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March 17th, 2008
10:43 am - What makes me a gamer?
So some thoughts on the RPG community and subculture. This was inspired by some other discussions -- this time I'm putting links on the bottom, since I want to emphasize my positive message first.
What makes a subculture?
Gary Alan Fine, in his book Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds , analyzed the gaming community in 1979 as a subculture. He defined a subsociety as a collection of individuals who have importance as a distinctive segment of society -- and a "subculture" as a subsociety where there is (1) a network of communication, (2) self-identification as a group, and (3) identification by those outside the group.
Why am I a part?
So for role-players, the key activities would be the games themselves, and communicating in a network of people who play. That would obviously include being a regular in online forums, but one can connect to the network in other ways, just so long as the chain eventually connects to the central sphere of gamers. So a group who just talk among themselves aren't part of the larger subculture. However, if a few of the group connect to large forums, then they are part of it. Those more central to the subculture may spend more time gaming, participate in online discussions, write gaming articles, and/or self-publish their own games.
For myself, I obviously communicate with other RPG players -- through my LJ, various forums, my webpage, and a few conventions. I also identify myself as a gamer. (My license plate says "RPGNERD", for example.) I would say that the main reason I consider myself a gamer is that I play games with others and also talk about games with a community of those who play. I remember being distinctly surprised when Lee in my group said in conversation that she wasn't a gamer -- I felt that by regularly playing games with others, one was a gamer. (She clarified that by "gamer" she meant someone who played video/computer games, which is the more common understanding of the term.)
I could compare this to other subcultures. For example, I am more marginally a part of the Korean-American subculture. I connect to a network through my Korean relatives and subscribing to KoreAm magazine. I identify myself as Korean-American, and others identify me as such. I have some other hobbies, though not as involved as gaming. These days, I don't identify myself as a singer, even though I sing fairly well, because I don't sing in groups often enough to feel it significant. I have in the past been involved in theater as well, though the theater groups I was in were somewhat isolated from any broader scene.
I know a little bit about a few other subcultures by proxy, like the poetry scene and the queer scene (at least in the Bay Area).
What is distinctive about the gamer subculture?
Demographically, gamers tend towards white, suburban, middle-class. They are often college-educated. Within the U.S., they are notably strong in the Midwest, but are pretty widely spread. Religiously, they are mixed with many being agnostic, but with a over-represented minority of pagans. As seen in "Psychological Studies on Role-Playing Games", the general trend is that tabletop role-players tend slightly towards introversion but strongly towards openness to experience (cf. Big Five Personality Traits). There is a trend of estrangement from mainstream culture, which basically means they watch less of the most popular television programs and magazines.
Beyond this, there are a host of traits that most readers are probably aware of. Gamers tend to dress informally in t-shirts and such, similar to sports fans though with different icons. They are not very physically fit, not surprising for a sedentary hobby, and no more pronounced than what I've seen of other sedentary hobbies. They strongly enjoy and prefer science fiction and fantasy, overlapping heavily with SF/F and comic book fandom.
Personally, I'm at least as comfortable in the general gamer scene as I am in other social groups -- including subcultures like a Korean-American crowd or theater geeks, or mainstream culture like going out to a local sports bar or club. I do have things that I am not happy about, but most of them are specific to my tastes rather than universal improvements.
The one dissatisfaction that comes to mind for me is lack of women. Broadly speaking, I'm fine with having gender biased space. For example, I'm fine with predominantly female gatherings like WisCon or BlogHer. I'm also fine with male-dominant spaces like men's movement gatherings or guys' nights out, as long as there aren't real-world perks hinged on them (i.e. like male-only golf games that make business connections). However, I find that within gaming, I enjoy a more gender split like AmberCon NorthWest.
Of course, there are lots of other things I would wish for. At conventions, I'd like better organization, more social activities, and better kids programs or child care -- but that's just sort of a general wish for better stuff. Similarly, there are a lot of hypothetical RPGs that I would like to see published. I would also prefer less division of camps in online discussion. I would describe those more as wishes than dissatisfaction, though.
Dissatisfaction with the Gamer Subculture/Community
This post was inspired by some recent comments about gamer subculture. Matt Snyder posted in "Dice Quixote" that he wanted to play role-playing games, but not participate in the surrounding subculture apart from the games. I discussed some interesting points in the comments to that with Lisa Fleishman. Keith Senkowsky followed up in "Amused..." saying, "Snyder has been accused of saying the subculture is beneath him (which he did not say). Well I am saying it. The subculture is beneath me. How you like them apples?" In response, Stuart Robertson started a thread on "The Myth of Gamer Subculture" on Story Games, and a parallel thread on theRPGsite.
There have, of course, been other negative comments on the gamer subculture in the past. However, they are often not consistent. For example, quite the opposite of Synder's point, Ron Edwards has criticized the tendency of gamers to not socialize outside of games -- notably in his often self-referenced 2002 Forge thread on "Social Context", where he suggested that participating in more out-of-game activities with other gamers was healthier than just playing. Others, more like Snyder, have claimed that gamers socialize together too much -- to the extreme of "doing everything together".
These clash both with my own impressions and the psychological studies of gamers that I've seen. I have seen nothing to indicate that gamers on average have any greater problems than the general population. They have a slight introversion tendency, but it is not pronounced, nor is introversion a flaw. I have seen both gamers who treat their games as a casual night out without socializing otherwise, and gamers who are a closely-knit social group with the people they play with. I don't think see a problem with either behavior. This is not to say that gamers don't have their problems, but then so does everyone.
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