are already rich. That's ultimately GW's interests
and it seems many, many of GW's fans are happy to kowtow to those
interests for the smallest of concessions and the slightest hint of a
reversal of frankly some of the shittiest attitudes any industry has
ever seen. No kind of corporate mentality justifies the level of
bullshit GW have spouted for the last 20 years, nor their apologists,
but fortunately for GW, most of their fans don't care.
So before we proceed, I want to make
one thing clear. I don't actually care if this situation
changes or not at this point. I'm pretty much done with the GW
community in entirety, and thus these are merely my observations.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a good situation at all,
but it's about as good as it can be currently (although I expect that
will change sooner or later) given that GW is ultimately a corporate
entity and it's only natural that fans want to like what they've
bought into for years and many are happy with what they get. This
isn't one of those “look at these sheeple” kind of rants. I mean,
I really, really struggle to understand quite what so many
people see in 8th Edition 40k in any single form, but I at
least understand that they do. It's puzzling, but this isn't what I'm
going to have a go at Gamers over. Oh no. You see, that doesn't
actually bother me. 40K was never a revolutionary or astoundingly
good ruleset. To my mind, it's been better (every single previous
time, actually) but to many it's merely a facilitator of the hobby
itself and all it has to do is function (or in 6th
Edition's case, pretend that it does for 2 years) and then
people sort out the bits they care about. Job done. Or so you'd
think, but then you visit what few forums are left, social media
groups, many youtube channels and comment sections, and... oh good
gork. See, I wish what I am about to say was a difficult thing to
say, but it isn't: much of GW's fanbase is a lot like a cult.
Crikey that's going to take some work
to recover from that kind of situation. There's no way I could find a
meme that makes this worse...
 |
| “Think like we do, or you're just a hater!” |
Oh dear, we've gone meta. Well
fuck...
Fanboy Ascendant: The Cult of
Positivism
It's popular to denounce criticism
within wargaming circles. I suppose the competitive element allows
devotees to most easily grasp for sour grapes and deploy peer
pressure more effectively. But it is strange that in a culture where
things are supposed to be great now, one wonders why the perils of
blind devotion are not subject to much reflection. I think the key is
obvious really, although its reasoning for being is more complex: the
fanbase is a jittery, insecure mess and for the first time in over a
decade it has the idea of agency and a “stake” in what happens
next, and is determined to defend it. But enforcement of positivism can be just as much of a weapon, and whilst the trend for dismissing
angry disenchantment on forums as poisoning the well before “New
GW™”, we now see a stark contrast of the exact opposite: complete
angry resistance to any and all criticism, and even a dictatorial
group-think. Cynics may have caused many a flame war by daring to
have opinions but never has a cynic started a forum or group on the
pretence of enforcing tone. Dozens of Groups and Forums now enforce
“No Negativity” rules, where criticism of GW is forbidden. Even
in groups that don't have the brass balls to admit the new apologist
agenda of maintaining an echo chamber of positivism, open criticism
typically leads to marginalisation if not outright expulsion from
groups, and that just stops any kind of dialogue from occurring.
The reasoning for this is at least
partly understandable, even relatable. Everybody who lived through
the latter parts of GW's Kirby Era got sick of the constant criticism
and anger. Of course, I would argue that the majority of that was
entirely justified, but even if we put that aside, most people who
moaned didn't actually want to do all that moaning, no matter what
GW's apologists would have you believe. But in the same way, most
fans don't want to hear why the thing they like isn't perfect. It's
somewhat understandable, but where else is that dialogue going to
happen, and the problem is that fans will demand to be free of any
criticism or complaints irrespective of where they occur and in what frequency. There will
always be fans who have complaints, there will likewise always be
apologists who have decided there are too many. The problem comes
from, in a sad, ironic sense, GW's apparent commitment to
feedback and consumer engagement. Because they engage, the dialogue
of what form the game should take now that there is a chance to help
shape it, is the narrowest and most inhospitable dialogue the entire
gaming community has ever had. The source of that problem is the
parts of the community who feel they are already being listened to
and catered to, deciding to shape the status quo into an echo chamber
of their existing position. This is ultimately a political power
play, and it's led by a lot of the people who defended the very era
they now denounce as the bygone age.
It's a bizarre and twisted logic that
has produced the idea that the very second
that GW has become open and receptive (apparently) to criticism, is the key time to have precisely one attitude of what this game is, which is, basically: "It's all good now! Let's just make years of pointless tweaks so we can buy more of your books and spend more on rules in two years than my dad did in 4 editions!". It's
almost as if there's a stake to be had, a grasping for legitimacy, a
scramble to control what the game is for the sake of creating a new
status quo that looks remarkably like the bullshit power-gaming and
sales-driven culture that existed in the Kirby era. Well, I suppose
there's no law that states apologists should be presenting original
ideas nor any semblance of imagination. It is this competitive
culture that ultimately dominates gaming discussion, much fortified
by GW's decision to divide its games into multiple “experiences”.
Notwithstanding that both Narrative and Open are still collectively a
crock of shit dressed up as an “option”, they are useful tools
used to silence dissent, with many Gamers offhanded to Narrative mode
especially and told “that one is for you”. This division
fortifies the competitive first mindset, itself fortified by getting
most of the content for Matched, alongside the fabled majesty of
Points Values, GW's weapon of gaming legitimacy. Points
naturally playing a key role in the balance narrative that promotes
the existence of 8th Edition as a necessary antidote. But
in the land of GW, this narrative could be easily quashed, if the
discussion had any true spirit to it. Knight Soup is still
dominant, and GW are being agonisingly slow in addressing that
imbalance.
But this isn't exactly a new
phenomenon. This is more or less why the situation is so bad, because
the culture hasn't actually changed, it's just embraced the line that
GW allegedly has and is running with it, hardly adjusting their
attitudes nor their practice. I've been insisted to by many an
apologist that competitive gaming is better than ever and yet
whenever I witness a local tournament I always see the same lists.
The same things reoccur and whilst specific units may fall in an out
of failure, I'm yet to see many loyalist armies that don't feature at
least one Imperial Knight, the usual ante-upping landing in the form
of Forge World units for the especially try-hard participants. What
is most sad about this culture is its insistence upon embracing and
celebrating the acquisition of a new environment with obviously
constricted appeal, the permanence of this restriction hand-waved
away via the “they listen now” rhetoric. It's no different to the
short-sighted defence of the cull of units by claiming they are
available, largely, still in the indices, failing to even consider the
obvious future where these books are rendered non-game legal and
following editions throw those units out onto their pile of
desiccated concepts, for the crows to feast.
The fan orthodoxy of the Cult of
Positivism ultimately drives forward a very limited narrative that
embraces a restricted appeal, and a hyper-simplified game for the
promise of some kind of security, the comfort blanket of
consideration. GW is clearly moving in those limited directions, and
the positivism agenda stifles any meaningful narrative away from
challenging that. They play into the space that GW has created for
itself, and thus the consensus that forms ensures a self-fulfilling
prophesy. Anything that GW does will be greeted as the new cool aid.
The position created for itself is simply 100% positive consumerism
in its most fanatical form. Those who don't sip the cool aid will be
denounced, and any fall in GW's fortunes, any mistake that will hurt
in the long term will receive no significant warning from anyone
willing to speak of it. GW's own fanbase are making GW blind to any
kind of disorder, failings or downsides of the path they have
trodden, as GW's games continue down the one avenue they have chosen
to adopt, which is a deluge of average, poorly conceived games,
endless supplements and a standard live service model. It's as
shallow a future vision as its fanbase itself, a perpetuation of a
status quo whose only principle feature is to resist the change it
has only just become even vaguely of embracing for the first time in
its company's history. And apologists wonder why the cynics think
they're idiots.
The fanbase has facilitated this
situation to the extent that it is the worst situation it could be:
the blind following the blind, leading the blind. Much like the
Sports Fans of the Computer Gaming industry have allowed and
encouraged the popularity of the live service model and its
associated microtransactions, loot boxes and gambling mechanics,
fanboyism within the GW space has ensured a similar space for GW's
interests. In a way, GW's rotten Kirby era created a majority crowd
disinterested in well-written and balanced games, and more a cult of
devotion to a shifting meta with incredibly obvious financial motives
for said shifting. In many ways, this situation is a self-inflicted
one, and much like S&M, it's a self-inflicted, consensual inclination, no matter how baffling it may be to onlookers.
Whilst no crime, the fanbase still swells with ranks of “listened to” devotees,
whilst the same failings dominate the game with no real noticeable
change in the game itself nor the atmosphere it had (and continues to still have, probably one of the worst in gaming).
The same crowd perpetuate this situation, moving from defending a
silent, indifferent and hostile Kirby era to defending more or less
the same issues dressed up in a company that claims to be a whole lot
nicer. Now with GW adding their rhetoric to the discourse, any
counter-narrative is doomed to be shouted down by angry fanboys,
determined to maintain an echo chamber of the status quo, no better
than the era of disenchanted fans under Kirby and in most ways
significantly worse. The sad realisation that for all of the new
kinds of gamers this new “image” may be beginning to attract, the
fans will still sip the cool aid regardless of the flavour, as they
have always done.
Nothing has changed, even during the only
time when change is even remotely possible. Now they have that
option, they will fight to the death to not use it. Let them.
Emancipate yourself, find a game worth playing. Because to my mind,
this community stinks and GW continues to do nothing to change that
and at best now panders to them. At worst, they're ignored anyway and all of this drama is pointless.
That really wouldn't surprise me at this point.
