I write role playing games. I’ve taken a break over the past year because of improving my mental health after a bad run with my previous company, as well as improving my physical health so my disabilities leave something of me. However, I still have a project or three I need to complete, if only to say that I could do it on my own and with the people I’ve chosen to work with. TL;DR: I’ve been in the trenches.
So have the people discussed in the Slaying the Dragon, which is a history of the Dungeons and Dragons franchise from the moment Gary Gygax started to it, from its growth from his basement into what it became under Wizards of the Coast. It collects news stories, personal interviews, and observations regarding how the game became what it is today.
It’s fitting that I read this book during the WoTC monetization OGL nightmare. That need to keep creating projects so you can make money is what the makers of Advanced D&D have struggled with all along: from the early days of just putting out too much work and diluting their product lines and creating trading card games, to trying to find the spotlight in Hollywood. The same story plays out again and again: gamers are not business men, but we seem to have a need to control every aspect without seeking appropriate counsel from those in the know.
This book is required reading for anyone who is in or wants to be in the business of making games. I see many parallels to mistakes I have personally made or have been a party or witness to. Had I read this book? I would have known better. It reiterates, without saying it, that no matter the game or format, we all end with the same issues because it’s the people that severely underestimate what it means to interact with others and run the business side of creating those games.
Would I Read it Again?: Yep. I bought a copy specifically for highlighting and discussing if/when anyone else in my house bothered to read it.
Rating: 3.5. While the author’s voice makes an otherwise dry topic more interesting to read, it also has moments where the bias toward or against certain people is really obvious. At times, it could use a little more objectivity in the subject . Yes, only a fan could write this way, but they also need to separate themselves from the artists they love.
“I don’t know why they gave it to her rather than me. She can’t even write.”
“This free content is BS. Why would they even release it?”
“Why did they let that group have that?”
“They just want my money. That’s the only reason they create new things.”
Everyone, at some point in time, either prioritized their desires at the cost of someone else or questioned why they didn’t get something when someone else did. The thought that we are owed something in return for our time, resources, or money, drives us to negative emotions, outbursts, and abusive behavior both in person and on the internet.
Entitlement is defined as the sense that a person is deserving or entitled to special benefits. Psychology Today states a sense of entitlement is the unrealistic, unmerited, or inappropriate expectation of favorable living conditions and favorable treatment at the hands of others. It also states that this sense of being owed is an enduring personality trait, characterized by the belief that one deserves preferences and resources that others do not.
Basically, a sense of entitlement is about narcissism and personal beliefs that you, above any one else, deserve something.
In geek culture, this comes up frequently. We deserve another season of a show. We deserve to know why someone made a business decision. We deserve a discount. We deserve the best free content. We deserve more. For every product released into the wild, there is at least one comment complaining about it and asking the company to personally cater to their desires.
Entitlement is often tied to ” the customer is always right.” Most people see themselves as the customer– the one deserving of something. They pay for something by contributing their time or resources. They spent 2 hours at the table role playing, so they deserve a customized experience. They paid $60 for a game, and it’s missing features they want. They contributed to a Kickstarter or acted as a cheerleader for an artist they loved, but they weren’t personally acknowledged. They spent money to join a club, and it owes them an experience. By seeing ourselves as a customer and someone who is spending, we use the statement to justify why we are entitled to talk trash and act unprofessionally in public settings.
The problem is, the statement of “the customer is always right” is taken out of context. While we used it in early marketing to ensure the customer always got what they wanted, many realized this was an untenable situation. It was first modified to advise that they were right until it was absolutely clear they were wrong. Another later modification stated the customer was right in matters of their own taste– companies couldn’t tell them what to like or purchase. We remember the earliest phrase, without understanding that we learned more about marketing and customer satisfaction in the last 100 years.
For geeks, it remains a motto, even if its hidden deep in our frontal lobe. We use it to downplay others in our games and elevate our desires above all else. We empower ourselves in believing that we are right and we need to take control because it is owed to us.
One example of this is edition wars. Whenever a gaming company decides to update their catalog with a new edition, people go to war over what is better. We believe the company is responsible for not only continuing the product they love but the new one product as well. The fans feel as though they own the work and product, and therefore they are owed work by the people creating it. Furthermore, they complain the company is only out for the money and demonize that authors, editors, and artists deserve to be paid for their work. None of those people are living high in their yacht, yet they get called heinous names for being creators. We abuse the very people who create the things we love because they aren’t doing it to our specifications.
Another example happened in the Mind’s Eye Society, a live action role playing group for World of Darkness products. After a particularly long stint of encouraging everyone to say yes, to the point of ignoring problematic behavior, actions, and outbursts, the group locked down their previous “Year of Yes.” Members were outraged when they realized the standards changed, and while that decision occurred years ago, it disempowered the group’s officials so badly that saying “No” is still a death wish. It not only openly subjects the person to abuse, but often means they are voted out or removed in favor of someone who serves the members’ sense of entitlement.
Studies show that entitlement is tied to a feeling of being disappointed or mistreated. When we’re children, we believe the world owes us after a beat down. We’re supposed to grow out of it, but for some, we remember the feeling of hurt and wanting someone to give us something. As adults, when something doesn’t meet our expectations of what we want from it, we call on those old resources and feelings, using them fuel our sense that someone has wronged us and we deserve more. Those old reserves and coping mechanisms are just that, however. They are things we should have grown out of.
Our skewed sense of reciprocity makes us feel like we are the ones who are still owed. Our sense of entitlement destroys our relationships with others, breaks apart gaming groups, and forces the companies who produce the things we love to spend their time in the mire rather than creating good products based on constructive feedback. It’s a cycle– one where no one really gets what they want.
How do we change it?
Recognition: The first step is recognizing when we transition from disappointment to entitlement. Disappointment in something is a valid feeling, often immediate upon seeing or experiencing something that doesn’t meet our expectations. We are allowed to be disappointed. However, when that disappointment boils down and becomes entitlement, we go from a valid emotion to an unjustified action. The facts of the situation don’t match what we are asking from it.
Examination: Once you identify that moment, you need to examine what it is you want. This takes some time. You’re separating out different emotions of disappointment, sadness, and anger, so it’s not immediate. This generally means stay off the internet and social media until you can sort it out. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that we are truly entitled to nothing. When we pay for something, we pay for an experience, but we’re not paying for our personalized experience. Nothing can be everything.
Breaking Down Reciprocity: The third step is understanding and dissecting how you view reciprocity. In case of entitlement, we view the transaction as one that favors ourselves– we want more in order to reach equilibrium. We believe if we do not receive that, we are free to seek it, no matter our means. However, reciprocity doesn’t work that way. If you go on the attack because your favorite game didn’t get a character out on time or something jumped the shark on your favorite TV show, you show that you are willing to engage only in negative feedback. Studies show that you break the cycle of entitlement by engaging people as you want to be treated. Constructive feedback creates a circle of trust where you still might not get what you want, but you can get off the hamster wheel and actually move forward with either accepting it or letting it go.
Entitlement is a form of narcissism. We think we are the most important thing, and our desires outweigh another’s autonomy or comfort. Our respect is skewed to ourselves. While self respect is a needed trait, it always has to be in balance with the respect we afford others. If respect is too much to ask, it goes back to treating people how you want to be treated. When you break the cycle a sense of entitlement builds upon– deserving, outburst, argument, anger– you have the ability to actually make progress; engage creators, peers, and others in your group in positive feedback; and change the things you love.
She’s just a life support system for a great pair of tits. Those guys really need their heads caved in. I really hate it when some guy tries to pretend to be a girl. Who cares if they doxxed him? His book was shit.
“Them.” “That bunch.” “Those people.”
While we discuss a lot of other issues during this series, dehumanization is the root of all of them. We have all heard phrases like that at a game, whether demonizing organizers, tearing apart clubs, or turning on fellow players. At some point, everyone, even the best player or the most patient GM, does the same.
Dehumanization is a natural part of othering someone and the initial step that acts as justification for additional actions. While Merriam-Webster defines dehumanization as “depriving someone or something of human qualities, personality, or dignity,” it’s also more than that in many ways– attributing maliciousness instead of any number of other possible explanations in a negatively charged situation, applying bias across entire groups based on a personal beliefs or experiences, or attacking someone based on rumors or other unverified information. Before any Facebook flamewar, before any disparaging meme, before any Twitter doxxing thread, someone in the process decides the target is other and stops attributing traits of humanity to them, either to other them into a group unassociated with the attacker or make themselves feel better about what they are doing in the process.
As noted before, there isn’t a lot of study into games that aren’t part of the video game group (something, perhaps, we should correct), so much of our data has to come from studies of dehumanization in general or dehumanization in video games. Based on that information, researchers found that dehumanization starts with words, proceeds to images, and ends in actions, a process almost anyone who has been on victimized end of things recognizes. A topic long in debate is whether violent video games make their players participants in violence, and while most find the answer is emphatically no, they do find that those games encourage the dehumanization of those within the events. For example, someone who plays violent war games based on real events loses sight of the very real people involved in the conflict.
For other games, especially those with character/player versus character/player, this is also true: we lose sight of the people on the other side of the conflict. We enjoy the “violence” against them and stop ascribing to them the very same traits we value in ourselves. We get that hit of dopamine from an accomplishment, failing to recognize that it comes at the cost of another person. That process fuels antagonistic relationships, painful interactions, and has fallout that extends far beyond some “butthurt feelings,” including perpetuating the cycle.
Dehumanization affects both the perpetrator and the victim. Most studies focus on the psychology of the perpetrator. After all, they possess the mindset that most obviously needs to be addressed. Other than the obvious traits of aggressiveness and bias that come from this behavior, more subtle effects also occur. Perpetrators of dehumanization both morally and ethically disengage from their environments, justifying additional steps that are outside of the accepted Code of Conduct or acceptable gaming etiquette. Furthermore, they lose their ability to critically analyze and interpret the events around them as the perpetrator is abstracting a person rather than addressing specific problems. After all, if you’re assured of your own intelligence, why would you believe anyone else might have a point? For example, it’s difficult to critically evaluate a situation and determine what is going on and what is the root cause if you’re blaming it on Bob being a jerk. Maybe Bob is a jerk, but maybe he has a point somewhere in all of that or there is something in the rules, person, or group that fuels the behavior or lets it go unaddressed. For the victims, studies from Bastian and Haslem in 2011 reflect that victims feel sadness and anger. Not only are these feelings related to poor group interactions in games, but they also lead to further victimization as the target becomes the perpetrator. We create a culture where no one is a person, just an idea of one.
How do we address it? This isn’t as easy as taking a class, as it requires addressing a basic human instinct to other people. That means we have to think about things in a way where we might not necessarily feel great about some of our most fundamental ways of dealing with one another.
Social Intelligence: This doesn’t come easily to most people, especially gamers who often exist on the fringes of society, as it is a learned behavior. However, if you find yourself continually on the receiving or perpetrating end of dehumanization, practicing this skill can teach you how to communicate in a socially intelligent way. Even if you create a script for these types of interactions at the beginning, you’re one step further than you were. Research different methods to improve social intelligence and find one that works for you.
Communicate: Once you feel comfortable with social intelligence, communicate with the person in question. If you are on the receiving end, this can feel intimidating, especially after the person has treated you in a way that devalues your humanity. However, some people don’t even realize their actions are harmful. Even if they are aware of it, they’re convinced they are in the right. You aren’t going to get through to some people. That’s okay and it’s not on you. If you realize you’re the one causing the problem, analyze what happened and led you there while empathetically communicating with the person you harmed. It’s okay to be in the wrong– we’re all imperfect and everyone else in the world has been in your shoes.
Break Obedience: While we’ll get into this much more in the next article, you are not your group. You are a person capable of making your own moral and ethical choices when dealing with another person. Most of us might be a bit eclectic in our favorite philosophies, but reference those if you want to check yourself against something.
Be Empathetic: If someone brings something up to you or is hurt by something you did, don’t immediately fire back. It’s easy to think you’d be okay in the same situation, but put yourself in that person’s shoes and think about how you would genuinely feel if someone did to you what you are doing to them. No one is okay with being doxxed, called names, or put down. No one. They might tank the abusive, dehumanizing behavior and not provide you a response, but they aren’t okay with it. You aren’t either.
By reducing others to something less than human it makes it easy to hate on their preferred play style, the way they built their character, or even the player directly. The worst part, though, is that we’ve all done it. It’s an instinct, and a primal fear buried in our hind brains. “Other” is scary. “Other” is bad. In gaming, this is toxic and contributes to environments no one wants to be in.
We’re not saying everyone has to get along. Expecting people to “respect one another” is also a fallacy– no one is going to accomplish it and nor should they. We don’t have to stay in games with people we don’t like. No one has to enjoy a game as it is presented, and there are certainly problematic issues and people in gaming we all need to call out and stomp down before they mutate our hobbies into a hellish landscape for everyone. Some people are just assholes, but by feeding them and their problems, we ensure they never go away. What we do need to do is ask ourselves, “Is this moral or ethical? Would I appreciate this if someone did it to me?” and if the answer to either question is no, full stop. Be the person in gaming you want to game with.
The Wuthering Cephalopod 