Stepping on Other People’s Fun
A few weeks ago I wrote about how people gatekeep themselves from certain games. To me, it makes no sense that you reject games out of hand because of something about the game. That it’s a card game, or it’s a Kickstarter game or anything like that. But it’s a whole lot worse when people do it to others. When it comes down to it, preventing yourself from having as much fun as you might have, that is your problem. But when you do it to someone else, that’s a problem.
We see here two tweets that got me thinking about this topic. And it’s not a topic that I’ve been ignorant of, in fact, it’s one that I think about fairly often. And the first tweet is much more general than just board games, but Rodney Smith talks about how it matters with board games as well in his video.
The Golden Rule of Being a Fan
We start today in an interesting place. I won’t directly touch on the topic, because I think we as fans of things need to consider what I hope is what we all want.
We want more people to find joy in our fandoms.
Basically, the rule, as is said simply up there, we want more people to join into our fandom. We want more people to love and find joy in the things we love and find joy in. The more people who find joy in the things we find joy in, the more we have in common with people, and the more we can share the joys of our life. That is the ideal that I hold for being a fan and one that I hope that fandoms as a whole can agree upon.
Where It Goes Wrong
However, it often goes wrong. And Rodney talks about it with board games, and I’m going to talk about it in that light as well generally, but this covers a lot of things. It tends to go wrong when current fans expect other people to be fans in the same way they are fans.
A board game example, a person who loves euro games might look down upon a new gamer who likes lighter games like Munchkin. A television example, a Doctor Who fan might look down on someone who prefers Peter Capaldi to David Tennant as the Doctor. A movie example, a Star Wars fan might look down on a new Star Wars fan who enjoys the prequel trilogy.
You can see how it works, because someone doesn’t enjoy the fandom in the exact way that someone else does, it isn’t as good. Their enjoyment of the fandom is less valid than the person who has been the fan longer or is the fan in the “right way”.
How We Tackle This
I could have spent more time on the negative, because it gets me annoyed. Rodney Smith is one of the nicest people out there and you see how passionate he is about the issue. But I see too many other posts who will just talk about the negative aspect and not about how we can help change things. And honestly, we need to change things. We look at big aggressions or slip ups and they are bad, like the gamers who scoff at female gamers, or similar to that, and we point fingers and call those people horrible. But it’s extremely insidious and easy to step on someone’s excitement out of a place that looks like it’s better. It is equally as harmful though to getting new people into the fandom or hobby.
The most common example of this is, and again going to board games, a conversation on Facebook or Twitter that goes something like this.
Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”
Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”
Person 2 in Hobby: “Have fun with that game.”
Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t a good game, you should play Scythe instead.”
Written out like this, you can easily see what the issue is. The newbie is excited for their new game, they are probably just getting into games and like lighter fare that is closer to what they have played before. The first response is just bad. If you don’t like the game, great, don’t step on someone else’s fun and excitement. The second response is probably fine, I through that one in there to make it look more realistic in responses. The third one is also bad because again it’s negative and ruining someone’s fun. It hedges itself in being positive by giving unsolicited and not useful advice. If this person posting their excitement is truly new to the hobby, Scythe is not a jumping in point, or whatever the person’s favorite game might be.
It might seem weird, but I’ve seen all of these responses and more negative ones. Why doe we like to be negative about things and ruin other people’s joy? As Rodney says in his video: “It’s not special not to like something.” Maybe it’s a power play, but honestly, I think most of the time it’s because people are excited or excited and disappointed might be better. They see someone say, “I got a new game” and they think it’ll be something maybe they’ve been interested in and then when it isn’t get they get disappointed. I think that this is where especially comments like “X isn’t good, try Y instead” come from. The person is trying to get their excitement back by getting someone to agree with them or to like their thing. But to the person who posted, it’s just negative.
So what’s better? To quote Thumper from Bambi: “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Honestly, it’s that simple, there is nothing that requires you to respond to a tweet or Facebook post on something you don’t like. In fact, it’s 99% of the time better to ignore them and show support to things you do like. A newbie to a hobby or fandom will generally gravitate towards the parts that are positive and away from the parts that are negative, as most people will. But if there is too much negative, a newbie might just leave a hobby or fandom. If you do feel compelled to respond, let’s see a better response.
Newbie: “I’m so excited I just picked up Munchkin, I’m so excited to play it.”
Person in Hobby: “That’s awesome, I hope you enjoy it.”
Doesn’t say that you like the game, but you are wishing joy upon the person and eventually, maybe that person will agree with you that Munchkin isn’t great and they want to play Scythe, but let them get there and let them grow into the hobby instead of pushing away.
But let’s look at another situation:
Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”
Person in Hobby: “Munchkin sucks.”
Person 2 in Hobby: “I used to like Munchkin.”
Person 3 in Hobby: “Munchkin isn’t good, you should get Scythe.”
Now, I went with all wrong answers here. Now, the person who started asked for an opinion on Munchkin, saying Munchkin sucks is an opinion, but doesn’t give any information nor is it said in a constructive or useful way. It’s aggressively negative for no good reason. The second one is saying the same as the first, just in a much nicer way. And the third one, the person asked for advice, but it was about Munchkin, not about Scythe or whatever the person’s favorite game again.
It falls into the same lines as the other example above and reasoning as to why those are not good responses. Let’s say that you really don’t like Munchkin, what is a better response?
Newbie: “I’m thinking about getting Munchkin, is it a good game?”
Person in Hobby: “I’m not a big fan of Munchkin, I don’t like how much take that there is in it. If your group likes that sort of thing though, it’d probably work for you.”
The big difference, it’s a nicely stated that the person doesn’t like the game. They only talk about the game the person asked about. And they gave a reason why they don’t like it. I even wrapped it up with an encouraging thing clarifying that for some people the game will work.
One final example that I see often as well:
Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”
Person in Hobby: “Those games suck.”
Person 2 in Hobby: “I remember when I liked those games.”
Person 3 in Hobby: “Scythe”
Again, it’s fairly easy to see what is wrong with these. They are very negative, two don’t answer the question and they tell the person they are doing it wrong. At least the first two do, the third one is just Scythe again. And it might seem like I’m picking Scythe, but honestly it’s one I see a lot of people use, I could also say my favorite game as well, Gloomhaven. But it’s also not useful to suggest massive games that the person would struggle with. It’s possibly less hurtful than the other two, but can push people away because it’ll make them feel inferior if they try a big game like Scythe or Gloomhaven and are overwhelmed by it because of what they have played before.
Then answering a question like this, think of it as stepping stones. You might want them to play Scythe, but that means you need to help get them there, taking the same steps that basically every gamer did from Classic Games to Modern Classics to Hobby Games to Scythe. If you need help with that, here’s a bit of a cheat sheet.
So what’s a better response?
Newbie: “I’m just getting into the hobby. I have Catan, Ticket to Ride, Munchkin, and Exploding Kittens, what game do you think I’d like?”
Person in Hobby: “Hmmm… I think that Five Tribes or Small World could be interesting for you.”
Person 2 in Hobby: “Good question, what do you like about those games? Something like Potion Explosion could be interesting, maybe if you like the set collecting and completing stuff parts of Catan and Ticket to Ride.”
Pretty easy to see how these are better. They give suggestions in line with or a bit more complex with that the person has played before. I think it’s always good to ask clarifying questions as well. The second person asks the general question of what is liked, but then gives a specific element of both Catan and Ticket to Ride, set collection in their reasoning. That sort of engagement makes the new person feel more involved in the hobby and in the group.
Go Forth and Grow the Fandom
Now, we are all going to slip up on this. I know that I do it from time to time as well. For me, it is something I intentionally don’t want to propagate throughout a hobby or a fandom that I love, this negative response. And I truly believe that most gamers, most fans, they want their hobby to grow. With that, I do believe there is a bit of letting go of your fandom or hobby just like you hold it. That can be hard, but when you can do that, your hobby and fandoms will grow. You will learn new things and see things in a new way, and it’ll strengthen your own joy in a fandom or hobby. I hope in the upcoming years we see more fans of board games grow and more fans of every fandom come into light and that we can all enjoy those similar things in our own way remembering that just because someone likes something a bit different than you, it doesn’t have a negative impact on your own joy.
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