"CYBERBULLETS CAUSE NO PAIN!!"

March 26, 2020 11:50 AM

How Games Marketing Invented Toxic Gamer Culture [Vice Games] How early marketing campaigns for online gaming platforms suggested toxicity isn't a bug, it's a feature.

“Companies like Microsoft and Sony frequently marketed toxicity as a key selling point for their new online gaming platforms. This is a puzzling strategy from the vantage point of 2020, a time when toxicity is practically synonymous with online gaming and too often spills over into real-world harassment. Perhaps these campaigns were eerily prescient in anticipating the downward spiral of gaming culture. Or maybe these edgy advertisements modeled the exact brand of toxicity that the same companies are now struggling to curb.”

posted by Fizz (35 comments total)

Related: No girls allowed [Polygon] Unraveling the story behind the stereotype of video games being for boys.

“In the 1990s, the messaging of video game advertisements takes a different turn. Television commercials for the Game Boy feature only young boys and teenagers. The ad for the Game Boy Color has a boy zapping what appears to be a knight with a finger laser. Atari filmed a bizarre series of infomercials that shows a man how much his life will improve if he upgrades to the Jaguar console. With each "improvement," he has more and more attractive women fawning over him. There is nothing in any of the ads that indicate that the consoles and games are for anyone other than young men. [...] By the late 1990s and early 2000s, video games appeared to be growing up alongside the young players who had latched onto the medium at the time of the Game Boy. Games and consoles were getting more sophisticated. Titles like Wipeout, Tomb Raider and Gran Turismo showed the world what video games could offer. For the most part, it showed what video games could offer men. There's a well-known commercial from 1998 for the original PlayStation where a grown man sits in a movie theater with his girlfriend. She's nagging him in an almost cartoonish way. Crash Bandicoot, from the PS1 game of the same name, is soon patrolling the theater, shining a flashlight on the man and telling him, "You are so totally whipped." A busty Lara Croft appears next to him, and he's given the choice of going home with his girlfriend, who is still nagging, or taking Lara Croft. He chooses the latter. The commercial ends with the tagline: "Live in your world. Play in ours."”

posted by Fizz at 12:00 PM on March 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I REMEMBER BABYLON

MY NAME IS Arthur C. Clarke, and I wish I had no connection with this whole sordid business. But as the moral—repeat, moral—integrity of the United States is involved, I must first establish my credentials. Only thus will you understand how, with the aid of the late Dr. Alfred Kinsey, I have unwittingly triggered an avalanche that may sweep away much of Western civilization....
...
...
"History is on our side." I cannot get those words out of my head. Land of Lincoln and Franklin and Melville, I love you and I wish you well. But into my heart blows a cold wind from the past; for I remember Babylon.

https://www.bookscool.com/en/Tales-of-Ten-Worlds-200673/1
posted by hank at 12:02 PM on March 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

Huh. I'm not surprised this would somehow involve Fred Durst.
posted by suetanvil at 12:04 PM on March 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

"There are two kinds of gamers in this world. The ones who still play on consoles. And the ones who've actually seen breasts."

sure-jan.gif
posted by brundlefly at 12:20 PM on March 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ugh this is awful. I lived through all this in real time and somehow never understood it. I think the way so many men are unaware of rape culture. This kind of poison is the air we breathe.
posted by Nelson at 12:46 PM on March 26, 2020 [17 favorites]

"There are two kinds of gamers in this world. The ones who still play on consoles. And the ones who've actually seen breasts."
Gawd, that line is so awful, it sounds like it came from Hackers.
posted by xedrik at 12:56 PM on March 26, 2020 [9 favorites]

Lest we forget, it's the same era that produced the infamous "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" Daikatana ad in 1998.

The very first thing that came to mind when I saw this post.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:05 PM on March 26, 2020 [10 favorites]

Console gamer girls don't own mirrors?
posted by straight at 1:22 PM on March 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Marketing campaigns didn't invent toxic gaming culture any more than Donald Trump invented fascism or the Kardashians invented vapid celebrity worship.

They simply goosed what was already there to build a fan base for profit.
posted by CynicalKnight at 1:34 PM on March 26, 2020 [12 favorites]

"Console gamer girls don't own mirrors?"

most women come out of puberty with a custom built gaming pc
posted by klangklangston at 1:38 PM on March 26, 2020 [10 favorites]

Honestly I think people wanting to be always right and punish others who are ‘wrong’ is as big of a problem in gaming as it is anywhere online. I find myself playing most games with chat options disabled (even mmos’s) and I enjoy them so much more.
posted by Drumhellz at 1:39 PM on March 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

My favorite quote from this era was at the launch of the hyper macho "Gears of War." A Korean test gamer said, "Wait, why am I playing the bad guy?" Indeed, unnamed Korean hero, indeed.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:44 PM on March 26, 2020 [11 favorites]

The PS1 commercial (YT) plays like the last third of American Psycho.
posted by Query at 1:54 PM on March 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Marketing campaigns didn't invent

Hi, yes, this is discussed in the article.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:34 PM on March 26, 2020 [13 favorites]

There's a big difference between marketing to teenage boys and marketing to their parents. I suspect companies noticed that those Facebooky "we bring people together" ads were better at getting adults (really, moms) to buy expensive game consoles than the "shit in a stranger's mouth!!" tone of the older ads.
posted by grandiloquiet at 2:52 PM on March 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Given that the late 90's/early 00's was my only heyday in gaming, this has that painful shock of recognition that, yes, I do remember that, and, yes, it really was toxic. And yet, at the time...?

Wtf was going on in the late 90's? I read a similar retrospective on Woodstock '99 that identified it as an initial germination of what would grow into the toxic masculinity we know today (which also, probably not coincidentally, involves that ne plus ultra mascot of toxic masculinity, Fred Durst).

There was also Fight Club in '99. There seems to a have been a definite shift towards lionizing toxic masculinity across different types of cultural output. I feel like it's intimately entwined with the hypercompetitive, zero-sum domination approach of neoliberalism which was in its ascendancy at the time.

I mean, I go back and watch action movies from the eighties, and the "heroes" are little more than amoral murderers, but the late 90's seem to have added more entitlement and cruelty. That sort of it's cool to not care irony.
posted by fryman at 3:12 PM on March 26, 2020 [10 favorites]

"Remember, Sully, when I said I'd kill you last?"
"Yeah, Matrix, you said that, you said you'd kill me last!"
"I lied."

It was steeped in the culture, 100%.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:33 PM on March 26, 2020

fryman: There seems to a have been a definite shift towards lionizing toxic masculinity across different types of cultural output.

I'm reminded of this previously about Lilith Fair. There was a conscious effort by men in positions of power up and down the music industry to maintain (and, after Lilith, to rebuild) the dominance of men. No idea if the same thing happened in gaming, but I wouldn't be surprised.
posted by clawsoon at 4:32 PM on March 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

I consider "GrandTheft Auto" the tipping point, partly because it made me personally lose all interest in the games.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:48 PM on March 26, 2020

Lest we forget, it's the same era that produced the infamous "John Romero's about to make you his bitch" Daikatana ad in 1998.

The very first thing that came to mind when I saw this post.

I remember the are you fucking kidding me? moment I had when they were interviewing his girlfriend on her level design and panned down to her breasts while she was talking. I 'm still pissed.

Plus I have a hate on for him for taking looking glass studios down as a side efffect of his hubris.
posted by BrotherCaine at 4:54 PM on March 26, 2020 [8 favorites]

MetaFilter: I'm not surprised this would somehow involve Fred Durst.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:14 PM on March 26, 2020 [4 favorites]

Being a gamer meant having the latest and greatest hardware, and the true elite were dumping thousands of dollars into souping up their PCs.

I've been wondering for a while how much participation in various hobbies is shaped by disposable income and disposable time. If women weren't pushed into family care and lower salaries, and men not pushed into ignoring family and making money, would expensive hobbies like computer gaming and robotics be more gender balanced?

I've been thinking about this a lot more since becoming a single father. Time for hobbies is... not so much.
posted by clawsoon at 5:33 PM on March 26, 2020 [11 favorites]

Console gamer girls don't own mirrors?

You don't even need a mirror, they're like right there, you can just look at them

not that I know anything about being a console gamer girl, my new motherboard informs me that I belong to the Republic of Gamers which I believe is a subset of the PC Master Race; it came with a sign I can hang on my doorknob to tell people to stay out because I am gaming, or to come in because the gaming has temporarily ceased
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:41 PM on March 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

I can afford any game and platform I want, but the current culture disgusts me. I grew up playing about 1 hour a day most days and 10 year old me would be in shock that I don't have ANYTHING.


I wouldn't be surprised if "disposable time" to wander is much easier for the average adult man (even with kids) than the average adult woman (whose housework increases even if she is just living with 1 unemployed man and no kids). Books on unemployment note men will usually increase playing video games and watching TV rather than housework or childcare.

Maybe male unemployment, due to less blue collar work, has supported the industry?

"Cohabiting women do a disproportionate share of the housework, even when the women work and the men don't -- and even when the women want to share the housework more equally, said co-author Sharon Sassler, Cornell professor of policy analysis and management.

"When men aren't working, they don't see domestic labor as a means of contributing. In fact, they double down and do less of it, since it challenges their masculinity," Sassler said. "
posted by Freecola at 8:51 AM on March 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

Being a gamer meant having the latest and greatest hardware, and the true elite were dumping thousands of dollars into souping up their PCs.

So between 1990 and 2008, my gaming experience went:

1. Buy a computer.
2. Play whatever games I liked that worked well on it until requirements outstripped my hardware.
3. Continue to use the computer as a computer for several years, generally losing interest in gaming.
4. Realize I need to upgrade my computer for non-gaming reasons; goto 1.

Hence, I have fond memories of Doom, Quake, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, the first two Diablos and the first to Max Paynes, plus a couple of Dreamcast games I played when that console was discontinued and got really cheap. And that's kind of it for that time period.

So I seem to have missed the transition from marketing to nerds to marketing to assholes.

In any case, I suck at games and I don't care that I suck at games. I play them anyway.
posted by suetanvil at 8:55 AM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Wtf was going on in the late 90's?

I think that was when The Man figured out how to redirect the early 90s' anger at injustice toward anger at ex-girlfriends.
posted by suetanvil at 8:57 AM on March 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

I guess people still don't seem to understand that Fight Club was satire.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 1:00 PM on March 27, 2020 [6 favorites]

I guess people still don't seem to understand that Fight Club was satire.

It is/was satire, BUT... a lot of proto-bros didn't get the satire and took Tyler Durden as a model. Also, one could argue that the movie succumbs a bit to the draw of the ideology it satirizes by making Durden & the fight club seem "cool."
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:44 PM on March 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've been wondering for a while how much participation in various hobbies is shaped by disposable income and disposable time.

As an anecdote that may serve as a data point, in the '90s I heard the rather astounding statistic that Audiophile magazine subscribers were 98% male.
posted by BrotherCaine at 2:17 PM on March 27, 2020

The only satire of toxic masculinity that actually lands effectively in Last Man on Earth, mainly because it takes the Producers route of making the thing it satirises look too pathetic and ridiculous for anyone to try emulating it. Most of the other attempts, no matter how brilliant, get stripped of their satire and adopted as an aesthetic by the very people they're trying to satirise.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:22 PM on March 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I mean, see also: PC Master Race, which was originally a joke about how smug PC gamers are.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:23 PM on March 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I mean, Fight Club was satire in the same way Full Metal Jacket was an anti-war movie. Intention doesn't go for much if people adopt your symbols in earnest all the same.

The logical conclusion of this comparison is that what's missing is the toxic masculinity Come and See. I'm not sure what that would look like/be, but.
posted by CrystalDave at 2:30 PM on March 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Intention doesn't go for much if people adopt your symbols in earnest all the same.

See also... every religion ever?
posted by Saxon Kane at 4:27 PM on March 27, 2020

I guess people still don't seem to understand that Fight Club was satire.

It didn't help that the movie ignored the the major point of the ending which is: nothing happens. The buildings do not get blown up. Because you can't make plastic explosives from soap made from human body fat. EVERYTHING about Tyler Durden was delusional. And the end of protagonist ends up in an insane asylum trying to get well, while his postfix followers keep calling him.

If that had been the ending, Fight Club would have been much less toxic.
posted by happyroach at 11:32 AM on March 29, 2020

"I mean, I go back and watch action movies from the eighties, and the "heroes" are little more than amoral murderers, but the late 90's seem to have added more entitlement and cruelty. That sort of it's cool to not care irony."

In the '90s, ostensibly the amoral murderers (who were in theory a reaction against the idealistic '60s & '70s heroes, who were often weirdly reactionary even then) became self-aware anti-heroes, who either reveled in the nihilism or were incapable of escaping it.
posted by klangklangston at 1:36 PM on April 19, 2020