fusangite said:
I think what your account is getting at is a culture that is invisible to many gamers. In my view, the people often most committed to the hobby are, paradoxically, the people who have been, for lack of a more precise term, forced into it.
For many of us, gaming was a community based around disability. If one was a geek and lacked the social skills to associate with non-geeks, one was, by necessity, living within geek culture. Geek passtimes tended to involve rituals or practices that provided additional social structure for people who lacked the social intuition necessary to get by in mainstream culture. RPGs were one of the best ways to add structure to social interactions. Other common geek behaviours fitted into this too: memorization of common texts like Monty Python or Star Trek meant that when conversation ceased functioning, people could switch into prerehearsed verbal interactions. Finally, the antecedents to forums like this, BBS's were a prefect place where people could interact is less complex and stressful ways.
Well, i'm somewhere in the middle there. I am *definitely* a geek/nerd--always have been. I've never fit in to any particular social group, even ones i was part of. However, i've also never felt left out or alienated. Now, this is not to say that others haven't felt they were excluding me, just that i didn't notice or didn't care. Then again, i occasionally run into someone from highschool that i didn't think knew who i was , and certainly wouldn't give me the time of day, and they're always friendly and companionable. Now, obviously a lot of that is simply growing up, and realizing the cliques of highschool certainly don't matter now, if they ever did. But it seems like some of it is that i was better-liked then than i thought i was.
[aside: i realized the alienation thing during a college lit course focusing on "alienation". I had the damnedest time in that class, because i just couldn't relate. To me, alienation was an alien sensation, something i'd never experienced. Not because i fit in everywhere (or, IMHO, anywhere), but because, IMHO, alienation is a chosen state: you have to both be excluded, and
care that you're excluded, to feel alienated. It has never occurred to me that belonging was desireable--i've always derided that impulse as sheep-like, seen it as the source of many of teh worst ills of our society (such as patriotism), and been proud to be different. Everyone else in the class, including the professor, all saw alienation as a situational condition--if you were excluded, you were alienated. Clearly, to them, belonging mattered, because when they were excluded, it hurt. Maybe because they had sometimes been included, and it feels good, and they thus missed it when it wasn't there. To me, being excluded is a way of life. I'm not sure i've *ever* been part of any group, even among friends--i've noticed that when big group activities are being planned, i'm usually not invited. I'm not not-invited--if i hear about it, they'll always say something like "didn't i invite you?", and it seems sincere--i just seem to get forgotten. I'm just not "part of the group." Only a very few close friends seem to think of me when i'm not there, and thus remember to include me. Even those close friends have admitted that remembering to invite me sometimes takes some self-checking (i don't come up until the "hmmm...have i forgotten anyone?" stage). I suspect that i'm really just not part of groups, to their perception or mine. I'm just not part of the mental image of "group", whatever group that may be. And everyone seems to assume that everyone else is filling me in, because they all assume i know what's going on in our circle of friends, but no one ever actually *tells* me anything.]
I think that existing in parallel to this culture is one that chooses RPGs simply because they are fun. The best groups I have been in have been those that are a mix of conscripts like me and subscribers like you. But I think our hobby has always been primarily defined by those forced into it because, for us, RPGs are part of a narrower range of possible social options. And so we commit to them more strongly -- and they become a more important part of our identities
I'm not sure whether that dichotomy is meaningful. That is, i think you're right that a fair number of gamers are geeks, and a fair number of geeks are participants in geek-like-things as much because they don't fit in to other groups, as because they want the geek-like-things inherently. And i think you're right that those who "must" play RPGs have a greater influence on the direction of the hobby than those who can do other things to socialize. But i also think this is true of most hobby activities, and for the same reason: there are some that feel (correctly or not) that they have no other social outlet, so they commit to what they do have that much more strongly. I have a co-worker who works all the time (364 8-, 10-, or 12-hr shifts last year, frex), and bets on sports when he's not working. And that's his life, as near as i can tell. Other than work, gambling seems to be his only outlet, so he does it constantly, almost obsessively.
Finally, as to my status: i dunno. I only have two social activities--RPGs and dancing--and i think that a large part of the RPGs is exactly what you say: it's a way to be social with my friends. Because i simply don't enjoy most of the other social activities that they do. (Or they're not meaningfully social, like going to a movie.) Though i certainly enjoy conversation, but that really only works with small groups, not huge hordes all at once.
OK, i'm gonna stop now and post this message, because i think i'm talking in circles, repeating myself, and/or losing track of the point. And it's time to go dancing.
Your statements here suggest to me that your circle of gamers were pretty socially functional people. Although you may comprise a large chunk of our hobby and, one day, maybe even a majority, you are likely to continue to be under-represented in the gaming community.
[BTW, i'm gonna address the "how social were we?" and "how social are gamers, based on a cross-section at cons?" questions in a later message, especially if someone reminds me.]
Maybe. It's so hard to judge these things, because there are no concrete standards. I know that i certainly feel out-of-place in most social gatherings, unless everyone there is someone i know reasonably well. I hate typical parties. And, in middleschool and highschool, i was certainly a geek, and not part of any meaningful social circle. I think you underestimate the proliferation of female geeks. While we did have one or two more-socially-ept sorts join our games at one point or another, they all left pretty quickly. And there was a trio of guys that i wanted to join the game, because i knew they'd bring something to it, but they never did in large part because they didn't want to be associated with a bunch of geeks like us--and said so, to my face. Our group was pretty much all-geek. And that meant some boys and some girls. And i'm convinced that my gradeschool/middleschool best friend dropped out of the group as much because of the company as because of lack of time. Even starting in middleschool, he seemed to care about fitting in (he was also the only one of the geek crowd with any athletic ability, and thus a chance at fitting in), and seemed to distance himself from his former friends as he became more active in social circles that didn't include us. Ironically, i think precisely because he was more comfortable in social situations that had more ritual and structure to them, and our own socializations were too unpredictable (probably through ineptness, moreso than freedom or individuality).
Which brings me to a counter-point: i don't think your description of using ritual and structure to de-stress social interactions is by any means unique to geekdom. In fact, i'd argue that it may even be
less prominent in geek social circles. I base this on the fact that more seems to be acceptable in hte geek world than in mayn other worlds. I'm thinking specifically of the generally-lower stigma against different sexual orientations, religions, etc., than you *seem* to find among, say, football fans. Despite the endless flamewars online about D&D vs. V:tM vs. whatever, i've never seen a sober gamer get in a shouting match, much less a fight, over it--football fans get in fights all the time, sometimes while sober, over favorite *teams* (not even different sports). And, in general, "otherness" seems to be a bigger deal to much of the US than to geeks.
As I was saying above, many people are attracted to gaming because it imposes a fairness and predictability on human interactions. Related to this is the also-powerful motive that people play RPGs to feel powerful. For many geeky adolescents, RPGs are an escape from their daily experience of social powerlessness and seemingly incomprehensible human interactions. For such people, introducing an attractive member of the opposite sex into gaming would rob it of many of the characterstics that attracted them to it. Such an introduction would evoke the feelings of fear, confusion, injustice and powerlessness that they gamed to escape.
Hmmm...interesting theory. I can certainly see that, especially among adolescents. But, like i said above, i'm not convinced that adolescent geeks are any more fearful, confused, outraged, or powerless than adolescents in general. If anything, since the geeks tend to also be the smarter kids, i'd say we're perhaps a *teeny* bit better at putting these things in perspective, and thus accepting them.
Based on my own experiences, I'd rephrase it as "many people are attracted to gaming because it provides a structure to negotiate human interactions." I don't think it's the predictability that is so important, as the influence. IRL, if you don't like the way your boss treats you, we just don't have societally-sanctioned mechanisms to tell your boss how to improve his communication technique. In the game, if you don't like the way an NPC treats you, you can go improve some skills, or pick up a feat, or use an optional rule, or in some other way change the nature of that interaction. And on a metagame level, you can say to the GM "hey, how come i have to RP this out, when my character has a Cha of 25 and should be good at this, but i'm just a shy office clerk?" And, even before you get to the stage of changing the rules, you
have the rules. Like you say above for interactions around the game, i think interactions within the game are much easier than in RL. I think part of why a lot of people fall into "roll-playing" rather than "role-playing" is precisely because it's not sloppy and unpredictable. RPing is only slightly more deterministic than RL, though it at least has the possibility of do-overs. But rolling the dice, despite the random element, is almost perfectly deterministic (at least in crunchy games)--you sidestep all those unspoken mis-assumptions that complicate RL interactions.
Finally, back to your point about geeks, interactions, and structure: The more i think about it, the more i wonder if you're right. I'm beginning to suspect that, if anything, the rituals of geekness--Star Trek, Monty Python, etc.--are merely filling in for other rituals--sports talk, machismo, gossiping, etc.--that the geeks have in part consciously rejected. [After all, you can't tell me that someone who can run Champions without the book, recite the entirety of The Meaning of Life from memory, and give you the stardate of every 'Trek episode, couldn't also memorize all the baseball stats, if they wanted to.] As a final point on this score, i'll point out that all the other social groups in my highschool seemed to need alcohol (or other stuff) to lubricate their social interactions, but the geek's parties seemed to go just fine without any mind-altering or inhibition-lowering substances. The popular kids seemed not to know what to do to pass time together, except drink.
I think our culture tends to view obsessive behaviour by men as a positive thing and such behaviour by women as pathological. Women who take their calling seriously usually face more criticism of neglecting family and social relationships than do men.
This wasn't avoiding being thought of as obsessive, this was avoiding a distraction that would've cut into homework time, dance practice, or other obsessions she had. She had no problem admitting she has an obsessive personality type, and she knows she's a workaholic. So, while your point is, i think, correct, it's not relevant in this case.
