MUSING & MACHINATING
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SPALDING WARGAMING CLUB
The prejudices people feel about each other disappear when they get to know each other. Media play a big role in our understanding of all things. They shape our preconceptions, our stereotypes, our expectations, our opinions and sometimes our wants and needs. So how do media reflect our strata of subcultures? As a foreword I’ll be conflating geeks and nerds under a single banner of ‘gerds’. This is for brevity alone: several people have strong views on what separates them (if anything at all) and that will be a topic for a future article. The Good Let us look at a few examples of positive representation. Top of the list has got to be Ben Wyatt from Parks & Recreation. There's no doubt he is a gerd; he writes Star Trek fan fiction, makes stop-motion films, plays boardgames and buys a full bat-suit. However, the important thing about his character is that none of these is his defining trait; Wyatt shows he can be assertive, articulate, passionate and well-groomed. He is a normal guy with interests that don't align with the mainstream. Next up are Dustin, Mike, Will and Lucas from Stranger Things. There's no doubt the boys are gerds: their opening scene is them at the end of a 10 hour D&D session and not long after they're shown as active members of an audio/visual club. They are all different and well fleshed-out characters showing great ranges of emotion and behaviour. This is the sticking point that we keep coming back to: their defining features aren't that they are gerds. It’s that Dustin is loyal, Mike is thoughtful, Lucas is headstrong and Will is robust. The BAD Although The IT Crowd is an entertaining programme, it does represent gerds in a terrible light. It’s important to note that this is a comedy piece and salt is required, as it represents the most extreme depictions of all characters. This includes Goths and business people. However, the focus is on the 3 main characters. Moss and Roy are both poorly adjusted, condescending, odd and socially inept. They appear to have a much lower level of social status and are confined to a basement to mitigate their impact on the workforce. Then we move on to Jen. Jen is brought in to manage Moss and Roy; she is there in order to mediate with ‘normal’ people as they’re both shown to barely capable of interacting in any social context. I have to reiterate that this is a comedy piece, it is designed to be entertaining and exaggerate flaws. What I take umbrage with is that it is blunt in its implementation. It reinforces damaging stereotypes that were out of touch at the time and more in keeping with American portrayals which leads me neatly onto the worst offender ... Arguably the most popular depiction of gerds is The Big Bang Theory. It is so very disappointing that this show has gained such traction and found an audience, because its central pillar is to point and laugh at the freaks. The obnoxious laughter track kicks in constantly to reinforce how funny these odd little creatures behaviours are. Every single stereotype is held up and ridicule encouraged, with the ‘straight man’ (Penny, herself a drawn out cliche) to highlight how strange their rituals are. Even now Chuck Lorre's portrayal is looking dated given that gerd culture is becoming more mainstream. That sounded a little reactionary didn't it? It may well be, but it doesn't make it false. As above, this is a comedy piece, but it’s what exactly is being used for comedic effect: it's them. The central characters ARE the joke. That Penny is used as a focusing lens for these individuals to highlight how outside the norm they are, she is supposed to be the relatable character who is portrayed to be hilariously out of her depth. Try watching an episode without the laughter track, I guarantee you'll see this show in a different light. Now for something I have tentatively avoided and with good reason: the representation of women. This is a powder keg, but what must be said is that the portrayal of female gerds is less offensive and a step in the right direction. Mayim Bialik plays Amy Fowler, who is again flaunting the full spectrum of expected behaviours as well as a sexually frustrated love interest for Sheldon Cooper. Now while I don't think this is a good reflection on female gerds, the actress herself does have a PhD in neuroscience. So for the industry I’ll take that as not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Finally Chuck Lorre. There's little that can be summed up from him other than he doesn't understand his source material beyond cliche and stereotype. It’s a total misnomer. Compare what he churns out to Dan Harmon's Community or the work of Kevin Smith. All that remains to be said is that this show in particular is the absolute bottom of the barrel in regard to its representation of characters, story, theme, humour and subject matter. It is lowest common denominator with its sights fixed squarely on a subculture it only understands through regurgitation of limited and dated understanding. The Ugly Fashion flirts with many ideas and concepts from militaria to chintz, but aspects of geek-chic refuse to die regardless of the season. Thick framed spectacles, plaid, (pussy) bow ties, argyll, ‘GEEK' printed shirts: aspects of this trend make what were once unfashionable ensembles into desirable ones. While it is great that clothing once deemed ‘nerdy’ or ‘geeky’ became vogue it’s worth noting that it is a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It's fashion, and only that. Branding it geek-chic is a little outdated and disingenuous, in that gerds (by and large) don't conform to the stereotypical clothing associated with them. However this IS what fashion does. Fashion has co-opted what it sees as the subculture’s attire, It’s more evident at the high of the movement in 2012 when EVERY celebrity donned a pair of thick frames whether prescription or not. Having said this you can't blame the industry because it reacted to another phenomenon, that of fetishisation. Let's be honest in that there is a monstrous elephant in the room that slid out of the shadows of the gerd sphere... Cosplay. You can stop right there if you’re going to make the ‘not all’ argument because you're deceiving yourself. No, not all cosplayers are conventionally attractive and there is no barrier for entry by the community, but stop yourself and look at the prominent figures of both genders who are more well known. Cosplay is unquestionably an element of the subculture where sex sells. The industry does borrow from Cosplay and vice versa because sex sells. Even more classic depiction is the gerdy girl who loses the specs, puts on the frock and combs her hair: she is transformed. The kitty in your living room was a tiger all along. The music industry has done this arguably more successfully than any other. Artists like Taylor Swift that put on the costume when it suits; that lends it yet more sex appeal. Let's not forget ourselves though. It is a costume and not a reflection of being part of a group, merely a disguise. Most of the icons wearing this kind of thing probably weren't ostracized for loving classic literature or knowing all the droid model numbers in Star Wars. Make Love Not Warcraft is a brilliant episode of South Park. So why has it fallen into the ugly category? This is down to the fact that it is funny if you're in the loop for different reasons than for those of a casual observer. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are gerds; the host panels at Comic Con and are pretty deeply embedded in gerd-dom including in the World of Warcraft (WoW) scene. There’s a lot of humour in the episode that the community directly relate to and as such has become a meme. However, in the time this episode came out there was a lot of negative press about the game, in regard to the addictive nature and poor health it fostered in its dedicated fan base. From an internal perspective, we know that these are outliers but, from the outside, these look like the norm. The episode makes the addiction to this game look like par for the course, that playing it turns normal children into gelatinous monsters in their mothers' basements. This, naturally, IS the joke. However I think it misses the mark for the uninitiated. An Ode to Balance So is media misrepresenting gerds? Yes and no. The classic stereotypes are still alive and well of the basement dwelling virgin, unkempt, unwashed, childish, condescending and socially inept. Easy and lazy iterations to be trotted out that are easily recognisable. They can be seen in The Simpsons, The Fresh Prince, Napoleon Dynamite, Grease and the Inbetweeners, etc. Although it’s not all bad. We still get Paul, Mallrats, Spaced, Community and Scooby Doo. Yet what we've been seeing is a shift in what is and is not considered in the gerd domain. Video games were once purely for gerds, comic books are now transformed into summer blockbusters, computers are part of everyday life, the internet is easily accessed and used by millions. The truth is that with every passing year more people readily encounter those with less common pastimes, they become known quantities as they become more readily available and exposed. Gerds will lose the stigma of outsider culture and be folded into the grey, but accepting, mainstream.
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As our lives become more technologically infused with every passing day, it is no surprise that table top gaming is moving in the same direction. However, a rift is forming between those who find it an antithesis of gaming's original form and those who fully embrace the shift from analogue to digital. So let’s look at a few perspectives. The Purist This is a position which is firmly entrenched in the fundamentals of tabletop gaming: it is social experience. Tabletop games bring people around a table to play a physical game whether it is naughts and crosses jotted in an exercise book margin, the annual family game of Monopoly, a bunch of friends for Dungeons and Dragons or a vicious grapple with an opponent in Warhammer 40,000. Every player has a need to fulfill; be it a drive for competition, to socialise, to escape the rigours of day to day life, to bond etc. It is the social thread that pulls those with disparate ends together, and if you're open minded you'll forge new friendships that would otherwise be unlikely. That alone is magic, to bridge gaps (in age, class, gender etc) that otherwise may not have been. It certainly is a compelling argument to be a luddite in this corner of your life. The Technophile There is no way you could assert that technology hasn't had an impact on table top gaming, but many have gone full bore and play games, that were originally physical, digitally. Games like: Ticket to Ride, Carcasonne, Mysterium, Star Realms and Forbidden Island have traditionally been played with other people in a shared material space but now these (and many more) can be purchased digitally and played that way too. There are a huge amount of positives to playing digitally, so I’ll look at a few of them. Firstly, convenience. It is undeniably easier and quicker to whip out your phone to play a game; you don’t need a table or even have friends! Play with randoms or alone with the A.I. at any time of the day or night. Insanity. Secondly it’s vastly cheaper. Ticket to Ride is £3.69 on the Google Play compared to the £25+ cost of the board game (excluding postage). It is a 5-player game, but even if you personally bought 5 copies then it’s still £18.45. If you already own a few games, you'll have encountered the problem of storage: not a problem digitally, as It’s stored on your Google Play library or phone/tablet. If reading rules is too much effort (i.e. Jeremy Vine) then applications are right up your alley: it's all adjudicated for you without any hesitation or misinterpretation. Let's face it, apps really do have the edge on paper. it’s Ronseal, although it feels a little soulless. The Hybrid What about the best of both worlds, to get the best of each approach with the tactile, very human quality of the Purist with the streamlined convenience of the Technophile? It's entirely possible and very common in the form of companion apps, scoring apps and PDF editions of rulebooks. Companion apps are exactly that: applications that work in synchronisation with table top games, and there are quite a few that once you start using them you won't look back. The gleaming example is One Night Werewolf. This is a game of deception, the townsfolk vs. the werewolves, in which individual unique identities are dealt out and which are kept concealed There are secret shenanigans, there is a 3 minute discussion and finally a vote on who to hang for being a werewolf. If a villager is hanged then the werewolves win and vice versa. However the secret shenanigans are done with players' eyes closed, with each character ‘waking up’ and using their specific character ability. Which means one person has to wake up, read out the character who is acting next, explain what they do and go back to having their eyes closed. This takes a very long time if you have more than 4 players (10 is much more fun), with going through each character (in the correct order), reading the ability and waiting a generous amount of time to let them complete their action. Let me remind you, there is only 3 minutes before you start this process all over again. Tedious. Yet there IS an app that fills this role; it is spectacular and a must-have. You plonk in the characters, and it does all the steps for you with a very clear, velvet smooth voiceover. Absolute magic. Scoring apps for some games are unnecessary because if you can do basic arithmetic then you'll have no trouble, but there are some like 7 Wonders that are indispensable. The reason is there is one scoring mechanic that is so complicated that you need a PhD to work it out: science. My goodness, the strife from science-scoring is unmatched. There are 3 symbols for science cards and in various combinations they give different outcomes; some can score you a lot more points than others in specific sets. Here is a very basic explanation: if you have 8 science cards (not uncommon) then you have to go through all the possible combinations and compare the score of each combination to find out which is the most advantageous. For 7 players, it takes a long time, not to mention it is arduous given that it is just 1/12 of the scoring conditions. The app is great: slam in what cards you have and the app calculates the best score instantly, no sacrifice of a virgin required. PDF rules can be hit and miss, mainly because of the load time on less powerful machines. On a phone, the PDF rulebook (pamphlet) for Keyforge is painfully slow, a drawback for such a quick game that can be a little rules-dense at first so loading it feels like a chore rather than a boon. On the other hand it is free... This is where you come to the premium PDF rulebooks seen in wargaming and role-playing games. Holy crap will that rock your world but at a cost. They are excellent for blitzkrieg pedantry alone. You’ve got a search function to quickly find the exact topic you need conformation from; there are links in there where other rules are referenced to jump to them; you can enlarge text to better thrust it into your opponent's/player's/GM's face; you haven’t got to carry around a great tome (3 A4 hardbacks for D&D 6E at 988 pages total): it is the way to go undoubtedly. There is a catch. PDFs, despite having no physical component, aren't much cheaper at all and you won't get a free one if you buy a physical book; plus they cannot be resold or traded unlike actual books. I am an advocate of physical media though, because if I’m going to spend £60 on books, then I want to feel like I’ve spent £60 on books, not £50 on PDFs then my tablet runs out of battery halfway through a session. What do I think? I’m in love with games; truly, madly and deeply. To see the physical and social aspect stripped away completely makes me a little uncomfortable, I would (rather tentatively) suggest it makes the hobby more toxic as it creeps into the mainstream. The same thing happened to video games. They were niche geeky pastimes that have become widely accepted. Yet as they became less intimate experiences, with online multiplayer rather than LAN, there was an erosion of sportsmanship, an increase in vitriolic attitudes and intolerance. Now you'll struggle to find many video games that you can even play on the same machine, where previously they were a dime a dozen. That is not to say I am slave to a completely analogue experience Apps are so bloody useful and, without them, some fabulous games would gather dust because their concept isn't as easily implemented without a third party, as is the case of One Night Werewolf. Maybe it’s an elegant but complicated scoring mechanic, like 7 Wonders. Perhaps it is simply just having Google on hand to check an FAQ, errata or clarify a particular card because you lost the piddly pamphlet that came with the expansion (I’m looking at you, 7 Wonders expansions). If you’ve read this far then my position is pretty apparent, I’m a gaming cyborg. Moreover, I think you should be too.
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