Representation Matters

When we hear "diversity", we tend to think of race...

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I note that no one has replied to your essay, and in pretty much all respects I agree with you. I have started to look more into who designed a particular game as part of my selection criteria, as well as the characters available for players to use. These are not the most important criteria by any stretch, but with so many games around, they might be the final decider if I cannot decide between different options based upon other criteria. I play most things, and unless it is a historical game then I don't think there are many excuses for a lack of representation. Further to this, I also look at how representation has been included and whether this entrenches stereotypes or challenges them.

Davidjc wrote: I note that no one has replied to your essay,

I feel like TWBG sends mixed messages about discussing socio-political content, which may result in folks being unsure of if/what/when they should opine. I have seen articles written (like this one) that would seem to be opening the door for discussion, but I've also seen people get lectured about their socio-political viewpoints from certain folks here.

Not to mention I would gauge the socio-political atmosphere here to be 90% homogeneous anyway, to the point where I would presume most are already "of the tribe" and feel no great need to merely nod in assent to most such content that is produced. When everyone in the house already eats Thousand Island dressing then no one feels the need to proudly declare how tasty it is.

p.s.
Thousand Island dressing is damn tasty, and you should totally try it.

fightcitymayor wrote:

Davidjc wrote: I note that no one has replied to your essay,

I feel like TWBG sends mixed messages about discussing socio-political content, which may result in folks being unsure of if/what/when they should opine. I have seen articles written (like this one) that would seem to be opening the door for discussion, but I've also seen people get lectured about their socio-political viewpoints from certain folks here.

Not to mention I would gauge the socio-political atmosphere here to be 90% homogeneous anyway, to the point where I would presume most are already "of the tribe" and feel no great need to merely nod in assent to most such content that is produced. When everyone in the house already eats Thousand Island dressing then no one feels the need to proudly declare how tasty it is.

p.s.
Thousand Island dressing is damn tasty, and you should totally try it.

It's funny ubarose got to this, I have been thinking about it for like the last hour so you certainly got to me, maybe I'm just in a dark place right now. I don't know how ubarose and Michael and the very, very few other people involved in the day to day running of the site feel as I literally only do the forums, so this is just my genuine feelings about stuff like this and the site. It may even piss them off, I have no idea.

My personal feeling about this sort of stuff is that the contribution we provide in this regard is via articles and the front page. Our front page gets in front of an infinite amount more eyes than the forum thread that follows it. If they were starting the site again, I probably would tell them not to bother having a forum or comment threads. Maybe a heavily moderated discord that consists of just straight completely arbitrary personal moderation when someone got a feeling. I did not always feel that way, I was a power of surfacing and countering ideas guy twenty years ago. But both professionally and personally, I have decided that the forum format and related adjacent formats are not effective in really doing anything at all about important issues that surface on TWBG in articles.

Professionally, we have learned through a building experimental and observational corpus of evidence that people do not change their mind about strongly held political or sociological views, no matter the nature of evidence, discourse, etc. Only no/weakly held positions are convinceable or affected by discourse at all, usually via the occassional affect by close friends and family. Thus, I consider the front page platform pretty important with respect to getting in front of eyes who may have only weakly held views. The forums? No. I consider it ineffective and pointless as a instrument of change. Only old people with strongly held opinions will engage in logging into a forum and getting into it politically. Worse than all that, the psychological rewards of intervening with your strongly held opinions, especially against the grain of the average opinion in a space, are pretty high. To me, the profoundly effective "debate me" culture in wide adoption has all but eliminated the point of these sorts of spaces even when large numbers of people mostly disagree with you. They won the open free speech version of the internet, because of the nature of human psychology and the instrinsic rewards of forum warrioring while still basically following the rules (e.g. civil discourse, etc). On a personal level, this has absolutely been borne out by the way the covid crisis has played out in my personal life and through the lens of online free discourse spaces.

The part that galls me is the practical appearance of "winning" when it's really just exhaustion. It's the wrestling the pig problem. The pig fucking loves it and everyone else just walks away silently a little more annoyed and frustrated than they were before. I take solace in the fact no one whose mind would be changed reads these sorts of spaces anyway but people do read the front page so it somewhat matters.

The criticism that I feel is most justified is the one made by I think Jur that we don't seek out and cover the things that reflect our values as hard as we should with actual shoeleather---the example was to go do a big interview and feature on a Zenobia award finalist. That reflects I think a lot of personal and emotional turmoil on the part of the tiny unpaid staff, but I think it's a legitimate criticism. But I don't have any more time or emotional energy to devote to the site than I already do, so I literally cannot imagine what the people who do a lot more work for the site (and $) feel.

I am strongly in favor of diversity, and this hobby could definitely use more diversity in both players and designers. However, I also find the fixation on representation to be a bit troubling, because it implies that even a minority might think like a bigot at times. If a consumer can't fully enjoy a game, book, movie, comic, whatever because it lacks a character that shares their race or gender or religion or culture or orientation or handicap or whatever, it makes that consumer seem like a small-minded bigot who can only relate to people who closely resemble them. But maybe that interpretation is merely my luxury as a white heterosexual male. But when I was a kid, Black Panther and Luke Cage were two of my top five superheroes. I was less enthusiastic about female characters until I got older, and then I became very enthusiastic about strong women like Ellen Ripley and Misty Knight. And it admittedly took longer for me to embrace gay heroes like Leonard Pine or Detective Kima Griggs. But the point is that I don't need my heroes to look like me or be like me, and the concept of representation suggests that we should coddle people who are that small-minded, as long as they are oppressed minorities. The growing diversity in various mediums is great, but maybe the representation narrative is a case of good intentions gone wrong.

Shellhead wrote: But maybe that interpretation is merely my luxury as a white heterosexual male.

DING DING DING.

You can find countless stories about how many people were excited to finally see a Spider-Man film, or play a Spider-Man game, that represented their background. It is vital that diversity become a focus until it's just second nature. I hope that one day it will just be something you don't notice, like good special effects. It will only be noticeable by its absence.

I am like you. I don’t identify with characters based on gender or race or religion or ethnicity. I identify with characters based on their personalities.

It’s my personal opinion that this is a better way to view the world. But it’s something I would, isn’t it?

As I’ve learned in life, what little wisdom I possess, people need to be listened to and understood. It’s a lot harder than it sounds. But it helps to try, it helps to listen to them.

It really does make a difference for others to see people with similar backgrounds in positions of success or participation. It helps their sense of belonging, it helps them feel understood. It gives them ideas that they, too, belong and can be successful there. That’s fantastic. That’s what I want for everyone.

Diversity means more than just a checklist. Black, check. Hindu, check. Transgendered, check. I think people who don’t understand it see it in those terms.

Diversity means people with different experiences and ideas bring that with them. It creates an environment that improves everyone involved.

When I think about my own privilege in life, one of the biggest privileges I have ever had was living amongst diverse groups of people and working with them, too. That makes me incredibly fortunate and has given me a lot of personal opportunity.

To me, diversity is opportunity for everyone. I welcome it.

Firstly, I would like to apologise to the site admin if my response to the essay raised unintended questions. My opening comment was an observation that the OP hadn't received any feedback (on this format it would seem - I dont use twitter) on their essay.

In part, I think the lack of response, raised by another poster, was mainly because most people on this website would concur with the views expressed by the OP, whether in whole or in part, and therefore didn't feel the need to respond. I just wanted to acknowledge the effort in putting the essay together by responding.

In terms of representation I can agree with those people that also raised concerns that a focus on representation could lead to a tokenistic approach in an effort to ensure that a full audience would be catered for. I certainly share those concerns, but when i think about growing the hobby and attracting new gamers from different backgrounds in, representation may be more important for building the magic theatre for new entrants as opposed to long term gamers. And more new backgrounds, the greater the chance of new boardgame visions being expressed through new game designs.

Gary Sax wrote: If they were starting the site again, I probably would tell them not to bother having a forum or comment threads.

You could always do the old "Comments Are Closed For This Article" thing that plenty of sites do. That way you keep any discussion centered on gaming threads where there is likely less drama.

Forums are tricky in this day & age. It feels like BGG has become a masterclass in how NOT to run a website (the place is literally 90% forums, but is now ruthlessly modded to stamp out even the slightest whiff of anything they deem unacceptable, which these days is a LOT, so why have forums at all?) But running what are essentially opinion pieces with forums whose use is either discouraged or outright derided seems like a definite contradiction.

Admittedly I enjoyed ye olde days of forums, where they were the wild west & any putz with a keyboard could wander in & get smoked. But like you said, then you get the greased pig who simply exists to start shit (hello DWTripp in RSP for over a decade.)

I do feel like running opinion pieces with no feedback mechanism turns a place into an echo-chamber, and we've seen how easy it is on the modern internet to simply navigate from site to site and receive absolutely no information or data of any kind that threatens a person's previously held beliefs. Obviously MAGAs are Exhibit A for such behavior but in the past few years if all I did was visit TWBG and BGG, I would basically assume that all boardgamers ran LGBTQ soup kitchens named "Eat The Rich" where improper pronoun usage was punishable by immediate incarceration. And I'm fairly certain that is not the case.

p.s.
Thousand Island dressing is still rad.

Gary, I understand where you're coming from. But I will point out that this sites front page has had a lot of lean years. At times the front page looked like a dead site with just a monthly post by Michael Barnes and Black Barney's shitty movie reviews. I wouldn't be surprised if the active forums are what kept Shellie from shutting off the lights during those periods. I've never thought the forum posts should be added to the articles and if you want to cut off the forums from the front page and add a discord link to the articles I say it's worth trying. Times change and websites need to change with them.

That Thousand Island dressing metaphor is so loaded with weighty interpretation that I'm almost shaking just considering them all

I feel that the best games that I enjoy seem to be the products of very small teams, if not individuals. Thus "representation" is kinda meaningless since there is no committee of diversity required or even desired, since this is a singular vision. The game product can succeed or fail on it's own merits.

Certainly the production team and marketing can tailor the visual aesthetic to appeal to the demographics they want, or risk alienating some if there is a misfire in the visuals. Higher the budget, the larger the print run, the wider the marketing net needs be cast. At least running the near final product by a diverse crowd can catch any missteps before they are pointed out to you on Twitter and the hordes gather, though that can be a capricious thing no matter what you do.

Since games are a luxury item I don't really see why they need to be held to any particular standard other than a basic "we didn't use a toxic dye on the meeples" safety standard. It would be interesting to see an industry accreditation system that specifically delineates theme, content, visual aesthetic, and production team requirements to meet a published, transparent, and well defined criteria. Would that be successful? Would game devs want to receive it? Would audiences at large select it over other games?

I would like to thank you all for your comments. I think many great points were raised and everyone was very constructive, open, honest and friendly. I love the realization that being a cis, het, white male maybe gives you the luxury of having so much choice that it's also easy to happily identify with characters who are not cis, het, white or male. I also love the comment that there was so much jubilation when there were finally "alternative" versions of Spider-Man that people who aren't cis, het, white or male could identify with. So, thank you all for your wonderful comments. Keep them coming.