In 2009, my future wife (then girlfriend) got me the best present I had ever received – a PS3. I did not deserve this present. I was a 30-year-old man who was a walking collection of red flags. My shelves were milkcrates. I had recently gotten out of a long-term relationship. My employment history was heavy on “barista” and “dog walker” and light on “jobs that provide health insurance and lead to lucrative careers.”
Dragon Age: Origins had just come out. Having grown up on Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale, I was a bit of a lapsed gamer but occasionally checked in on the medium from afar. I lacked a computer or a console at the time but the gift of a PS3 solved the problem, and before I knew it, my girlfriend and I were playing Origins over the holiday break. My idle curiosity transformed into deep obsession.
When Dragon Age II released in 2011, the pivot to more action-focused gameplay irritated me, initially. Despite two years as a console gamer, I had yet to truly embrace twitchy titles, but DAII won me over despite its gameplay, mechanics, and obviously rushed state. In fact, the most compelling things about DAII were its inner contradictions. There was the game it wanted to be, and then there was the game it was. The inspirations of the series were still being worn on its shoulders, even when the work itself seemed to have different goals.
The big epic adventure of Origins had given away to a smaller, personal story about a refugee and his merry little band of bisexual weirdos. I loved it, and these internal tensions made it infinitely more compelling than its predecessor. Despite some egregious plot and story choices (why is every mage a secret blood mage who turns into a demon even though the text clearly wants to recognize mages as normal, decent humans?), Dragon Age II is easily my favorite in the series.
As we come into the era of The Veilguard, I can’t help but notice the discourse – the myriad of reactions to the trailer and a completely different set of reactions to the gameplay demo. The “Baldur’s Gate 3 is what I wanted from Dragon Age 4” hot takes giving way to the “Hah, you never REALLY liked Dragon Age at all if you wanted Baldur’s Gate 3 to be Dragon Age 4” backlash felt so… scripted. We’ve seen this
before. We see it a lot. This is what fandoms do now.
Ten years of expectations — bottled up and suddenly spilling out. Ten years of nostalgia to file off the sharp edges and smudge Vaseline on our memories. Plus, just for kicks, ten more years of videogames (and entertainment writ large) culture trying desperately to make products out of art.
What we expect from our art and entertainment says a lot about us, but how we react to our expectations not being met says even more. I would argue that expecting a toaster to toast bread is reasonable, but expecting a creative work to cater to your every specific desire and preference is not. Getting profoundly mad about either isn’t great behavior, but I have more space for folks who are angry at the toaster not working.
Keep in mind, there’s a lot of potential joy in art and creative works not giving you what you want. Some of my favorite moments as an audience member in a theater or as a videogame player on my couch have come from having to sort through my feelings about what I was experiencing. The toxicity we see in gaming from (ostensible) fans is based in a narcissistic impulse — people getting angry at even the slightest perception that something might, in fact, not just be for them. This is why the Worst People You See Online are yelling about jawlines or whining about Rook’s merry band being composed entirely of pansexuals.
This is why we can’t have nice things!
Of course, I’m not saying all preferences are bad or that all discourse is useless. Preferences are fine and good! Talking about things is healthy.
If you go to a horror movie to be scared and the movie doesn’t scare you, it’s normal to have feelings about that. Talking about it with other folks might help you better understand what the movie was doing and engage your brain in a healthy fashion, even if you end up, ultimately, still not liking that flick. It’s also okay to have a general preference for an idea or mechanic, absent any specific context. I like turn-based combat. Dragon Age has never had that, but I tend to enjoy it! With that said, having preferences and discussing them is a far cry from the kind of toxicity we’ve now grown used to seeing on the reg.
Algorithms have spent years conditioning us by rewarding anger and outrageous behavior, and an abundance of right-wing reactionaries are desperately trying to control art and culture – areas they have historically failed at influencing because they’re more interested in the politics of grievance than noticing and processing things that might be beyond their own personal experience.
Another driver of toxicity is that the horrors of the world are overwhelming right now. It’s almost too big to wrap our feelings around, so, instead, we feel very deeply about things that are easier to hold in our heads — like a videogame franchise. Throw in the collective trauma of a global pandemic and huge problems coming on the horizon, and we’ve got ourselves a nice little despair stew. It makes total sense that, amid all of this, feelings of people losing ‘control’ over their favorite series would be weaponized.
I don’t think any one way to be or any one set of actions can solve the problem of gamer toxicity, because the toxicity of fandoms is a symptom of larger cultural forces that require a myriad of solutions to overcome. But I do know that, as an individual, I can acknowledge my own specific set of expectations and preferences.
I’m going in to Veilguard open and graciously ready to receive whatever the creative team has put together, no matter how I ultimately end up feeling about it. Frankly, if it upends my expectations and challenges my preferences, that’s probably a positive sign. I’ve enjoyed plenty of things that were exactly what I wanted them to be, but I’ve only ever been transformed when I’ve been pushed out of my comfort zone and I let go of my expectations.
This openness is key because art’s ability to make unseen things – new ideas, new perspectives – accessible is one of the greatest things about it, but we aren’t going to see any of it if we’re busy yelling that things are ‘different’ than what we got last time. We need to be strong enough to actually look, which is hard to do since we live in a terminally-online society that rewards being fragile, closing your eyes, and doubling down on rage.
Change is scary, but it’s also inevitable. Maybe that’s the disconnect. This resistance to change – this nostalgia – is a trick we play on ourselves to say, wasn’t there a time when things were fine? And wouldn’t we rather go back to that time instead of wrestling with the horrible things happening right now?
Sometimes I think about what I’ll be nostalgic for from this era. I can easily imagine taking a swig from my last container of water during triple-digit Fahrenheit temperatures and desperately wanting to relive that quaint, cool summer of 2024 when temperatures were mostly 80s and 90s, I played the Elden Ring DLC and got excited about Veilguard.
Hopefully, it will be a pleasant sort of nostalgia, not one that drives me to post rant after rant online, but something to keep in mind is that too many fandoms today are prone to unhealthy engagement, and our society is too broken to fix it easily. All we can do, as individuals, is to love loving things and practice being open to the new. A healthier relationship with art could translate to a healthier society because it means understanding who we are and what we want, and also being ready for the inevitable change that’s coming next, whatever it is.
The Veilguard could be a return to form for BioWare. It could be the elegant swan song of the creative team that made it and then got unceremoniously laid off. It could be the best Dragon Age game yet. It could also be a total mess that doesn’t work. Critically, it could be all of those things at once.
…And who knows? Maybe engaging with it will be good practice for approaching the things that actually impact the material conditions of people in our society. Here’s to hoping.
— Rich Lovejoy
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Excellent opinion piece full of salient points. I couldn’t agree with you more and glad you’re part of the writing team too!
Great piece – I think it nails quite a few things here.
As someone who unironically wrote about what it was like to be a “gamer”, I find myself more and more divorced from the scene I once called home. I want more swings even if that means a few misses.
I feel exactly the same way and I’m glad you posted this. If a studio puts out a game you don’t like, then don’t play it. It seems like madness to me to demand something of an artist. An artist should be totally free to do as he pleases. Pollock once took yellow paint and started painting over his work when a potential buyer said the painting needed more yellow. One to remember.