Play Matt: Are Competitive Men a Board Gaming Blight?

I would guess that the women you play with are partially trail blazers, ie you have the experience of playing with men and you are also a selection with different characteristics from the whole female population. But I hope your example will be followed!

I greatly enjoy many types of board games but I do not enjoy playing with others at all. Hence, all of my gaming is solo, which I very much enjoy.

It has taken me a while to come to the conclusion that I am a bad winner/loser and mid position player. I enjoy none of these experiences.

Of course, I totally understand that many people game because of the social interactions. In my games, the only toxic player is me and this reduces my stress considerably.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy having a drink with friends, I do, but not gaming so much.

Much of this is my totally non competitive nature in work and leisure time. I have no ambitions to be the boss and I have no desire for winning. As most folk know, I despise sport in all of its formats and remain bemused at its tribal nature. I think this has always been the way with me but for some fucked up psychological bullshit reason, I have probably been repressing the feelings for most of my life. Now, I feel far more in control of what I do as a result of discarding the competitive elements of my life to the trash bin.

I finally ginned up the will to go through this and my feelings are similar to Barnes'. Whatever "SJW snowflake soyboy cuck virtue signaler" thing you think I am, I guarantee you I'm even worse, so there isn't much point in my chiming in, but I will anyway.

I'm similarly unmotivated by the desire to win. I play games, and I try my best, but I don't care if I win or not. I don't read strategy articles, I don't care about "meta" or anything like that, I don't normally even note wins. In negotiation games (or games that someone has turned into a negotiation game), if someone tries to drive a hard bargain with me I will usually just respond with a civil version of "eh, get bent" and then go on to lose.

I don't understand hyper-competitiveness and I don't play into it. If someone comes at me hard and aggressive in a game, I'm done with that game, because I don't care and because I'm not giving time to this asshole.

As to the larger statement of the aggrieved white men, I cannot imagine how you can deny such a thing. There's a definite plague of them at the moment, and the nerd world is rife with them. Is it moreso? I don't know or care; it's in my house so I have to deal with it. I've been through gamergate, through comicsgate, through the board game issues that were clearly influenced by them. We still see them all the time, in the legions of dudes who are constantly complaining that hearing from or about anyone who isn't like them is so annoyingly political, unlike the desire for everyone who isn't like them to shut up and stop bitching and merely accept a nerd world by and for straight white men.

And this is all in a current social climate that is dominated by the ultimate Aggrieved White Man, by a renaissance in hypercompetitiveness and cruelty, by the rise in dominant, punishing, humiliating authority which isn't satisfied with crushing you under their boot, you also have to thank them for it and commend their crushing skills.

It's not competition that's the issue. It's a specific type of competition. And it's been brewing for some time but really seeing now as its moment to shine.

ubarose wrote:

jur wrote: But women in all-women groups have toxic ways of exercising power too. Not so much through physical intimidation but there are processes of social exclusion, gossip and shaming that work just as effectively to police behaviour in all-women groups.

This is true. Of course every group is different, however, in my personal experience, women have paradoxically exercised their power to exclude other women who are seen as playing too competitively or aggressively. That is certainly one way to ensure that a game group all defines "healthy competition" in the same way.

To clarify, I’m assuming playing competitively and aggressively is ok within the confines of the game.

The problem is competitive or aggressive behavior from the player, correct? Subtle distinction—it seems important though.

I'm not going to lie, this premise of this discussion has annoyed me and I think I've figured out why. This whole discussion is framed around the question "Are most white men that play board games assholes?" Cause that's really what's being asked here. You can qualify with "hyper-competitive" or "angry" if you like, but the undertones are still there. So with the question framed that way, and being part of the demographic targeted with this stereotype/generalization, I feel like I'm being goaded into defensiveness or some sort of self-flagellation. So I'm just going to ignore that and refer to whomever we want to target here as simply "assholes" and move on. Because anyone that personally attacks or belittles someone verbally over a game, in person or on the internet, is an asshole.

Now, if we're talking simply about assholes on the internet being assholes to others that talk about board games, good luck changing that (hence my flippant comment earlier in this thread). I'll be honest, I'm not sure this is limited to "nerd-culture" or not. Perhaps it is worse, but I lack a clear frame of reference. And I do wonder if nerd-culture simply attracts more men on the Autism spectrum that have trouble managing emotions or empathizing with others. The only way to deal with this is to make people feel unwelcome for making direct or indirect attacks, and while I may not agree with all the new moderation here, I DO NOT MISS THE PERSONAL ATTACKS.

But let's talk assholes at your game table...why the fuck are they still there? Perhaps it's my blessing (and curse) that I very rarely play a game with strangers. These are my friends and acquaintances I play with, and I wouldn't knowingly tolerate abuse of others. There are more subtle problems at our table (as any other) where perhaps we sometimes get excited and loud and that can be intimidating to others, but my wife shuts that down if she's around and I try to keep it in check. But really, once you get outside of personal abuse by some asshole (which should eject them from your group), we really move into the area of the magic circle. And that's for your own group to set up and enforce. If you have some asshole that likes to "control the meta" and badgers other players incessantly, don't allow it. If the rest of the group is cool with that, then perhaps you need to find a group that meshes with your interests better.

Let me give a couple of concrete examples of the above:

A former co-worker of mine, who was one of the people that got me into board games, is always about playing above the table. And he can be loud and aggressive about it, but never abusive. It's just how he likes to play and have fun. I personally have no issue with it (at least when he's sober), but my wife hates playing with him. Well he's long since moved away and we only see him at BGG.Con these days (which is bad, because he drinks the entire time). The first year my wife went with me, we played a number of games with him and generally did not have a good time. So guess what, now we generally avoid him, and we let him know that's what we're doing and why. We still do occasionally play with him, and when we do, he tries to keep himself reigned in. When he plays with others, he plays his own way. And that's fine, I don't want to tell other people how they can have fun. But if your behavior interferes with my fun at the game table, I will make sure I don't play with you.

Most of the people I play games with are nerdy engineers from my office, but my neighbor from down the street joined my group a couple years back. He's a biker, my wife calls him "pirate" due to how he looks, and he tends to be more of a "fuck it" aggressive gamer. If anything, he's the least competitive player in my group, because he just does something because it seems fun. Again, never makes personal attacks outside of the context of the game. My wife is intimidated by his demeanor, and get's really stressed out playing direct conflict games with him. She fully admits that he's a nice guy and he never picks on her over anyone else, but that is her own personal bias. So, she just won't play that type of game with him, and that's fine (to be fair, she generally avoids those games anyhow). He's not doing anything wrong here, so I see no need to censure him.

So I guess I'm just trying to say don't play games with assholes. And if your public game group is loaded with assholes, start figuring out which ones aren't and just play with them. Because I'll bet they'll be much happier, as well.

@uba

That kind of in game restriction drives me insane. My partner has these informal rules so we've realized competitive games are a no-go for us.

You should see the weird constrained games of argent we play. To her credit, once I explained how, like, I found rushing mages to end turns was just as aggressive as using fireball sorcerers she had a real epiphany.

You know, uba, I actually think the sort of thing we're talking about falls more within the purview of the original article Matt is commenting upon. Like, some people have had such a shitty time with competitive *in game* play they've just opted out. My partner is because of endless bullying and "mental superiority" stuff that surrounded her brother and parents growing up related to winning games that puts her on serious tilt when things get competitive inside the game, not even above the table like a most of this thread is about.

We play lots coops or very passive interaction worker placement/adventure games together.

Man, what a load of BS. What does being white or straight have to do with being an asshole during a game? What does being a male have to do with it either? Assholes are assholes, sore losers exist across the spectrum.

What "white privilege" exists when playing a board game? The rules don't favor the gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity of the player (except perhaps some trivia games). All the players start out according to the rules and they don't favor anything other than knowledge of the rules. I'm at a loss as to how any physical characteristic "defines" a bad gamer other than interpersonal bullying and that also occurs regardless of any "fragile white toxic ego" claptrap you can assign to someone just based on their appearance.

Face it. We are mostly adults playing games that are really meant for kids. Many are marketed towards adolescent male kids, primarily white, because that is just the largest demographic. So when Red Scorpion strikes her pose with her assets hanging out, it is because adolescent hormone driven males like it so the former adolescent hormone driven adult males making the game commission that art. Adults really shouldn't be playing FFG terrinoth games. They should be playing chess, bridge, poker, or maybe some grindy multiplayer solitare mechanic driven sterile euro with so little theme that no one can get offended and it doesn't encourage any bad habits. Or they should be out working to provide for their families in a dangerous job that fulfills any power fantasy that may still be lingering in their subconscious so when they come home it is a place of refuge, not a combat arena they need to control.

Games, especially thematic ones, can't always be marketed to EVERYONE. Sometimes you gotta pick a group and play to that groups desires and expectations. Don't like it? Then you are not part of that target group and you should seek out or create a game that DOES appeal to you. I'd LOVE to see what an area control game designed by and made for women looks like. It might not appeal to me but I'd still like to see it and I don't think I'd complain if all the men in the game are represented by sniveling beta males, whiny metro dudes with man-buns and skinny jeans, and ill-kempt potbellied neandertals in white undershirts with the goal end prize being Fabio. THE GAME ISN'T FOR ME.

That said, I am glad that WOTC changed their art direction to include POC and women not wearing chainmail bikinis. I have enough Frazetta and Vajello art books that my son can enjoy puberty and my daughter can feel welcome playing DnD. But maybe she won't be so down with Descent or Warhammer 40K?

Face it. We are mostly adults playing games that are really meant for kids. Many are marketed towards adolescent male kids, primarily white, because that is just the largest demographic. So when Red Scorpion strikes her pose with her assets hanging out, it is because adolescent hormone driven males like it so the former adolescent hormone driven adult males making the game commission that art. Adults really shouldn't be playing FFG terrinoth games. They should be playing chess, bridge, poker, or maybe some grindy multiplayer solitare mechanic driven sterile euro with so little theme that no one can get offended and it doesn't encourage any bad habits. Or they should be out working to provide for their families in a dangerous job that fulfills any power fantasy that may still be lingering in their subconscious so when they come home it is a place of refuge, not a combat arena they need to control.

I don't agree with this. I don't Uwe is designing things like AGRICOLA for 11yos. I just don't buy it at all. TWILIGHT STRUGGLE is meant to be mixed in with SORRY! and LIFE? That's just not correct. I think it's smart business to make a game that appeals to kids, but none of these boutique shops think kids have $80 to punk on a board game. They know who they are going after. Those big tiddy goth girl sculpts in all the KSs aren't for Susie, they are for Arnold.

I think things are getting better. Most of the community would see something like Red Scorpion as problematic now. But that's because of the hard work of taking a stand and pointing out it's wrong when that could be embarrassing or bad for business.

Thomas Hobbes doesn't get enough credit for laying the foundation for the world we live in now. To recap, Thomas Hobbes was a scholar from the mid-17th century who described nature as "bellum omnium contra omnes," a "war of all against all" and described an authoritarian politics as the human contribution towards keeping this state of entropy under wraps. Hobbes didn't base what he said on any study of nature at all, but from having been raised poor, and from having seen the English Civil War up close. His theory came from a lifetime of seeing people at their worst and had nothing to do with nature at all. Animals, for instance, do not kill one another just because they can. Neither, really, do humans. They have to be taught and encouraged to do so, and there is no shortage of kings willing to use the complexity of the human mind to turn it against itself for its own ends so they don't have to do the fighting themselves. The history of political philosophy has mainly started from a refutation of Hobbes as a sort of Chicken Little hysteric. To this end, Hobbes has been forgotten, because scholars since Locke think of themselves as being above re-litigating Hobbes.

The problem is, Hobbes is still useful for kings and other ruling class assholes. You don't have to think much about what he says, especially if you've had to compete for basic necessities your whole life, which is a common thing under capitalism, from the very poor up through the middle class. The rich, of course, compete for other things, and use us in that competition. It's conceivable that you could leave an American High School, with its strictly delimited set of winners and losers, without knowing how to write a complete sentence, but still having instinctively come to know the dictum "bellum omnium contra omnes."

I have not seen a defense by red-blooded american boys against "SJW cucks" which is not essentially Hobbesian in this way. "You assholes armed with your spelling bee trophies and pedigrees are asking me to lay down my guns and spell "neoliberalism"? No thanks." Our culture (and our games) are swimming eyeball deep in Hobbesianisms. Artificially produced conflict is an essential element in the pedagogy of narrative structure: i.e. "where's the conflict?" This is an essential part of the way the ruling class instrumentalizes us to do its bidding and to shut up when we're not, and it is rewarded by the ruling class often enough that pursuing it within the perceived entropy of capitalism sometimes seems the only worthwhile thing to do.

Asking men to lay down arms when arms are their only competitive advantage is an uphill battle without first getting a grip on the ideology that fuels it, and it doesn't require a degree in political philosophy to do so, just a bit of literacy in it.

And this has been my 67 cents on the subject.