Revenge of the Gamer

There’s nothing like the internet to make you feel like an ass. I posted the Gender in Gaming- Equality or Special Treatment thread a couple of days ago. I also posted this on my blog.

The women here posted a letter asking for a number of changes in the gaming industry. I took issue with a part of the letter that suggested that the current trend of advertising was putting women in danger at conventions and other gaming venues.

This sounded ludicrous to me. I couldn’t imagine the cover of an RPG driving men into a sexual frenzy, and I was right. The thing is that’s not the type of advertising they were talking about.

What they were talking about are things like this:

This is the single most tasteless piece of advertising I have ever seen.  In a nutshell its asking men to run around and get as many pictures of sexual acts such as kissing and groping as they can.  Then they twitter these to prove that they did it.

Now any sane person wouldn’t expect this to cause a lot of issues, and I know I didn’t.  I was wrong.  This ad very much placed women in danger, as one man came forward to post on my site told me. David tells a frightening tale.

While at a con a man ran up and grabbed his female friend’s breast. The bastard doing the sexual harassment had his friend take a picture of this, per the advertisement you see above. So in a nutshell EA’s advertising caused at least one woman to be brutally groped at a convention. This poor woman is probably scared for life, and may never come near another event like this.

This does incalculable damage to our hobby and it makes all of us look bad. So I came back to say I was wrong. Very wrong. Adverstising can and does hurt women, and really this sort of shit needs to be stopped.

I apologize for my earlier post. I have definitely changed my opinion.

One of the sites I frequent is The 20 Sided Woman Project.  It’s run by Sapphire, a woman who is exploring gender differences in gaming.  She’s asked a lot of questions and interviewed quite a few people, myself included.

I respect Sapphire and agree that finding more ways to make women comfortable with gaming can only improve the hobby.  More people playing means our games survive through difficult economic times, and that benefits all of us.

Yet, some people take things too far.  On Sapphire’s blog I found a link entitled A Letter to the Gaming Industry which purports to speak for women in gaming.  I read the letter expecting an attitude similar to Sapphire’s, but was floored by what I read.

The authors aren’t looking for acceptance in the gaming world.  They are looking to change it to suit their moral version of what it should be.  Check out this paragraph:

“Be aware of how your advertising effects us. Not just emotionally, but how your ads and events can put us in unsafe and uncomfortable positions when we game online, with new players, or at conventions. It is again, a matter of a minority making the majority look bad, but keep in mind when a choice you make as the industry might put the women who are a part of your community in dangerous or uncomfortable decisions.”

The parts in bold are what bothers me.  It says that advertising on the part of gaming companies is endangering women.  Are you serious?  Let’s take a look at some of this evil advertising shall we.  This is the cover to one of the recent Shadowrun books:

Now bear in mind that I did some searching.  Surprisingly, I actually had a hard time finding an RPG book with a scantily clad woman on the cover.  This one is the closest I could find after looking through Exalted, Shadowrun and a few others. (If someone can find me a better one I’ll replace it.  I’m looking for something really racy)

Still, it illustrates my point.  Covers like this are putting women in danger?  Men are going to see this and feel compelled to harass or even rape women at conventions?  That claim is not only ludicrous, but its completely unsupported by any scientific evidence.

Even if it were somehow true that advertising could endanger women, it would only mean that they are all doomed to a life of harassment and rape.  Why?  Because our society is pervaded by ads that objectify women.  Take a look at this cover from Cosmo and compare it to the Shadowrun cover:

It’s as revealing if not more so.  This is hardly the steamiest cover I could have found, either.  There are far worse I see on the shelves whenever I go to the grocery store. 

Look at the shows and commercials you see on TV.  They are full of sex.  Who wasn’t cracking jokes this summer about Megan Fox in the Transformers movie?  She was there as eye candy, not for her acting ability.

All these types of entertainment and advertising are rife with images of women who are one step above naked.  Yet no one is claiming that people who view them will feel compelled to attack or harass women. 

The claim made by the women over at A Letter to the Gaming Industry makes no sense, but it wasn’t the only part of the letter to draw my ire.  They also had this to say:

“Sometimes we are too afraid to speak up at all for fear of alienation, abuse, or difficulty finding work in the industry because we might be seen as ‘hard to work with,’ when all we were doing was trying to have a discussion and change things for the better.”

I’ve been a gamer for nearly thirty years.  During that time I’ve seen my hobby go through hardship after hardship.  Companies like TSR and FASA have ceased to exist, because pen and paper RPGs are a dwindling market.  Its not easy to make a profit and more and more hobby shops and companies are closing their doors.

They are working hard to stay open, and that means making tough business decisions.  If I’m the head of a gaming company and I have someone apply that wants to change how we’re doing things I’m going to pass them over in favor of someone else.

Why?  I need someone who can help me sell more copies of whatever book I’m producing.  Having someone come into an interview or join a company and start telling me to change cover or internal art because its offensive to women is going to ensure they either never get the job or are fired if they did get it.

People play RPGs to escape from their real lives for a little bit.  We like to pretend to be something we aren’t.  When I play a game of D&D I’m not doing it to be some acne infested overweight teen. 

I want to look like the guy on the cover, the one who’s built like Hercules and has a face like Brad Pitt.  I want to play a character that has a chance with the scantily clad well endowed woman on the cover next to Hercules. 

For decades I’ve been able to do exactly that when I step into one of many fictional worlds out there.  From Rifts to D&D to Vampire you can be whatever you want to be, and tell any story you’d like to.  You can escape from your dull dreary life to become a hero, or a swordsman or a suave ladykiller.

What gives these women the right to come in and change that?  Do you really find my hobby so offensive that you think it needs to change?  If you want a game that doesn’t glorify or objectify the female body then make your own.  Market it and sell it and see how it does.  If there is an audience for it you’ll find them, and create the community you seem to seek.

Don’t try to change my hobby.  It’s fine the way it is.  Our advertising is fine.  Our games are fine.  We like sex.  We like nudity.  You don’t have the right to tell us we can’t, or to try to change it.

If you do successfully neuter our hobby maybe you’ll find this ‘acceptance’ and ’safety’ that you’re looking for.  But it won’t be the same hobby anymore.  It will be your moral version of what it should be, and that’s just wrong.

If you want to fight for equality you have my support.  No one should be excluded or mocked because of race or gender.  But asking us to change to suit your views?  That’s asking for special treatement.  Pick one.  You can’t have both.

When I game I don’t do it with men or with women.  I do it with gamers.  I know men AND women who like the hobby the way it is.  We have a blast and we don’t see a need to ‘fix’ it.  You have a right to your opinion and your crusade, but we have a right to ours as well.

As those of you who follow my blog know when I was sixteen I moved from New York to California.  It was a huge shift in my life.  I lost all my friends, my girlfriend, my dog and my home.  Everything I knew was gone in the blink of an eye.

I did what any teenager might do in that situation, I escaped.  Reading has always been my favorite hobby, and at that time in my life it was my only solace.  I read novel after novel as I escaped into other worlds to avoid my own.

Not long after arriving in California I met a boy in my Econ class who loved reading as much as I did.  His name was Eric Muhly, and while I’ve since lost track of him I’ll never forget him for one very important reason.  Eric introduced me to a series called The Wheel of Time, by a man named Robert Jordan.

The first book, The Eye of the World, was without a doubt the best book I’d ever read.  I followed the characters from the small village of Edmond’s Field and out into a larger world.  That book and the ones that followed gave me something to hold onto during a very difficult time in my life.

They also reaffirmed my desire to be an author, and my goal is to one day create a series as epic and rich as the Wheel of Time.  If I succeed half so well I’ll be ecstatic.

Every few years since high school a new book came out, and I bought every last one on its release date (well except for the last one).  Some of these books were amazing, some of them made me question why I was still reading the series.   After nearly twenty years and over 10,000 pages I am more invested in this series than any other I’ve ever read. 

In 2007 Robert Jordan passed away.  He was eleven books into his epic series, but wasn’t able to write an ending before he passed.  Instead he wrote down all his notes and told the entire story to his wife Harriet.

Harriet found an author she trusted to finish the series.  Brandon Sanderson agreed to finish the last three books of the Wheel of Time.  On October 27th the first of these will be released.

To help generate buzz about The Gathering Storm Tor books launched a book tour.  They were looking for volunteers to run the tour, and I was fortunate enough to be picked for the San Jose location.  Hence the nifty Storm Leader title.

I will have the opportunity to meet the wife of the man who’s series meant so much to me.  At long last I can offer Robert Jordan’s widow a belated thanks for everything I’ve taken away from the Wheel of Time. 

I will also get to meet his successor, Brandon Sanderson.  We’ll be going out to dinner, and I plan to pick his brain about writing.  Brandon has published a half dozen novels in addition to the Wheel of Time, and I want to know how he did it and how I can emulate him.

I’m excited.  This is both the fulfillment of a childhood dream, and a tremendous opportunity for me to meet the people who might be able to help me get my own novel published.  I can’t wait.

Thank you for everything Mr. Jordan.  Even after you passed away your legacy is still a big part of my life.

I’ve been working furiously on The Bond of Jhordil for over a month now.  In that time I’ve focused on the first story arc, which deals with two brothers living in a small town.  The problem this presented was a difficult one for me to solve, but I believe I’ve finally done so.

I wanted to show the reader what life in the country Olivantia was like, but was stuck on how to do that without boring them to sleep.  In order for a story to work you need to inject some sort of conflict.  No one wants to read about happy people living ordinary lives.

The novel had some inherent conflict, but I didn’t feel it was enough.  Both brothers are the son of a Binder.  Binders are evil necromancers who’ve drank from the Blood Tree.  This tranforms them into vampires, and gives them tremendous strength.

During the prologue the people of Olivantia rise up and overthrow the Binders.  They kill them wherever they can, and the few that survive flee into the Blood Wood.  My protagonists are both children of the Binder who ruled the town of Mountain Shadow.

One of the Binder customs when they ruled was the taking of wives from among their followers.  They’d kidnap any women they chose, and of course tended to pick the most beautiful ones.  This means that over the centuries a clear pattern emerged.  The Binders and their children were beautiful, more so than most of the peasants living under their iron rule.

Temis and Larken are the spitting image of their father.  Both are attractive, and quite obviously what I call in the series ‘Binder’s Get’.  This has proven to be more curse than a blessing, because it makes them a target for all the hatred the people have for the Binders.

That’s what gave me the basic conflict I’ve used when setting up the novel.  Add in the boys struggle to come to grips with what they are, because they are of the blood.  This means they’ve inherited certain vampiric traits from their father.

Still, I didn’t feel it was enough.  It makes the characters believable, but it just wasn’t exciting enough.

So with some help from Christine I brainstormed a series of scenes that would accomplish my goal.  Yesterday I finished those new scenes, and am very proud of them.

I came up with a dark ritual I dubbed The Call.  Every year the teens in Mountain Shadow go to the cemetary to prove their bravery and that they no longer fear the Binders.  Each year they read a passage from a book of spells to prove that bravery.

In all the previous years this ritual failed, because the people reading it lack the spark of magic.  This year they have Larken read the ritual, and since he has the magic in his blood it causes the spell to work.

The spell calls a pack of blood wolves, and several of the children are killed.  Temis and Larken are blamed, even though they are the ones who save the survivors.  Magic is outlawed in Olivantia, so they’ve committed a grave crime.

Anyway, this series of chapters gave the early part of the novel the conflict I felt was lacking.  I have more details I want to inject, but that was definitely the most challenging.  The others should come easily, and I’ll be done with the first story arc by the end of next week.

Then its on to Temis entering the Blood Wood in search of his father’s legacy, and Larken’s enslavement and inductment as one of the Bonded.  Good times!

When I finally started writing The Bond of Jhordil I didn’t know what to expect.  I learned a lot from writing Yuri Silvertongue & the Violet Spire, but I know it’s fundamentally flawed on a lot of levels.

I worried that I’d carry many of those flaws with me into Bond, but much to my surprise the initial chapters have been far better received than Yuri ever was.  The people helping me with editing seem genuinely interested in the plot, and are asking what happens next.  The story carries them forward, which is what I’ve always strived to do. 

That’s great news for me.  Its far too early to tell how well the finished product will turn out, but it’s light years ahead of Yuri and that’s saying something.  Of course, even if people didn’t like it I doubt it would matter too much to me at this point.

You see the writing itself is different than anything else I’ve ever done.  You know how every once in a while you’ll pick up one of those amazing books?  The ones you can’t put down and have to read and can’t put down until you have?  I haven’t experience that since I picked up Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

At least, not until two weeks ago.  For the first time ever I have that feeling when I’m writing instead of when I’m reading.  The Bond pulls me forward chapter after chapter.  I find myself writing furiously, day after day.  I want to discover this story, and new things seem to lurk around every corner.

I meet new and interesting people and see places I never knew existed, and this process of discovery is nothing short of amazing. 

Perhaps its that the core of the story has been rattling around in my head for so many years.  Perhaps its because I know the world so well.  After all this is the world I’ve run so many campaigns in, and have been daydreaming about for nearly twenty years.

Regardless of the reason the fact remains, I’ve found what I love doing.  Creating this story is the most fulfilling thing I’ve ever done in my life.  I feel complete when I’m writing, and I love the finished product.

To date I have just over 100 pages written.  That’s a staggering amount of writing to belt out in less than a month.  Nor do I see my pace slowing.  If anything I expect it to increase.  That means that by January I’ll have 400 pages written.

I know now that writing a novel isn’t nearly as simple as belting out 400 pages.  I’ll need to par that down to the useful parts, probably about 300 pages or so.  Then I’ll need to write a whole bunch of new scenes to flesh out parts of the story.

How many times I’ll have to repeat that process I can’t say, but I am confident that each iteration will lead to a better novel.  Every re-write will tighten it up and strengthen the story, and eventually I’ll have a fine tale that flows from start to finish.

I expect that final product to be finished by the end of next summer.  That gives me about 11 months to write and preft The Bond.  I have no doubt in my mind that I’ll be able to accomplish that goal.

Wish me luck!