[image courtesy Twitter]
Video: GDC Vault Education Soapbox (relevant section starts 0:30:00 mins). Transcript below.The image above is from the
Education Soapbox session of the Game Developers Conference annual "
GDC Education Summit". The slide, "
Teaching Students to Make Games Under Fascism", is part of a broader presentation, "
Teaching Students to Make Socially Aware Games", arguing the case that games and game development are 'political' (small "p" although
vid. [1(b)]) and in being so can be used to convey politicised messages and ideas, especially those of marginalised or under-represented groups. To address these shortfalls educators are called to task through appeals to a
greater social and moral imperative[1], that they are, for all intents and purposes, obligated and duty-bound to teach greater awareness and sensitivity towards these narratives in their students, especially given the current sociopolitical environment, that
Trumps America is Fascist.
It's difficult to determine whether this 'fascist' threat narrative and barely disguised anti-Trump rhetoric is sensationalised and hyperbolic for the sake of drawing attention to the
authors field of study, or for other reasons. Whatever the case may be its certainly
not a reflection of, or a reasonable commentary on, reality as it stands; were Trumps Administration and United States
actually fascist, GDC, let along the session and its speakers, would not be quite so public and open with their dissent and advocacy for 'resistance' and 'subversion' of what would then be 'The Parties' policies, no matter how 'just' ("J" and "j") the cause or 'brave' the speaker and others thought themselves to be for "speaking out". History paints a vivid picture on this point[2].
Aside from it being
de rigueur, a
cause célèbre, for cohorts of such to come together in oppositional
solidarité to the new Trump Administration "SUM = [because] + [reasons(
n)]", these discussions are
not about games or game development, or even the issues on the table, themselves often poorly constructed facades. They are instead nothing more than recruitment drives, initiatives meant to bring new blood into class-based political agitation, a facsimile of '
{rich} vs. {poor}', '
{black} vs. {white}', now '
{arbitrary attribute} vs. {privilege}', an ostensibly unfalsifiable self-justifying dialectic[3].
To this end these political activists and agitators, those cunningly disguised as 'educators' and 'thought-leaders', are teaching students argumentative slight-of-hand tricks that perpetuate and preserve the narrative, not solve the problems they may present, techniques useful in deconstructing the workplace and crippling business through polarising categorization and division under the guise of "civil rights" instead of building cohesion around difference, a far more valuable skill in highly competitive global marketplaces[4], and arguably what students actually pay for when studying, not just game design, and what they aught to be hearing when attending premiere development confabs like GDC.
Bluntly put, what these interlopers are doing is co-opting students futures with emotionally appealing faux injustices, half-baked conspiracy theories of little tangible benefit in the workplace. An outlook that will eventually have them looking back on lives lived with
significant and longstanding unpaid dept, of being openly resentful at realising they were nothing more than child-sacrifices to a different demi-god, a fabricated pseudo-religious conflict[5], their bodies thrown on the barbed wire of disingenuous confabulations so the 'Clerics' and 'Architects' could walk their backs freely to the pots of government gold at the end of the rainbow, the sole beneficiaries of "The Struggle" and very institutions they spent so much energy opposing, with nary a thought of the students used to get there.
This isn't "education". Its not "teaching", game development or any one of the associated disciplines. Its not even "critical theory". Its simply a malicious and deliberate hijacking of students enthusiasm for all things gaming and game development at a time when their intellectual defenses are least resistant to abuse, and an "abuse" it is. Its a mendacious and open theft of the young's minds and futures for the agitation of falsehoods, self-perpetuating politicking intentionally structured to be unsolvable and unending.
Footnotes:
[1] GDC 2017 - "Teaching Students to Make Socially-Aware Games"
(a) "[sic] Video Games Are Expressions of Culture, Goddamn it, and It Is Ethically Irresponsible of Us as Educators and Human Being, Especially Given the Garbage Fire That Is Politics Today, to Send Our Students out into the World without Teaching Them to Think about the Fact that the Work They Produce Exists in a Broader Social Context - Like, to Seriously Think about That and Actually Care".
(b) "[sic] VIDEO GAMES ARE POLITICAL. THE WAY WE MAKE GAMES IS POLITICAL. THE WAY THAT WE TEACH OUR STUDENTS TO MAKE GAMES IS POLITICAL".
[2] Much of the historical literature that survives actual fascist and authoritarian regimes paint poignant portraits of daily life, and none of it is the Hollywood or cinematically glamourised fiction of "vive la résistance", "che G" t-shirt revisionism, its dirty, stinks of piss and vomit, of doing anything to eat and stay alive, of being anonymous so as to go unnoticed, of slinking through shadows, talking in whispers to avoid not just official political enforcers, but the more abundant and arguably more dangerous snitches and citizen spies ready to do a 'turn' over split milk. Being an 'enemy of the state', mildly political or oppositional were never prerequisites to persecution when a person could be beaten for walking on the correct side of the road.
[3] There's a fundamental difference between the historical "{black} vs. {white}" struggle of the 1950's and 60's Civil Rights movement and said same struggle under the newer millennial "{arbitrary attribute} vs. {privilege}" paradigm. For the former a persons 'value' as an individual, and to society at large, was largely determined by their actions and deeds, their "character" as exemplified in Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech. For the latter the opposite is the case, 'character' and 'value' are affectations, subordinate consideration to whatever arbitrary attributes a person may possess or claim, like skin colour. In this way the individuals successes and failures can be blamed on 'self' (former) or 'others' (latter), making the person responsible for their own mistakes (former), or the victim of others (latter).
The NET effect of this difference now is a self-justifying "hierarchy of privilege", the "Progressive Stack" as its more commonly know, 'white' being at the top ("white, CIS-gendered Male" to be precise) with every other 'attribute' ("marginalised" grouping) below. In this inversion lower staves of the stack have greater 'value' because they are considered to be more 'marginalised' in Society, so greater effort should be expended giving voice to those individuals than anyone above them, regardless as to merits of the claim (its not a 'meritocracy').
In other words a 'white' person is 'systemically privileged' because they are 'white' rather than as a consequence of their efforts, 'good' or 'bad'. In this way being 'white' means the individual must always be taking advantage of privilege systems and the underprivileged regardless of outcome or intent. Conversely a 'black' person (anyone that's 'non-white') is always a victim of someone regardless of their efforts to be 'good' or 'bad' because they are not subject to the same systemic privileges advantaging a 'white' person.
This manifestation of "intersectionality" as this is properly called, is an inescapable self-reinforcing victimology that enslaves adherents to a hierarchy of forced outcome instead of selective opportunity, a construction of arbitrary considerations that can be flipped and changed at the turn of a D20. Its a grand illusion that tricks people into bondage to those at the very top, not the 'evil white man', but the Stacks authors, the oft' soft-spoken, self-effacing 'intellectuals' and 'social critics' who perpetuate what is nothing more than an alternative system of control, a different form of the 'systemic oppression' supposedly being fought, the success of which is solely dependent upon continued appeals to individual and societal (in)justice and outrage.
In essence its a system that continues to victimise victims of oppression by recasting the means through which victimhood manifests itself whilst its high-priestesses and priests revel in the rewards of nonfalsifiable, unchallengeable and unaccountable positions of authority (criticism justifies the systems existence, not its veracity or efficacy).
[4] Bureau of Labor Statistics "Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations"
(a) Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2015
- Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations (Major Group)
- Software Developers, Applications
- Computer Programmers
- Multimedia Artists and Animators
- Political Scientists
(b) Work for play: Careers in video game development
(c) Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook
(d) American Political Science Association research and development
(e) Survey of Graduate Students and Postdoctorates in Science and Engineering, Fall 2015
- Table 9. Graduate students in science, engineering, and health in all institutions, by detailed field: 2010–15
[5] Student loans are often the most significant repayment obligation experienced by the individual other than a home mortgage, and depending on the type, value and severity of the repayment schedule, may cause the debtor significant stress. Poorly managed this can lead to any number of mental-health issues or increasingly risky coping behaviours including the possibility of depression or suicide. In this context being indebted for the sake of a "useless degree" is a significant co-factor to problems in later life rarely, if ever, openly contemplated or considered by 'political activists' as they chase new recruits for their cause instead of arming them with tools for success that should include their being able to repay loans taken against their education.
- Student suicides in those aged 18 years and above, by sex and usual place of residence indicator, deaths registered in England and Wales between 2001 and 2015
- CDC factsheet : Suicides (incl. students) facts at a glance 2015
- Office of National Statistics - suicide rates (UK)
- National Institute of Mental Health - suicide rates (US)
- Royal College of Psychiatrists: CR166. The Mental health of students in higher education (pub. 2011)
(a) U.S. Department of Education, Student Loans, Forgiveness
- National Student Loan Two-year Default Rates
- Official Cohort Default Rates for Schools
- - FY 2013 3-Year Official Cohort Default Rates by State/Territory-National Calculated August 6, 2016
(b) DEGREES OF DEBT: Funding and finance for undergraduates in Anglophone countries - a comparative investigation of student debt levels in the UK, USA, Canada and Australia.
