Enough of the dudebro strawman

Dudebros suck don't they? They run around spouting out terrible stereotypes, support bad products, and criticize the good ones with immature slander. At least I think that's what they are. These are one of those articles where I really wish I had an audience. I really wish I could actually ask the serious question of a show of hands; Who has actually met this supposedly massive dudebro demographic, and if so how many of them have you seen? I'm sure its something that is real and is out there, as are the ignorant folks that dismiss animation as childish, and idiotic fanboys. However like these radical opinions, I don't think dudebros are to be taken seriously and there probably aren't enough of them to actually hurt anyone. Yet comment section after comment section it sounds like they're to blame for all of the world's nerd culture, political, or social problems. This especially applies to game culture as it would seem, political and social fields have plenty of other guys to blame, but for gamers to point fingers as to why their most amazing game ever didn't sell we have 3 common options: Blame poorly handled development or market conditions and all the variables that may come with that. The other two are blaming dudebros, or blaming a popular trend/genre like FPS. I already covered why the FPS scapegoat is ridiculously stupid, so I guess this is sort of a follow up for the dudebros.

So for starters dudebro has no solid definition. Its a label used to roughly describe a fratboy-like dude that you hated in college. Notice how the music and some brief descriptions change up, and yet stays oddly specific in the creepy grudge sort of way throughout the loose dictionary of the internet. It gets worse. Just look at that list! Mitt romney is on there for whatever reason, and the list sets unrealistic inhumane portrayals like the very first list bit asking if all you do is talk sports and sex. There is not a single person that can sanely answer that list right, because the entire thing is a juvenile strawman label the author is venting on with not so subtle gender politics involved. The person being described is pretty much an extreme fratboy who has turned criminal (remember the article is practically defining them as rapists). There is not a full sub-culture of that out there, and if there was then the last thing you'd be worried over is them calling Nintendo or Double Fine games childish. Its an unrealistic label being created to beat up on. What people out there that inspire such caricatures (likely frat boys in a small young adult phase of ignorance and insecurity) are in fact a pretty small minority compared to the more level-headed folks.

Bringing this back around to exclusively games though, I feel things don't change too much. You have this seemingly mythical group that goes around refusing to buy anything good, calling your games kiddie, and any time something a cult following likes isn't successful they get blamed. These are the guys that supposedly "hardcore" game their way around every AAA M rated action title but are too good to touch anything lesser. Yet the term simultaneously applies to guys that only play annualized games, except pokemon because that's totally an exception that would make this whole thing seem weird. This blame game can happen any time, unless your game in question is an FPS or open world action game in which case you don't have easy access to this label. That's actually the big kicker that sets off a small avalanche of issues with this strawman concept: Plenty of games fumble and fail under this loose dudebro stereotype. Look at bulletstorm! Big gruff dudebro protagonist with bulky muscles, empowering gameplay, tons of creative swears, gritty gore, and of course its an FPS. Didn't sell even close to EA's inflated success standards (remember this, I'll refer back to it later). Look at Space Marine, a game that is even named after a supposedly stale dudebro trait that has big bald men running around with chainsaw swords and guns that fire miniature exploding bullets. How much more bro-ness do you need for that to get your attention dude!? Oh but not only did the game not sell any special record amount, but the publisher sank because their games (another recent one of which was "GO USA!" military shooter HomeFront, so the publisher was double dudebro-ing when they faded) sold that poorly. So who are the dudebros going to blame for this mess?

"Where are my dude brethren?" cried the dying space marine

Want to take this even further? What if I told you an entire sub-genre capable of pandering to that stereotype has been gone in this supposed rise of the dudebro? Well it has, I call it Arena Shooters. You know a genre where their iconic aesthetic was buff gruff heavily armored bulky space marines splattering each others blood with state of the art graphics, built-in trash talk, online play, and big manly guns. The genres last major innovation was big manly death vehicles, and in UT's case they had hoverboards. Even Halo, one of the last games to truly run on somewhat of an arena shooter vibe, has declined across last generation where dudebros were supposedly running rampant and ruining our quality stuff. These were high quality games that were injected with aesthetics that were over the top masculine to the point of hilarious fun, yet there were no dudebros rescuing them because this supposed demographic doesn't even exist in such a large supply like people would expect. Heck even with the help of the old school FPS fans like myself aren't enough to combine with the dudebros and have these games make waves. Meanwhile Last of Us has sold well over 6 million at this point. Dudebros, right? Umm.... no, that's just where the audience is for a lot of the modern day "hardcore" gamers. Cinematic adventure games, survival infused gameplay, zombies, and dramatic story telling.

Look, there are problems out there but if we're building our own dumb little scapegoat that's less likely to fix anything. These "dudebro" things manage to magically pop up as a solution that doesn't quite make sense for why point & click, some set of indie games, Nintendo, that platformer you loved, horror, and others don't sell but honestly they all have other problems attached to them in some way or another. You want to know why Point & click isn't a major genre in the AAA market? Well for one thing its not exactly AAA stuff anymore (what would you dump the budgeting into outside of graphics and voice actors!?), and because its not a high stakes high sales game the publishers and developers aren't very interested. That's an industry problem, and one I, and more important critics that actually have an audience like Jim Sterling have been calling out for a long time. Now you might blame dudebros for not letting it sky rocket into the mainstream again, but to put it bluntly you've got very niche tastes in that kind of thing. Your best element was story driven adventures, and that's been taken over by practically everyone outside (not within) the sports and military shooter genres. A large audience would rather do more than just point & click while being stopped by logic redefining puzzles. What's that, indie game #729 is your favorite game ever and you're upset its not selling more because "dudebros"? Well maybe if someone of importance had actually covered it better it might have gotten the attention of dudebros and beyond. There's also that fact that its gameplay probably wasn't a trustable source of fun because indies usually have weird short lived twists over mechanics that many people aren't sure they'll enjoy. Its not because they were off punching in mountain dew codes for double XP in call of duty, instead they might be testing themselves in Dark Souls, replaying Shadows of the Colossus, supporting another niche game that barely gets seen, or they could be making their Skyrim lets plays on youtube, or just having some lazy week playing retro games with their nostalgic friends. Its almost like there's a ton of better places to be and do than risk your money within gaming. While we're at logical answer, we've found a way to explain why the magical dudebro strawman army wasn't there to save Bulletstorm. It was because the concept was interesting but a little strange with its arcadey points & stylized kills making some people (not just dudebros) wait, and EA's budgeting and sale standards were far too high for what the product was. On top of all that even some of the people that wanted it were disappointed with it because the direction of the game was tugged around a bit to be a psudo-old school shooter marketing as a more pure shooter. Oh yeah and its general marketing wasn't exactly spectacular (not terrible, but it wasn't great either). See real problems have real answers, where as the strawman only has holes and more questions in place. When we put a real solution up, things start to make sense of themselves.

The real final example I give you is for Nintendo, which deserves its own paragraph here. Now I understand a bit of the defensive-ness because there actually is a legit population that is ignorant enough to say "Nintendo is kiddie". However they still aren't the core problem that would fix everything if they disappeared. Heck look at the 3DS, tons of sales for that thing, so again the dudebro strawman is leaving questions because its not a clear answer. Millions of 3DS fans didn't just wake up and boycott the wii U because it was kiddie and they were too dudebro for it. There aren't 10 million people buying PS4s just to be a trash talking jerk on COD and madden all day long. No, there are 10 million+ people looking into a wide variety, seeing many 3rd party companies, taking interest in new IPs being made, etc. Nintendo by comparison is selling you a console on practically one publisher's catalog. They lack the open-ness of a PC or mobile library, the 3rd party support of competing consoles and PC, and they even lack the good prices that they try to welcome you in on with their lower barrier to entry sales because their games never go down in price and even stay up in the 2nd hand market. So where will the smart consumers go if Nintendo's catalog doesn't cover their preferences? Oh but those are only dudebros that don't have nintendo preferences right? I mean everyone else can appreciate Nintendo because they cover everything outside of M rated titles, right? Actually no, they're missing a few good niches and even some large ones. Nintendo's Wii U library doesn't have much of cinematic story driven games, strategy games, those niche japanese games, horror titles, MMOs, open world games, and a few others. Oh but it does have COD ghosts and COD black ops 2, but once again dudebro and the Dorito dude army were not at Nintendo's aid because that isn't an actual problem to solve. The actual problem is they have no long lasting 3rd party support to properly compete with the other consoles, it doesn't have the same open library as a PC, and Nintendo alone can't cover every niche enough to warrant everyone to buy their system. Even if they get a big strategy player interested in Pikmin, its ridiculously impractical to ask that they buy an entire console for that when they could buy their entire wishlist in a steam sale for less. Meanwhile if they were to look at say the already successful 3DS they see multiple games, and a bigger supporting library surrounding it, and more discounts towards its entry. Its more practical and smarter on every level. Meanwhile the MMO gamer wont touch either console with a 10 foot pole while the PS4 might interest them for couch gaming now that its getting some F2P ports and Destiny in addition to a wide supporting familiar but diverse library they can fall back on if they want a break from their norm. Nintendo is an excellent company and they really do deserve more sales, but there's an actual reason as to why they aren't getting them and its got more to do than frat boys that likely barely even play games at all.

It could be story driven RPG gamers.... nah, totally duebros that don't like big N

Ok so on a final note, maybe we can go back and look at a very focused point of the label dudebro. Its the one that I know for a fact exists and have spoken with: COD & madden exclusive gamers. That's a bit overgeneralized really, but these people kind of do exist. However what is their problem amd crime? Well none really. Look if you really need to blame these trends and habits of chasing some popular mainstream game, by all means go ahead there is a piece in there somewhere to be angry at. I've raged against COD and COD trends plenty myself (though looking back as I've said before, I've taken it too far as well), and the ironic bit is that the arena shooter sub-genre I mentioned before is dead because its habits contradict those of the trendy COD types. However the problem is almost never with the guys that want to just enjoy themselves. You can be mad that COD has dumbed down gunplay, reflex based combat, and popularized an unnecessary amount of gimmicks that ruin the fun, all exploitative to grab a big careless broad audience, but let me ask you this: Who actually did that? Who actually thought of doing this format? Who thought of lowering the skill level, and who decided to popularize it? If you're blaming it on the guys playing the game, I'm genuinely worried you're the type of person they like to weaponize in group discipline. The answer is you blame the guys creating and making the decisions to begin with. You need to get to the root. When Killzone 3 said "we can't do server lists because that breaks the game for some people" I didn't go and yell at the first person I saw. I didn't accuse my sister of ruining killzone because she doesn't like shooters or customized mechanics. I didn't fuss at my dad because all he played at one time was COD. What I did instead was join the community in protesting the developer's decision. We created over 90 pages of a fuss about how backwards, how stupid, and how insecure of a decision this was for them to make. Sure there was a bit of mudslinging at COD, but as a reference for what we did not want. We were angry at the actual creators of the game for exploiting a bad trend, and we were a bit upset that COD (or halo where it really started) continued to go that road and keep the standards low. The guy at college that just turns on their system for COD doesn't understand this, and that's not exactly something he needs to worry too much about. Worse case scenario is he's hurting himself by not exploring the "better quality" stuff, but he's not ruining games by missing out.

What am I getting at here? What's the point other then to overuse this funny sounding term in one article? Well for what its worth, I want people to stop trying to blame and overgeneralize and/or dehumanize parts of the gaming community. We have a ton of options, niches, and awesome gamers out there and just because what you like isn't selling doesn't mean the rest of gamers are a bunch of Doritos munching frat boys. Its actually an ironically toxic attitude to sit there and blame all our problems on some magically hateful overly masculine group that barely even exists in the real world. The ones that do border on the stereotype are either too harmless to matter (Madden/COD addicts who just... play those games) or they're not nearly as bad as they're made out to be (check out bro team on youtube for example. They play up to a certain trash talking male rage stereotype for humor and their youtube audience, and play a wide variety of games on PC as a canvas for their comedy. If you're taking them as a serious problem, you really need to get a grip on reality). Its dehumanizing, its elitist, and its avoiding the real problems we face in the gaming industry. Problems like irresponsible budgets, uneven coverage of genres and niche gamers, poor coverage, etc. On top of that it just implies a scary amount of pessimism that could spark its own ironic insecurities (because you think everyone is against your tastes). I can't imagine thinking that my favorite stories, games, and books are a failure as a result of some ruling society of prejudice going around. I don't blame Sly Cooper's lacking sales on people who are so shallow as to instantly dismiss cartoons based on some prejudice they have for it. That's not normal. Running into people that ignorant is a shocking surprise, and I generally feel confident in saying that Sly Cooper 4 is an amazing game to play on the PS3. If anything I'm closer to fearing an enjoyment of something like gears of war, because its dismissed as a beacon for this demonized label of "dudebro"-ness, and that's when this has really gotten to a ridiculous level. I feel good standing by enjoying my gritty industrial sci-fi shooter games or my cartoony 3D platformer games, because I love games like that. I also know that Sly was a very low seller, and I look to actual solutions like the fact that nobody really knew what to expect of its quality due to various conditions from the team behind it to its competing place on the market. "dudebros did it!" isn't an actual answer for me, and its not something I can fool myself into believing. So please... can we stop it? Much like blaming FPS on everything, I'm tired of seeing this as the catch-all easy blame thing. Its not that simple guys, and if you're  going to be taken seriously or even fun within the hobby its time to actually respect and acknowledge that its a diverse industry with many factors and bits going into the success, creation, and thrill of a good game. I'd rather have more intelligent and interesting discussions on the success or failures of a game instead of digging through these silly scapegoating comments.

Well since its all over I thought it was time for one of these...

Fun fact: I've said dudebro 30 times in the article.