The Wild Rumpus

An Official Apology and Some Words on Complacency

As most of you know we held our 3rd annual GDC That Party alongside Venus Patrol a few weeks back. Since the event we’ve had amazing feedback, love and support from those who came. As Richard Lemarchand preached from the DJ pulpit at the end of That night, 

“Your dancing here tonight signifies significant cultural change at GDC”…drops mic, explodes into a cloud of sparkles.

and we’d like to agree. The thing that keeps us coming back to GDC each year is to run a night in which we are surrounded by such a loving community of developers, writers, curators, artists, musicians and more, working as part of a sea change bigger than us all. But to stay true to what we are working towards we need to ensure we never let ourselves become complacent and so there is something serious we need to talk to you and to other event organisers about.

Rumpus parties have in previous years been held up on a pedestal, a shining example of ‘how to do video game parties right’. When there are bigger headline stories of paid-for dancing women and serious sexual assault occurring at other similar events we can mistakenly don rose tinted glasses and become blind to the more unacknowledged forms of harassment, and yes, they too can happen in spaces we would like to believe they couldn’t.

After That Party we were made aware of a very saddening series of separate incidents which occurred across the course of the night. Incidents in which attendees faced harassment and were made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe. Whilst this is the first time that we have heard of such incidents happening at our events we won’t kid ourselves that this is the first time such things have occurred. So whilst we are heartbroken, this is something we needed to hear and the fact we’ve not heard of such incidents at past events is perhaps more worrying.

Its a point which resonates more so this week in the wake of Game_Jam. It is amazing that the people who endured the things they did walked away and called BS when they saw it. There were relatively clear lines crossed and the response the situation provoked is testament to that.

But it is loud incidents similar to this that can put events like Rumpus on a pedestal and can mistakenly lead us to view ‘the problem’ as stemming simply from corporate culture, consumerism or one specific ‘bad egg’ and subsequently we can all become complacent and stop checking ourselves and our own work.

Just because Rumpus and Venus Patrol are run by the people they are and are born from a passion and love of a community, does not mean that our work and events will automatically be safe and welcoming spaces. We need to always work towards this and we admit that we have been complacent.

For the most part we assume that most people reading this post won’t know of the specific incidents to which we are referring. There was more than one and they all took different forms. However the consistent factor across all of these was that they passed by silently. None were reported to us on the night and this is our fault. We failed to have in place a procedure that encouraged people to speak up in confidence and let them know what is unacceptable at our events.

Whilst we need to say that extreme inappropriate behaviour is unacceptable, I feel it is perhaps more important for us to say that non-extreme behaviour is equally unacceptable. The sort of behaviour that is often sadly brushed off as just being par of the course with ‘gamer’ or ‘club’ culture. I personally have been victim to this, most of us have.

The person dancing too close for too long, the person outstaying their welcome, the person saying off colour comments at the bar- you can feel it in your gut that a line has been crossed. But you’ve tried to vocalise it to security in the past and you always get brushed off, told you are over reacting, or worse, told that this is just what happens at clubs.

So I am telling you all what I even need to tell myself, that just because an incident wasn’t something you deemed ‘severe’ or ‘extreme’ or is something you’ve endured in other clubs or other events does not mean you should silently endure it at ours.

No one should ever have to endure this behaviour and it will never be tolerated at our events.Through complacency we let down those affected by these incidents and by extension the community we seek to support. For this we sincerely apologise.

So, where do we go from here? As a collective we are now working to develop policies, procedures and actions we can undertake to help prevent these incidents happening again and to provide you with the encouragement and support to call out harassment when you see or feel it at our events. We also want to ensure that this is something more than just a policy buried on a website and something we actively integrate to our events. As a brief snapshot of where are current thinking is (and we welcome input on this)…

  • Publishing a long & short form Safe Spaces policy*
  • Ensuring in our policy we speak in a language and tone that relates to our audience.
  • Creating an internal team policy and procedure for dealing with incidents when they are raised, either pre, during or post events.
  • Making the event team clearly identifiable during an event.
  • Having conversations with venue & security in advance of an event, making all event staff aware of our Safe Spaces policy.
  • Highlighting our Safe Spaces policy with every ticket purchase for an event.
  • Promoting our Safe Spaces policy on pre event newsletters & communications
  • Ensuring posters promoting our Safe Spaces policy are visible during our events.
  • Holding Rumpus events, team & staff accountable to the same policies as attendees. 

I also want people to know that there is no statute of limitations for telling us about incidents at our events. To help us craft our policies and procedures we encourage you to reach out to us at marie@thewildrumpus.co.uk if you have ever felt uncomfortable or unsafe at our events or feel you have been harassed. We will treat all communication in confidence.

Thinking beyond ourselves though we really want this post to reach those running events or projects in any format and to heed this as a stark reminder. Despite how loudly and aggressively others in your field may cross lines and how much your work may be held up in opposition as a ‘gold standard’, please never forget that you and your work are not by default above reproach. 

NEVER BECOME COMPLACENT

To cultivate the positive community and culture we want we need to always check ourselves, take on all issues of all scales and be proactive. If you do not have at least a policy or procedure in place, then, like us, you are already failing your attendees. 

Thank you to everyone who has put their faith in us and Rumpus and we hope that faith persists as we grow.  And thank you to those of us who have declared previously that we are ‘doing it right.’ But we truly believe that there is no such thing as doing it right, there is only working to do it better.

- Marie (on behalf of Wild Rumpus & Venus Patrol)

*If you are interested in drafting a Safe Spaces policy please see Geek Feminism for an excellent template and format approach. Provided to us by the lovely folks at Mount Royale Game Society http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy