The Way of Patrick Miller

I’m going to start this post with a funny story: After E3, I was playing a bunch of weird niche fighting games (Asuka Burning Fest 120%, Garouden Breakblow: Twist or Fist) with the Insert Credit folks and some of the Skullgirls team. Things got a little hype, and we accidentally left a window open, so someone called the cops on what was unarguably the nerdiest get-together ever. They let us off with a warning, and on our way out, I said to everyone, “Hey, guys – I do believe that was your official welcome to the fighting game community.”

…

After all the gender horror stories came out from E3, I was tempted to joke on Twitter something along the lines of: “Can’t wait until we’ve solved all the gender and sexuality stuff in video games so we can get to issues of race and class.” The joke being, of course, that it doesn’t work that way; that all these nasty axes of oppression are all tangled up with each other, and we all pick and choose where to start untangling the knot on a day-to-day basis as a personal decision.

Anyway, I’ll keep this quick because I should really be labbing it up for Evo right now.

Yesterday, Noel Brown’s mugshot showed up on the Internet courtesy of some public record database-scraping site, which revealed that he had been arrested during CEO 2013 for domestic violence. Word through the grapevine is that he had caught his (ex?) girlfriend involved with another competitor, broke down a hotel room door, and either punched (her version) or pushed (his version) her, which led to his arrest.

Today, Brown’s mugshot showed up front and center on Kotaku, next to a picture of Ryu, thanks to a post by editor Jason Schreier. The post has since fallen down the page a bit in prominence, but it’s gotten them over 40k pageviews as of this writing.

There are a few things wrong with this. 

Now, it’s hardly news to anyone that Noel Brown shouldn’t be punching people; what he did was inexcusable. Nor is it news that the fighting game community has issues with gender. Our issues with gender apparently make for excellent blog fodder (see Aris Bakhtanians being downright disrespectful to Miranda Pakozdi on stream during that stupid Cross Assault show as the instance that brought much of this to people’s attention); but in general, I think the games press overall has done a better job tackling gender issues over the last year. But this story was not handled well. And I believe the problem lies in how the story was executed, not what the story was about.

My main problem with the way Kotaku handled this story is best explained in two parts.

First: “But it’s newsworthy, and we report the news.” 

“The fighting game community is a bunch of low-class misogynist assholes” has been a popular story for a while now, and it’s not fair. To be sure, we should be calling bullshit out everywhere, but the FGC gets a disproportionate amount of scrutiny.

• One of the world’s best SC2 players, Ilyes “Stephano” Satouri gets arrested after DreamHack 2012 for being drunk and disorderly: No Kotaku story.
• A spectator (?) straight up punches a dude in a wheelchair at MLG Dallas: No Kotaku story.
• Korean pro-gaming team WeRRA disbands following a sexual assault scandal: No Kotaku story.
• A mid-tier player who hasn’t really won anything of note gets arrested for assault after finding out another player is involved with his girlfriend: Front page on Kotaku.

For context’s sake, Noel Brown is more or less the fighting game community’s version of Steven “Destiny” Bonnell (SC2/LOL); he’s known for being an above-average player with a loud mouth and a short fuse. Destiny is, among other things, known for explaining the proper use of Banelings in Starcraft 2 by way of a very vivid rape analogy (trigger warning – also, no Kotaku story).

Here’s the deal: I'm tired of only getting in the mainstream game news for the bad stuff because there is so much more than just the bad stuff. You should know how it feels; think about each time you see video games show up in the evening news. To their credit, games news reporters are doing okay at reporting the outright acts of charity from the FGC (funding scholarships, for example; we’ll see if anyone picks up on saving a STL Tekken player’s house from foreclosure). In other words, if Noel is “newsworthy” but none of those other incidents mentioned about were, there is something seriously suspect with your newsworthiness-rubric.

Furthermore, if the only story that comes out of CEO 2013 was Noel Brown, you buried the lede. You could have written about the tournament itself, but instead you wrote about some dumb fuckup that happened after hours. And it’s a little disingenuous to say “we report on this just like newspapers report on athletes committing crimes” because at least those publications also cover the results of the damn game in the same paper. Think of it this way: If Noel Brown had won the tournament instead of popping off and getting arrested, no one would have written a damn thing about it.

And no, this is kind of work isn’t “shining light on gender issues”. If you’re writing about gender issues, you write like this; you write from the perspective of the victim, because that’s who matters most. Not like you’re writing a tabloid story for a gossip rag – because that’s not news, that's entertainment.

Second: It’s different because we’re mostly not-white and broke.

As I alluded to above, race and class are two areas that most games writers simply haven’t spent that much time dealing with, and they’re really bad at it. So open up that Privilege Knapsack, straight white male games writers, because we’re about to unpack a few more things.

In case you didn’t get it: This means that the first thing you need to do is keep an open mind and not get defensive, or else you’re gonna have a bad time. Nothing about this section is calling you a racist; it’s about learning how to deal with race and class without unintentionally hurting people.

I’m grossly oversimplifying a few years of college classes here, but: There are multiple axes along which we are oppressed and oppress others; race, gender, class, sexuality…the list goes on. When you start to unpack how those various dynamics work together, you end up with some very fascinating, subtle, and nuanced ways in which power asserts itself. To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve dusted off my textbooks; read this and see if it makes sense to you.

Now: Let’s talk a little bit about the fighting game community. Street Fighter and Street Fighter II became a worldwide sensation in the early ‘90s in large part because these games offered the thrill of direct, one-on-one adversarial competition for a mere 25 cents. Over the years, this attracted quite a number of people who loved the excitement and stimulation of competing against friends and strangers in arcades. Since arcades mostly flourished in urban centers, and the barrier to entry was limited only by how many quarters you needed to save for laundry, the people who stuck around in the fighting game community typically tended to be young men of color. This stood in stark contrast to competitive PC games communities built around games like Quake, Counter-Strike and Starcraft; you invariably needed a $1200+ computer and a home Internet connection to to play those games.

With the resurgence of the fighting game community triggered by Street Fighter IV in 2009, and overall decline of the American arcade, we now see more white people (still mostly men) in the fighting game community than ever before – but the community is still very firmly committed to its roots in non-white working-class culture.

Personally, I find that much of the joy of being an active member of the fighting game community is the feeling of being in a community where I belong; a community where I don’t have to pass as white (even though I can; I am a biracial white/Filipino man named Patrick Miller, for crying out loud) or well-off. This manifests itself in some very simple ways:

• I don’t worry that people think less of me if I choose to use less-than-perfect diction or dress fairly casually (I usually show up to tournaments in a tank top and sweatpants).
• I rarely have to worry about going out to group events that are particularly pricey, because, well, we’re all broke.
• I don’t have to worry about people judging me if I get really excited while watching a match.
• I don’t have to worry about anyone’s opinion of my behavior being taken as representative of my race.
• Lastly, part of me exults in the fact that last year’s MVC3 Evo champion is named Filipino Champ, because ever since Pacquiao started losing it I haven’t seen a whole lot of Filipinos winning anything these days.

To be sure, we have our own issues with misogyny and homophobia, but they’re complicated. On one hand, there are a fair amount of respected community members who are gender or sexual minorities; on the other hand, we still have a problem with problematic speech and conduct. There is, internally, people who wish for us to grow up and act like mature, respectful adults; I am one of them.

But there are also people who view that kind of thing as the “political correctness” that they seek refuge from. Like me, these folks view the FGC as a welcoming place where they can let their hair down and be among like-minded folks; they haven’t yet realized that their behavior prevents other people in the community from feeling the same way. They will come around, but it takes time – just like it takes time in any other community, game-related or not. We are doing that work on ourselves, and perhaps this weekend was a much-needed reminder that we need to continue.

The problems come in when you start reporting on a story of a young man behaving badly–when he is a young man of color, from a community that is racialized as predominantly non-white and classed as working-class. Not because his behavior is defensible (from what little we know of the situation, it wasn’t) – but because your reporting contains a racialized and classed subtext.

Zolani Stewart mentioned it best on Twitter: “A mugshot of a white man is individual as criminal. A mugshot of a black man is 'black men as criminals’.” In this context, Brown’s mugshot isn’t just about him – it’s standing in for black men, and other men of color, and in this context, the FGC as well – though that’s probably the least important identifier.

With that in mind, I would offer one more point of emphasis: Pretty much anywhere in video games besides the FGC are racialized as white spaces; on the Internet, everyone is a white male by default, and certainly both the professional and enthusiast sectors of games are dominated by white men. So when you post a mugshot of a black man right smack in the middle of Kotaku, Stewart’s effect is even more pronounced.

At this point, I’m reading a story probably written by a white guy, on an enthusiast site that caters to a mostly-white-guy audience, about a man of color from my extended community who did something fucked up and hit his girlfriend after finding out she was involved with another guy.

Do you know why tabloids stay in business? It’s because they sell you stories that make you feel better about yourself. It feels good to read about how the rich and famous do things that you would never do. They allow you to pass judgment on people who make far more money than you ever well, because that feels good.

Well, Kotaku did the same thing with Noel Brown, and it made me (and many others in the FGC, apparently) feel real fucking shitty. Because from my perspective, it’s a lot of white people pointing at this asshole who happens to be in the same community as I am and feeling real good about the fact that these people hit women and they themselves don’t (presumably).

And when I know that those same white people are notoriously bad at covering similar kinds of bullshit in other competitive communities – see the other examples above – it feels even shittier. Because there’s something especially crappy about having a bunch of white people implicitly tell you how awful your people are about gender when they’re simultaneously so bad about dealing with their own gender issues (see any gender-related post about games on the Internet, ever). It makes me feel so shitty that I almost feel sorry for Noel Brown, which is fucked up, because THE GUY GOT ARRESTED FOR HITTING HIS GIRLFRIEND.

Of course, it should go without saying that I don’t think that anyone who covered this story intended for that reaction, but nevertheless, that’s what happened – because the outlet didn’t adequately handle the race or class dimensions of the story.

The most common defense I’ve heard here is: “Well, he was arrested, so it's newsworthy." 

As I’ve already pointed out, going by our existing standards, practically nothing Noel Brown does except hit his ex-girlfriend is newsworthy, and that’s pretty fucked up.

However, there’s an additional layer of fucked-up-ness to this once we add race to the factor: People of color, especially men, are disproportionately represented in prison. According to The Sentencing Project, more than 60% of the people in prison are racial/ethnic minorities, and for black men in their thirties, one out of ten is in prison or jail in any given day.

My friend Alex Wawro asked me on Twitter: "How often does FGC bullshit come along with an arrest warrant?” My response: “Given the preponderance of men of color, surprisingly often.” (That got me called racist a whole bunch of times until I clarified that I am a man of color acknowledging the statistic I cited above, which I thought was funny – apparently, I pass for white even on Twitter, where my goddamn handle is an explicit reference to an old derogatory slang term for Filipinos.)

One of the perks of being white in the United States is that it’s easier to avoid the legal system. People are less likely to call the cops on you and less likely to press charges; just look at the old white finance douchebags who keep ruining the god damn economy.

So when you say “Well, he got arrested, so it’s newsworthy” you need to be real damn careful in how you report this story, because otherwise I know I’m going to see a whole lot more FGC members showing up on the Kotaku front page due to the statistics of racism in the United States.

At this point, I’ve written 3000 words on how pissed off I was by the article that I simply don’t have it in me to point out all the ways it could have been done better (or not at all). Time for me to wrap it up with a call to both the FGC and the people who write about us.

To the fighting game community: We need to step our game up.

When it comes down to it, we can only be responsible for our own behavior. So let’s take a deep breath, read Miranda Pakozdi’s excellent post on the topic, and work on behaving like some god damn adults.

The fact is, the reason Kotaku was able to run this article was in part because we weren’t there first. Too many people were circling the wagons and not enough people were calling out the stupid shit Noel did in the first place. And if we’re going to call ourselves a community, we need to step up and acknowledge that members of our community were doing some dumb shit. No, we’re not responsible for Noel’s actions, but we can make it clear that we don’t approve. We’re not (all) kids any more; and we need to lead by example – however anarchic “leading” tends to be in the FGC.

Unlike other competitive game communities, we don’t have a central authority to hand down decisions from on high – and we don’t want one. Which means that we need to take ownership of this ourselves, even if it just means tweeting and blogging making our opinions heard. It also means that we should be taking our reputation and our image into our own hands – by supporting the victim in whatever way we can, and by making sure that our community is safe. If anyone wants to help organize a charity stream monster-thon, get at me.

For my part: I’ve recently started writing for Shoryuken.com, and I certainly hope I can call bullshit out when I see it there – though, naturally, that’s up to my editor. If not, well, there’s always this blog.

To the people who write about the FGC: Have some respect.

If you covered the fighting game community on the regular, and wrote about what happened at major tournaments, then maybe we wouldn’t be so mad at you. But when you mostly just cover the salacious and sensational, you don’t do us or our community justice. Notable things happen in the fighting game community every day, and when you just cherrypick this kind of stuff, it’s downright insulting – because you're clearly not putting any effort in to actually learn more about us before you get your story.

I spoke to one prominent member of the community and asked if he was at all interested in making an official comment. His response: “Fuck no. These guys aren’t interested in a real conversation. We’ve tried before.” I believe him.

In other words: If you want us to trust and respect you enough to report you on our community, you can earn that trust by reporting on the rest of the FGC, not just the naughty bits. That means learning how to report on events, player profiles, results, and – gasp – maybe even learning how to play the damn games.

It’s not easy to enter the fighting game community. We devote ourselves to rigorous practice of games that are among the most physically and mentally challenging activities out there; we travel all over the world to play the best because we love it (there sure as hell isn’t any money in this); through this practice, we can make profoundly deep lifelong connections. It’s not easy to get competent at fighting games, and if you don’t do that, you won’t find much of a place in the practice-focused FGC. But every single person you see around you at Evo or Season’s Beatings or CEO or NCR is going through that process, and it’s truly like nothing else in the world. 

Personally, I’ve been in this community for twelve years, and only fairly recently have I felt like I knew enough about the games or the people who play them to write competently about them. However, this community has been the catalyst for some of the most rewarding experiences of my life. So it wouldn’t hurt for you to embed yourself in this community for a while before trying to tell our stories to anyone else – or, barring that, give a little more time to talk to people who are part of this community. I’ve got a couch and a spare joystick; you’re welcome any time.

–patrick miller