Talk:Gary Gygax

“[Believed] that different races of people were biologically distinct” — misleading and poorly sourced

The claim about Gygax adhering to scientific racism was added to the Personal Life section by an anonymous editor on March 5th of this year, with the source provided being this PBS article which describes Gygax as "[believing] that different races of people were biologically distinct and capable of different things in life".

The PBS article, however, cites a source that does not support this claim — Dragon Issue #29, containing an entry of Gygax's From the Sorcerer’s Scroll column that concerns "race" as a game mechanic representing fantasy creatures (elves, dwarves, ogres, fairies, etc.) and makes zero comments on real-world "racial" groupings of human beings based on ethnicity or phenotype.

Unless a better source in which Gygax makes such statements on the subject of real-world "racial" categorization can be found, this claim should be removed from the article. The statement that he believed women were naturally less inclined to enjoy role-playing games is supported with good evidence — the claim that he was a racist is not. SoarelTheHobbit (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Good enough for me. I was able to verify the Dragon 29 column said nothing that could be construed as referring to real world races vs. fantasy game races. Jclemens (talk) 07:17, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

In fact, the closing paragraph of that column argues strongly against Gygax as a real-world racist:

As human adaptability is undoubted, and human capabilities deemed vast by this writer, it seemed to follow that allowing them the full range of possibilities was the best answer. Thus, humans are found in all alignments, in all professions, and so on. The weakest are very weak, the strongest very strong. The human race plumbs the depths and soars to the heights. In AD&D, as in the real world, humankind will certainly attain greatness and domination if it doesn’t destroy itself first through warfare and strife within its own race.

Certainly not insufficiently enlightened for late 1979. Jclemens (talk) 07:22, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

PBS article, posted by some terminally online nutcase, is factually incorrect. Very surprising. Let's please keep this cringy culture war BS off serious Wikipedia articles. 184.88.53.147 (talk) 04:34, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

SoarelTheHobbit, I think when you said that "The PBS article, however, cites a source that does not support this claim..." you may have missed that it also cited a BostonTheatreScene.com article which states outright that Gygax was "a biological determinist", suggesting that he maintained a philosophy involving scientific racism. (This is references on the Dungeons & Dragons controversies article.) Others have critiqued D&D because early manuals only depicted humans as being white, and people have suggested that the nonhuman races were somehow proxies for nonwhite people and humans were representing white people. There is also reference to how human races, such as "Asians", were represented pretty two-dimensionally with the use of tropes/stereotypes.

However, I agree that there does not seem to be sufficient basis to assert that Gary Gygax was racist. The BostonTheatreScene.com article (accessible via the Internet Archive) does not seem to be a reliable source, and it was referencing his belief that women were largely not interested in the game as opposed to discussing race. Citing the stereotyped depictions of human races and modern analyses that nonhumans were somehow unconscious representations of nonhuman races all seems like it should not be used as a basis for asserting that he was necessarily racist, and doing that would currently require WP:OR.

It may be that the Dungeons & Dragons controversies article should be edited to remove the reference to "biological determinism" as unreliable -- I believe I will do that. CapnPhantasm (talk) 02:46, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

Not entirely sure why there is push back; there's a primary source where Gygax outright states "As I have often said, I am a biological determinist". The sentence could be rephrased to include secondary sources (NPR's Code Switch discusses this; also mentioned in a 2006 The Believer article where they went & played D&D with Gygax). I also think the PBS source is fine since it is a reliable secondary source where they go on to discuss the impact of this belief in the game design; random links an editor adds doesn't necessarily indicate that's a reporter's only source. The point of reliable sources is we trust their vetting & reporting process. Sariel Xilo (talk) 03:54, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

This subject has been brought to the forefront as there's now a section dedicated to it in official material published by Wizards of the Coast, discussing Gygax' own views as well an many problematic aspects based off of those views that he incorporated in early editions of the game. There are now in fact reliable sources on this, and should be covered in greater detail. 46.97.170.199 (talk) 11:55, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Self-identifying makes for a pretty clear case, at least wherein here he is talking about his perceived difference between sexes in how they enjoy games. I think to say anything more about it than that would indeed require more sourcing. BOZ (talk) 04:42, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I think sticking to exactly the words Gygax used makes the most sense; the current prose only quotes him in part (with the full quote in the source) so I just added quotes around "biological determinist" to make it clear that was the term he used to describe himself. We could add the secondary sources after that bit and then use the primary for rest of the sentence which includes the longer direct quote. Sariel Xilo (talk) 16:26, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not even sure that would be useful, given semantic drift and how cultural norms have changed since Gygax's statements were made. That is, a correct repetition of his words from 45 years ago is not going to convey the same meaning nor place him in appropriate context. Jclemens (talk) 17:40, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

The quote is from 2004 (where he reaffirms that this is long stated belief); I don't think we've had that much of a culture drift in 20 years that his statement would have an entirely different meaning then than it does now (ie. he still thought the game wasn't a "compelling activity" for women "can't play games well" decades after the development of D&D). Both PBS & NPR bring up the Gygax statement in context of the impact in the game's design which is more relevant for the D&D controversies article. Sariel Xilo (talk) 17:59, 20 June 2024 (UTC) (Missed that I grabbed the wrong part of the quote so corrected & added a strikethrough Sariel Xilo (talk) 00:07, 21 June 2024 (UTC))

I just added in the sources. Sariel Xilo (talk) 00:14, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

References