Gaming Apologist??

As many of you know, I’ve been involved in the roleplaying game industry for over thirty years. During that time I emerged as the leading spokesman for the industry when it came to claims of murder, mayhem and suicide being blamed on games. This role is one I am happy to perform, though I do find it minorly irksome to be labeled an apologist for games.

This isn’t because the word apologist is incorrect. The dictionary defines apologist as one who “writes or speaks in defense” of a subject. I certainly do that, as the above clip shows. The Pulling Report is certainly a document that many see as defending games.

The thing of it is that I don’t see what I do as defending games.

What I do is attack arguments that are not supported by fact. I use truth to expose lies about games. I use truth to point out where others are being unscrupulous in their criticisms; or where their methodology is faulty. If you look at the Pulling Report, you’ll see that it’s fully footnoted, and that my sources can be checked. (In fact, no one has ever has the courage to accuse me of being disingenuous in my presentation.)

Where I do get hit is by people who use the word “apologist” as if it means “shill.” Critics of games will point at me and suggest that I somehow have to say the things I say because I work for the industry. (The fact is that I do not get paid for my work in this capacity and even though, in the past, the Game Manufacturers Association has given me a committee and a budget, I’ve never touched the money; and in the last decade the committee hasn’t even had a budget.) Shills shade facts. They dwell in the shadows of statistical variance. They twist facts and words because there is no merit to their arguments.

This is the first time on my website I’ve mentioned this side of my career, and the first time I’ve ever linked to a site containing the Pulling Report. (The copies on my hard drive are from four OSes ago, so I can’t even open them.) It’s an interesting part of my career, however; and one that probably could stand some revisiting.

The video, by the way, was recorded last year at Gencon. The man who comes in and sits down to my left as I’m speaking is the late E. Gary Gygax who, along with David L. Arneson, created Dungeons & Dragons.