Thread by @PRLPoliSci

Alright folks! My dissertation's on how video games can influence political attitudes and participation. So let's have a talk about this since it's stirring up a good deal of controversy. A thread. (1/18)
nytimes.com/2019/03/27/opi…

Let's get this out of the way 1st: Game culture isn't perfect. It has not been the friendliest of places to those who aren't straight white males. But that's been changing A LOT over the last decade. There's always room to improve, but gaming has never been more welcoming. (2/18)

Designers are concertedly making games that reflect the diversity of our world. Community organizers are trying to make their digital spaces more inclusive and welcoming to everyone. Is there pushback to this? Yes. But mostly on the fringes. (3/18)

As much as some are getting angry, Dr. Condis is correct that some games are being used as platforms by White Supremacist groups. Games and gamers aren't intrinsically racist. But a lot of people use games as escapism. There's stuff about their lives they don't like...(4/18)

Stuff outside their control that drives resentment. In the presence of skilled, nefarious operators, that resentment can be redirected. The selective use of certain jokes and memes, in their hands, can foster prejudicial attitudes. (5/18)

Games do not make people hateful. Games can be a refuge for people who want to escape things without a simple, ready explanation. Hateful people can exploit that want; they invade our games to poison the minds of the vulnerable. (6/18)

This is something we have to be aware of, as gamers. We can't just pretend it's not happening. It is. As Dr. Condis says in the article, White supremacists admit this. This isn't speculation. We need to be aware that these people are there. (7/18)

BUT! The majority of gamers don't use game as a form of escapism. A lot of research has been done on the motivations of game play. Escapism has been shown to be both the most likely to lead to anti-social outcomes and a motivation for a minority of gamers. (8/18)

Most play the games for mastery, the challenge, and for the immersion in interesting stories, and to catch up with friends. And, on those last two, my research shows how games can INCREASE political activity. (9/18)

There is a strong association between the number of political actions people do and the frequency of playing games that make them think about social, moral, and political issues. Image from my #MPSA2019 paper. (10/18)

There is also a strong association between the number of political actions people do and the frequency that they play games with other people. Images, again, from my #MPSA2019 paper. 1 playing groups among youth 16-27. 2 social game play among US adults, generally. (11/18)

I'm in the middle of a content analysis that is (so far) showing that the most popular single-player games of the last decade have A LOT of pro-social, politically relevant rhetoric. Are the arguments they levy in their rhetoric perfectly non-problematic? No. But... (12/18)

They're not encouraging people to be White supremacists. Quite the opposite. If anything, they tend to paint prejudicial attitudes as misplaced or detestable. The games Dr. Condis mention are real. But the proportion of gamers playing them is the size of a rounding error. (13/18)

That doesn't make it good or excusable. That also doesn't mean that those games don't have larger consequences (emboldening those who play them to spread hate, etc). But when we talk about games, gaming, and those who play, we should keep that in perspective. (14/18)

What we need to remember, above all, is that games (especially social games like Fortnite) are microcosms of reality. You have the good stuff that I research and the ugly stuff Dr. Condis researches. Both can (and do) exist simultaneously in a messy, complex package. (15/18)

For the sake of making gaming as welcoming a hobby as it can be, we need to be aware of the ugly. We should make a concerted effort to clean it up. It's our house. Don't let these supremacist pricks make a mess of it. Call out shit when you see it. (16/18)

But we should also spend more time focusing on the good that games do and actively encouraging more of that. And people aren't going to want to do that if all we talk about are the ways games can be problematic. (17/18)

Games can be good. They ARE good. They do so much good for the majority of their users. Let's keep that in mind as we work to make them even better. (18/18)