Kissing cousin cultures

A while back, I promised to write about the differences and similiarities I saw between the folks who attended Worldcon and the folks I tend to see at the various gaming conferences. Walking around Worldcon was an interesting experience, because everyone there was clearly “of my tribe” in some indefinable fashion, and yet they were also different. Just the sheer sense of anonymity was interesting, for one: seeing so many sorts of people that I recognized made me expect to run into people I knew — but in practice, that didn’t really happen very much (although to my pleasant surprise I bumped into some: Jamil Moledina, who runs GDC now; Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games; and a few SF writers whom I know and expected to see there, like David Brin, Cory Doctorow, and so on).

So, herewith, my thoughts on similarities and differences:

• A huge part of the SF community seems to be “acceptance.” The folks at Worldcon were simply a far more diverse bunch. I mean, this is a con where there are panels on the subtleties of Tom Corbett Space Cadet, opposite a pirate vs ninja swordfighting competition, opposite a regency ballroom dancing class. SF is a more diverse community in gender: lots of women around, not something you see at gaming cons. There were lots of disabled people (lots of wheelchairs) and people with a variety of physical characteristics, ranging from the blind to dwarfism and kyphosis. There’s the annual blood drive, a decades-long tradition. I don’t actually see the mainstream gaming audience as being all that tolerant of this sort of thing, as evidenced even by the slang.
• In tandem with this, I observed that instead, other values were pushed to the fore. I’ve noticed before that many of my SF writer friends have a certain way of speaking, where they hoard bon mots for the proper occasion, or pride themselves on quicksilver wits. (At the restaurant for dinner one night: “Yeah, he was in a bad mood today, rather testy.” “I guess he hasn’t descended yet.” Groan.) It turns out that this is endemic in the community. It’s an assortment of people who have above all selected themselves for intelligence and in many cases, verbal acuity. One unfortunate side-effect of this is that a surprising number of folks introduced themselves to me first with credentials designed to impress upon you how intelligent they were, a sort of need for self-justification. You don’t usually run into that as much in the games biz, with some notable exceptions.
• This sense of self-justification extended into other areas, with some major positive side-effects. SF has always been a ghetto genre, of course, and has struggled for legitimacy for its whole existence. The result is that it has a much stronger sense of its own history. There was a wall of signatures where they asked attendees to sign under the year when they entered fandom. The wall had pictures of key SF things going back to the 1920’s. And there were signatures going back to the 1920’s too. There was a photo gallery of pro writers that is apparently sent from con to con, in an amazing display of coordination. (The games biz often has trouble getting something to the other side of the building). And keep in mind that in the end, this was a small group. The Hugos are voted on by less than 2000 people. Worldcon simply wasn’t that big, and I would guess that dedicated SF fandom is a fairly small group overall.
• And finally, the combination of these things led to not only a tremendous sense of self-worth, but also a real acceptance of strangers, of newbies. I sat next to Larry Niven for breakfast, I wiped spilled coffee off of Harlan Ellison. Authors and fans mingled freely. This is a community which gives awards to its fans, not just its stars. It’s a community where the good is equally as celebrated as the popular. Gaming could learn a lot from this, but perhaps it’s grown too mass-media already to have this strong a sense of community.

I think there’s lessons for the gamer community in what I observed; the gestures we see towards “gaming as lifestyle” or “gaming as worldview” right now tend to be crude at best. Here’s a group that has managed it for a hundred years, and in many ways, they are us.

In any case, a belated thanks to Worldcon for having me, and to folks like Cory, Bill Shunn & his lovely wife, Toby Buckell, John Scalzi, and others who made me feel welcome (yes, I am forgetting tons of names already, have I mentioned that I suck at names?). I will definitely be going back at some point now that I am no longer a con novice. It’s always nice to visit the cousins even if you don’t stay in close touch.