I’ve decided that I want to give this whole blogging thing
another go. After a few more years getting into tabletop gaming and greater
exposure to gamer culture online, I feel that I have more to say and more
background to speak with insight.
There are a few geeky topics of varying intensity that I
would like to blather about here including tabletop and online gaming, comic
books, geeky movies or TV, and opera. A common thread that continues to come up
in conversations with my wife and friends, however, is the state of nerd
communities and our media.
What has happened in terms of my nerdvolution in recent
years? I’ve played some new table top RPGs: Pathfinder, Numenera, and a game
developed by a friend of mine called Valor. I’ve played oodles of MMORPGs in a
desperate quest to replace the increasingly problematic World of Warcraft. For
one of these games, Star Wars: The Old Republic, I helped start and lead a
guild, which turned out to be an interesting window into a whole host of issues
about bullying, personal identity, and nerdly social dynamics that I would
never have guessed would come up.
I have also read a great deal more of the quintessential nerd
books and comics including some of the Drizzt series, Harry Potter, Star Wars
novels, The X-Men’s Phoenix Saga, and the Forgotten Realm’s Avatar series…
which similarly brought up a whole host of feminist and racial identity issues.
Go figure.
I really enjoyed these games and this nerdy media most of
which I have only consumed in the past 2 or 3 years or so. My experience with
gamers has been largely great and I have met people from different background that
I would have never met otherwise. Nevertheless, something about these
experiences sometimes fires up my sociological eye.
Maybe nerd media and communities are no more backwards or
troublesome than the general populace and mainstream media. Like the general
populace and mainstream media, however, nerd demographics are thankfully
diversifying more and more. As this happens the troublesome aspects of gender
and racial tropes and acceptance (or lack thereof) within this diversifying
group become more and more apparent and demanding of investigation and
challenge.
