Posted on 03/22/2018 11:36:06 AM PDT by TigerClaws
At a time when President Donald Trump, the National Rifle Association, and others on the right are blaming video games for promoting violencewith nary a shred of credible evidencea new book has leveled a completely different criticism at the gaming industry: "toxic meritocracy."
According to Christopher Paul, chair of the Department of Communication at Seattle University and author of The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games: Why Gaming Culture is the Worst, video games promote individuality, reward skill, and encourage players to do their best in order to win. These are supposedly bad things.
"Games are based on leveling up and getting stronger," Paul tells Campus Reform. "We expect the most skilled, hardest working player to win. The typical narrative in a game is a rags to riches story where the player propels the character into a key role and perhaps even attains god-like status."
"All those things shape our expectations and focus players on individuals, rather than the collective," he added. "As actualized meritocracies, video games quickly become really toxic spaces where players are focused on individual glory, rather than creating positive spaces for interaction."
Not all is bad, Paul notes, pointing out that games like Mario Kart and Mario Party are more cooperative and based on "luck, contingency, and serendipity," elements that he hopes game developers will prioritize more in the future.
"Moving away from merit allows communities to be developed on different terms, giving an opportunity to build something else, something new, something that has features other than the endemic toxicity that comes with meritocratic systems," Paul contends.
Speaking as someone who played a whole lot of Mario Kart and Mario Party growing up (and in college...and as an adult...), I will say that the luck-based elements are sometimes a lot of fun, but they're also infuriating. In the Mario Party games in particularwhere the "luck" aspect can be overwhelming and game-breakingmy play-group often came away thinking, "Well, that was a terrible game." The mini-game comes to mind where Bowser appears, forces you to pick a random color, and then relieves you of your hard-won coins and stars if you choose wrong.
If that's your thing, more power to you. Play all the Mario Party you want. But I don't think it's "toxic" for more serious gamers to prefer games with clearly defined rules and a skill-based system that rewards good gameplay. Gamer culture has its problems, but promoting meritocracy isn't one of them.
At least Paul doesn't want to regulate away the aspects of gaming he doesn't like. The person who wants to do that is the president of the United States.
Or, as to say to Danse.....”that’s ‘General civilian’ to you.”
The establishment has wanted to have game makers add more women in the design of games. It is easy to change the definition of a “win” in a game such that a SJW attitude wins.
And for obvious reasons, liberal professors are deathly afraid of meritocracy.
The Dunning-Kruger effect
F&G ping
“They asked me how well I understood theoretical physics.
I said I had a theoretical degree in physics. They said welcome aboard.”
Ive risen to the top bracket of Level 1040 and Im using the White Privileged mod.
Fear Me.
LMAO. Thats our boy. Keeping Helios One in the dark.
I was sure you were being sarcastic, but no /s or (sarc) makes me wonder?
Hmmm...How much do you think we could get for the professor? College grad must bring more? /s
Only the good ones.
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