Good luck protestors, I hope your motives are honest and true.
I wasn't intending on writing this. In a lot of ways I'll either come off as uninformed or a hypocrit. But I think writing about it for all the internet to see will [hopefully] help me in the long run. As I write this, I have friends opting to participate in Adbuster's Occupy Wall Street. As a bit of perspective, I have another group of friends who have decided to organize a local parade to celebrate the life of one Daymon Dodson, a community hero from Ohio, whose life was cut short. The parade is a celebration of anyone you've known whose life ended prematurely. To add another ingredient in the pot, I've got a handful of guys who drove down to Miami to watch a college football game. Everybody is into something, try not being offended by the coming paragraphs.
I'm always so interested in what people my age pour their energies into. I'm usually the one at the table that waves the "I'm a gamer, I'm a blogger," flag. It seldom sparks conversations of interest. I'm okay with that. Back in my more radical days, a brown-to-green clothed-wearing Isaiah would be providing transportation to something like an Occupy Wall Street function. Due to my upbringing, protesting and activism has always interested me. Coming from a predominantly poor, black neighborhood in Cleveland -- it's rare you see a group of black folks protesting the government in this large of scale. Local government was more our thing. When prices go up and local stores and churches were closed, then that's when the people of Cuyahoga were gonna let you know.
Imagine coming to college with a dusty Playstation and barely-there scholarship money, and being introduced to a people that had the ability to protest, well, anything. To this day I find it interesting. It took me a long time to conclude that if you have the ability to acknowledge wrong in your neighborhood, then do so. No matter your background. No matter your neighborhood.
It's really interesting to witness the evolution of what the internet has done to modern day activism. I'd be interested to see if lower-income activist have increased because of it.
With that said, today, in this current state of America -- we have so much available to consume. We have so many ways to enjoy ourselves and communicate with others. I game. It's what I've done since living in Coit projects. It's what I've done since other kids around me didn't have games, at all, and I had three Nintendo games. Now gaming warrants million dollar production studios. There are dollar games on your phone to your home entertainment system. The funny thing is, or not-so-funny, everyone I know who complains about the gaming culture, experiences games the most.
Every since I've started writing and reviewing games I've never met so many people who've consumed so much. There are exceptions, but if you want to be educated in what you write about, you better have a rich vocabulary. So it makes sense to turn into this consuming beast. I guess it also goes without saying that I've never met so many well-off white people and Asians. Again, this makes sense, video games are created [majorly] by whites and Asians so the media reflects the people, for the most part. I've met the poorest of the poor who are very dedicated to the gaming culture and they have similar stories to my own. So you can go ahead an nix that part of your angry response e-mail.
Here's the deal, to draw a parallel between the protesting culture I've met via my academic circles and those in-the-know in the gaming community. I now have this perception that everyone who protests issues on a large scale comes from, or has a great deal of money. That's always made me uncomfortable. I know, I know. My third paragraph is contradictory. I stand by that point, no matter your background, your voice is valuable and necessary. I'm just not sure if it's necessary to me or the community.
If anyone is interested in activism in games, there are several indie developers who make games to raise awareness for causes. Darfur Is Dying is a great example.
Ten years ago, I was at every political rally. I drove to Chicago and D.C. and bailed friends out of jail for being foolish enough to speak up to the man. I got jaded in the process. Burned out. I saw more and more people show up to protest topics that had nothing to do with what the actual protest at hand, was about. Everyone has their own motives. I guess I lost mine under someone's synthetic brown moccasin.
In the gaming community [as an example], the age of the internet forum is a great way to see a complaint go from a logical discussion, to a pissing contest that only marginally relates to the original topic. I'd even argue that protesting in the games industry is close to non-existent. Sure there are petitions to make the next Mega Man game or Final Fantasy remake, but everyone's okay with being nickled and dimed. This opens the argument to the games industry needing activism. I'm not sure it does.
The gaming culture is one of few connected to an industry, that seems solely based on the consumer's dollar. If you stop paying for it, they stop making it [example: Guitar Hero]. Imagine if gamers got fed up by the billion-dollar game franchise Call of Duty and stopped paying for $15 dollar map packs? Activision would stop making them, it's pretty simple. Wall Street attendees aren't so lucky. They are protesting a much bigger beast. A beast, some would argue, Activision is a part of. A much bigger ideal. A lot of them gathered via social network, smartphone mass text message, or various websites. You can see this as the little guy using the system's tools against itself. I don't know how I see it.
There is a cloud of guilt that hangs over my head while trying to formulate an opinion on radicals [of any kind]. I blog and write about games. I'm a consumerist that social networks. I'm a lot of things and I'm sure you are too. I don't understand how protest currently function. It interests me, but only on a small scale. Small scale I can understand. I can relate to any activism when it's dealing with a smaller community.
I love seeing gamers raise money to keep arcades open. I've attended gaming tournaments to help a friend in need. I'll never understand what one hopes to accomplish by staging, what I see, as a big show against corporate America. When, on a smaller scale [depending on how you look at it], you could just stop buying the stuff they are selling you and focus on creating new methods of interaction with your neighbor.
But hey, that's just me.