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April 9, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
22:59
The Gauntlet is Down, MovieBob
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This is Bob Chipman, otherwise known as Movie Bob.
Bob was a contributor to The Escapist for about six years, I think, until mysteriously he was let go, which apparently has nothing to do with any hashtag consumer revolts, but he won't tell anyone why he was let go.
So after being a relatively big fish in a relatively large pond, Bob has been reduced to his YouTube channel.
let me introduce you to some of the things Bob puts on his YouTube channel.
If you're not sure what that was, that was the intro sequence to Bob's series, The Adventures of the Game Over Thinker, which he's been doing for about, I think four to five years.
So this series is a framing device in which Bob plays every single character in a universe where morbid obesity is the norm.
And for some reason, he has chosen this as his framing device to make his commentary on the modern game industry.
Now, I tell you this because I'm going to be going through a few clips of things Bob has said in order to discuss or rebut his points.
I suspect some people might wonder exactly what kind of bizarre shit they're looking at, as I play a clip of Bob making a point before responding to it.
And before we go on, I think it's important to give credit where it's due.
Bob did stick with this for 100 episodes, and the production quality is, honestly, it's better than anything I could do.
You know, I have no idea how to do all this, and it was probably an entirely one-man operation.
So I actually think that a lot of work went into his series, and he stuck with it, which I think is admirable.
Okay, Bob, so let's begin with some of your more crazy statements of late.
Some asshole tells the internet his girlfriend cheated on him and she's an indie game designer, so a bunch of dweebs who already hated her games for not being hardcore enough used it as an excuse to supercharge the anti-woman, anti-progress, anti-change, anti-outsider lynch mob behavior.
No mention of the fact that she was having an affair with Nathan Grayson of Kotaku, a journalist who has covered her game and is even mentioned in the credits, Bob.
Not one mention of that.
They'd already been pulling since Feminist Frequency started doing its thing years ago.
Then a bunch of gaming sites saw the media focus on this shit show as as good a time as any to start openly talking about distancing themselves and the broader game culture from having to pander to these exact kind of assholes, which got manipulated into this bullshit gamers are dead conspiracy theory by right-wing political hacks who'd been angling to gain a foothold in video games.
No mention of Game Geno Pros, Bob.
No mention of the factual documented collusion between the big video game websites.
And then to dismiss that as a conspiracy theory and then present your own crazy conspiracy theory about evil right-wing people trying to conspire and manipulate their way into the video game industry is absurd, Bob.
In an utterly transparent attempt to refresh their dwindling ideological ranks with a fresh crop of angry entitled young bros with an appeal to the diseased final remnants of tech bubble libertarianism and a knee-jerk anti-feminism, which of course I'm sure has nothing at all to do with existential panic at the likely impending candidacy of the first serious female candidate for president.
Bob, are you suggesting that people are anti-feminist because they're worried about Hillary Clinton becoming president of the United States?
Because I can tell you now, that's not why people are anti-feminist.
And if you think that's the case, you are a fucking fool.
Jesus, that is some ridiculous shit right there, Bob.
So anyway, let's talk about your opinion of gamers.
So Bob, some of the things you've been saying recently have been patently crazy.
But have you always been this way?
Around the 20th century, modern culture had an epiphany that it had been treating its female half-shitty all this time, opted to make amends, and things generally got better for everyone.
Yes, better for everyone, no matter what this has to say on the matter.
The above-mentioned push to make women equal members of society started out as a movement simply called suffrage, which gradually morphed into women's liberation until it finally reached a weaponized form known as feminism.
There's always a danger inherent, you see, whenever a movement for social change goes from, you know, calculated, methodical advocacy to fighting, because fighting carries with it a visceral element that can either be intensely useful, but also hard to turn off.
Kind of like, say, after the big bads, the movement had to go nuclear to take out in the first place, get vanquished, and then you're left with nothing to do.
Thus, in the same way that Dr. King's noble struggle against genuine evil of racism tragically morphed into the trivial opportunistic race baiting of Al Sharpton, the modern feminist movement is still spoiling for a fight but now has no more dragons to slay.
Yep, that was Bob Chipman from about six years ago.
Bob's also aware that modern feminism is synonymous with first world problems.
And it's largely turned its attention from advocating equality to carping about negative role models in popular culture.
And so you might be thinking, well, that sounds surprisingly reasonable.
How the fuck was Bob Chipman ever surprisingly reasonable?
And I think I can tell you.
I think, honestly, Bob Chipman has always been a social justice warrior, or at least a proto-social justice warrior.
A social justice warrior in waiting, if you will.
He just really needed the right environments to flourish in.
I think back in the day, Bob was actually pandering to his gamer audience, and so felt obliged to criticize feminism.
Even though, I think even then you could tell he thought there was something valid there.
So then, to the damsels in distress.
Here's the complaint.
And yes, I know that's basically bullshit, as even the greenest gamer can attest, that modern game heroines are all over the medium kicking ass with their inhumanly shapely legs, knocking out evil with their gravity-defying tits, and pausing only to play volleyball, pole dance, and experiment sexually with one another, but you and I both know that's not going to help this particular argument.
But the fact is, Super Mario Bros. remains the Rosetta Stone of narrative video gaming, and part of that has meant that Save the Princess remains a recurring element in which, in the eyes of feminists, represents a prolonging of dated patriarchal gender roles.
Frankly, yeah, guys, they kind of got a point.
Yeah, the broader goal of my spiel will be to refute that point, but I'd be being intellectually dishonest if I didn't acknowledge that the critique of gaming too often treating women as little more than property to be fought over has at least some of its basis in truth.
And if you don't want to acknowledge that, perhaps you need to see the opening scene of Double Dragon again.
Yeah.
So you can kind of see where folks might see that as kind of troubling.
So let's have a brief moment of humility introspection and admit that yes, as far as sexism is concerned, gaming along with the rest of our culture has a ways to go yet.
As you can see, the seeds of Bob's betrayal of gamers were sown long before Anita Sarkeesian turned up to swindle everyone out of their money.
As for the argument, do video games sexualize women?
Some do.
What's your point?
Oh, feminists don't like it.
And that appears to be the full extent of the entire argument against the sexualization of women in games, but we'll come back to that later.
But returning to Bob's opinion of gamers.
Is Bob a gamer?
As gamers, we're used to being thought of as the problem.
Well, he used to be a gamer, then Gamergate happened, and the Gamers Are Dead articles happened, and Bob really embarrassingly attempted to toe the line.
Even those of us who were really into video games as a whole, you wouldn't really hear us say gamers all that much.
You might hear us say video game fan or player or something more like that.
Alright, player, calm down.
But honestly, that just really comes across as disingenuous, doesn't it, Bob?
No one ever said video game fan.
And you are certainly not a player.
So what is it that makes you question your gamer identity?
I don't know, I guess when it stopped being about the games, or at least it feels like it.
Okay, so Bob's having a crisis of identity, because someone who should remain unnamed is making it about something other than the games.
Well, I can't imagine.
I mean, is it anything to do with identity politics, Bob?
Because you have very strange opinions on identities, don't you?
Look, in response to the threat of censorship, video game fandom solidified into a singular gamer identity for strength and numbers, and since maintaining that identity was projected to work out well for the industry, that industry enthusiastically encouraged it, just like they encouraged rivalry and separation in the SNES vs. Genesis days because it was more profitable then.
That's all.
Really, Bob, and you don't think the people calling themselves gamers as a way to identify themselves to other like-minded people whose primary hobby is video games had anything to do with that?
I mean, you are a man of many ironies, aren't you, movie Bob?
It's not just that the Nintendo brand and their studiously maintained roster of characters is permanently tied to some of their happiest childhood memories, it's that the abstract idea of Nintendo at one point represented something more than just a corporation.
It was an identity, a rallying point, and a comfort zone.
Well, I guess that explains this.
And so now we come to the main points that I wanted to make in this video.
Ultimately, I don't care whether Bob considers himself a gamer or not.
What I care about is Bob's willingness to lie to himself.
For example, let's see what Bob's opinion of GamerGate is.
But there is no real threat anymore.
Not from the government, not from shitbag Florida lawyers, not from anywhere.
Nothing for them to actually fight.
And so they've turned your secondhand rifles on feminism, on minority voices, on independent developers, on socially conscious game journalists, innocent people who've committed no crime save for trying to elevate this medium and the discussion, all of which might have been averted had you and yours not chosen to also stop building after you'd stopped fighting.
You're right.
Yeah, it's very brave of you to tell yourself that you're right, Bob.
But let's think about what you've just said there.
You have just said that no one in the game's media has acted unethically.
I can't believe you actually think that, Bob.
Rathcore asks, could certain gaming sites such as Kotaku and Holygon stand to update their code of ethics to something more resembling the SPJ?
hmm no Really, Bob, that's absolutely fascinating.
I am absolutely shocked you would think that games journalism doesn't need an ethical code.
Especially when you go on to say this.
Honestly, what's happening is simply game journalism growing out of being primarily an enthusiast press.
Critics don't like arty material that flatters their self-image as intellectuals because someone bribed them.
They like it because they're critics.
It's just game criticism falling into line with other types of criticism, where reviewers mainly dig artsy indie stuff, mainstream audiences dig disposable mega budget crap, and every once in a blue moon they kind of agree.
As far as ethics standards go, guys, it's video games, not a fucking CDC bulletin or the nuclear launch codes.
So let's be clear here, Bob.
You don't think the video game industry needs press that has journalistic integrity because it's just video games.
It's just your career.
Other people's careers.
People's money gets spent on this.
But it's just video games.
As we've talked about before, video games are toys.
Well, Bob, it's no wonder you would be against a movement that was pushing for ethical standards in the video game industry.
No fucking wonder at all.
And you know what?
It shouldn't come as any surprise to me that when asked about your buddy Anita, you become incredibly intellectually dishonest.
Tyler Bastille asks, how are Anita Sarkeesian and Jack Thompson's arguments any different?
Well, one was a notorious right-wing political operative for years before gamers had ever heard of him and only got into the realm of media censorship as part of an early effort to silence supporters of his political opponents.
And whose overall goal was not public advocacy, but launching actual lawsuits against the games industry while simultaneously pushing for new laws that if successful would have led to games being literally censored in the only way that's meaningful in a free market, i.e. by force of government.
And the other one made some videos espousing an opinion that some gamers disagreed with.
Bob, you fucking hack!
Jesus Christ!
Not even you, not even you, can possibly claim that that answers the question.
The question, Bob, was how are their arguments any different?
Not how are they different as people?
You have not addressed their arguments, Bob.
But you know what, you're not done yet, so let's carry on.
In all seriousness, people, as I've said numerous times elsewhere, there's as many valid criticisms of this person as there are any other opinion-oriented critic or pop culture commentator.
You're not proving anything comparing them to a genuine scumbag because they incidentally both talked about video games.
Jack Thompson wanted video games to stop existing, period.
Anita Sarkeesian, at the worst, at the absolute worst, is asking that some games, in her point of view, stop sucking.
That's it.
And that that is treated like some huge, revelatory, controversial thing is evidence of just how far we need to go.
And evidence of just how empty and shallow so much of gamer criticism otherwise has become.
We have to be about more than graphics and review scores, people.
And yes, I understand the idea that having widespread criticism of certain tropes and design choices may lead some designers changing their minds about what they should and shouldn't put in a given game.
Guys, that's not self-censorship.
Self-censorship is if you don't want to change something, but you do because you're trying to stay out of trouble.
If you actually change your mind about what you want to make, that's just changing your mind about what you want to make.
And while I'm not going to say it's impossible that a game maker might feel and act this way about a questionably exploitative character design they otherwise like.
If that's your concern, I'd be more worried about the bigger implications, like Japanese designers being pressured to change their aesthetics to appeal to Western sensibilities, or a military game feeling pressure to go to the played out patriotic route in order to avoid offending American audiences.
Bob, you are so full of shit it's painful, absolutely painful bullshit.
Is social vilification not leading to self-censorship bullshit, is it not?
You can't possibly tell us that that's the case and expect us to think that you are correct.
But, more to the point, you have not addressed the question you were asked.
In all of this ridiculous, incorrect sophistry, what I have to tell you that is very persuasive to me and to others are the brain scan studies now that are coming out of Harvard, Indiana University, Michigan State, in which they put kids in mri tubes.
They have them play video games.
The video games over stimulate that midbrain, the animal part of the brain.
You are learning in a virtual reality to be violent, to enjoy being violent, how to kill, and so you're given an appetite as well as scenarios in which to be violent.
Well, the negative impacts of sexual objectification have been studied extensively over the years, and the effects on people of all genders are quite clear and very serious.
Research has consistently found that exposure to these types of images negatively impacts perceptions and beliefs about real-world women and reinforces harmful myths about sexual violence.
The question bob, is, do video games cause violence or do video games cause sexism?
And i'm not even going to waste anyone's time providing you the evidence to show that video games don't cause violence.
At this point it's categoric, as you well know, bob.
And if you were too lazy or short-sighted or stupid to think critically about these issues and take a good hard look.
So a congressman yeah, and that's how they got so fucking close to winning.
And us, on the other side, we didn't have a choice.
You can't educate people on the subtle nuances of art and psychological response theory in the middle of what felt like a goddamn ideological and political firefight.
So we made a choice.
It wasn't like there was a big ent mood over it or anything.
Everyone, or seemingly everyone, just kind of collectively arrived at the same basic place, whether by calculation or because we were just desperate or dumb enough to momentarily convince ourselves it was the truth.
And then what?
We rejected it, all of it, and we couldn't let Thompson and the censors have anything that looked like ammunition see.
So we just shouted down everything.
Games will make you violent.
Games make unrealistic expectations of achievement.
Some character designs are sexist.
This game will turn your kid into a rapist.
Maybe there's a geopolitical issue with military games.
Maybe this or that character is kind of racist.
We mocked and shit all over the reasonable arguments right alongside the stupid ones.
We threw the good data and the nuanced behavioral studies into the same wood chipper as the chick tracks and mazes and monsters.
All we need to ask ourselves is, do video games cause sexism?
A German study with 4,500 initial respondents has come up with pretty unambiguous results.
And the answer, Bob, is no.
Video games do not cause sexism, just like video games do not cause violence.
You're a big fan of hard truths, Bob, so I'm going to give it to you straight.
You're full of shit.
And you're full of shit because you want what they're saying to be true.
But it's not true.
It's never going to be true.
In the same way that video games don't cause violence, video games don't cause sexism.
Video games are just a form of entertainment that almost everyone on earth can pick up and put down like that.
They can tell the difference between fancy and reality.
And just because you are so mired in your progressive politics and you want what they're saying to be true, you are willing to lie to yourself so you can believe that it is.
It is not true.
Anita Sarkisian's arguments are not correct.
Your ego and hubris have made you into a liar, Bob.
You have become the problem.
You have put a gender above the truth.
And look where it has gotten you.
Nonetheless, I detect pride in your telling of this shame.
Of course I'm proud.
A whole bunch of people made a decision to stand up for what they thought was right and made a real difference.
Why wouldn't I be proud of that?
Bob.
What you've said here is an accurate description of Gamergate.
There is a group of extreme left progressives who are trying to use social pressure, usually via social media, to censor games.
And it is scarily effective.
There is a progressive lynch mob on Twitter and they are very, very successful at censoring art that they do not like.
To say that this is not censorship is just a lie.
It's just more lies to yourself because you, Bob, claim to be anti-censorship.
And I think the most frustrating thing, at least for me, about your opposition to Gamergate, Bob, is that you have acted ethically in the past.
You know what the ethical standards are and you apply them to yourself, but you don't think they should be applied to the industry as a whole.
I find that baffling, Bob.
I find that to be a willful betrayal of your own principles.
So Bob, I am calling you out.
I want you to defend your ideas in public.
Because I don't think you can.
And I think that the only way you can continue to perpetuate such nonsense in your own head is by shutting out evidence or arguments that challenge you.
And you find it more comfortable to sit in your echo chamber and tell yourself what great ideas you're having and how right you are.
But on the plus side, Bob, I suppose you do do some marvellous impressions.
So I'm the anti-thinker.
That used to make me the bad guy around here, but now we got bad guys got way more interesting special effects.
So I guess I'm more like the bad boy of the arrangement.
I'm not against thinking.
I got all kinds of thoughts.
You just don't want to hear them.
Bob, I tell you what, that is the best Jim Sterling impression I have ever seen.
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