While I'd love some more paragraph breaks, I like what you're getting at. The allusion to Barry Sanders works for me. Just be you. Enjoy games, don't be defensive about them 24/7, and focus on [i]having a good time[/i], not advancing the medium with every waking breath.

There were more paragraph breaks. Bitmob ate them... be back in a half hour after the editor loads so I can fix it. ::walks into the mist::

I especially like your concluding paragraph. Maybe it is a good idea to act like things are no big deal. I know that I'm guilty of being overly defensive of games to some degree, but it's hard not to be when most people you've known bash one of your biggest interests when they haven't even taken a second to understand it. People that are ignorant and don't try to learn more bother me. I especially don't like journalists and politicians that slander things they've done no actual research for.

@Shirk I agree, it is aggravating. I don't believe we should never defend games, but we need to be slowly begin moving things to the perspective that those journalists and politicians are the joke.

I can't believe you'd write this ridiculous article. Gamers are rarely ever defensive and I honestly feel offended that you'd make such a horrible accusation. In fact, gamers are the least defensive consumption audience out there. Clearly, movie buffs and music lovers are far more defensive than us.

Great article. Especially liked the bit where you mentioned comic books. As a writer whom wishes he could get his ideas for comics off the ground (dem unreliable artists) I have nothing but respect for sequential art as a storytelling medium, but the comic book industry is largely populated with irrational fans and lazy writers and publishers who make all their choices based off of what they think the most vocal of their fans wants just to make sure they keep selling to their dwindling market. Thank goodness games are far too big, take far too long to make, and are far too expensive to make to ever reach that level of creative meltdown just by the unreasonable input of rabid fans alone. They can take fan input seriously but it would be darn near impossible and unreasonable for them to randomly change something only weeks before the product came out just because a few people whined on the internet. As for how we appear to the mainstream, I just recently caught my mother playing the Wii with Pa a bit ago and caught her yelling at the game. (Something she is usually very disapproving of me for doing.) And poked fun at her that it wasn't so easy to judge on that side of the controller. So I figure, the more people we can get hooked on the Wii, the more understanding we'll get. Like Magneto trying to turn world leaders into mutants in the first X men movie.

@Jeffrey Yeah, Nintendo is equally evil as Magneto. I've written something before about the places that movies and comics hold and how video games could fall on either side. Hollywood makes a thousand films a year and a ton are Transformers 2 and worse than that, but we get more than enough great, artistic films that span taste and demographics. The same can't really be said for comics. I mean, what comic outside of Watchmen and a few others climbs above the usual fans? There is nothing wrong with that, but I know which I prefer.

Great piece, Jeffro. I loved that you used the burner analogy from Matthew Shafeek's interview in A Life Well Wasted; it's been ruminating in my head since I first heard it. I also like this post as a whole, because I can get overly defensive not just with gaming in the general sense, but by the fact that as a gamer I travel the road less, um, traveled. Calming down that irrationality is my resolution for the new year. Although I'm no zen master, sitting criss/cross apple sauce while pinching my middle finger and thumbs together; I will go on record as saying I take the Barry Sanders route on this one. And it's working out pretty well, so far.

I think it's important to go beyond this and say that gamers should also be critical of the medium. As much as I love games, I don't think it helps to coddle them; it's important to know when to stand up for something and when to say "you know what, there's room for improvement."

[quote]I don't believe we should never defend games, but we need to be slowly begin moving things to the perspective that those journalists and politicians are the joke. --Jeffrey Michael Grubb[/quote] No, no they are NOT the joke. They are politicians and journalists, and the average non-gamer is not cruising websites and forums for a balanced look at videogames. All they hear is the sensationalized crap you see on the news and the negativity put forth from politicians who haven't the first clue about games, but feel they have a right to censor and occasionally ban them anyway. "Real" media likes to make people scared. They like to put out statistics about video games that make people think they are harmful, when real scientific studies do not show that at all. Politicians take this and run with it in order to get the concerned parent vote, which is a LOT of people. Also, the occasional unscrupulous lawyer will grab hold of the issue and ram it down people's throats. Do you really think Joe Lieberman was concerned for the children back in the 90's? No. It was a political move designed to hit the ignorant adults of the era. Gamers are getting older, but until the baby boomers are eliminated in the coming decades the medium of games will not be respected and will continue to be attacked. Has it got better over the years? Oh yes, and we have nowhere to go but upward. Does that mean we should keep fighting? I don't want any organization telling me what I should and should not enjoy, or what my future children should or should not enjoy. Yes, we have to keep fighting the way we always have. I don't mean we should have 13 year old users e-mailing death threats to that Australian bloke who is ruining everyone's fun down under. On the other hand, if a news source or politician starts spouting misinformation it is our duty to call them out and make them explain. All it accomplishes is creating a scapegoat, ignoring the real problems in our society.

@Alex I agree with the belief that "games won't be accepted until all the old people die," and these politicians and journalists are among that group. I'm just concerned that younger people on the fence will be turned off by the average gamer's zeal.

I used to work in libraries (I'm currently unemployed), and I have family members who currently work in libraries. So, I've come to realize that as entrenched as books are in society, they aren't safe. Banned Books week happens every year for a reason - because thousands of books are challenged in libraries every year - though the mainstream press doesn't necessarily cover it unless the title being challenged is mainstream (like the Harry Potter books), or if the law is broken in the act of attempting to keep books out of readers' hands. While I don't believe that people should jump up and scream every time someone says something degrading about video games, and gamers, I also believe that we shouldn't be complacent either. As long as the Video Games Voters Network has reason to exist, we should be prepared to respond to aggressive critics in the press, while attempting to bring a level of discourse that is more polite than what our opponents are bringing, instead of less polite - we should, through our responses, make our opponents look more crass and vulgar than they say we are.

Can't say I agree with the bulk of the article- while I do think that perhaps rebuttals should be a little more targeted and considered, to stop fighting is going to be more detrimental than even the worst of death-threatening trolls. (And it's also worth pointing out that it's only critics that don't have reasoned criticism that get lambasted- nobody with a valid criticism has seen anything even resembling a comeback, never mind vitriol) It is, as Alex Gagne pointed out, when it's politicians, pressure groups and other decision makers, the people with the power, that are getting it wrong that it needs to be fought against- we need to be working with these people, and getting them on side- and that can only start with telling them that they're wrong. (And even then, part of that is picking up on the media outlets spreading the mistruths- bad journalism affects everyone regardless of subject) I think one thing we need to look at as well, considering we're basically discussing perspective, is that we can see significantly more of us than not only we can of the people in the same boat when film or rock and roll was under attack, but also that they could see of [i]themselves[/i] at the time- there is no discussion taking place in reaction to a game critic that didn't take place in reaction to a rock and roll critic at the time, the only difference is that their discussion took place in a bar over a table, drowned out to all but the next table over (where the same discussion was probably taking place) by the jukebox- whereas our discussion is between an American and a Brit, saved to the public internet for the entire population of Australia to chime into later on. Because of this, we appear much more defensive than we are, for better or for worse. But then, who can blame us for being defensive? We are, after all, under attack.

@Steve I agree. Absolutely, that goes hand in hand with this. We need to be the group of people expecting more from games. For example, I don't think Bayonetta can be the game we point to as our great feminine statement. If that is the game that is supposed to prove that games are considering of gender equality, then no wonder people have a beef with games.

@M Kelly But who are we under attack by? Some insane lawyer, Joe Lieberman, and Hiliary Clinton. They are all jokes. And rebutting them only legitimizes it. It is a faux pas to bring up Jack Thompson on podcasts and websites, because to mention his name is as good as acknowledging that he has something worth listening to. If we go a step further and actually begin arguing with these real world equivalents to trolls, then all we have done is taken their bait. Things are different in Australia where they deal with real censorship and don't have the umbrella defense of the First Amendment. The main thesis remains true: the best way to prove that games are good and worthy are to prove that gamers are wise and well-adjusted.

@Alexander Yes, I think that if people are making legal challenges against games then we need to be working through and with the ESA and Video Game Voters Network. That is completely different then trying to defend World of Warcraft to a TV host that is talking about a statutory rape case.

"the best way to prove that games are good and worthy are to prove that gamers are wise and well-adjusted." And we do that by making our wise and well-adjusted more visible, to drown out the loons- as you've said, there's nothing we can do about the existance of trolls apart from neutralize and then bury them- and you can't do that facing inwards, telling ourselves that [i]"they"[/i] don't get it- that way Comics lies. It's not "us" that need to consider lawyer, Lieberman and Clinton (And Vaz, and Atkinson, and Chavez) as jokes, it's the people that are otherwise innocently swallowing their nonsense. There is a line between "not rising to the bait" and "not having a voice"- and to stop acknowledging the powerful people (who Lieberman was, and Clinton is) gets us on the wrong side of that line. As the saying goes, attack is the best form of defence- the question is, how do we get the wise and well-adjusted "us" out there, when we don't have the same platform "they" do? ...I've just fallen into my own trap by responding, haven't I? ;P

@M Kelly I was considering the irony of it, myself. But I don't disagree with you. I don't think we should be defenseless. I just think that we are overly ready to pounce on anyone that may not enjoy games in the same exact way we do. Trying to bring reason to the debate with Lieberman and Clinton is one thing, but we get defensive against someone like Roger Ebert when he says games aren't art. That was not an attack. That was an opinion that wasn't going to change by attacking him.