Creating creators and critics

Originally, this was going to be the Part 2 of the community post; last week's post was originally longer, but I couldn't figure out how to articulate everything by my self-imposed deadline so I split it up. A significant chunk of the followup was going to be talking about Jim Gee's thoughts on 'affinity groups'.

...but then I saw this this video (as part of my continuing effort to watch every vlogbrothers video in the archive) and now this post is going to be about Gee's more recent thoughts and how they're related.


Uh...yay?

 Ok, in order to get there, lets start off talking about "consumers" and specifically about consuming media, be that TV, movies, music, video games, comics books, book books, newspapers, what-have-you. Except for video games, people generally think of "consuming media" as a passive experience; you're reading or watching something others have made. You're really not participating or interacting with it, but just kind of absorbing it.

or at least advertisers hope you are.

This kind of view is really clear  in the language; vegging out in front of the boobtube, or the idiot box, zoning out. All this imagery of being super passive.

However, this is not the only way of 'consuming media'; you can also consume it reflectively, considering the deeper levels of meaning or context in the media. What does this symbol mean? What is the creator trying to say and how? How does this relate to other similar pieces of media?



What does this dick joke say about the environment?

Gee calls this 'being a critical consumer', and the vlogbrothers call it thinking complexly, and its a parallel theme that's very important to both of them. For the vlogbrothers, its how you start to make sense of the world, and they extend this into science, too. To them this idea is about finding some way of more deeply understanding the world, be it through literary analysis or scientific quantifying and statistics, and using it.  To find some way to help yourself better understand the world you are in, meaningfully discuss it with others, increase that understanding, and act based on it.

And that's where we come back to Gee.
If you're not familiar with James Paul Gee,
he's a professor who was trained as a linguist, then became focused the potential of video games as a medium, then started really looking at how video games teach and engage, and how people interact with them and each other around them, then wrote a book about it...

That I'm a fan of.

...and has been an influential thinker in the academic space around games since. (If that phrasing seemed odd, I'm using "academic space around games" to go general and avoid the whole serious games/educational/games for impact/games for good etc. naming issue.)

Now, that's the revised edition, because he wrote it years ago. More recently, Gee's been talking more about critical consumption and a "modding attitude". So critical consumption is similar to what we were just discussing, but from there things go slightly differently. See for Gee its not just about being able to discuss creations meaningfully, but about discussing things in the manner of a creator and from there creating things yourself as part of  larger discussions.

For example, in literature, this could look like someone reading Fahrenheit 451, discussing in classes or online the themes of how man relates to technology, and how they're expressed in the book and whether they agree or not, and eventually writing something themselves, to express their feelings and thoughts on that same topic. Or other topics that became more important to them during that journey.



Like how awesome and terrifying robot hounds can be.

Gee refers to this shift to identifying as a creator as a "modding attitude" because he was focused on games, and there you can plot a nice pregression of person who plays games, to "gamer", to modder, and perhaps from there to game creator.

Though, to be clear, modding is creating something new, the same way a short video , or essay, or parody of a song is creating something new and contributing something to larger cultural discussions of issues. You don't have to be making  full movies or games, or books to be contributing.



A single image can be enough.

And this is where I think the vlogbrothers and Gee's feelings converge; its important to be able to reflectively consume media, because if you can't do that you won't really be able to engage with the issues within or behind those media or meaningfully contribute to larger discussions. And having more people meaningfully contributing makes those discussions richer, bringing new perspectives or ideas that others hadn't thought of. And when someone engages with those discussions its also usually good for them, helping them feel capable, feel like they belong to something, and helping them be better able to deal with their lives in some way.

This was one of the things I was groping for a way to express in the community post, and cut; one of the things good communities do is support this transition. They welcoming novices,  help them develop skills of critical analysis, provide aspirational and instructive examples of higher level discourse, and create safe areas to try out new ideas and ways of expressing them. These communities enrich themselves, and enrich the people involved in them.

If in the last post I had asked "How do you make games that spawn good communities?" rather than focusing on 'positive impact', this would have been part of the definition of "good".



Not taking yourself too seriously all the time would likely have been another part.

Gee highlights facilitating this transition as something the education system needs to be doing and is currently bad at. The vlogbrothers highlight this as a reason they like youtube: because the weak barrier between creators and consumers allows for more interaction and (and this part may be more implicit) a very easy transition from one to the other.

So what do you think about the importance of shifting your identity from the audience of a message to a participant in a discourse?  Is it important? Why?
How about its importance in terms of the media we're bombarded with everyday, and being able process and contextualize it all rather than being buffeted about?

Leave your thoughts in the comments,
or if you have a story of making this kind of transition in some area, whether its how you went from watching films to making them or how it felt doing a young authors contest or science fair, leave that too. It seems that these can be some of the most interesting experiences to share or to hear about.

photo credits: yaelol.wordpress.com, hhhuuuhhh125 on deviantart, , sophiedaveyphoto.wordpress.com, semi-rad.com

Best Game Company?

So, most every major TTRPG that companies have come out with has serious balance issues:

• DnD 3.x: does mages vs. fighters really need a link?
• Pathfinder: the lowdown
• DnD 4e: a "good character" (the responses, not neccesarily the first post)
• nWoD: I can't speak to this as much, but for reasons below (and new mage's "lol atlantis" fluff) I don't have much faith in WW
• Exalted: Anatomy of failure
• Aberrant: various views (this is by no means a major system, but I like fiddling with it occasionally. Also both the bits where 1) claws power vs. str enhancement, where one option is both cheaper and better in every way and 2) the default character creation that allows for characters that would be 306-1198xp if bought with that, makes me giggle)
• Scion: anything past Hero level. Dex is already the god stat, so how do you even fight without maxing out epic Dex? and why are the aesir dex-screwed? What does 10 successes even look like and why doesn't that do half the things dex knacks do?

Yeah, this is entirely about the mechanics, but thats what the systems are for. Obligatory proabably repetitive disclaimer; yes, you can run a good game in any system. But that means your GM is great, not the system is. The measure of the system how much less work it is for the GM and players to get what they want than the alternatives. And for most parties, balance is a concern, which is a sizable part of why you use a system rather than freeform.

In some games these are starting characters,

in some they are balanced with each other,

in some they are both

Basically it seems game companies just suck at playtesting. Like really suck. And economics and demand say they aren't gonna fix it, cause theres enough other stuff in their products that unbalanced mechanics don't nix the deal...mostly. The bigger issue is that they have limited time even when they do playtest, so they won't find everything the rabid masses of obsessed fans will. Charop boards thrive on this fact.

So if the only way to truly stress test a system is to give it to hoards of powergaming fans; in a perfect world (or at least one where 1) companies didn't care about giving away product for free or 2) people would still buy the finished product after having the drafts of the system) we'd just do that. I mean homebrews start as small things or houserules to something established, but if a group put its mind to it theres no reason the people that brought you Crystal Keep and all the "The 3.5 X class handbook" threads that reviewed every option from every splatbook couldn't turn their efforts to actually balancing things, instead of noting the problems and moving on. And this does occur sometimes, but what i'm saying is this writ large accross a whole game, including its fundamentals.

Wikis and boards and such allow input from all sides, and the real issue is everyone having the same goal; a clear statement of purpose outlining direction and philosophy is essential here. So many design calls come down to preference and style, so having a cohesive idea of what the game is for and whats most valued (cinematic vs. gritty, ease of use, flexibililty, etc.) saves allot of repetitive arguments later.

I guess I'm saying gamers, properly motivated and organized, would form their best group of suppliers. If theres any group that would voluntarily put in the time both figuring out fair dice mechanics and fluffing out new setting to go with them it'd be the people in this hobby.

(Those drawn to the mechanics, anyway; I know allot of people play socially or only care about story and often handwave mechanics, which is great for them and their groups. The arcane (not in the magic sense) structure of say dnd 3.5e can attracts a type of person who is great for this, though.)