The "Hardcore Gamer" Ethos of Exclusion

           Erica Kubik’s “Masters of Technology: Defining the Hardcore/Casual Dichotomy in Video Game Culture” article is, at its core, based around showing how the dichotomy between “hardcore” and “casual” gamers is a heavily gendered, exclusionary one, created by white male gamers solely to justify their own prominence in video gaming culture.  As Kubik states, such a gendering is nothing new: white men have attempted to present themselves as “the makers” and masters “of technology” for decades, and their attempts have constantly relied on obscuring the enormous contributions women, people of color, and non-whites have made to technological history (Kubik, 137).  The very concept of “hard mastery and soft mastery” within the scientific and technological fields, in fact, is actually heavily gendered in nature, representing, as Jennifer Light points out, the idea that “the ‘hard’ ways of knowing are men’s domain” while the “‘soft’ ways of knowing are more feminine” (Light, 469).  It is why John Mauchly, J. Presper Eckert, and John von Neumann’s became famous for their “invention” of the ENIAC while the remarkable work of its female proto-programmers was forgotten, for programming was seen as the direct descendent of the maddeningly rote clerical labors that the ENIAC was supposed to eliminate. 

Though Kubik never mentions Light, the dichotomy between hardware and software the latter mentions is extremely relevant to Kubik’s work.  Just as the “hardware” of a computer was considered more valuable to work on precisely because designing it was seen as being more intellectually rewarding than the “clerical labor” associated with “software,” hardcore gamers’ preference for what Kubik describes as “ultra-competitive gameplay that exhibits technical mastery or a conquering mentality” betrays a need to justify their dominance in video gaming culture by pointing to their “mastery” of difficult game mechanics and games (Kubik, 146).  Of course, as Kubik writes, “in order to belong, there have to be people who don’t belong,” and those who “don’t belong,” those non-white, non-male, and/or non-heterosexual people who would dare white male “hardcore” video gaming culture, are lumped under the umbrella of being “casual gamers” (Kubik, 145).  Whereas the “hardcore gamer” is, in their own mind, distinguished by their skill and mastery over difficult games, “casual gamers” play “easy,” accessible, and ultimately (though Kubik does not refer to them in these terms) “non-skillful” Facebook and mobile games that aren’t even “proper” games; they are the unskilled, unwashed masses that the “hardcore” gamer can lord superiority over.  When the “hardcore” gamer speaks ill of “casual” gamers, in essence, they are upholding their specific notion of what gaming is by excluding those whose existence would challenge the notion that white males have an exclusive monopoly over technical mastery.

Yet, the challenge that casual gamers represent towards “hardcore gaming” culture runs deeper than that.  After all, as Kubik herself points out, in the minds of hardcore gamers, “they are the elite of gamers and […] industry leaders look to them to be the litmus test of quality when it comes to games because of” their mastery over games; their skill not only entitles them to lead the community, but also to have games made specifically for them (Kubik, 138).  When this doesn’t happen – when designers dare to make games that appeal to more than just the “hardcore elite” – the historical reaction among hardcore gamers has been to decry how “casuals” are bringing down the industry and ruining their favorite hobby.  Nowhere is this more obvious, from my perspective, than with Gamergate, a hate movement dedicated to throwing women, minority groups, and other non-conformers out of the gaming industry through death threats, rape threats, and disturbing amounts of misogyny and bigotry.  According to an Australian academic, Dan Golding, Gamergate is essentially the death-throes of a “gamer” identity (essentially the “hardcore” elite described by Kubik) in the wake of demographic changes that it cannot adapt to.  As Dan Golding states on his tumblr, a “gamer” is a constructed "identity based on difference and separateness” that was supposed to unite (white male) video-game players back from when “playing games was an unusual activity” (http://dangolding.tumblr.com/post/95985875943/the-end-of-gamers).  Yet, as a study from the Entertainment Software Association shows, this has been changing in a big way.  Not only has the number of women playing on both consoles and mobile devices (on both smartphones and devices made specifically for gaming, such as the 3DS) leapt up from 40% in 2010 to 48% in 2014, but “casual,” social games on Facebook and smartphones have gained prominence precisely because of their accessibility (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2014.pdf).   

The implications of this are fairly clear.  While Kubik tries to make sense of what a “hardcore” game is with her discussion of FPSes, the reality is that, as Golding states, “this insinuated criteria for ‘real’ videogames is wholly contingent on identity,” one that is fundamentally challenged not only by the increasing prominence of women, people of colors, and all other groups that fall outside of a white male “norm,” but also by the making of games not dedicated to the “hardcore” elite.  To me, nothing better represents how toxic – and how ultimately doomed – the exclusionary notion of “hardcore” gaming described by Kubik really is than in the formation of a hate group that has been formed essentially to protect a cultural conception of “gamers” that is already becoming less and less relevant culturally (and that couldn't come soon enough!).