Hey! So, this might end up feeling a bit more free willing than usual because partly
I just wrapped a convention appearance
and (of course) I've now got a bit of a
headcold and also because I'm putting this
together kinda last minute...
(inaudible voice off camera)
WE'RE putting this together kinda last minute.
Ok so, I had a different episode that was going to
run this week (we'll probably run it next
week instead, it should still be unfortunately evergreen) but I wanted to bump it for
something else because it's not really
about "happy stuff" going on in the world
of gaming and it honestly has been bugging
me a bit that SO MUCH of the week-to-week
discourse here and elsewhere in games "commentary"
(I guess?) is so often on the negative side
- regardless of whether or not you can pin it
on ME being personally a sourpuss or the world
just being kind of, ya' know, terrible.
So I'd been genuinely  hoping to see something
positive happen in video games (outside of
"Oh hey, this game seems nice") to build
a happy installment around and wow
yeah, then this whole thing happened.
So, context: Along with ridiculous disasters
of the self-inflicted kind, the UK is currently
grappling with a bizarre wave of organized
and extremely hateful campaigns against transgender
rights and really, transgender existence
as part of a free society fronted by a strange-bedfellows
mashup of political alliances that have turned their ire recently on the awarding of a
500,000 pound charitable grant from the British
National Lottery to the transgender youth
charity "Mermaids", which works to raise
awareness,
connect trans youth and their parents with
support, resources and information and lobby
for better treatment of transgender individuals
and public education on trans rights issues...
with the controversy blowing up massively
when once-popular comedian and TV producer
turned prominent anti-trans-rights political
activist, Graham Linehan pushed his social
media followers and fans to inundate the National
Lottery with complaints (mainly about deeply
misunderstood science and baseless child-abuse
conspiracy theories) involving the
organization that led to the grant being temporarily rescinded and placed under review.
In response, Harry Brewis - a popular YouTube
video-essayist and Twitch-streaming personality
better known as "Harris Bomberguy" or
"HBomberguy" - decided to boot up a charity
stream on Twitch wherein he'd raise money
specifically for donation to Mermaids in defiance of
Linehan's aim to defund the group by
inviting fans and followers, of his
to toss in donations in his direction while hanging
out on-stream and watching him
attempt a complete playthrough of the famously
frustrating and overlong DONKEY KONG 64; starting
off with a modest target goal
...and then things got wild.
The "HBomberguy" stream ended up catching fire on social media,
hundreds
of fans began kicking in ever-increasing sums
of money and flooding internet discussion
spaces with newly-minted memes about the game,
their Host's take on his escalatingly-esoteric
experience with it and visual-puns on the
idea of Donkey Kong characters reimagined
as trans rights icons.
Noteworthy fellow YouTube and gaming celebrities
like Linkara, John Romero, Natalie Wynn, my
friends and colleagues Lindsay Ellis and Jim Sterling, former "Matila" actress Mara Wilson,
MANY others all made call-in appearances to
encourage further donations (full disclosure:
I did not call in as I was working most of
the weekend (as I said) through I did make a donation
of my own and would've been happy to call in under other circumstances)...
..with the stream eventually extending all
the way into mainstream media attention as
international politics got involved with Chelsea
Manning and social-media superstar United
States Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
calling to show their support, encourage donations
and..
yeah, talk about classic gaming.
[on phone] "My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez I am the Congresswoman for New York's
14th congressional district."
[Cortez] "It's a...it's a no brainer Trans-rights are civil rights are human rights."
- [off camera] "Woo"     - [HBomberguy] laughing
[Cortez] laughing
[Cortez] "I never own an M64, through I do think it's probably the best system out of all of them."
"Um...I never own an M64, but I use to go to my cousin's house all the time and she had
Super Mario 64, Pokemon Snap..."
Now, obviously - the basic inherent GOODNESS
of this is plain on its face (or it should be).
A bunch of people coming together organically
and spontaneously in the spirit of charity
and shared humanity to do something positive
and then will it into something increasingly
fun and meaningful in order to make that positive
impact increasingly large.
It was, bar none, one of the most remarkable
and beautiful things that I've ever seen
play out in a digital space and I was simply...
awestruck and proud of how admirable the people
involved in this were (to say nothing of honored
to "know" a few of them in one way or another).
But it wasn't until I rewatched and considered
the magnitude and meaning of the brief yet
striking interaction between Brewis and Congresswoman
Ocasio-Cortez that I understood how specifically
(though I would stress NOT most-importantly)
powerful it felt AS a gaming moment...and
that part of what I was reacting to was the
first overwhelmingly strong sense in ages
of a wholly-positive incarnation of a "gamer
culture" in the form of, "Hey let's play
this game" as an rally-point for friends,
colleagues and indeed total strangers to organize
around and affect positive change.
I recognized that in many respects THIS was
the energy - if not the specific accoutremants
- of the game-culture I'd felt like I could
remember existing at one time but hadn't
felt the presence of in forever.
A variant totally different from both the
aggressive toxicity of frog-memeing conspiracy-monger
edgelords raging against the hair color choices
of games journalists on one hand and the bloated,
shambling husks of the slow-motion imploding
AAA games industry on the other, and that's
celebratory of gaming as a positive force
without that very celebration needing to be
the focus or the reason for being. By which I mean
...ya' know, "gaming charity streams"
themselves occasionally get a bad or at least
cynical reputation because so often they're
seen (not entirely without reason) as being about using
the act of charity as a tool for building up "gaming" or
"gamers" as opposed to the other way around.
- ya' know, "Hi! You can't criticize this controversial game
or call gamers toxic in any situation anymore because
SEE we did a charity thing and that means it's good now"
- and there
was just NONE of that energy or even a sense
of NEED to "defend" or "build up"
any of the medium at all here.
You had a sitting member of Congress and a
quote-unquote "gamer" in the same space
NOT as enemies arguing over censorship, or
granular freeze peach goofery, but as ALLIES
unifying (if only for a moment) to do something
actually meaningful about an issues that actually
mattered. And, not to argue and snark over a game but to commiserate over
shared classic Nintendo 64 memories.
I mean, yeah, without this turning into
a complete ramble...
(inaudible voice off camera)
...look I'm doing my best, we've usually got a week to work on these, I'm doing this in like 2 days!
What happened on that stream was, broadly,
an example of what the best in simple humanity
should look like. Period.
But it's also, in the narrow sense, an idea
of what the BEST version of gamers and gaming
can look like - a refreshing antidote to the
mean-spirited ugliness that's defined the
culture for too long and I genuinely feel
like maybe a measure of redemption for
some of the less-than-beneficial things "gamer
culture" has been party to in recent years.
And watching it play out I felt rejuvenated and hopeful and positive and renewed about video game in a way
that almost nothing has made me feel about them in a very very long time.
It's a 
better way forward - should we choose it.
Just a thought.
And one more thing...
Trans-rights are human rights.
