Now that the gates have closed and the last invisible horse has crossed the imaginary finish line, it’s time to discuss the effect of the Emperor’s New Clothes on our subculture.
If you’ve been following the Kickstarter campaign for Emperor’s New Clothes, you’re probably aware of the controversy that surrounded it during its tenure. For those that may only be hearing about this for the first time, here’s the rundown:
Emperor’s New Clothes launched at the beginning of March. The game, and the campaign layout, was based very heavily on the children’s story, The Emperor’s New Clothes, wherein a rich and vain ruler is swindled by a pair of individuals into believing that he would receive new suits that would be invisible to anyone too incompetent or stupid. Those surrounding him, fearing for their own situation (since they saw nothing), pretended they could see the outfits, perpetuating the lie. Only at the end of the story, when the emperor is parading down the street in his new suit (that is, naked), does someone – a child – finally calls out the ruse.
From the onset, it was apparent the project was working in a very similar role. For example, take a look at the contents:
Don’t see anything? Well that’s because it’s using a new printing technique called Regulated Operator Optical Screening (ROOS) by Wysiwyg Press, and not everyone’s eyes are accustomed to the new technology. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Just looking around its pages, it was clear there was a lot of tongue-in-cheek stuff going on. I mean, the second pledge level is called “Hoke’s On You” for crying out loud. Yet folks were still cautiously optimistic, as the game was the creation of Jonathan Liu of GeekDad fame, a well established and respected game review site. What’s more, it was being produced by Game Salute’s Springboard line, a company known to assist quite a few different independent projects. Both parties do a lot of work with Kickstarters.
These names had some weight behind them, and it gave people pause. Plus, it was quickly noted that the campaign ends at midnight on April 1st. April Fools’ Day.
Those in the gamer community who follow Kickstarters regularly got into a debate. Was it an April Fool’s Joke? Would Jonathan and Game Salute spend all that time and effort (not to mention money) on a project that they may cancel at the last minute?
Was it a planned bait-and-switch, where the real contents would be revealed magically in a later update?
Was it some kind of social commentary? And if so, what was the angle? How to run a Kickstarter? The pitfalls of crowdfunding?
Or was it seriously What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get?
Emperor’s New Clothes generated a lot of discussion, and it got a fair amount of attention. Sure, maybe not as much as the Verionica Mars project or the 9 year-old who wanted to go to computer camp, but it easily could have come in third for the month. In the end, that’s partially what Jonathan was hoping to achieve.
At first, there was a lot of positive spin around it, as people either “got it” right away and wanted in on the joke, or they pledged in the hopes that more reveals would be forthcoming. Eventually it did, though not the way people expected. In the meantime, Jonathan continued regular updates with a tone that spoke of the seriousness to the project, including trotting out various showcases on artists and updates on the game’s progress.
The proverbial dam broke about two weeks in when a post by Ken of Geek-Craft spilled the beans regarding a letter sent by Jonathan, via Game Salute, to some reviewers on his original intent with the game. (We also received that letter a couple days prior to it appearing on the web.) In it, he confessed that, no, it was not an April Fools thing, nor was a rope-a-dope planned. It was very much, in fact, partly intended to be used as a social prank by playing the game around other people, and partly buying precisely what was shown. They were asking reviewers to write about it the game however they wished, to continue the act. However, Ken, not realizing the scope of Jonathan’s intent, or that the letter wasn’t meant to be public, posted it. Granted, he and Jonathan chatted afterwards and came to an understanding that didn’t leave either side upset, but for the public writ large the damage was done.
Once the article got around, it was now perfectly clear people were going to get exactly what it looked like they were the entire time: white game components.
Blank white game components.
That’s when the gamer community sort of lost its head. And things got, well, nasty. A portion of the community felt that they had been ripped off or deceived and aimed their anger at Jonathan and/or Game Salute. Another portion saw no issue with this revelation, as they sort of had assumed this fact from the very start, what with its glaring obviousness and all. It sort of spiraled from there.
That’s what I want to discuss here. Irrespective of the project, I think one of the more unexpected things Emperor’s New Clothes has done is reveal some harsh truths about us gamers.
Let’s start with the tone itself. I know, I know. Civil discourse on the Internet is often tenuous and fleeting at best. It’s wonderful when you can get it, and we all know it’s much to be desired. The power of anonymity, the lack of intonation and inflection that provide nuance to one’s words – it’s all too easy in the digital age. We know this – by intrinsic understanding or learned experience – that it is much easier to excoriate something (or someone) online than it is in person. For most people, their patience with online individuals is far less than if the person is in the same room. It’s much easier to be angry, dismissive, or down right belligerent and rude when you don’t have to face your opposition. You don’t have to meet their eyes, and the social cues that exist in the physical realm to help to reign in the more caustic knee-jerk discourse is completely absent.
Sure, written words have the same power in their argument, but we aren’t talking about a Sunday editorial here. A random handle like ‘Fragman212’ or “luvsdogs87” provides a one-way shield to say inflammatory things all you want, since that’s not the same as attributing those words to Henry or Anne Jenkins. Pick any active forum, chat room, Reddit page, YouTube video, or viral social media share, and you’ll see this effect in all it’s flame-war-ready glory. Say what you want about news media or established bloggers, but at least they put a name to their words, the same way Jonathan did with his project. In that, I applaud Facebook and Google Plus for at least making the speaker known by name, even if it only goes so far to curtail the collective Internet angst.
What happened with this project wasn’t pretty for us. For one, it became apparent that as much as American society is advancing its acceptance of non-video gaming as a hobby, for all the good that game conventions, Wil Wheaton, or Kickstarter itself provide, there is still work to be done internally and externally. The board gaming community still has a collective chip on its shoulder about certain things. It’s why we shudder when someone responds to the hobby by saying, “Oh, like Monopoly?”. It’s why we still feel the need to take potshots at video gamers to show that we’re not an inferior gamer type, even though they get far more attention and social acceptance overall. And it’s why we’re quick to point out to others that tabletop gamers aren’t just cave-dwelling awkward people the way that they’ve been portrayed for the last twenty-ish years.
We love our culture, and we want others to love it too. So when something comes along that seemingly is set to prey on that, we get feverishly upset. People treated the project with that zealotry, as if the game, or its creators, had somehow shammed their way into the community, based on an idealized notion on what a game is supposed to be.
The thing is, there isn’t uniformity in gaming either. That’s sort of why it has such room to flourish. Sometimes, in our collective ‘Us vs. The World’ approach, we forget that our microcosm isn’t exactly homogeneous.
We saw this in how the reaction to the “real” Emperor’s New Clothes unfolded, when you essentially had people devolve into three camps of opinion:
Camp A
These folks either got the premise right away, or wanted to join in on the fun as it progressed. They were the ones that wanted to buy the game so they could imagine it the way they wanted it to be. Maybe they’d use the components to design their own game, or perhaps they’d just enjoy pulling that social gag of confusing the passersby. Many just liked the idea of letting the game become whatever they desired at the time. It allowed them to create their own tales without concise rules or a definitive play path. For them, they were after the interaction with other people and experience of imaginative thinking at what it could be. They were, in short, who the game was aimed at.
However, those who stuck with it were forced to defend their stance on doing so by stating that they were ok with an art project styled game, or one where they had a blank canvas in which to create their own world vision. As things became more contested, this group got defensive and dismissed folks who were upset with the realization that contributors were getting precisely what was presented. This group saw the dissenting opinion as people who didn’t “get it”, and clearly were without a sense of humor on the matter.
Camp B
These folks saw the campaign, and most of them got the joke. At least, they got that there was humor involved. But they yearned for more. They held on to the notion that something else was coming just around the corner. They’d give it a few more days, and then they’ll get to see the big reveal to what Jonathan actually was up to. There was no way he was going to do something so silly as to give people what was clearly a plain white box.
Except that’s precisely what happened.
When news hit about what was behind the curtain, this contingent felt the whole thing was an elaborate deception on the creators’ parts, and since no one likes being tricked, they took to spreading the word on what a terrible idea the game was. “Jonathan missed the point”. “Game Salute failed again.” These were actual quotes. I still don’t see how the person creating the project can miss his own point, but this wasn’t a logical reaction. This was an emotional one. People were upset, and they were going to let others know about it. The reveal to the game was supposed to happen organically; the existence of the letter to reviewers not only expedited the timetable, it created in some proof of some kind of hidden agenda. It saddled the game with a scandal that it wasn’t prepared for.
What’s worse, many in this group greeted those who stayed with the campaign with ridicule and derision for doing so. Many who felt tricked by the not-so-subtle tenor, in turn chided the folks who stuck with it as dupes looking to get suckered, or idiots for supporting something that clearly wasn’t worth their time and money. To some, Emperor’s New Clothes wasn’t even a game, but instead just a bunch of pieces being shilled out.
Camp C
This group was, essentially, the rest of us. We didn’t have a stake in the matter at the point when everything bubbled over. We didn’t feel the desire to contribute to it for whatever reason, nor did we have a vested interest in criticizing it. What became more likely was that many people just opted to stay away entirely. The project had sort of taken upon an aura of conflict that it never intended to have, and it soured the excitement of many potential backers. Unfortunately, this kept the overall pledge amount lower than it potentially could have been, due to a conflict that didn’t have to happen.
This group’s numbers grew substantially as the waning weeks wore on. Watching. It’s more than a little unfortunate. These were the everyday gamers who perhaps had heard about it via others in chats, conversations or forums, and wanted to see what it was all about, only to be turned off by the tone the first two groups were generating. It was like the audiences of two rival sports teams at times. Gamers can do better than that.
This project illustrates that we must get out of the binary way of thinking about how to look at games. I purposely waited until the campaign ended, in part to avoid the ongoing debate at the time. It’s also something that is sort of central to why I founded our site. Gamers don’t all like the same games, and that’s perfectly fine. Most accept this fact. If everyone liked the same games, there’d be little reason for innovation or variety.
However, players often miss the second half of that thought process: just because you don’t like a particular game does not mean the game is bad. Yes, bad games exist, but most people talk about the ones that have some level of success to them. If a game doesn’t apply to your sensibilities, I guarantee there are other people out there where they do. Cards Against Humanity and Twilight Imperium cater to very different gamer types, for instance, but that doesn’t mean that one is inherently better or worse than the other.
It’s one of our founding principles for the site and why when we look at our reviews, we focus more on the types who would like a particular game more so than a completely subjective ranking system. With the onset of Emperor’s New Clothes, it became apparent to me that we gamers still have a ways to go to get out of the strictly Good/Bad mindset. People are complex, and complex games are designed by complex people. It’s unnecessary to to go around berating a game simply because it isn’t your cup of tea. There were folks who really enjoyed the concept that Jonathan was laying down, and it really was unfair that they were marginalized because of that fact.
I’m not saying there weren’t mistakes made on the developer’s part in all this; it’s quite apparent from various writings that Jonathan wanted greater success out of it, and he never intended it to be a hot button issue. Such is the law of unintended consequences. Sure, the last update reveals that in yet another admission, this was also a lead-in project for Game Salute to bring their array of game components online, and I know that will certainly garner additional eye rolls from some. Between that, and the way information was doled out, they didn’t do themselves many favors in the matter. Nevertheless, the project has been successful.
To me, though, that is irrelevant. The game itself is irrelevant. The project is irrelevant. My focus isn’t to deride or defend the game’s development, but instead to reaffirm the needed commitment to look at games through the lens of which audiences they’re supposed to be for, instead of the simply ones we want them to be. Perhaps, then, when the next Emperor comes to town, we gamers will be able to approach it more than in black and white terms. Or at least just white.