I'm going to use an example, which is almost always a bad idea.
I'm going to use an example because it shows the extent of the problem, it shows that the problem still happens now today, and it shows that I haven't exaggerated or distorted the problem. If you have a blog you know what happens if you use an example: people comment on the example, not the point. You go "You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a community affected by global climate change" and someone will comment "My cat's breath smells like cat food". Try not to be distracted from the point by the example.
So, This Happened
A relatively successful independent game designer (not I nor anyone I have much history with) wrote a short, satirical tale.
In his tale, he described a hypothetical indie designer writing a game that (depending on how you interpret the tale) is either very niche or very bad. The imaginary designer complains--to comic effect for the hundreds of people who shared the tale--that D&D is making their niche or bad game harder to sell. The Take is a joke at the imaginary niche or bad designer's expense. That's it.
Now, there are lots of things to say about the story here:
- D&D does take up a lot of space in the industry
- An indie game can be successful, though.
- "Success" can be defined in a variety of different ways.
- Independently-produced games have, in the past, competed with D&D in significant ways, even financially. They've even out-competed D&D sometimes. How?
- For an individual designer, financial success might be more likely with a niche game than working for D&D.
- Many things WOTC does are actually unfair. Which ones?
- Many critiques Indie designers have of D&D or its fans are unfair. Which ones?
- Indie culture does have some self-defeating characteristics. What are they?
- Games are not a meritocracy but to what degree can quality be said to exist or matter?
- What things that aren't "quality" do still matter in getting to (any definition of) "success".
- Does popular accessibility ever become quality?
- What if you do have a niche game and know it? How do you define success for that?
et cetera.
After hundreds of people on the internet shared or liked this story, hundreds of indie game designers got very angry and railed against it and the creator of the story. Everyone yelled at everyone.
The Point
The point is that they yelled about nothing.
Literally none of that stuff above got discussed, because:
- The indie game creator who penned the original take responded to critics with, basically "I don't have to talk to you because you're not successful and/or have no structural power".
- The critics responded to him with, basically, "I don't have to talk to you because you are successful and/or you do have structural power".
(If you doubt this characterization, the whole useless pile-up is recorded here, here and here. Feel free to comment if you think I'm wrong)
Both sides have set boundaries on the conversation that are calculated to be impossible to overcome, even for someone who really wanted to engage. The original game creator can't go back in time to be less established any more than his critics can press a button to be successful enough for them to be "worth" talking to. Anyone familiar with nerds will see what's going on here: they're both making excuses to avoid confrontation, and thus to avoid playtesting the quality of their ideas.
The original developer spent literal hours crowing on the internet about his right to use the block button to ignore nobodies.
The critics, in turn, spent literal days crowing to each other about how irrelevant and out-of-touch the original developer was, as were all his kind.
The conversation, such as it was, wasn't about anything that could help anyone make, enjoy or sell a game, it was posturing to each other about who has the right to be listened to, to have their concerns addressed, to make a point, to have a point considered.
More than one critic said "Oh, I would've hoped for better from (the creator who had the original take)" but instead of saying that to that creator, they said it to each other. In other words: the person you're complaining about has done things to make you respect them, but you couldn't even get it together to bring your complaint to them.
Representatives from all the usual hatemob suspects are involved: mainstream careerists, what's left of Story-Games, Troika trolls, Something Awful goons, RPGnet parasites, etc. (Helpfully nobody's calling anyone a Nazi or using the "I won't debate Nazis" loophole. They're just excited to say they don't have to have conversations period.)
"Who has the right to be listened to?" is a real short and boring conversation because everyone instinctively has their own answer. It's about as useful as "Who likes lasagna?".
Everyone wastes a tremendous amount of time announcing and re-announcing and re-articulating their announcement that they're going to ignore each others' points because they don't want to waste time.
And what do they do with all this time they've freed up? The people with experience learn about nothing new and the people who are new learn nothing from those with experience. And everyone's terribly comfortable.
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