Gamers and Gates

On Fridays, if I'm lucky, I go to the rifle range and shoot holes in circles. It's a relaxing thing I like to do and it's a kind of reward, a conceit, after a decade of running a successful business. It's my golf. There is tremendous guilt in this time away, but that's another story. I mention this because you will never see a more polite group of miscreants as the fine ladies and gentlemen of the rifle range.

Why? Mostly because they all have guns. That tends to engender politeness, despite what you might have been told. When there's yelling, it's because there's a violation of safety. I was yelled at last week for not noticing someone else's safety violation. It takes a village.

They also have a common cause. They're all members of a maligned sub culture. They have vastly, wildly divergent views on politics, religion, the way of the world, but they all agree on one thing. They all want to continue to punch holes in paper circles, and much of the world disagrees.

I mention this because gamers are also members of a maligned subculture. Sure, the video game market is literally 100 times larger than the hobby game market, but any attempt to distance myself from video gamers ends up with me throwing stones within my glass house.

Their games are violent. Check. They're a black hole of time. Check. It's predominantly a male pursuit with difficulty integrating women. Check. My male dominated murder hoboism, AKA my D&D group, meets all standards for which I dislike vidya games. There are great, beautiful, creative, and non violent themes in both genres, and we all strive towards those examples, but the criticisms, the examples of what's normative in the sub cultures, are mostly the same.

The one saving grace of hobby gaming sub culture, one difference from video game culture, is eventually, hopefully, we'll meet face to face. It's social gaming. We're not all holding guns to engender politeness, but we still get along well enough to kill the monsters and take their stuff. Yes, our online forums are just as virulent as the video game forums, but have you ever been on a firearms forum?

Oh geez, the amount of time people spend trying to convince you that one, one-hundredth of an inch is vitally critical to your survival is just staggering. Arguments get just as heated, although there's very rarely threats of violence for obvious reasons. There is no deterrence in gaming forums.

Without a social outlet, video gamers have no social consequences to their douchebaggery, no deterrence. There is no convention or game store where they'll have to encounter each other and reconcile their differences. There's no rifle range of politeness.

I'm not a solutions guy, but if I had to guess, it would be more accountability and zero tolerance. More walled gardens and less Wild West. But I've got my hands full over here, trying to get my own hobby game house in order. Our basic guideline of Don't Be a Dick, Wheaton's Law, tends to work pretty well for us.