Complexification

Filed under: Conventions, Politics, Roleplaying
1 Comment

Not unexpectedly, I only made it to one panel yesterday, and only about 15 minutes of that.

It was a panel on gender in gaming, and by the time I got there (toward the end), it was mostly audience comments and questions. The bit I specifically wanted to mention, though, came from panelist Victor Raymond, who--after a discussion of romantic and/or sexual interaction between characters when one of the players is uncomfortable being romantic and/or sexual with the other player (actually, the focus was much narrower than that, but this is the general issue that they were touching on)--noted that he wanted to approach the issue from a sociological perspective. Specifically, he said:

"It's more complicated than that."

I want to adopt that as WisCon's official motto.

Except, of course, that having a single simple official sound-bite motto is contrary to the ideas of diversity and complexity.

Also, I'd like to polish the phrasing a little, to make it even more sound-bitey and catchy. I've been using the phrasing "Complexify, complexify, complexify," but that isn't especially euphonious.

Anyway, my real point is that regardless of the phrasing, I always hope to hear a comment along those lines at pretty much any panel or other discussion at WisCon. It's easy to oversimplify and overgeneralize; I do it all the time, even in this very sentence. I want us to keep reminding ourselves that it's always more complicated than that.

So thanks, Victor!

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One Response to “Complexification”

  1. hplovec

    Jed-

    I’m not sure if you’re aware but the International Game Developers Association (www.igda.org) does special interest groups to discuss various topics. Granted, this is for computer gaming, and your panel description didn’t mention if this was role playing or computer based, however, for the past 2 years I’ve been involved with the Sex in Games discussion group.

    It was spawned from a Game Developers Conference roundtable about sexuality in games headed by Brenda Brathwaite, lead designer for Playboy the Mansion and discussion has ranged from the mundane (the “Hot Coffee” mod of GTA:San Andreas,) to discussing what are the greatest challenges in creating a sexuality based game.

    In either case, if you’re interested, you can register at the site for free and sign up for the mailing list. You don’t have to participate (there are a ton of lurkers and I only post every few months when I think I have something to contribute,) but it might give you some further insight into what the panel was discussing.

    Colin

    reply

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