GenCon, the biggest board game convention in North America, has a very diverse (read: non-white male) line-up for its Insider Featured Presenters this year, including a female majority. I’ll let a celebrator explain (H/T: VD):
That’s right, folks. There are 13 female IIFPs and only 12 men. This means there are MORE WOMEN THAN MEN, and that is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL, because that is a HUGE amount of change in a really short period of time.
So, how did GenCon attain this goal of diversity:
And importantly, this lineup is much more reflective of the diversity of activity within the gaming industry as a whole. In years past, in order to get selected you pretty much had to be a cishet white dude working for a mainstream company on trad tabletop games. But this year’s lineup includes a wide swath of thought-leadership in the hobby, including tabletop publishers, LARP designers, event organizers, activists, critics, podcasters, academics, and community managers. Which is EXCITING!
Consider the nerd/geek distinction when reading the italicized list.
Here’s the list of people and their credits.
It has abandoned having presentations from people who create board games in companies that matter, in favour of people who like to talk about board games or have nothing to do with board games. Of course, our diversity celebrator thinks abandoning the raison d’etre of the convention is EXCITING!
Why is it that diversity is only ever achieved by allowing those who don’t make things, unimportant people, and those aren’t involved in the activity equal say to to key players who actually create things?
****
Also, notice this: more women than men is a huge deal. The individuals and their worth aren’t even mentioned, just having women there is all that is celebrated. Yet it is evil to suggest that: “Indies chosen as IIFPs were selected because of pretentious identity politics and not merit.” It’s all identity politics all the time with them, yet pointing it out is just wrong.
****
Contra Vox, I doubt this particular action will effect GenCon attendance over much. Of the many people I’ve known who’ve gone to GenCon not one has ever mentioned attending a panel. Most of the people I know who go, go to play as many games as possible and buy the newest games. I doubt a change in the industry panel line-up will even be noticed by the majority of attendees, let alone effect their attendance. (Although, it could be a first step to other measures).
Basically, the new lineup consists of people who do not actually produce anything, but exist only as parasites on the larger community.
I predict Gencons attendance will drop like a rock over the next decade.
I used to roll those polyhedral dice, back in the day.
Tabletop games face stiff competition from smart phones, PC games, consoles, etc.
If these women get more people – male or female – rolling polyhedral dice at the gaming tables, more power to them.
If these women FAIL to get more people rolling polyhedral dice – then GenCon isn’t worth anything anyway.
Arneson and Gygax are dead. If GenCon dies too, it will be the way of all flesh.
Aye. I still toss the dice every week or two. These “diversity” they are pushing have jack to do with gaming. They are parasites
if they wanted more women and non Whites, the industry has awesome people. Send Mike Stackpool or for a more urban flavor Lou Porter, both great writers or Beth McCoy or Lisa Steel who could a great symposium on the law or the middleor C,J Carella writer and game designers (for GURPS and inventor of Unisystem) or Larry Corriea which would cover Black, Female and Hispanic.
I have no doubt if I racked my head I’d come up with some Asian folk too. Gaming is pretty diverse
First question to all in every panel: show me your dice.
Second question: show me your code.
All else is dross. This will converge and, like all parts of the progressive borg, die.
Also, notice this: more women than men is a huge deal. The individuals and their worth aren’t even mentioned, just having women there is all that is celebrated.
That really describes just about every single human organization in the 21st Century western world. It also describes perfectly what will cause the death of western civilization.
“Contra Vox, I doubt this particular action will effect GenCon attendance over much. Of the many people I’ve known who’ve gone to GenCon not one has ever mentioned attending a panel. Most of the people I know who go, go to play as many games as possible and buy the newest games.”
This is how the world *should* work. It shouldn’t matter who runs the event so long as the event is fun and successful. In practice, however, these people don’t believe in running a fun, successful convention. They believe in using the convention to push their social agenda, which is why they’re so excited about gender ratios in the first place.
GenCon will disappear because these people will soon decide there are too many white males in attendance, or math-based games should be discouraged in favor of vampire cosplay, or the convention should mainstream necrophilic dinosaur sex like the SFWA did.
Identity politics is inherently focused on people, not things. So when SJWs try to talk about things, like science, math theorems, or in this case, games, they revert to talking about people who do things–or worse, what people think of things. So “feminist physics” isn’t about using the power of the uterus to measure the mass of a neutrino, but about “what women think about physics.” Which is not physics. They try to get little girls and minorities interested in science not by teaching them something really interesting about science, but by writing biographies about scientists or inventors who happened to be female or minority. (And kids’ biographies tend to be incredibly boring.) And when it comes to gaming, instead of making games, they want to talk about people who play games or people who make games.
I think, with guidance, they could learn to realize the difference between people and things.
I am humbled that you would link to my little blog. Of course, it’s hard to not hit targets that big.
If they need a minority to give an award, why not choose Mike Pondsmith?
Oh, that’s right. He didn’t succeed because of affirmative action. Never mind.