Ethical questions while gone

I don’t really know how to begin with this, but while gone on this unintended break, I went through a lot of ethical questions on videogames and culture. Although much of the absence could be laid on the heat in my office, and the loud AC in the window, the rest is mostly these ethics.

Before you start saying that a little heat is not going to kill me, yes actually it can. I lose consciousness for some reason. My office is usually 10-20 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. Most of that time was spent in the 90’s outside. To alleviate this, there is an AC unit on the window. It cools everything down, but is so loud it is difficult to think. Since there isn’t a lot blocking the cool from leaving, it was constantly feeling both hot and cold at the same time. If you continue to think I am a wimp, then I must agree.

On to the ethical questions.

The questions go from easy, but hard to do. Then we go into hard with a feeling like nothing can really fix it. The easy one was whether or not to sell multicades, even though I don’t have a lot of money. The harder to do was the watch on the sidelines as a friend studied the Ferguson riots. Finally we arrive at to do a lot of the changes in gaming journalism, and wonder how I fit into it.

The first should be simple, but is hard to do. Within Anthropology there is a system of ethics on good practices. One of the major roles is to not take advantage of those we are studying. This hasn’t always been a rule, btw. When Anthropology first began, there were several who studied culture and destroyed it at the same time. This is actually the reason why we have the rule.

The reason why I was caught up with it was when I was offered a job selling multicades. The job was to just call up various folks, and place local ads about the games. It would have been $200 commission for each one.

A multicade is an arcade unit that has multiple games playable in it. They tend to be run by emulator on a small computer, but some are from original boards. Some of the multicades even have permission from the original game companies to sell the machines. As far as I could tell, the multicades I would sell were good quality and totally deserving of the price. Heck, it would mean I got one to show off to others.

Not only that, I knew several people that would be interested with the arcade unit. It wouldn’t have been hard to sell them. I don’t think it wouldn’t have bothered anyone to buy from me. In fact, it may open up some things for my research. Some of the insiders even thought that it sounded like a great idea. So long as the machine was good, then no one would complain.

The quality of the machine is not in question. It is in how I would be labeled from then on. I want to be seen as the anthropologist, not the guy who sells multicades. If I contacted people about selling a unit, they may not be open to answering questions later. In other words, I would tarnish my original purpose. After discussing it with a few folks, I decided against becoming a dealer.

The next ethical question is more that I wasn’t able to do anything. A good friend of mine took students with him to study the protests in Ferguson Missouri. He was trying to be a third party, and not get involved. His job was to show how the media sets up, and find out the various angles the media would use. In other words, his job was aimed at the media. Instead, he and others were arrested by the police. It became really obvious that the police wanted a specific story told, and if it wasn’t, they would retaliate with arrests.

So, my friend starting using his camera to show what wasn’t be told. It meant reading really long, and amazingly detailed articles about cultural works within the area. For example, this article on the size of towns, and how they used police to pay for the town. Then there were videos. The media said there was a riot on a rooftop, so police fired gas canisters at them. My friend showed the police firing gas canisters at a crowd on the ground, and one at a random building. One guy aimed his camera at the police, and filmed them doing all sorts of things. The evidence was not a happy picture.

I was worried about my friend, and worried about what this all meant. Besides videogames, I study intercultural history. Riots, protests, and the responses to them are a common thing within my studies. It was an ethical struggle asking about what I should show on a blog about videogames. You are reading this because you want to see the culture of videogames. I was busy studying, watching, and trying to understand an event.

A lot of that got to me. Studying this kind of stuff means you get yelled at. I might feel embarrassed about telling folks I study videogame culture, but I know that even close friends will yell at me for even hinting that the story they see on the NEWS may be wrong. When you are being told that an enormous riot is happening, and you should lock your door, it does not give you happy thoughts when a friend says the riot is 20 guys, and the rest are probably not doing anything.

This is a subject that comes up every time we have a major protest movement, riot, or shooting. During this same time, a lot of the people who study it release some great papers. Studying it is full of ethical questions, and has very strong emotional responses.

After a lot of soul searching, I will write some articles for here, but they will have videogame themes. I will also help my friend out with what information I have gathered, because I know he has done the same for me.

There is another ethical question, and that was an event at PAX. I sort of high fived 500+ people going down the elevator. It takes a lot more explanation, and the reason why it has so many questions is the question of illness. I really enjoyed doing that, but because of the spread of germs, it is against the rules. So, expect that to be a longer article later.

Finally, it seems that videogame journalism has gone overboard. This has created some ethical questions for me, about my own reporting, and articles.

To start off, the original reason is really dumb, and I don’t want to cover it. Slate gives a good rundown of the events, and that is about it. Much like Ferguson, it wasn’t really about the original reason why people began to protest. Really, it was a problem that was happening all the time, and this event is what sparked the protests over the entire thing. The response to the protests is what made it bigger.

The response has been for gaming journalism to say that the idea of a Gamer is over. The very people whose job it is, to declare what the idea of a gamer is, said there was no term. This goes against much of the mini nationalism being pushed for idea of gamer, and the response has been pretty strong.

There have been ethical questions about gaming journalists getting too cozy with game companies for years. Forbes covers the problems of when a journalist was fired for naming names. They followed it up with a long article about how the journalism itself was being promoted more by the companies, and sponsored by companies wanting to appear ‘gamer’.

The problem is that, much like gaming magazines before hand, others had been stepping in for the job as cultural informant. Twitch, youtube channels, fan groups, and companies going directly to the gamers has meant that places like IGN, Gamespot, and others are seen as not covering games well enough.

IGN was once a fan group. I remember when it was separate sites about games. My favorite was N64.com. It is now gone, but one of the writers became the head editor of IGN. It was all about fans during that time. They slowly grew out of that, and turned it into a job, which needed money to pay for it. This led to the problems you see now.

Youtube channels are starting to get sponsored. This means that they may fall by the wayside just like IGN has. If the pattern holds up, something will replace it soon.

The ethical question is how to stay pure from the corruption. Anthropology has similar questions and problems. History has also been looked at with the same question.

Because it is videogame journalism, the ethics question about game reviews and promotion are seen as a reporters dilemma. It is expected that the journalist is pure, and untainted by outside groups. This is difficult since the same journalist has to try to snag the game from the company he is trying to stay pure from. Much of PAX was trying to woo journalists, or fans to a side, or at least appear to be.

In anthropology the question is more, can you look at your subject with the proper lense. You have to live in it, and become a part of it for the study. The answer within anthropology -and most soft sciences- has either been to lean on numbers for validation, or admit biases, and own reasons for asking questions. I love numbers, but only if they represent an actual value.

History says that there is no way you can escape bias, or be totally pure. Being part of the world means you have opinions, they can get you without even realizing it. As I tell students from time to time, we treat Mulan as if she were alive. We have no idea if she actually existed or not. All of the people reading about her treated it as a fact, so we say the same thing. Pulling out as much information to support a thesis is needed for any historian, but ultimately a lot of history will be an unknown.

Instead, we look at the culture and time that something was written, and why. Then when reading the history, we can see the biases, and how they worked within the narrative.

The reason why it became an ethical question is because I did some of the things gamers have been complaining about. I got my picture taken for a new game twice, and I hashtagged a new game for some meat.

The pictures were for booths, and had cool things to pose with. One had a really powerful fan -it was actually a snow blower- and the other had props to pose with. I enjoyed getting my picture taken, and the way the game was promoted itself. Now that I think about it, one of them was for an internet service, but the idea applies.

The meat was for the new Gauntlet game. You wrote #needsmeatbadly on your twitter or Instagram feed, and would get meat from a wagon. I had to prove I had done it, which is not an easy task without wifi in the area. I actually screwed up, and had to promise to redo it. I got my meat on a stick, and it was very tasty.

The pictures were just a fun thing to do. The meat was a great reference to old school gaming where grabbing random meat on the ground upped your health. Heck, the only thing I ate that day was free food from that wagon, and the AFK room.

Individually it is fun. As a large group, it shows excitement for an idea. This is the corn wall theory going. In a corn maze, a wall may be only a few stocks thick. An individual will think that it is just them, and walk through the wall, maybe breaking a cornstock on the way. Because no one in the large group of visitors realize what is going on, whole walls are destroyed by “Just mes”. In the same way, that cool picture I got was fun, but it make a massive wall of people promoting the game.

So, my ethical question is how to I stop myself from being tricked, or stay pure. History says it is impossible, I am alive and observing, and therefore being effected all the time. Journalism suggests trying anyway, or at least pretending to. I think Anthropology has the better answer, just admit to what is happening.

When I go to these shows, I will tell you about the promotions, and what they did. If someone asks about it, I will try to be honest about it. I can be influenced, and know it will happen. I will then talk about it here, or at least try to.

Over the last month or so, I was caught up by a lot of things. Some of them are sort of boring like 115 degree heat in my office, and a really loud AC unit. I had to question my ethics like, should I sell multicades. Then I wondered about Ferguson Missouri, and how I should treat that within this blog. Finally, the question of how to act when various organizations are trying to influence me. It was a lot to think about.

Hopefully this long essay means I am back. PAX was a lot of fun, and I need to finish up some stuff about SRGE. Thank you for the understanding.