The Tiger’s den problem
Or, why we still deal with a very toxic way of thinking.
I woke up to this:
Now, let me talk for a second about a thing. I’m not even going to the problem of how QA departments are exploited and not paid enough. I of course deeply care about that, but I also think it is a symptom of a much more worrying way of seeing things in this industry.
Something I really was hoping we got past, but I see it’s still there, like a demon some of us keep fighting and never really goes away. As a matter of fact, this sort of thinking is fueled by a certain white male power fantasy attitude, that (unfortunately) I tend to see more from older developers, people who grew up like me across the 80s and have seen pretty much all the evolution of videogames.
It’s something that has made me left the industry, just a few years after I started, in the early 2000s, and move to work in web design (I know, right?) and back to study for a few years. It’s a mix of gatekeeping, exploitation, delusion of grandeur and bullying that I associate, as I often do, with a particular pop culture reference.
In the anime Tiger Mask, a Toei production from the ’70s the main character Naoto Date is a wrestler working under the Tiger Mask persona (that was inspired by a real Japanese wrestler, but that’s not important).
Naoto was a former member of the Tiger’s Den, an evil association which trained people to become vicious wrestlers. There are several things about the Tiger’s den that eerily echo the views of a (I hope diminishing) part of the game industry.
Celebration of suffering. The Tiger’s Den was famous for their extreme training sessions (usually involving torture). The passage through pain (symbolized by the ever present stay one night hung upside down, thank you norse mythology) is so celebrated in this industry through crunch. You’d be surprised how many times I hear this narrative of crunch as a mark of honor and good sacrifice. It’s not, obviously. But works so well with the male hero narrative and with the next element.
Gatekeeping. Here comes sociology 101 and the fact that some social groups want to be impermeable and exclusive because it’s through the definition of non-belonging that they define and legitimate their identity. There is a very toxic behavior at work here, of people wanting to make the developer clique extra exclusive and reject everyone they don’t perceive as a peer through a distorted understanding of skills and involvement. It all boils down to seeing a certain inner group as a small group of heroes/chosen ones(here we go with the same narrative) that are more fit than others. In the Tiger’s Den this belonging is expressed through a cult-like structure, the glorification of sacrifice and the use of violence as a form of gaining respect in the group. I have seen so many times in my career (and I’m a privileged white man, so, imagine how this hits underrepresented groups) a plethora of little secrecies, microaggressions and delegitimation techniques that pretty much resonate with the necessity of hard gatekeeping. Not saying that all the industry is like that, but there has been a fair amount of this around for a pretty long time. Surprisingly, I’ve seen this particular pattern happen even among the most progressive and apparently inclusive people. It’s a sneaky and dangerous mechanism.
Arbitrary hierarchies. I mean, all hierarchies are. But yes, despite what the author of the tweet says elsewhere (that he absolutely values the QA teams work and he just thinks they shouldn’t be labeled as game developer) the belonging to a certain, recognised group does have tangible effect. This might come out as obvious but it’s really important. The moment you, a game developer, state that a certain department cannot be labeled as game developers, you create a very dangerous space to enable a hierarchy. It’s even obvious and easy to see how that naturally leads to statements like
You are not a game developer, therefore you shouldn’t be paid as such.
You are not a game developer, therefore you shouldn’t be credited as such.
Also, being cast out a certain social group tends to crystallize and accentuate differences in treatment and interaction. It’s a very powerful form of social control. Of course this is easily seen in the Tiger’s Den story: Naoto, a former member of the Den, is then outcast and persecuted by the Den itself when he refuses to abide to their vicious practices. See where this goes? Yes, this is a fairly typical ronin story cliché, but I keep stressing that we have so much to learn about social structure from pop culture.
All this to say (also known as TL; DR:)
This sort of thinking seem to be innocuous, because after all is just about labelling. But unfortunately it enacts a really toxic environment that ends up with people devalued, payed less, delegitimated and sometimes even bullied.
Every single person in a team making games *is* a game developer. Without QA the game cannot be published. This is true for all the people in the team, in different roles and expertise. Making games is an absolute remarkable effort and everyone is important.
Also, please don’t get me started with a certain Italian developer who once stated that game designer is a worthless role because after all it’s just common sense (I’ll let this one settle).
