Anita Sarkeesian was given an award at a game developer’s conference last spring, and now we learn that assholes tried to shut it down with a bomb threat. Seriously, dudes? This is how you deal with critics?
A bomb will be detonated at the Game Developer’s Choice award ceremony tonight unless Anita Sarkeesian’s Ambassador Award is revoked. We estimate the bomb will kill at least a dozen people and injure dozens more. It would be in your best interest to accept our simple request. This is not a joke. You have been warned.
As this “gamergate” nonsense continues (it seems to be imploding now, as more and more of the idiots’ motives are exposed), it becomes increasingly clear that it was never about journalistic integrity. It was never about making sure that reviews of games were honest and unbiased. It’s entirely about silencing reviews that might disagree with fanboi’s assessment of the importance of boobs and explosions.
It’s the Hate Out of Ten phenomenon — gamers getting insanely angry that someone might not share their adulation. It’s to the point where they’re threatening death and rape and bombings to journalists and commentators who do not support their need for approval.
That’s the opposite of journalistic integrity. That’s demanding the FoxNewsification of all kinds of journalism.
And now it’s gotten so bad that the FBI is getting involved. In arguments about the merits of the toys people are playing with. Fuck me, this is ridiculous.
And that is why I no longer have anything to do with gaming.
At the moment they’re exploded about Thunderf00t’s Twitter account. Apparently he got suspended, and he released a video unequivocally blaming Anita Sarkeesian for it. And his folks are lapping it up, as everyone’s just running with the “blame Sarkeesian” narritive. Reddit is exploding, and AVFM jumped on it with both feet, IGN’s all over the place. It’s ridiculous.
All the MRAs are crying foul, and claims of “feminist tactics” are everywhere. And the only evidence that it actually was Anita (and her “vicious mob”) (as far as I can tell) is the fact that before his suspension, he was apparently having an unhinged, conspiracy theory-esque multi-tweet rant at her. Oh, and the fact that he SAYS it’s her.
It’s both funny and completely sad, all at once. I don’t want to live on this planet any more.
Re: the “FBI is getting involved” link: That’s really interesting. There was a guy in the Thunderdome who posted video of David Aurini (the guy doing the anti-Sarkeesian documentary) talking to Esparza on the phone who told him they had no record of a report from Sarkeesian. Now, according to the Polygon article various publications were told the same thing whereas now, they’ve handed it off to the FBI with no explanation for why they were telling all and sundry that they had no record of a report.
I wonder if they were deliberately blowing smoke at people who were trying to find out details about the case or if they needed to be pressured to get the FBI involved and are now hoping people will overlook that they’re changing their story now. #tinhat
So in order to stand in opposition to the vicious tactics of Sarkeesian and her feminist mob, in order to stand shoulder to shoulder and tell the world, “No, we are not okay with these horrible feminist tactics and will not put up with this unfairness!”, these brave young men, these pioneers of a future of equality, adopt the philosophy and methods of…… Al-Shabaab…?
I will advance my OWN conspiracy theory and say he got his own twitter account suspended so that he could blame it on her and give himself more fuel for ranting.
People are already claiming that she staged this threat to get more attention?
I listen to Coast to Coast AM pretty regularly (guilty pleasure), and Anita’s critics are just a loony as callers to that show.
Wow Thunderf00t goes full Alex Jones.
@5: Heh, good one. He’s certainly disturbed enough to do something like that, considering the amount of dishonesty in his anti-sarkeesian videos. Which comprise about half of his repertoire now.
@6: Yeah. If Anita was milking this for attention, she’s doing a really poor job. Her only response to it so far: https://twitter.com/femfreq/status/512031831739215872
In the mean while, twittering “thunderf00t twitter” will poison your will to live.
Er, Googling. Sorry.
Well, it’s happened. Gaming culture has spawned terrorists.
@1 Removing oneself from gaming is letting the trolls win. They’re losing now, and badly. Game developers are taking SJW (I’m proud to wear that label) viewpoints very seriously. And there are tons of games, most of them indie, that address these issues in novel ways. Check out Gone Home, which has won tons of awards and is an absolutely beautiful game. Others to check out include The Novelist, To the Moon, and Kentucky Route Zero. And there are literally hundreds of small indie titles by developers of all types of humanity. Rock, Paper, Shotgun runs a regular feature by Cara Ellison about sex in games (and that site, along with Polygon are the two most popular gaming sites with progressive leans.) The Border House is another good place to find great games and great discussion about games. The good stuff is out there and is emerging onto the mainstream. It’s actually a really great time to be a gamer: during the last violent thrashing death-throes of the old order.
In the first linked article:
“Why? Because some people on the internet aren’t okay with her shedding light on the fact that women are often portrayed as little more than background dressing in video games. ”
Fuck that for an understatement!
Somebody needs to tell these dewdz that they sound just like their sexist old dads. Why do they think their sexism is new and exciting? It doesn’t feel different when you’re on the receiving end.
And do they all march in lockstep with Thunderf00t? I looked at Kotaku’s 1300-comment thread and it’s dominated by douchebags claiming ——absent proof—–that she lied. Once they say that, all pressure on them to make an argument is gone.
It’s worth noting that the bomb threat happened in March (before all this “gamergate” stuff about journalistic integrity). Anita Sarkeesian, being the professional victim she is, told us immediately. No, wait, she didn’t tell people, and Kotaku only dug it up six months later.
They were right! Video games DO encourage violence!
I hope you’re right. I’m not the most social gamer, but I’ve often hesitated to get on socially oriented games because of those sorts of trolls.
I’ve had occasions where I’ve wanted to report people, but had difficulty finding the option. In one game, a few mercenaries drew crude phalli on the team briefing map before missions, which made me glad I couldn’t voice chat with them.
Professional victim, asshole? Before Gamergate? She’s been getting death and rape threats from you little douchenozzles ever since you fucked up by going ballistic during her funding phase. THAT was utterly brilliant, by the way. Gamer assholes harassed her, people got angered—–justifiably so——and boom! Gamerdudez funded her series of videos with their own hatred.
Is there any way we can replicate that every time gamerscum go after another woman? That would be great.
@Ginmar, not sure if that was a reply to me. But I was sarcastically pointing out the absurdity of the belief that Anita Sarkeesian is doing it for attention, when we didn’t hear about it for months.
Fuck me, there’s some stupid out there.
Actually, I feel pretty moronic myself right now; made the mistake of going to TF’s video to see what he’s on about.
‘When you rip a man’s tongue out, it shows you are afraid of what he has to say’…he says out loud, with his tongue intact and zero traces of irony, on the public platform that is Youtube.
I even had a quick shufty thru the comments; immediate regret sunk in when I saw the gem that was ‘Men may not get rape threats online, but they get rape threats directed at the women in their life, so for all intents and purposes it’s the same thing’.
My gob is truly smacked.
P.s. Neither quote is verbatim, but they’re close.
@18: Whoa, calm down. I’m pretty sure @15 was being sarcastic, and the two of you agree with each other.
ginmar @ 18
I read miller @ 15’s use of “professional victim” as ironic.
@20: When I went through the comments (and tweets) I kept screaming “HOW THE FUCK DO YOU KNOW IT WAS HER?” at the top of my voice. Because he simply SAYS it was her, and that’s enough! You can trust me, I’m a scientist! Remember when I used to do science videos? Back when I still had credibility, before I threw a two-year-long hissy fit? Yeah!
You can really tell how invested the gaters are in ethics when they’re rallying around a guy who dishonestly accessed your blog network’s emails and spread them around.
I only play a few games, but I am interested in the gaming industry and game design. There’s a lot that can be done to improve the former (and when you do, the latter will also improve). PZ said it best, “gamers getting insanely angry that someone might not share their adulation”. It’s like saying, “If you disagree with me then it means you’re attacking me.” It reminds me about how religious fundamentalists get so offended when you question their religion.
I love video games (specifically PC games) and build my own gaming computer every two or three years. I don’t belong to the gaming culture though because it is dominated by asinine “dudes” and outright sexism. I frequent some computer and tech forums and the handful of female members either get extremely patronizing treatment or they get objectified and asked for pics or disproportionately commented on their appearance. It’s unfortunate such a fun and interesting medium is being ruined by immature assholes.
Yeah, but in their self-righteousness, they’ll paint that as being Snowden-like, probing for important journalistic Truths, and thus, outside the norms of mundane law (gamer pun very much intended).
I mean, we’re talking about the accuracy of reviews of tiny indie web-based games that were given away free here, sheeple! Follow the mon-
Oh. Right. Free.
Still! Game reviews! It’s only a sign of the repression of white cishet gamers have to endure on a weekly basis. The reviews scored a shaming 8 out of 10. The swag given away to reviewers to get a review, like copies of the item to be reviewed! Can you imagine if book or movie or music reviewers were to be given free copies of- What?
Oh. Still! Game reviews. How am I supposed to know whether I should buy MACHINES OF DEATHWAR UNENDING 14: SPECIAL DIRECTOR’S EXTENDED EDITION WITH BONUS 4TH BROTHEL or UNENDING DEATHMACHINES OF WAR RELOADED 6.5: THE WHORES OF EVERYONE?
I mean, we all know I’ll buy them both cause, hello, completionist, amirite? But which one should I buy zero-day, and which should I buy the week after? THIS SHIT IS IMPORTANT!
#OnlySlutsAndBitchesMoanAboutMisogynyInGaming
It happened in March and people are still floating the “she’s doing it to get hits”
Oops, I think I hit the bad words filter, sorry, PZ.
There was a great comment on this kotaku piece on CHS’ anti-feminist gamers video.
I can’t get to Kotaku at work so I’m paraphrasing, but in response to her bit about “How come nobody complains about the gynocentric show The View“, the commenter said something to the effect of “When the hosts of The View send rape and death threats to a man for watching their show, then we’ll talk.”
Of course, the only reason Kotaku is unsympathetic to CHS is because I’ve fucked every gaming journalist in the world and convinced them all to toe the feminist line with my amazing dick. Fortunately, men don’t do critical thinking very well, because they’ll say anything for a good lay. Sam Harris will back me up on this.
If I may…
Saying “gamer culture” in this case is a lot like saying “muslim” — the gamer population is very large (50% of Americans are gamers of some sort or another, and 47% of gamers are women, with the demographic bump in the population across gender sitting in the 35-yo zone) and diverse and I’m fairly confident that the people who are resorting to harassment and abuse are a “fringe element” within the much larger whole. Unlike islam, we gamers lack a central doctrine that says apostates must be punished, that we feel we need to adhere to under threat of hellfire — so I’m quite confident that the vast majority of gamers are probably completely unaware of the harassment, or do not support it. No, that is not based on any kind of polling. But since the gamer population is a large subset of the population at large, I suspect you’ll find a breakdown of popular attitudes is not dramatically shifted one way or another except that gamers are probably slightly more affluent across the board (though that is also changing thanks to wonderful very inexpensive games for cell phones)
In other words, please remember that gamers are almost half of us. If you’re talking about “gamer culture” there’s almost a 50/50 chance you’re part of it. Personally, I don’t think there is a gamer culture. There’s a misogynistic culture of anger that exists within the gamer population and appears to also exist in the internet user population (which is, shockingly, only 85% or so) There is no single “gamer culture” anymore than there is a single “muslim” culture and saying that “gamer culture” is full of misogynist harassers is about as inaccurate as saying all muslims are terrorists. After all, Anita Sarkeesian’s stack of games dwarfs most of ours by a truly epic margin:
http://www.newstatesman.com/sites/default/files/images/sarkeesian-video-games-800×800%5B1%5D.jpg
My point: perhaps we should talk about “harasser culture” as a fringe element of the internet user, social media, and gamer population. It is definitely a phenomenon, unquestionably. I wish I knew how much it overlaps in those 3 – how many of the people harassing Sarkeesian are also the photoshop artists and twitter creeps.
Ah, Miller, sorry, I”email been fending off assholes using the exact same phrases and arguments. They come out the gate calling HER a liar…..but nobody ever asks them for proof.
I wrote:
No, that is not based on any kind of polling.
OK, so I did just ask my raid team leader. ;) She does not support harassment of anyone, and thinks Sarkeesian is completely right. She’s a 52-yo executive manager at a tech company, mother of one, and a feral druid that clocks about 175k DPS @ iLevel 570. N=1!! So, I’ve got science backing me up!
Joking aside, that’s sort of my point: there are a whole lotta lotta gamers and the size and variability of the population puts paid to the concept of “gamer culture” See:
http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf
which is a generally cool fact-sheet about the gamer population.
#26 I’m with Saad. I watch the Jimquisition videos and Extra Credits and the more I learn about the game industry, the less I like it. We have to bring up the game industry when talking about gamer culture because the two feed off each other. The culture won’t change unless the games do and the games won’t change unless they think they can make money off it. I don’t know which end we should start from or if attacking the problem on both ends is the better solution. In any case, how do we do it?
One point: all we know about FBI investigations is that the SFPD confirms it sent information to the FBI and it’s the FBI’s responsibility now.
We don’t know the FBI is actually doing anything. I really hope they do, but…
Gamers are like Muslims? No. You know what, Marcus? You defended gamers…..that was your first thought. It’s exactly what you see when women talk about some horrible thing that men do to women. Instead of sympathizing with the victim, men rush to defend…..men. They totally ignore the actual victims. And sometimes there’s subtle little finger wags about how women need to stop being so unfriendly to deed who are just trying to help. (That’s usually later.)
I don’t care about the hurt fee fees of gamers any more than I care about the NFL.
You know why? Because if it were just a few bad guys, the “other” “good” gamers would go after them. They wouldn’t be swarming websites by the hundreds. They wouldn’t be whining about how it’s a few bad apples. They’d be getting shit done, and maybe—-just maybe—-they’d display some concern for the woman who’s being threatened with rape, bombs, and death.
Marcus has a good point about “gamer culture” vs “harasser culture”. I’m sorry for using that phrase. It’s just that the “harasser culture” has too much pull in the games industry that it can make its opinions heard more than the non-harassing gamers in the games where you’re more likely to find harassers.
Marcus, do you know the breakdown of what kind of games women play? There’s a popular game around the department called Hay Day and I’m the only guy here who plays it, the other players are all women. Of all the people who play Call of Duty (for example), how many are women? Now how about those who play Civilization or other turn based strategy?
So where are all these non-harassing gamers? Because they’re not doing squat.
Instead of sympathizing with the victim, men rush to defend…..men.
By pointing out that half of gamers are … women?
Marcus Ranum #30:
I was going to say, or we could talk about toxic masculinity, bros-before-hos, rape culture, lad culture, patriarchy, entitlement, misogyny… but sure, much as with self-confessed rapists who won’t use the R word, maybe the use of a new phrase would get some traction before the usual haters re-define it.
Seriously, good idea. “That’s harassment and we don’t accept that here.”
Sinfest
Marcus #30:
Maybe we need a specific term to describe gamers who are extreme, militant misogynists and bigots? How about “Gamerists”?
I’m only half-joking.
#38…..by ignoring how those “good” gamers have been silent or protesting #notallgamers?
Marcus, I’m not sure I see in what way your comment wasn’t a combination of “No True Gamer” and “#NotAllGamers”. I’m sure you don’t think it was, and I know you’re generally onside – can you explain how you think it was not those things?
Because as previously established, I’m a gamer, since my Dad bought me War at Sea back in 1976, just after we immigrated to Canada. And those assholes? They’re gamers too. And to say there’s no gamer culture is, I think, certainly from my point of view, not true. A shared obsessive love with Monty Python. With sff literature and film. With comics. A sociolect (cf. “dump stat”, “respawn”, “rules lawyer”, et c.). The Geek Social Fallacies (which are the reason for the specific form of the bad behaviour, not its cause).
These things exist. A notable culture exists in which these things are prevalent. And though it has been improving, that culture has also included a big heaping helping of misogyny, racism, transphobia, and homophobia, among other things.
I was looking through D&D Next last night, it came in to my friend’s show for review (The Gamers’ Table Youtube show is edited right here in my apartment, currently). I was struck by how inclusive the art has become: there are unambiguously POC all over the place, some in non-Western dress, some in Western dress, women and men in equal numbers (still nothing for other genders, but it’s getting closer).
So yes, things are improving. But we don’t get to No True Gamer away the realities, which are that these people are a significant chunk of our community, and that a much larger chunk of our community hasn’t seen fit to give a damn.
do you know the breakdown of what kind of games women play?
I don’t believe that information is widely available. However, the PDF I linked in my second comment has some very interesting data. (http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/esa_ef_2013.pdf)
According to some figures posted by Blizzard that I’ve seen on battle.net 16% of World of Warcraft players are women. To put that in real terms, that works out to 400,000 (source: Neilsen http://www.shacknews.com/article/58076/nielsen-estimates-400000-female-world ) Women make up nearly 40% of Xbox Live (source: Microsoft http://www.gamespot.com/articles/microsoft-women-make-up-nearly-40-percent-of-xbox-live-audience-in-us/1100-6414785/ )
Here is some dissenting view of the ESA survey: http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/19/gender-inequality/
It relies on creation of an imagined “core gaming” or “hardcore gamer” that supposedly are predominantly male because: reasons. No, seriously, they’re predominantly male because they say that’s what hardcore gamers are.
The most important number that jumps out at me from the ESA survey is that Women buy almost half of the games The game developers know this. That’s why the issues that Sarkeesian is very rightly raising are getting the attention they deserve from the game developers that want to be in business 5 years from now.
Here’s another big number: 30% of parents play games with their children. Pause, let that sink in. For one thing, that tells me that Sarkeesian’s arguments are extra important and must be promoted forcefully and the time is right for them. It ties in perfectly with my point above: game developers that want to be in business 5 years from now need to be making more inclusive games.
Big questions I wish I knew the answer to: What percentage of Facebook game users are women? (Facebook knows but it’s apparently not telling) What percentage of cell phone gaming app users are women? 48 million people in the US (source: http://www.bigfishgames.com/blog/2014-global-gaming-stats-whos-playing-what-and-why/ ) play smart phone games. 46% of teenagers.
For the record: I am not defending “gamers” I am saying that most people who are talking about “gamers” don’t know what “gamers” are. I absolutely agree with Sarkeesian’s videos. I wish I had known about her when she was doing her kickstarter so I could have supported her financially. Where’s my time machine!?
@37 ginmar
What do you mean they’re not doing squat? What are you talking about? What should they be doing that they aren’t doing?
FFS, Sarkeesian IS a gamer. The people defending her are, for the most part, gamers. The game developers defending her are gamers. The award she was being given in March was from the Game Developer’s Choice Awards, a celebration of gaming.
I do disagree with Marcus about there being a larger gaming culture and it is toxic. It’s like saying there isn’t a ‘Greek’ culture just because of the variety of Fraternities and Sororities out there. Culture is one of those fuzzy words.
Marcus @30
I think you’re treading close to “NotAllX” territory here. I agree that there’s a discussion to be had about endemic harassment across many communities on the internet, but at the same time, when a portion of a population is doing something objectionable, the best response is not to tell the people being hurt by those actions, or those of us who are not involved but getting a pretty shitty view of your group, that they should not blame everyone in the population.
I also find the comparison of a global religion with hundreds of years of history to a tiny fraction of the wealthier western population that chooses voluntarily to engage in a recreational activity more than a little troubling.
Seven of Mine #3
Almost certainly the former. I don’t know much about the police in US, but in countries I am familiar with “smoke screen” is the golden rule of any police work until arrests are made (or enough evidence has been gathered). That way the criminal aren’t tipped off, evidence isn’t being destroyed and nobody tries to run away or lawyer up. It may also serve as a honey trap for sympathizers.
Police detectives aren’t as dumb as the ones on-patrol guys make them look.
P.S.
Notice PZ’s usage of “fanboi”? I was right! I Я Smart!
P.P.S.
ugh, Chakotay avatar
Bronze Dog #17
I remember once on a freemium MMORPG (that was populated almost exclusively with teenagers) someone was trying to recruit people into his guild. He advertised by screaming “join us – we have a real girl as guild president!”. Immediately someone pointed out that he uses women as a bait and the recruiter was laughed out of the chat.
I remember a time where a response to his ad would have been completely different. I don’t have data and I’m biased, but from my perspective things do seem to be getting better. Not everywhere, and only in baby steps, but things do get better.
Alverant #25
Have you read Sins of the Industry?
It’s a good take on the gaming industry and may be relevant to your interests. It’s written by a MobyGames regular – and MobyGames is also a place you might want to visit if you want some hard to get VG info.
Marcus Ranum #30,32
Yes, it’s diverse like any large cultural phenomena, and, in fact so is Islam.
When people talk about “gaming culture” they’re usually talking about mainstream games and the big gaming industry. WoW* may be an outlier (as its players are older and more evenly spread across genders), but would you seriously argue that your interaction with your guild in WoW is the same as, say, in a CoD multiplayer? Don’t you notice that the most expensive and most advertised and the most popular games and many of their players are all part of a sexist culture?
*It’s great that you have a good raid leader, but don’t pretend for a moment that Blizzard isn’t part of the above gaming culture too. Please remember its pathetic reply to criticism of women portrayal in Hearthstone and the general sexism level that exists in all Blizzard products.
Marcus, you’re in luck! No time machine needed! You can still support Anita Sarkeesian financially by donating here!
I’m not sure I see in what way your comment wasn’t a combination of “No True Gamer” and “#NotAllGamers”. I’m sure you don’t think it was, and I know you’re generally onside – can you explain how you think it was not those things?
I think I screwed up by introducing the “muslim” issue; I was going to take my argument in a certain direction and didn’t, which resulted in a head-feint. Let me complete that and then explain why I don’t think I am engaging in a “no true gamer” argument.
I often hear people say, with regards to islam and terrorism, “why aren’t the moderate muslims speaking up?” I.e.: the argument is that there is a vast mass of muslims that don’t support terrorism, and they ought to be standing up and saying “HEY! don’t associate that shit with me!” And that’s a lot of how I feel about gaming. The reason I have been introducing all this information about the demographics of gaming is that there is, I believe, a vast mass of gamers – literally hundreds of millions that could shut the door conclusively on the kind of bullshit we’re complaining about by saying “nuh uh.” The problem is they’re too busy playing Farmville and Flappy Birds and … The good news, as I see it, is that the gamers that are spending money are not the stereotypical 14-year-old boy stereotypical hardcore gamer that’s desperate to see some pixillated sexualized violence. I wish that that vast mass of gamers would stand up and disclaim the harassment and say “STFU, Sarkeesian is so right, stop doing that, it’s raid o’clock…” but they’re voting with their money, which is going to do the trick just as well.
So, why was my comment not “#NOTALLGAMERS”?? Because the “not all X” meme is arguing that (whoever’s saying it) is exceptional. I.e.: “Sure, most gamers are assholes, but I’m not like that!! Not all gamers!” I’m arguing that, the vast majority of gamers are not assholes at all. (The vast majority of muslims aren’t terrorists, either!)
to say there’s no gamer culture
Then you’re going to wind up, like the guy in the venturebeat article I referenced in my previous comment, coming up with a stereotypical “core gamer” and a stereotypical “gamer culture” that embodies just those elements that you specifically want to critique – which sure will make it easy to critique the hell out of them. If you want to say that there are “core gamers” who like first person shooters like Duke Nukem 3D and that they suck … yeah. Eventually a defintion of “core gamer” is going to either include a massive number of women or it’s going to get narrower and narrower and more specific; that’s not intellectually honest.
I consider myself a “hard core gamer” (go ahead, you can’t touch this: http://www.ranum.com/stock_content/geek-cred.jpg ) and a feminist. I have tickets for Blizzcon ’14 and so do the rest of my raid team (who, coincidentally, are all women) I am a true gamer and would never dream of dis-including someone using a “no true gamer” argument. Our problem is that we have a lot of assholes.
But when you are talking demographics like half the US population gaming, you can’t say that asshole gamers are anything but a vanishingly small though loud and possibly influential part of the population. I’m not trying to defend them at all; they are marginal and should be further marginalized and are going to be, because of the size and financial clout of the vast majority of gamers, half of whom are women and probably don’t dig that shit.
For the life of me I don’t understand how and why #gamergate even happened. Even assuming that the central “crime” that Zoe is accused as doing occurred, it still isn’t worth getting work up about at all. Even assuming Zoe traded sex for a game review for Depression Quest, while it would be unethical, it shouldn’t have cost anybody anything given that you can play the game for free and really gamers calm down you may have wasted 5 minutes checking out a game! In light of this “crime” not being true, indeed cannot be true it’s so freaken absurd that it even happened.
Likewise, I literal have no idea why anybody as a problem with Sarkeesian. Look I haven’t watched every single moment of Tropes vs. Women (I’ve seen ~80% of it) but she hasn’t said anything radical, untrue, or really nothing that wouldn’t occur to a person if they thought about the issues for 3 minutes. Why are gamerbros so up in arms about it? At worse you can say some of Sarkeesian’s examples are not the best*, but that’s minor quibbling.
*for example, I think citing Mass Effect in the Ms. Male character episode works, and frankly I’ve made the same complaint vis-a-vis femsheps just copying malesheps’ animation, I think DA:O and DA2 are much better examples. I also don’t think you can “blame” 80% of Mass Effect players playing malesheps on the lack of marketing support for femsheps. And I don’t think it is a given that Jennifer Hale’s voice acting is better as I personally find Hale to be awful as renegade-shep.
you’re treading close to “NotAllX” territory here
Put another way: When you’re talking about a few thousands, or even tens of thousands of loudmouths and harassers in a population of hundreds of millions, “NotAllX” is exactly backwards. “NotAllX” argues “I am the exception.” I am arguing that decent gamers are, by and large, the vast majority, i.e.: the harassers are the exception.
Aside from the material harm caused by harassment and gaming terrorism, it also poisons the entire debate over gamer culture. It’s true that people making bomb threats are a tiny minority, or else we’d see a lot more than two (there was the other one with the Sony president). It’s true that most of the people speaking out against gaming-harassment culture are invested gamers (including people in this thread).
However, this is the same defense used by #gamergate supporters. They say they don’t support harassment. They just want to stop the “corruption” in video game journalism (which seems to mean the mere existence of op-eds, and to “SJW”s). Hardly anyone buys it. In a comparison between gamers and Muslims, Muslims come out far, far better. Islam has had centuries to radiate outwards into very disparate philosophies. The harassing gamergaters and the “reasonable” gamergaters have been spawned less than a month apart.
It’s true that it’s not all gamers. But we can’t just dismiss it as a small minority, and absolve the rest. We need more scrutiny.
ignoring how those “good” gamers have been silent
Way to completely miss my point. I appear to be incapable of explaining anything, today. :(
The point is that the vast majority of gamers is: us. The trouble-makers are a very small, very vocal, and possibly influential minority. Attack their influence and they’re gone immediately. That is work in progress. Get the vast majority of gamers, half of whom are women, to say “nuh uh” to that shit, and it’s over. That’s why the harassment culture is reacting so strongly – they’re about to be further marginalized and they don’t like it. They’re already a rounding error.
I see your point, Marcus, don’t necessarily agree, but I see where you’re standing, and with your premises, I cede that you weren’t making the bad-faith arguments I thought you were. As you noted, I’m not sure that was as clear with the initial post as you might have liked; it certainly sounded defensive to me. Thanks for explaining.
The common counterpoint to this is that men and women generally gravitate towards different kinds of games. The genre of games that attract more female players are, unsurprisingly, the ones which either have less bothersome portrayals of women or less toxic anti-female cultures surrounding them. I’ll wager that the sort of dudebros responsible for most anti-female harassment in gaming culture are more likely to play Hitman, Grand Theft Auto, or Call of Duty than they are games with a larger proportion of female players. Of course, it should be needless to say that such behavior is a significant contributor to most of the gender disparities in gaming.
On an semi-related note, I can vouch from personal experience that certain gaming communities not only have a gender problem, they have a race problem too. If someone makes a mod to a game that adds more non-European characters or re-skins existing characters to make them look non-European, they will catch hell from the white gamers. One time I made a mod for Age of Mythology that gave the ancient Egyptian characters darker skin (since the originals were all whitewashed in the fashion of Ridley Scott), and boy did some of the commentators get racist about it. With another mod, this one for Total War: Rome II I got accused of “turning ancient figures into n*ggas”. Lucky for me that I’m an affluent white dude so that such insults don’t sting me as much.
michael kellymiecielica
I’d say it’s simply a mix of very insular defensiveness and plain ol’ misogyny. They’re not used to their hobby being held up to any kind of robust criticism, and it hurts even more that it’s a stinky girl doing it.
Except @52……it’s not over. Go look at the comments on Zoe Quinn’s piece on Cracked. Where are the “good” gamers? They don’t do anything at all, it seems, except get defensive.
@44: Well, they could try flexing all those muscles we’re being told they have. It’s their house. They need to clean it or stop whining when outsiders point out it’s filthy.
michael kellymiecielica #49
It never had anything to do with any substance – it’s all about denying women their rights. The backlash against Sarkeesian started well before she’d made any game review/trope discussion (not counting Lego, obviously) and the scum were up at arms against Quinn just because her game featured her prominently.
There is nothing else and there never was. The “journalism” talk went away fairly quickly because it was due to typing error (one person who wrote “march” instead of “may” and later corrected himself). What remained was the core argument – that Quinn dared to “cheat” on her boyfriend (as he claims).
In other words, 4chan and its Reddit supporters are nothing more than US Taliban who want to police how women talk, on which subjects, where and to what extent they may present themselves in any media, and with whom they may have intimate relations. These people are proto-al-Shabaab and should be treated accordingly.
Don’t fret. It was a little ambiguous at first, but a lot clearer to me by the time you got to #43.
Perhaps some of us are accustomed to arguing against religion. Perhaps we’re accustomed to a situation in which 80% of everyone you encounter is on the other side, and accordingly we assume a defensive position immediately.
With respect to gaming, the dynamics are exactly the opposite. We should not be on the defensive: we should be saying to the game developers, “I won’t buy a game that sucks, and if you added sexualized violence to it, you won’t get my money.” Or, we don’t even need to say it if we just base our spending habits on what we want to see in games. Unlike with atheism, which is a question of how the 20% can get the 80% to back off, we’re the 80%.(*)
One exercise I’d like to go through is to map the games Sarkeesian points out, to a timeline and to sales. With the glaring exception of GTA5 it strikes me that those games a) sucked b) didn’t sell particularly well d) are older. One of the things that struck me from Sarkeesian’s last video was that I haven’t played any of those games (I have a used copy of GTA5 a friend gave me but…. Halo Reach!) I didn’t not play them out of any kind of moral outrage, but because they sucked. I think it’d be great if a time-line and sales figures showed that, because it would be evidence that the ship is already turning and may have started turning years ago. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying to get the industry to clean up its act and in the meantime we don’t need to do anything to marginalize the harassers other than to say “hey, millions of us don’t play that shit” and vote with our dollars.
(* made up numbers)
Yeah, it’s definitely not just misogynists/homophobes/transphobes/etc. I don’t know how they do it, but the all-around shithead contingent somehow finds its way into every little crevice in society. We’re going to need a lot of warm soapy water.
@56 It’s not over. Go look at all the twitter posts by Dawkins or the continued raging by atheist MRAs or ElevatorGate or women atheist bloggers being hounded off-line. Where are the “good” atheists? They don’t do anything at all, it seems, except get defensive. They could try flexing all those muscles we’re being told they have. It’s their house. They need to clean it or stop whining when outsiders point out it’s filthy.
Anita Sarkeesian is a “good” gamer. The makers of Gone Home, who pulled out of the PAX indie showcase due to concerns about some of the panels there are “good” gamers. The journalists at Rock, Paper, Shotgun who have posted many articles about their stance on promoting inclusive games are “good” gamers. The legions of game fans who push back on MRA bullshit are “good” gamers. I could go on. The reality is that people who support “good” values don’t typically resort to using napalm — hacking phones, bomb threats, intimidation, trying to destroy people’s lives — and therefore have less media visibility. But “good” gamers and “good” game developers and “good” game journalists are all around.
@51 miller
I’ve seen plenty of people buy it (mostly because gaming journalism has been pretty stupid for awhile). Many people don’t know how gamergate started, which I guess is with the ‘scandal’ with Zoe Quinn.
@56 ginmar
In the Kotaku and Cracked articles it’s more of a brawl. Why are you saying there aren’t “good gamers”? Are you only looking at the bad ones or something?
We’re going to need a lot of warm soapy water.
Hey, cold isopropyl alcohol and a wire brush works pretty well, too.
@48
I did not see the point of “not all men” as saying “I am exceptional”. I mean, I didn’t follow the hashtag, but that’s not what I got out of it. Rather, it was saying that only a minority of men are causing rape. The defense is frustrating for a number of reasons: a) It obstructs discussion of the problem, b) it ignores the long gradient of sexist behavior, from microagressions to rape, and c) we already knew it wasn’t all men. I think all three things hold here.
My basic understanding of the internet is that lurkers and other non-participants dominate the numbers. So when we’re talking about gamers who say stuff on the internet, that’s already a tiny minority. The harassers have got to be an even smaller minority than that.
Yeah, there are apparently 15% of GTA Online players who are women, which I’d say is possible. I see more female avatars than that, but I wouldn’t want to bet they’re all played by women, nor that all the women are playing female avatars. I do, but I don’t play in public servers. When I do, I get propositioned on the street by guys wanting me to ride, who then start shouting abuse at me in-channel if I refuse, usually followed by some form of murder. W00t! feel that reality! For both of us, unfortunately.
So I don’t play on public servers, I play with my close friends, in my crew (the name of which can be found in my post above mentioning a Youtube channel; look us up on PS3), on closed crew servers. I don’t get the same experience that gamers with male avatars do, because, directly, of misogyny.
And it doesn’t matter how many times I tried it, it happened again and again. Now, there’s something to the response that it’s GTA Online, and a certain culture has been created over the years which has fostered a game that encourages a certain degree of misogynist behaviour…which, of course, is why Anita Sarkeesian made that criticism.
(content note, next paragraph has some somewhat graphic misogynist violence)
The worst part is, 90% of the story, and 99% of the online game, would be just the same without any misogyny, because there isn’t any inherent to that chunk of the game. It’s in the background (again, see Ms. Sarkeesian’s work), but you have almost none you’re required to do to complete the game. Unlike, says, GTA San Andreas, where to complete the game you had to do “pimping” missions, 10 of them in each of the game’s three cities, which involved driving sex workers to jobs, picking them up afterwards, protecting them from violence, and occasionally instigating it yourself if she tried to keep too much of the money she’d earned. Or GTA IV, where you were required to knock a woman you’re kidnapping unconscious because she won’t stop talking and grabbing the wheel to, y’know, save her life (oh, the unreasonableness!), or later slap her to make her look more pathetic and look at the camera to show her father you’re serious. In the story in V, there are some smaller incidents, in side missions or random encounters, a couple of which Ms. Sarkeesian has reviewed, but the main storyline is pretty much without them. And the online game has even less; very few of the missions have anything other than the background misogyny – much the same as our world, the gendered slurs, the billboards, that kind of thing – in them at all, which is why i play the online game a fair bit. Also, I have friends I enjoy playing it with, and we’re looking forward to Heists.
So yeah. I even play the misogynist games. Because I’m a gamer. But I’ll also criticize them as such, and my friends have gotten so used to hearing it from me that they’re starting to look at me when stuff comes up in movies and shows and games. Which says to me they’re starting to see it themselves – but they’re still expecting me to do the heavy work. But that’s a long step closer, no? And that’s why i stick around, because I think we can make gaming culture into something NOT toxic, and any such movement is going to need grandmothers, because we’re viewed as sensible old women who won’t take any crap, and you have to listen to your nana.
So I’m gonna be one of those. The gaming grandmother.
Wait. I already am. Four grandkids so far. Got my second set of gold stars on a song in Rock Band last night (hi, we’re The YogSothGothians, I’m DaKitty, on bass – we’ll be here all week!), and unlocked the last weapon in GTA Online last weekend. Gonna play some Firefly and Arkham tomorrow night, maybe some Suburbia or the Russian import Evolution (which is AWESOME) at the weekly board game night.
And then push myself into starting that game review blog. I need to do that. I just don’t want to get buried in abusive crap when I do, for the crime of “criticizing games while being a woman”.
They believe him without question.
Sarkeesian gets death threats and is forced to leave her home, and it’s all like “prove it to me”.
Pathetic hypocrites all.
Marcus Ranum:
Dessert topping and floor wax.
–
Those who do not speak up condone with their silence. They are part of the problem.
All that is required for evil to triumph is for the “good” people to do nothing.
Oh, and my current favourite subversion activity: I’ve been using GTA Online as a cosplay opportunity. I’ve so far managed Zoe, Kaylee, Clockwork Orange Alex, Leela, Amy, Wonder Woman, and a Blues Sister. I’m in the process of assembling Thelma and Louise outfits, and modifying an in-game Thunderbird analogue, so we can film the jumping-off-the-cliff scene.
I need to get a friend to spend some time flying around with a helicopter and doing some photo shoots. :)
Uhm. Aren’t we talking about comment sections and forums here? Are you really suggesting that people must engage in such threads or they are part of the problem?
My understanding is that while a large segment of the population plays games, most of them do not self-identify as gamers, and the ones who do self-identify as gamers for the most part play certain specific kinds of games (like AAA shooters), are more likely to construct their identity around being gamers (I don’t see many Farmville players IDing as hardcore gamers), and consider the kinds of games that most of the gaming population plays (phone games, for instance) as not really being games or being lesser games, i.e. “casual.”
So in that case, I think it’s fair to talk about a “gamer culture” insofar as the term “gamer” has been coopted by a very specific subset of people who play games.
I must add that I play a lot of these so-called “casual” games (with Puzzle and Dragons being my favorite), and have never once thought of identifying as a gamer.
doublereed #70:
Not that every individual MUST, but that people in general SHOULD. Letting expressions of bigotry and bigotry’s myths stand unchallenged *does* contribute to the problem, by giving the impression to the targets of said bigotry that it’s real, they’re alone, and nobody will ever speak up for them or have their backs. Even though speaking up has real risks and real costs. Even though some people have to withdraw to protect themselves. Even being silent for excellent reason means the bigotry gains a fraction more ground. That’s why silencing, specifically, is the direct goal of sexist harassment. If women and allies speak up about how they’re treated, and they’re not immediately smacked down and discredited, those neutral, silent, basically decent people… might start to believe them.
Where are all the good gamers?
Seriously?
Well, I know that one of them is making Feminist Frequency videos, and quite a few more are helping her out financially to be able to do that. Another is writing cool indie games about topics the mainstream game industry doesn’t have the imagination to realize that they wouldn’t touch, like depression, and then speaking out about harassment on Cracked.
y’know. Just for a couple examples.
Frankly, I would draw more parallels between gamers and atheists than gamers and muslims. There are large numbers of both gamers and atheists who aren’t even really aware that that label fits them, let alone have considered actively participating in a shared-interest community built around that label. I’ve yet to meet anyone who just happens to be a muslim but would never consider referring to themselves as such. And in both gaming and atheism the real problems arise within those shared-interest communities that exist as small subsets of gamers and atheists at large.
I think that’s relevant primarily because it’s hard to get people invested in changing a community they don’t even really consider themselves a part of. And that vocal, self-identified subset is going to be very attractive to those who’d like to differentiate themselves and exclude others they don’t consider ‘worthy’, but much less attractive to the open minded who consider gaming (or atheism) just a facet of their life rather than a defining feature. So while I’m fully in favor of encouraging more people to identify themselves as gamers and to stand up against this bullshit as they see it, I’d guess that wouldn’t make a huge difference since most people who don’t already identify as gamers aren’t really in contact with these assholes frequently anyway.
In the end, though, I think this raging is happening so visibly right now because things already ARE changing, and these assholes know it. Devs and publishers are seeing the money in catering to ‘casuals’ and non-young-males, and are realizing that the AAA titles that are the bread and butter of the most vocal gamers are increasingly producing a poor return on investment. The people who don’t know that they’re gamers are making the changes without even realizing the changes are occurring.
Time to link Solnit’s 2008 essay, Men explain things to me: (bolds mine)
Marcus @50
<blockquote cite="Put another way: When you’re talking about a few thousands, or even tens of thousands of loudmouths and harassers in a population of hundreds of millions, “NotAllX” is exactly backwards. “NotAllX” argues “I am the exception.” I am arguing that decent gamers are, by and large, the vast majority, i.e.: the harassers are the exception."
I think you’re fooling yourself here. In my experience the purpose of the #notallmen defense is not to claim a personal exception. It’s to derail the discussion. It requires the people (usually women) discussing the problem of violence by men against women to have to parse language and go down the rabbit hole of “of course I didn’t mean all men do this but…” and getting sidetracked into apologetics, which distracts from talking about the actual problem. It’s a rhetorical derailing technique as practiced.
So, actually, yes, when someone starts in with “But these horrible assholes are only a minority, they don’t represent all gamers” I hear the exact same argument, whether intended or not. “You can’t talk about the problems among gamer culture without providing a satisfactory bit of exceptionalism to spare individual feelings.”
No. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’m not a gamer. All I know of gaming is this horrible misogynist, violent shit being thrown at women for existing. It is not my responsibility as an outside observer to develop a more nuanced understanding of gaming and gamer culture of which I am not a part. People who are part of that culture – who don’t like that outsiders like me have this terrible impression of what you are part of – are responsible for changing the perception.
*sigh* Obviously that first paragraph was intended to be in a blockquote.
Carlie @16: I heard that in Lisa Simpson’s voice! (I should never have got that CD….)
just saw Marcotte: Right-wing vultures start to circle #GamerGate (Rawstory link)
All the journalistic integrity you can eat.
…Which leads me to wonder if Dawkins these days is the mark, or the collaborator.
Pteryxx
Pteryxx is totally on point as usual but I want to add:
Wait, why is it assumed we’re talking about just blog comments and forums? If we’re saying speak out against this bullshit then it doesn’t matter if you do it on twitter, facebook, in game channels or whatever. Call that shit out when you see it and make it known where you stand, it’s not like the harassers are sticking to one venue. They’re fucking everywhere. Sexism is fucking everywhere. Everyone is fucking sexist to begin with so claiming that the majority of gamers aren’t harassers and are just quiet is really stupid. Death threats and such is the extreme (so far) that we’re dealing with but it’s all from sexism, so just call that out. It’s not that fucking hard. Stop making it the women’s work since we’re the ones getting the brunt of it. Step the fuck up and stop making excuses. (Yeah, let’s just get the 50% women gamers on board, it’s not like the other half are part of the problem and need to change at all. /snort)
That’s really all it takes to not be apart of the problem.
whoops, I should’ve specified: I mentioned Dawkins because Sommers is one of the right-wing vultures Marcotte’s referring to.
Marcotte’s citing Kotaku: Conservative Critic Argues That Game Culture Is For Guys
AlexanderZ
Oh no you didn’t…
I think the relevant group, when we talk about “gamer culture” are the people who play AAA games. Not necessarily shooters–I stick to Nintendo games myself, and those are AAA titles as well.
To this subset of gamers, it really is about power, power over what kind of games get made. AAA games are fundamentally a collective activity, because they are so expensive to develop. Only a few kinds of games are created, based on what developers think will have the safest profits, and if your tastes are different from the majority tastes, you’re SOL. This cultivates a paranoia that, if a game feels unsatisfying (as many inevitably do), maybe that AAA games are moving away from you, and you’ll have to settle in the indie ghetto. If a game gets a 8/10, instead of a 9/10, then reviewers are literally killing games. If someone writes a text-based choose-your-own-adventure game about depression, other developers will get ideas and stop making AAA titles. If someone criticizes the representation of women in games, it doesn’t matter if you’re not convinced, other people will be convinced and force change in the games that you play.
bah, another fix to my #82: Kotaku fixed its headline to remove “Conservative” because American Enterprise Institute employee and anti-feminist Christina Hoff Sommers… is a registered Democrat.
I just want to point out that the distinction between “hardcore” and “casual” used in the pdfs in the beginning of the thread is how many hours one plays on average per week, with “hardcore” gamers as people who play more than 30h/week.
Also the ESA pdf points to CoD, Madden, Assassin’s Creed and other rehashed “hyper-masculine” sequels as top sellers in 2013, which means maybe the ship isn’t turn as much as it seems. As others have pointed out here, gamers vote with their wallets (as most of us do on anything nowadays) and it’ll take a great number of people changing before big companies really start worrying about these issues as threats to their income.
There’s a nice video by The Game Theorists, on YouTube, called “Are gamers killing video games? ” which has nice examples of this tendency of the industry to repeat itself too much. I can’t link to it right now because I’m on my phone, but it’s really easy to find.
I apologize if anything is unclear, English isn’t my first language :P
If one lurks and sees an example of misogyny or bigotry or whatever, and one does not engage at that point, even with just a single comment, like “lurker here, but that was just wrong,” then yes, one is part of the problem. If every lurker did that, and assuming they are the vast majority, the behavior in question will rapidly be seen as unacceptable, and weight of social pressure/public shame will end it.
No one “must” engage, because no one is required to diligently not be a part of every problem. But that doesn’t change the reality that one is part of the problem in such cases.
Now Cracked is a suggested GamerGate target.
Conversely, the silence of the lurkers allows the minority of vocal bigots to selectively self-reinforce. They perceive themselves winning status, and that is one of the primary drivers and motivators of behavior. We see this in other primates all the time. Silent acceptance of the alpha’s behavior by the group is an act of tacit submission, and reinforces the alpha’s status, encouraging further behavior of the type. But on rare occasions if the alpha goes too far, the entire group may turn on him (usually a him), and this almost always immediately shuts down the offending behavior in question.
TMM @ 88:
FFS.
If I roll my eyes any harder, my spine will pop out of my neck.
Have you seen the absolute dregs of, say, youtube comments, and forums and twitter? Are you really going to engage every single one you see? Are you going to go out and call out the bullshit for literally everyone on Stormfront and /r/TheRedPill. After all, it’s not hard to seek out nasty comments in all sorts of places. Even you don’t seek it out, are you going to dismiss anyone who says “Don’t read the comments”? Not only is that a massive timesink, it’s a simple way to become fatigued with social justice. I would go so far as to say that’s unhealthy.
I can only assume that you’re saying that people should, in general, call out bullshit when they see it. That one should engage with the sexism that infects their communities. Because the alternative is simply mind-boggling in terms of scope.
@81 JAL
I never claimed that they are quiet. In fact I don’t think they’re quiet at all. You can see plenty of “good” gamers engaging in the discussions of the Kotaku and Cracked articles. You can find plenty of gamers defending Sarkeesian and fighting against sexism if you just bother to look.
What would you like me to do?
In League Of Legends, which perhaps has the most toxic community of any online game, we’re still trying. The community and the developers are trying. They have put into place systems to reward people with good sportsmanship, and they ban people who continue to act like asshats. Including “pro tier” gamers going to their competitions.
http://forums.euw.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1015978
They have a reporting system where members of the community can review complaints, and basically issue bans. (It’s slightly more nuanced.) (It’s called “The Tribunal”.)
In the online games I play, I do not associate with such people. I’ve defriended several online acquaintances over this. I’m sure to report this kind of negative behavior whenever I can so that processes like the Tribunal can get their asses banned. So do all of my friends.
I’m not sure what else I can be doing.
…
Have you played 3.5? I just reviewed some of the books to double check, and it seems that the male to female art is close to 50%-50%. (There might be a little more male art. My totally unscientific random check was about 60%-40% for the pages I chose.) The pronouns are a little worse as well from my excerpt, but I remember that many of the books seem to randomly choose for each class and prestige class description whether to use male or female pronouns.
In the splat books focused on other cultures, they also do non-Western dress, but in that case it’s almost caricature (just like some of the western dress is also caricature), and so I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.
Your implicit complaint about earlier D&D is IMHO completely off the mark.
By what metric? How do you know that?
I do not doubt that being in online gaming exposes you to a multitude of misogynistic racist asshats. Why do you think that constitutes a majority of people playing online games? Why do you think that a large chunk of the online gaming community – moreso than people at large – don’t give a damn? How did you figure that out?
There are toxic players, yes. One problem is John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory – that anonymity and an audience tends to draw out the worst in people. The game industry could do better in this regard to allow the community to better police itself. For example, I don’t know how effective it is or if Riot Gaming could do better, but it seems to me that they’re taking this with some non-trivial degree of sincerity and effort (see the above discussion).
Again, I’d really like to know what you think I as an online gamer could do about it.
…
PS: Mostly what Marcus Ranum has said.
EnlightenmentLiberal, if you’d just look up a few posts you’ll see a whole discussion about how important it is to call this shit out whenever you encounter it.
Relevant to this topic: Ally at HetPat for Men has a good post about this too and the comments got… interesting, with people trying to defend this shit and describing being afraid that the Ebil Feminazis will take away their games.
I still don’t get what the whining’s about, though.
@Amphiox and Pteryxx,
It’s hard for me to see lurking as problematic, because even those among us who are vocal do it too. I follow dozens of websites, and delurk on only a handful. Anyway, I’m not particularly convinced that people delurking will solve our problem. We’d probably find that lurkers are a no more enlightened group than average, and their main redeeming feature is that they don’t harass people they disagree with. (Although now that I think about it, I’m basically agreeing with you that lurkers are part of the problem.)
Sorry, posted to soon. Wanted to add to EnlightenmentLiberal who said:
Because we play these games and these things happen to us and NO ONE SPEAKS UP or backs us up. So don’t #notallgamers, when #mostgamers just sit there and allow this shit to happen. What else are we supposed to think, then, other than that they are a significant chunk and that a much larger chunk just don’t give a damn?
miller #94 – the problem with lurking, basically, is that when all else is equal, there’s more incentive for random lurkers to jump in and say ‘You go, brodude!’ than there is to say ‘Ew, not cool’. Taking a few seconds to cheer misogyny in a bro-culture-infested space is more rewarding and less risky (to those so inclined) than taking a few seconds to decry it. Which in and of itself means their voices are overrepresented, their BS gets more credibility, and they get to enjoy bonding with their women-POC-and-queer-dissing peers. While those other lurkers, the ones who either *are* a targeted identity or who don’t want to silently stomach the hating, quietly withdraw from the community rather than speak up and get *forced* out.
Nobody said delurking more would solve the culture problem. However, the decision (or default) NOT to spend a few seconds and take the risk of saying ‘Ew, not cool’ still isn’t a neutral, harm-free decision. It just means the lurker who stays silent merely because they don’t see the point of bothering, probably isn’t the lurker paying the price.
Perhaps that most gamers who do give a damn have been driven away from toxic communities. I don’t play LoL or on-line shooters at all. I’ve played a couple MMOs in the past, and did indeed call out and mock and report bad behavior, but have generally found welcoming communities there. I occasionally play on-line games these days, but almost always with just friends and family. And the gaming forums I frequent (Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Polygon, Kerbal Space Program, Orbiter) are also friendly ones, where harassers that show up are immediately called out, brought to task, and usually banned. There are friendly places; why would we go visit shitholes?
These “gamers” complain about their AAA market of sandboxes and shooters losing its “rightful” place as the Only True Gaming. Bah! They’re johnny-come-latelys whose rise to prominence came at the cost of older established top genres like platformers, traditional JRPGs and adventure games.
The thing is, many of the people who could be calling out the assholes can’t be arsed because usually the assholes take their video games WAY more seriously. It doesn’t feel like it’s worth the effort.
I don’t agree with much of what Anita Sarkeesian. When I watch her videos I find myself thinking “well that’s not quite right”, “that seems a bit dishonest”, stuff like that. But these fuckwitts that make death threats, rape threats and bomb threats sicken me so much that I *want* to agree with her, if only to distance myself from them. The tactics used by some of the “gamers” in this dispute are beyond reprehensible. Disagreeing with someone is no reason to hate in the way so many of them do.
Gee, I wonder why that is.
Could it be because everyone *knows* the assholes are likely to flip out and create a huge scene if anyone calls them out? Could it be because the assholes don’t seem a big problem to you as long as you don’t poke them and neither does anyone else? Could it be that letting them get away with the odd flash of bigotry seems like a worthwhile price to pay for getting to keep playing in peace and quiet, and stay part of the gaming group or online community, instead of maybe getting blamed for troublemaking if you *do* call out the asshole?
I have a question for you.
What do you think these assholes are doing *over private channels* ?
Think about that for a minute.
I’m speaking from experience, because I had a gaming guild poisoned by an asshole who was careful not to pull the heavy sexist and bullying crap anywhere that I could see him. I called him out *once*, he apologized, and I thought that was the end of it. Over the next year I had multiple good players leave or go missing for no obvious reason. I didn’t know what was happening until I started to get complaints *from other guilds*. Because I was the only person who called him out in public, everyone he harassed out of my presence had nobody to turn to. Good people left my group without ever knowing someone would have had their backs.
You better believe I’ve learned my lesson about making sure calling-out happens in public. (Along with explicit anti-harassment statements.) That’s a lot of friends I might still have if it weren’t for the default of silence.
#61 You can’t flip genders and have it be equal. Dudes really need to stop trying that gambit.
#62: why should I have to wade through 1300 shifty serial comments—–all obviously taken from Thunderf00t’s bullshit——in search of one or two nice ones?
#74; That’s pretty disingenuous. There are 11,039 comments on that article. When last I looked, the high rated ones were regurgitating Thunderf00t’s bullshit, as well as citing her spiteful exe’s lies——while declaring that she, Sarkesian, and Rebecca Watson were obviously lying. A lot of “men” refuse to listen to women but the standards we set for men are so low it seems lots of guys expect parades just for NOT being a total scumbag.
I guess being the true scientist, sceptic and reasonable person that he is he has some credible evidence for this and presented it to the viewer….
zezzer
That is, IMO, part of the problem: Gaming gets consistently redefined to keep dudebros the majority. Whenever women pick up on something, like the casual games, they stop being “real” games.
Sure, half the population games in one way or another, but the assholes monopolize the stage.
@102 ginmar
Are we talking about this Kotaku article and this Cracked article?
Because I’m just glancing through the comments a bit, and sure there are idiotic comments (as well as comments that cite Thunderf00t), but they’re being responded to. There are plenty of supportive comments as well. Are we looking at different things or something? Why are you pretending that the good comments aren’t there?
Indeed. I just glanced through the most popular comments on both articles and the ratio is about 1:1 “good” to “evil.” There’s plenty of push-back on the evil. And Kotaku and Cracked aren’t exactly known for having particularly well curated comment sections. Go to a better site and you’ll find that similar articles have comment sections where almost all of the most-recommended comments are on the good side.
@101 Pteryxx
I agree with your general point, but I don’t think it’s because people are afraid of assholes flipping out or whatever. I just think people generally avoid confrontation. Honestly, when I’ve called people on their bullshit, they usually just shut up and quit it without making any kind of scene.
People think it makes a scene to call somebody out in public, but usually it doesn’t.
And that really sucks what happened to your guild.
@mattwatkins
Are you saying such a better site doesn’t exist?!? :-O
[The link links nowhere, and it might be an oversight, but also a clever way to indirectly say things, or I am too suspicious of everything …]
All I know of gaming is this horrible misogynist, violent shit being thrown at women for existing. It is not my responsibility as an outside observer to develop a more nuanced understanding of gaming and gamer culture of which I am not a part.
…. said everyone, who ever stereotyped a huge population based on the actions of a minority, ever.
So where are all these non-harassing gamers? Because they’re not doing squat.
I know for a fact that everyone on my raid team loudly and strongly pushes back on anyone who makes racist, homophobic, or gendered insults in general or raid chat. For those who aren’t aware of the difference, there’s “guild chat” which is broadcast only to members of the guild, and “general chat” which broadcasts to everyone on that server in that region. “Raid chat” is everyone in a particular raid group or quest group. The point is, if someone throws a gendered insult in public in our presence, they get called out on it, with a deliberate attempt to make it unrewarding for them. And, if they escalate, they get reported to the admins as engaging in harassment. For one thing, in the chat system used in World of Warcraft, if you register a complaint on someone’s comment, it deletes it from the chat (and can get their account locked) so you can always tell an abuser, “hey you’re wasting your time saying that stuff because I’m right behind you cleaning up your language for you.” And it works. As always, when you’re dealing with that kind of situation, you need to orient your actions not toward convincing the trouble-maker (they’ll usually think it through afterwards) but toward convincing the other people who are reading along silently. One other thing I have observed is that calling people out on their language – just like people do here in Pharyngula – empowers others to realize it’s appropriate to do so, which magnifies the effect.
One funny thing that happened one night in LFR (looking for raid, which is a pick-up group queuing system that mashes strangers together) A guy in our raid used some racist language and I called them on it. They started yelling at me. Then, when we got into the next boss fight, the racist died, and immediately complained that they weren’t getting heal-spells from the healers, and one of the healers said, “I don’t heal racists.” It was delicious.
I’ve seen people kicked from guilds for using inappropriate language.
Since I often tank (the tank is the guy who sits there and keeps the boss’ attention and lets the boss wail on them while everyone else inflicts damage) I have a fair amount of leverage in a raid. If the tank says, “well, I won’t tank for a homophobe” and leaves the instance during a boss fight, the whole party is going to wipe. Stopping the action and saying “kick the guy using homophobic language from the raid or I’m out of here” is going to get that person kicked. People remember that kind of thing.
Also, if I might observe, most online games have harassment guidelines and mechanisms to enforce them. Unlike, say, certain skeptical and atheist organizations, they actually do boot players, too.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2012/12/06/blizzard-comments-on-how-to-deal-with-harassment/
“You can’t talk about the problems among gamer culture without providing a satisfactory bit of exceptionalism to spare individual feelings.”
I’m not saying that, at all. I’m entirely in favor of calling out bad behavior and bad games. Push both the players and the game designers!! Push across the board! The trick is to push where the problem is – which is not too difficult because the people who are the problem are being pretty damn vocal about it. Where I think people get sloppy is when they stereotype “gamers” without realizing that the “gamer” population is a lot larger and more diverse than the stereotype. Stereotyping is a set-up for failure no matter what direction it’s going.
If that’s true (I’m not wading through a TF video comment thread to verify), that’s pretty amusing. Hillary Clinton purportedly said something similar (about how women are the great victims of war since their sons and husbands are killed), and that quote is still brought up to attack feminism.
What bugs me about calling this “gamer culture” is that I don’t think gamers are worse than various other groups. It focuses on the wrong variable. The same thing happens in various groups, and gaming is just one of them.
I am a pretty hardcore gamer, by most definitions I would guess, and have a large number of gaming friends from all over Europe (I’m from the UK). Not just virtual friends either… for instance, next month one of my friends is celebrating her birthday, and we’re expecting friends to turn up from Iceland, Norway, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Ireland etc. We’ve played shed-loads of games together, of many different genres. So you’d think by and large we’d be part of this “gamer” demographic being spoken about here surely? Urm, No… not really, to be honest.
As Marcus Ranum has pointed out, the vast majority of gamers like us don’t spend their time in gaming forums, or talking about game journalism on twitter, or following game developers. Of my friends, I’m probably the most inclined to do so, but my browsing tends to be limited to reading articles or watching videos (The Escapist and Extra Credits pretty much). I don’t have any interest in reading the comments or forums though… not to avoid bile and hatred, simply due to lack of time and not thinking there would be much added value from doing so. Most gamers like myself won’t have heard about GamerGate, or know who Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian are. I likely wouldn’t if I wasn’t also interested in Social Justice issues in addition to playing computer games.
Also, my friends and I don’t tend to play many of the online games that have the worst problems, like Call of Duty, League of Legends and so on. They hold no interest to us. Other games we do play, like Wow and Guild Wars and such, have their problems too, but in those all the guilds and groups I’ve played with and led have always had a zero-tolerance approach to any issues of harassment.
So while I agree with the message of “speak out when you see misogyny”, and have done so and continue to do so as much as I am able, I do also think you can’t overlook the point Marcus Ranum is making. Sure, we can speak up when we see it… but when the majority of us don’t inhabit the spaces where this happens, what can we do then? When I know these issues are happening I’ll make a point of tracking down the discussions, and speaking up for justice, but I’m not going to spend my life policing these areas all the time when they hold very little interest to me.
When the majority don’t use these resources, and are unaware when these issues occur, it becomes disingenuous to expect the majority to do something. As major consumers of social media, we should never forget that not everyone is linked-in the way we are. We can and SHOULD expect people to speak out… over-generalising isn’t going to help one bit though.
Marcus Ranum
The problem with this #NotAllGamers “Don’t smear us all” stick is, even with the individual stories of safe places, there’s still instances of people spouting harmful bigotry. Because every anecdote is filled with admitting of policing and banning people from the safe place. Now just because a few have found pockets to hide from the overwhelming majority doesn’t mean the gamer culture and gamers in general do not have sexism problem. If that were true, it wouldn’t be a fight in the mainstream and in the smaller places to keep it safe and shout down bigotry.
Do you also quibble with saying “Society has a sexism problem”? Everywhere and everyone has a sexism problem, just because your hobby and your identifier are being specifically worked on doesn’t make it any less true that gamers do have a major problem.
And really, when I say gamers, I mean all people who identify as gamers regardless of their playing AAA titles or not. I don’t usually play such games either because of its issues. Even if people are naming the COD players because they’re easy targets doesn’t mean there aren’t problems in board games and app games. (I remember stories told of DM’s being assholes and the fight to get a good group together, for instance.)
Indeed. Also, different games and websites have different issues and varying scales of problems. Gaming sites and forums seem to have the worst problems, mostly due to their demographics I would suggest (in that they cater for and get the most vocal minority of the gaming community). Some games, like League of Legends and Call of Duty (and it’s many clones) are notoriously bad, while others are much better (Wow in my experience, and by the sounds of it, Marcus Ranum’s too).
There isn’t one gamer community, there are lots and lots of different communities under the gaming umbrella.
There isn’t going to be a “one size fits all” solution to this. Each community will face it’s own challenges to clean up the problem, and will likely require different resources to do so… such as stricter moderation in the gaming sites, added reporting tools in online games and so on. Some communities are going to take longer than others. The good thing is there are new signs of change coming all the time.
#114 JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
I don’t believe that’s the point he’s trying to make, or that he is quibbling about sexism being present.
I think that he, like I, is trying to pint out that you are trying to treat all gamers as a monolith, when in reality we are parts of lots of little fiefdoms in the land of gaming.
*like I? like me?
bleurgh… 1am here. Getting too tired to work out this grammar thing.
markbrown
That’s like saying there isn’t a problem in the atheist movement because atheists aren’t worse than other groups or society at large.
Are you really that upset by calling it a culture you’re going to defend the idea that there isn’t definable ” attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group” with gamers? Really?
markbrown
Because the fact you play puzzle games (or whatever) instead of specific games being targeted you’re just going to cop out? You admit to still being the land of gaming so…Dear lord, if you’re not doing the problematic things or playing them and are speaking out against it, then you’re not being targeted when we say gamers. Obviously. It’s that simple. Stop taking it defensively and demanding that we agree on a list of exemptions. (I doubt that’s even possible, nothings completely sexist/racist/ableist/etc free) Gamers, except blah, blah, blah, blah just wastes time because there’s even gamers who play problematic titles but speak out so they aren’t part of the problem either. Like Anita, for instance.
Seriously mirroring the #NotAllMen discussion from previous threads.
@Pteryxx
Calm down, I know all these things. I was just pointing out the kind of inertia that leads to the harassers dominating the space in many games. Many people, when harassment becomes enough of an issue to override their sense of fun, just leave the bad place for greener pastures, because they’re not as attached to it as the harassers obviously are.
Exactly, except not at all.*
There is a problem, and that problem does reside within gamer culture/atheist culture/etc, but said problem is not unique to any of those cultures. We could go on about gamer culture, atheist culture, programming culture, academic culture, but it’s all redundant: the phenomenon in question are effectively the same thing, occurring in different contexts.
*Nor, for that matter, am I markbrown.
“There isn’t going to be a “one size fits all” solution to this. Each community will face it’s own challenges to clean up the problem, and will likely require different resources to do so… such as stricter moderation in the gaming sites, added reporting tools in online games and so on. Some communities are going to take longer than others. The good thing is there are new signs of change coming all the time.”
Seems quite different from the NotAllMen thing, despite the superficial similarity.
#105…..So surrender and back away? Why is it always women who have to leave?
#108: Jesus Christ, you want some wood for that cross? Maybe Some bricquettes? Gamers are an oppressed minority now? Unlike other people—–like, but don’t know, WOMEN—-gamers can stop getting “discriminated” against if they stop acting like assholes.
#109: Policies against harassment aren’t worth the pixels they’re printed on if people argue that it’s just not happening. And I can point out that I had a great Army unit, one in a million, but SOMEBODY in the Army is committing rapes and sexual assaults at a horrible rate. You have great experiences as a man but you can’t possibly understand the breadth and depth of what women go through.
For one thing, guts who do this to women often do this precisely because they know everybody hates women. They treat other men differently because men are worth something. This isn’t going to be just about any woman’s first experience with sexism.
Sorry, messed up the block quotes. The outer block quote should have ended at “at large”.
We might as well shirk any personal responsibility for any and ALL social issues with the hashtag #NotAllHumans.
We are a social species. And we have always policed our social behaviors through the collective. Every individual has a duty to share in that responsibility. If you self-identify with a group, any group, then the negative behaviours of others in that group IS your business. There is no neutral ground, no “notallX” ground, for silence is not neutral. Silence is acceptance.
Those who self-identify as members of those other groups are responsible for dealing with these kinds of actions within those other groups.
Those who self-identify as gamers are responsible for dealing with these problems within the group that is gamers.
It is irrelevant whether or not the problems exist or are worse in other groups.
“But the other kids are doing it too” did not work as an excuse for 5 year olds. And it still does not work now.
I’m not an activist, so I’m not going to wade into some online community that I’m not interested in simply to oppose the misogyny there. But what I will do is call out and work against the misogyny that I encounter in the areas that I am active. Like the environmentalism adage: think global, act local.
I used to play WoW, quite a lot actually. I mostly played on one server, but had a few characters on other servers to meet with friends, try pvp, etc. And for a long time, I thought that perhaps my main server was more polite, more civilized and generally more welcoming than the others I occasionally visited. My safe home-server civility shroud was torn when cross-instances came into existence. I stopped playing about a year later, partly due to the elitism and partly due to time/money constraints.
I wonder now if my perceptions of other servers was skewed because I had a pretty low tolerance for garbage before using the ignore feature. With a long ignore list, I didn’t see most of the daily asshole chatter happening; interacting with a larger number of servers in the newer expansions made it impossible to keep the ignore list effective. Perhaps my report/ignore wasn’t really addressing the problem, but simply hiding it from myself? I wished to spend my play time playing rather than arguing about IRL concerns.
Well I believed that until all this crazy Anita Sarkeesian stuff happened. I’m not so sure about that at all, now.
I mean I don’t know how much hate mail The Nostalgia Chick or other female critics for other media get, but I doubt it’s of the sheer magnitude that Anita gets. Hell, when Anita Sarkeesian was criticizing movies, she herself didn’t get this crap until she started looking at video games. Or this Zoe Quinn thing? I don’t even understand what’s going on with that, to be honest.
Maybe I’m naive and the fanfiction/moviewatcher/novelwriting/crafter/anime/music/competitive-knitting scene has similar levels of vicious harassment of feminist women. But this? We’re talking about a bomb threat here! I’m not even sure if the hacker community ever had people react like this.
#118 JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
Okay, I may not post a lot here, but I read a lot, including the comments, and I’m going to preface this by saying I have a lot of respect for you as a poster, so it pains me to have to ask if you’ve even read what Marcus Ranum and I have posted, or are just responding to a perceived disagreement that simply isn’t there?
At no point have I even suggested that there isn’t a problem with sexism in gaming.
At no point have I suggested that we shouldn’t be trying to fix the problem.
I have specifically stated that I do speak out when I see misogyny. When I see these issues arise I specifically seek out the discussion to speak up for feminism and social justice. I have not and will not suggest “copping out”. I am also not looking for people to make exceptions of certain aspects of gaming.
The point I have being trying to make – that I believe Marcus Ranum has been trying to make – is that there is not just one thing called “gaming”. It covers lots of different games, lots of different genres, lots of different platforms and medias, and that while misogyny is pretty rampant throughout, the symptoms differ, the communities differ, and the methods required to fix the problems are going to differ. Treating the whole of gaming culture as one big monolith is simply unworkable and is a hindrance to fixing the problem.
Off the top of my head, here is a quick list of the different issues in gaming:
1) Misogynistic themes in games that are not handled in a sensitive nuanced manner (as described in the latest Tropes vs Women)
2) Harassment and Misogyny in online games.
3) Harassment and Misogyny in gaming media sites and forums.
4) Harassment and Misogyny on social media relating to game development and game journalism.
Not exhaustive, but enough to illustrate my point.
I’ve separated the last three; not because the issues are different, but because the communities they affect will be different (though of course, there will be some overlap in communities). Also note that some members of the gaming community will not experience any of these issues at all as they only play single-player games utterly devoid of misogynistic themes (Candy Crush, Farmville, Angry Birds etc).
Now we can and should expect the majority of gamers to work towards raising awareness of issue 1, and call for developers to work harder on producing better, more inclusive games. But should we be calling on all gamers to be working on issue 2 when many (possibly a majority) don’t play online games and never encounter these problems? Should we be expecting all gamers to be denouncing harassment on gaming websites and social media, when probably the vast majority don’t actively participate in these platforms? I don’t think we can be asking that… it simply isn’t feasible.
My point is: Different Communities, different problems, different solutions. Oh, and the label “gamer” is too damn broad to be in any way meaningful.
Is there a way getting blockquote to say who you’re quoting? cite doesn’t seem to do anything. Bah… never mind…
screw dog
You probably just made my point better than I did, and in far fewer words.
What we should be calling for and expecting is that the different communities under the “gaming” umbrella be working on the issues inside their communities. The online gamers working on the problems inside online games, the social media users working on social media etc. Stop fixating on the useless “gamer” label.
Beyond that, work on being better human-beings, and that has nothing to do with whether you’re a gamer, or an atheist or whatever.
1) Absolutely.
2) Trivially follows from (1) so, again, absolutely.
3) Depends on what it is, but generally speaking, yes.
4) And had that been put forward now, that would be relevant.
Staubenville seemed to be about as hateful and severe. I’m not so sure it has anything to do with gamers being worse than with gamers getting more attention.
<blockquote>
Is there a way getting blockquote to say who you’re quoting?
—<i>markbrown</i>
</blockquote>
That’s how I’ve been doing it, should I feel the need.
#120 Jacob Schmidt
My apologies for the copy/paste error and not catching it before posting.
————————-
#129 markbrown
Thank you but no, I don’t think this is just a perceived problem and yes, of course I’ve read every comment.
As Giliell pointed out in #103, most of those people don’t consider themselves gamers so no, they wouldn’t be included since they don’t identify with the label. For those that do, yes I expect them to step up just in general. And really, it’s not like those types of games are completely free of the same issues either. They maybe better or have more variety but that doesn’t mean progress should stop either. Also, look how Angry Birds isn’t ignoring sexism.
Did you not read my comments? I specifically said just call it out where you see it regardless of what platforms you’re on.
I agree that different specific forums and such will take different solutions. People will handle these problems in different ways from different game designs etc.
Saying that the gamer culture needs to work on sexism isn’t to say there’s only one blanket solution being suggested. I don’t know where that idea is coming from. Calling out gamer culture and gamers is simply a call to action for ALL of them to get their shit together because they all have the same problem. It’s unifying for every gamer from each section who deal with this bullshit and feel alone, beaten down, and losing to the misogynist shitheads. That’s one huge goal of those fuckers: silence then those vocally oppose get divided and conquered. Making gamer a rallying cry for everyone who shares the hobby and says “No matter what this isn’t acceptable.” It drives them out instead of relinquishing the title to a narrow range of people like Giliell pointed out in #103. The other unifying factor is that something needs to be done and this problem needs to be called out across all areas of gaming. So I fail to the issue.
I do think gamer still has a place and a purpose regardless. Saying there’s no gamer culture (an overarching similarity between all) is like saying there’s no geek culture, which I just don’t buy.
This isn’t a gaming forum. This place doesn’t need to come up with a solution for this problem right now. Pointing out what specific subsets needs to do is pointless here because it’s not going into action. The people who need to do that need to do it in their forums, blogs whathaveyou. That doesn’t mean we can’t have a general conversation about the need for change. If people want to get ideas rolling or talk about their experience in different subgenres, fine. But this isn’t IGN. Insisting on specifics and details drives different progressive gamers apart and shuns those non-gamers from the conversation completely, which I find stupid and harmful frankly.
Look at all the comments and time wasted arguing for specifics without even listing specifics.
#130 markbrown
And how do we let them know we want them all working on it even if we’re aren’t part of their specific subgenre to get their shit together? By telling gamers in general to get their shit together. I’m not the one fixated on the gamer label, I was merely calling everyone of them out to do better. You’re the one who’s bogged the discussion down with “But my games and friends aren’t like that!” You think being specific is so much better, prove it. Start talking specifics and make that discussion happen if that’s where you want the focus going instead of getting hung up on the gamer label.
#81 screw dog
1. Who the hell is suggesting that?
2. Did no one read my #81? I specifically said call it out where you see it. JFC. We’re talking about gamers because that hasn’t been happening wide scale and we’re trying to push for that to occur.
3. This is ridiculous. This defensive knee jerk reaction to a general statement as if you feel guilty for not doing enough or just appalled at the general suggestion. Like how dare a woman suggest all men call out rapists and don’t be that guy.
I’m so done. I don’t know how else to say it. I guess we’re just at an impassive. Can’t even try to get my own community to do better without a bunch of bullshit about being specific enough. I play all sorts of games with each community having a fucking problem so I don’t see what the fucking big deal is. But then again I’m not married to the gamer label as an identity since I’ve never been welcome anyways (YES, across the fucking board). Whatever.
@131 Jacob Schmidt
So the reason I don’t like the comparison to Steubenville is that it was about rape. Rape is a big fuckin’ deal, and rape culture is a big fuckin’ deal.
In Sarkeesian and Quinn’s case, the attacks were completely random. There was no big deal. It wasn’t even victim-blaming (at least at first). There was nothing interesting happening until a hate campaign grew out of the community. The gamer community specifically. As Zoe Quinn puts in the Cracked article:
I don’t think there are any clean ways out of situations like shitty behavior in gaming culture or the internet. By “clean” I mean that the problem is people used to getting their way by acting aggressive and dominant. That is how they handle conflicts. They make allies with people compatible with themselves, they cultivate confidence with those allies, and make sure that any social conflict with them is so difficult that most people choose not to bother.
The worse version are the various flavors of bigots because they can “pass for normal”, which is a disgusting statement because they are normal from a “solving the bigot problem” standpoint. At least a pure bully stereotype would be honest about what they hate.
The least violent solutions on a human level right at the level of childhood education. But people will use any communication tool they have when they want to dominate and don’t care about consequences. I can’t see solutions without creativity in internet technology combined with social community experimentation. The only other option is a threat of a physical visit by law enforcement, and the cops are soooooo trustworthy (where do you think bullies can end up when they grow up).
Activism is important too, but many have good reasons for not being able to be “aggressively” activist so I’m not trying to sell a stereotype. Leaders can often call things out easier with fewer repressions, especially if they have a privilege advantage. And people in the comments matter too. The religious “evangelize” for a reason. In-person persuasion is important and the internet matters. That harassment happened for a reason. We are a threat to them. Making our feelings go away by any means possible including internet harassment is because they can’t gaslight everyone.
*raises hand*
I’m a gamer. I play “real” games. I’ve been playing them since I first had access to a computer more than 20 years ago. I play big name games, some even that apparently have communities that are actively hostile to women. I wouldn’t know – I’ve found the only way to not be pushed out of your preferred gaming spaces are just not to engage with the community at all. Turn off chats, don’t visit forums. Hell, I’ve played MMOs entirely solo just so I didn’t have to deal with people acting like raging doucheweasels.
Single player games are great – I’ve always loved them for their immersion and ability to shut out everything else for a while and just enjoy the world and gameplay. The first time I played an online game with a chat option I immediately turned it off – other people shouting nonsense was the antithesis of enjoyable gaming to me. Almost like being in a quiet room listening to music whilst people burst in randomly to have loud, obnoxious conversations. I ignored multiplayer games like the plague for ages until I discovered you could play them with friends – people who you knew and actually liked. I actually enjoyed that, playing stuff like C&C Generals with a group of guys at a LAN. Good people, no nastiness, good times.
As soon as you tread outside the comfortable friend spaces, the degree of arsehole gets kicked up to the top of the scale. I’m not just talking outside your immediate friend circle here either though, The only time I ever actually joined a player-run guild and had a fantastic time was in WoW. We had a small raiding guild full of what seemed like decent folks. Bad behaviour was actively discouraged. Our raid leader was a woman and we had a few more around even though the guild presence was overwhelmingly male. As usual. Still, within the group I felt safe and had a great time. Outside the group? Giant piles of arseholes. Ignored.
In practical terms, I try to call out bad behaviour when I see it, though as a woman gamer, someone particularly at risk of being bullied out of my (vanishingly rare) favourite online spaces, there’s very little incentive for me to do so. I still do it, just only within the spaces I feel safe and only when I feel strong enough to deal with possible fallout.
So… yes. Gaming has major problems. Anita Sarkeesian is doing a fabulous job of shining light on the roaches – turns out there are just many more of them and they’re much more virulently nasty than originally thought. This needs to happen, I’m just so sorry it has to be her to bear the brunt of the pushback vileness. I wish I had her strength, I want gaming to be better.
#134. Random???? Are you high? They were targeted by angry gamer assholes specifically, deliberately, and with great deliberation. Thunderf00t has been quoted uncritically by EVERY gamer asshole. . Where have you BEEN?
That’s a fair point. My point about Staubenville wasn’t to say that the initial events were really comparable, and while yes, I accept that rape is a big deal, I don’t think the people driving the shit storm that followed accept that.
But, ultimately, you do have a point: such incidences do seem to crop up more in the gaming community, and they seem to have some different qualities (i.e. shitstorm from trivial or petty grievances, at best).
Random is a fair description. “Spontaneous and sustained” is probably better.
@ Jacob Schmidt 139
Utterly and completely untrue.There is no such thing as “spontaneous” in human behavior. It was however quite sustained.
Not only was it sustained but it had patterns. Gendered patterns, and patterns of cruelty and rage, strategic patterns…
#132 JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
from #118:
The reason I asked is because I am truthfully baffled how you could make such an inference of my motives or position from my comments before this point.
I have problems with this mentality, as it’s almost exactly their argument… “those people aren’t real gamers… they don’t play real games” blah blah elitist shit. But then again, who am I to insist that someone use the label when they don’t feel it applies. Bluergh… I don’t really have a point here, except to say that maybe we’re getting crossed wires here because we have different definitions of what a gamer is.
I totally agree. I’ve never not agreed.
The thing is, it appears that in this thread no one can even agree what a “gamer” is. In one post you say “most of those people don’t consider themselves gamers”, but then also talk about how we shouldn’t relinquish “the title to a narrow range of people like Giliell pointed out in #103”.
Marcus Ranum pointed out in #30 how something like “50% of Americans are gamers of some sort or another, and 47% of gamers are women, with the demographic bump in the population across gender sitting in the 35-yo zone”. If we’re saying that all of them are “gamers”, then expecting to rally all of them is going to be near impossible considering only a minority participate on gaming sites or social media. How do we reach them? When we talk about this huge gaming community we get people like ginmar at #37 saying “So where are all these non-harassing gamers? Because they’re not doing squat.”
Narrow it down to those who do participate and then we can do something (at least under the scope of gaming. The rest would lie in the scope of culture as a whole in my opinion). Here we can get the message out. But as soon as this is mentioned we are accused of saying “#NotAllGamers”, or trying to beg off the fight because “my games and friends aren’t like that!”.
After that? Every time someone tries to clarify what they are saying, one group of commentators imply the definition is too narrow, the next group that the definition is too wide.
I got into the discussion because I felt there was too much confusion about what set or subset of “gamers” each individual commentator was talking about. But even that is derailing it seems. I’ll stop after this post unless anyone has any specific questions or comments for me, because I don’t want to be detrimental to the discussion. My apologies to all if I have been.
Hello.
I’ve been talking off the ears of friends and family about this the past couple weeks. I’ve been arguing with people on facebook, defending Sarkeesian and Quinn. I just identify as many things before identifying as a gamer. I’m a feminist, an atheist, a neuroscientist, etc. etc. Hell, I just enjoy video games, and would really like to use them without the sexism. Also, isn’t Sarkeesian a gamer? I mean, she plays games, right? I thought that was why she got involved with her criticisms of the industry.
But, ja, there are way too many people just ignoring the massive amounts of threats and harassment.
How about to avoid all derailing as to the definition of what constitutes a gamer, we let the definition be “a person who identifies as a gamer”? The rest is irrelevant. The culture needs to change, and to spearhead that change people need to be vocal in their support for changing the status quo.
It’s not about rallying everyone together, it’s creating cultural shift whereby attitudes slowly change from two directions; from the bottom up, i.e. people speaking out locally against bigotry in gaming or simply pointing it out so others can recognise it, and from the top down where game developers who support this campaign start releasing games with more balanced content and less lazy/damaging tropes.
Nothing changes until people recognise problems, and that’s where Anita’s videos come in. It’s also why there’s been such a backlash. People really, really resist recognising problems because if you start seeing flaws in things you love then your enjoyment of that thing is diminished. Tends to throw people into reactionary defensive aggression mode. Like Dawkins and Shermer. “DAMMIT, STOP RUINING THINGS SJWs! EVERYTHING WAS FINE UNTIL YOU STARTED POINTING OUT THE MASSIVE GAPING FLAWS WE WERE ALL OBLIVIOUS TO!”
By the way, has anyone else been hearing this phrase “Social Justice Warrior?
Does it remind anyone else of “Militant Atheists”?
Good fucking god. The Hosemen and their ilk have become that which they hate.
Sophia @144:
That seems quite reasonable. Anything else is othering.
Tony @146:
That and erasing people who don’t fit anyone else’s definition of what a gamer is. Like people who only play iphone/android games, or “hardcore” FPS players dismissing anyone who doesn’t do that. No True Gamer is something that I really think we should avoid here.
It’s perhaps just time to face facts. Gamers like to paint themselves as an egalitarian bunch that only care about the skill of the player, but there have almost always been a large contingent of vocal gamers who spend a great deal of time throwing around racist and homophobic slurs, complaining about censorship or political correctness when criticised, and espouse some of the worst kinds of misogyny. This “dudebro” gaming culture has been accepted for a long time under the pretense of merely “being overly competitive”, but it isn’t. And now, as Amanda Marcotte points out, that this is being used as a recruiting drive for young conservatives.
As for speaking out when you see these things, I must admit that I have learned to ignore the comments rather than report or speak out about them. I used to try to report them, but month after month of trying to report people doing/saying racist/sexist/homophobic things, and absolutely nothing happening, I found it was easier to just ignore them (or hide/leave the chat channel).
Marcus @60:
It might be a good idea to do both: base your spending habits on what you want to see in games and (literally) send the message to developers that they’re not getting your money until they fix their shit.
****
CaitieCat @66:
THIS.
It just kills me that what Anita Sarkeesian is advocating for-treating women better in video games-wouldn’t require many changes, but the result would be rather profound. It’s like the misogynistic fuckwit contingent in the gaming world think they absolutely need to have violence against women or they have to sexually objectified female bodies in their games for them to be fun (which I really doubt is the case; this is just an excuse for these fuckers to go full on raging misogynist).
ck @148:
I agree with everything except it being a gamer problem. I believe it should be framed as a dudebro problem. I’m a gamer, many of my feminist friends are gamers and people who’ve had to turn off chat channels are also gamers*. Gaming itself isn’t the problem, bigotry, misogyny and unchecked behaviour are the problem. I acknowledge wholeheartedly that many of the issues are exacerbated by the content of the games, which are of course a product of the culture they stem from.
I’m just a little tired of being lumped in with this supposedly monolithic group of arseholes when the people I know who identify as gamers mostly support the campaign to have games be more awesome. The dudebros don’t.
*Predicated of course on them identifying as such.
Sophia @147:
(bolding mine)
::Raises hand::
Before my best friend died in 2010, I played video games on somewhat regular basis. After he died, pretty much all the fun got sucked out of my life and I mostly stopped. In the last year or two, the only games I’ve played are on my phone (Bejeweled Blitz & Jewels Star). According to some, I’m not a gamer bc those aren’t “real” games. So nice of others to dictate what kind of games qualify as “real”.
I know this is verging on #notallgamers and I acknowledge that. I still think it’s a category error though.
Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion wrote:
#notallgamers may be responsible for creating the problem. But [nearly] all gamers have to responsible for the solution to it.
ck @153
That I agree with.
So long as we’re not forcing at-risk women (who happen to be gamers) into being the main driving force behind this, because the consequences are pretty damned horrible. Be nice if the privileged gamer contingent could sit up and really get in on this too.
Sophia @ 154
I think a lot of us are. Unfortunately this seems to mostly happen through measured and reasoned articles & conversations, whereas #gamergate utilises the screaming-obscenity-from-a-moving-car approach of Twitter, and seems more immediately effective due to it.
There have been endless words written decrying #gamergate since it began. I’m certainly willing to entertain any suggestions others have for addressing it directly.
Matthew Trevor @ 155
Of course. I suppose I should have written “the as-yet-silent privileged gamer contingent.” The ones who have the ability to speak up yet don’t because it’s uncomfortable to do so and they’re not the direct targets of the horribleness and don’t want to be.
You’re right about the approaches. I suppose we have to hope that the screaming, incoherent stupid is reprehensible enough to the people who’ve not spoken up yet that it kicks them into saying something. Something small even. “Guys, don’t do that” even.
@Marcus @109
So you’re claiming that “gamers” are an oppressed minority now? Give me a fucking break.
Jacob Schmidt @ 113
This. “Gaming” is a hobby of a tiny group of the global population, limited heavily to middle and upper class people in a few western countries. The rampant, vile sexism on display in gaming culture is merely a facet of the actual global problem.
markbrown @130
Something you and Marcus are both missing is that when people bring up horrible sexism in gaming, you are immediately going into a defensive “not all gamers” reaction instead of just saying “Yeah, this sucks.” Your first impulse is not to acknowledge the problem but to excuse yourself and some of your friends. You may want to meditate on that impulse. It’s understandable, but in the end it doesn’t help.
THAT’s the problem with the “notallX” defense. Instead of talking about the actual problem, it deflects into talking about how the problem is being talked about. Which this thread, as Sophia has pointed out, has derailed into thanks to employing the “but gamers are a diverse community!” defense.
*sigh x2*
“limited heavily to middle and upper class people in a few western countries”
Should have said “limited heavily to middle and upper class people in a few western or industrialized countries” – I neglected to consider Japan, Korea, China, etc. Haven’t had my tea yet this morning. Mea culpa.
5) Continual redefinition of what constitutes a True Gamer in an attempt to gerrymander women out of gaming.
6) Disproportionate numbers of male protagonists and games advertised towards males.
7) The potential source of a lot of the rot: the disproportionate number of men in control of gaming companies.
8) The enabling of harassment and misogyny in all sectors by gamers who are too apathetic to bother opposing it.
9) The vehement opposition from misogynists and apathists alike to anyone trying to effect change in the industry on behalf of women, minorities, or any party that isn’t straight, white, middle-class young-ish males. (See: “Social Justice Warrior”)
10) “Covert” misogyny that translates into significant magnification of internet outrage for perceived slights from female parties (see: incoherent hatred of Anita Sarkeesian, incoherent outrage against Zoe Quinn).
I’m sure there’s more.
ck @148
…which would be bad enough by itself. The thing is, a lot of them do value other people online based on their perceived skill. If those people suck, the more vile gamers will start calling them racist, homophobic and misogynistic things. It’s okay to enjoy a game even if your teammates aren’t that good.
And there is reason #2 why I don’t play LoL anymore. #1 being because I hate the words people use to describe getting outplayed in a lane.
There are millions of people who play games. There aren’t millions of people who self-identify as gamers.
I play games. I will never identify as a gamer (as the “community” stands now).
What you are saying is we can’t call Al Qaeda terrorists because not all Muslims are terrorists. i.e. we can’t call gamers misogynists because not all people who play games (not the same thing as a “gamer”) are misogynists.
@162 addicted44
Uhh… yes there are. There are several in this very thread.
Do you identify as an atheist?
I normally just lurk on threads like this, but I had a couple things I wanted to add.
A lot of people have asked things along the lines of “Where are the gamers that don’t support harassment”, and the question is really grating on me. Every activist on the topic is a gamer. Every victim on the topic is a gamer. This isn’t gamers against feminists, It’s misogynist gamers (and a misogynist system supported by neutral gamers) against feminist gamers. EVERYONE involved is a gamer, that’s the only reason they’re exposed to in-game behavior or content.
addicted44: There *really* isn’t some central gamer culture we all belong to. We don’t vote on anything, and we don’t have leaders. It really is just a word to describe people who play games. Most of us have no emotional investment in the word “gamer”, so issues of self-identification are a bit of a red herring. I think there’s some tricky things with labels accidentally happening here, but if you’re present in the same online spaces I don’t think whether you use the label “gamer” changes your responsibility.
doublereed @163:
One can play games without calling themselves a gamer. I can see why some people would choose not to self-identify in that way.
As a gamer who never posts on gamer forums, at least these days, I nonetheless have no problem with saying that gamer culture has a misogyny problem (of course, because society does), and there is evidence that it is particularly bad. So, yes we identify as gamers and consider ourselves progressive, but we really can stop all the mitigation. One of your identity labels has a stain on it. Quelle surprise. The way to avoid that is to do identifying with humans at this time.
Please. This is not the time for “not all gamers.” That is a given. Gamers are associated with misogyny. Suck it up.
@165 Tony
Honestly, I just found it to be a strange reason.
I think it’s pretty clear at this point that gamers and gaming culture is associated with misogyny. Honestly I think Marcus and others took offense to those saying that the feminist gamers are silent or difficult to find or something. And demonstrating feminist gamers that are loud, popular, etc. is a direct response.
I’m not a “gamer” in the sense of “plays video games,” but I am one in the sense of “plays tabletop RPGs.”
I bring this up because I see this current situation as being directly analogous – identical even – to the situation (currently non-explodey, but there’s a definite powder keg) within the RPGer crowd. In my experience, groups of gamers who are looking for people to join or who just want to meet new people to potentially play with fall into two groups: those who don’t make an effort to announce that they’re friendly to women, LGBT folks, PoC (in general, those that aren’t cishet white guys), and those that go out of their way to make that announcement. The former groups tend to be mostly cishet white guys. The latter are pretty diverse, and newcomers to the scene/area don’t tend to even approach the former groups unless they are cishet white guys.
Which is to say, some RPG groups have decided to be proactive in announcing their bona fides, and are getting rewarded with fresh blood. When I was in college I was in a large game group that was at least 40% female. At some point, a man joined and started making comments that weren’t necessarily THAT bad, but got the hackles of the women up. The women chatted amongst ourselves, agreed that this was a pattern, and approached the DM. The DM responded by (1) apologizing for not noticing, (2) asking us what we’d like to have done (a talking-to? kicked out?) (3) LISTENING, and (4) following up. The DM approached the guy for a gentle talking-to. This went badly and ended with the guy ranting about [insert sexist and homophobic slurs here] and stomping out.
Now: what if we’d not felt comfortable approaching the DM? What if the DM had blown us off? Probably over time, the female membership would have shrunk and eventually the group would have been all or mostly male, and the well-meaning guys would have been left scratching their heads. Or maybe there would have been a blowup incident in the group.
I bring this up because friends of mine – women, PoC, LGBT people – who are into video games have described very similar situations to me. Sometimes it ends the way the group I was in did. Sometimes it doesn’t.
I think we’re partly talking past each other. Let me throw some things out.
All it takes for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing. I think most of us are taking that as given. A corollary is that you are responsible for self-policing your community. Sure.
We’re all atheists here (mostly). We are thus responsible for self-policing the atheist community, right? Does that responsibility include going to MRA forums?
For the gamers like me. We are responsible for self-policing the gaming community, and many of us do. Does that mean we are required to also attend semi-related and unrelated online gaming communities?
I don’t think anyone is objecting to the notion that there are serious misogyny problems in online gaming. I think people are objecting to accidental or misunderstand statements which characterize it as a problem of a significant number of gamers, when I do not know if that is the case. I do not doubt that for many people on many games, you can be exposed to it constantly, but that might only require 5% of the population to be asshats. Whereas, it seems that some comments here are implying its higher. Thus, we gamers are seeing a personal attack. Perhaps that’s not a fair reading, but I think that explains where we’re coming from. (At least, that’s where I’m coming from.) Also, sometimes I see implications that it’s impossible to play any online game and talk to people without constantly experiencing massive racism and sexism, which at least I’d like to think is false, depending on the game.
Of course the online gaming community has a problem, just like the online atheism community has a problem. However, in both cases, it might just be fringe elements or percentage-small elements inside the community who have the problem, and in both cases, it might be that because of the nature of the internet, it becomes near impossible for the good people to “eradicate” the bad people. I think that is an unreasonable goal.
The best we can hope to do is identify and create safe shared spaces for shared community, like we do here. If others want to create an MRA forum, then there’s not much we can or should do about it, except when their space collides with our space.
Similarly, for the gaming community, all of us good gamers should strive to create a safe gaming experience. Part of this can be accomplished through independent action. It may require help from the game creators to avoid John Gabriel’s GIFT. For example, “The Tribunal” system of LoL which allows the community to self-police and ban bad gamers. LoL has far to go, I’m sure, but at least we’re trying.
You seriously don’t know if it’s “significant,” or do you mean something like “a majority” or even “a large percentage”? (And if the latter, why the fuck would that matter, as you say it does?) Those are not the same thing. You’re a denialist if you think it’s insignificant, or too ignorant to speak on the issue if you just have no clue and simply believe it might be insignificant.
Well, that clears it up fast: many people being exposed to it constantly is what people in the English-speaking world consider significant. That is a significant effect. Also, the number of these asshole is significant enough to have that effect. This is not difficult to understand, for anyone whose brain hasn’t temporarily shut off as a defense mechanism.
You just said you don’t doubt many people experience it constantly. Now you speculate that, perhaps in a select few games, it’s “possible” that they (not the assholes, but ordinary people) could somehow do something to “solve” the issue on their end. As if that’s their responsibility. The only responsibility they do have is to speak out against it and vote with their feet/pocketbook, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re going to be playing it without such experiences.
Ok, now we can talk about something specific.
To be clear – are you implying that if a game like LoL has a bad community, then decent people should not be playing it? I don’t think this is reasonable. This might be one of the undertones in this thread to which I have been reacting against. To me, that’s akin to suggesting that because there are a lot of asshats on youtube, I should not watch youtube videos. Of course, there’s some differences between youtube and a game which requires human interaction, but then my complaint is especially true when the company and game are making sincere efforts to combat these problems, such as LoL IMHO.
That IS part of the self-policing effort…
Penny Arcade’s own Tycho provides a refutation of the GIFT in their RealID comic (which for some reason I can’t find): “Everyone knows who YOU (Gabe) are. That doesn’t keep you from being a total asshole.” In this Facebook age assholes are happily attaching their real names and faces to their drivel. It’s not anonymity that drives them, it’s the easy access to victims and the lack of consequences.
If 95% of the people who play these games are really not assholes, they can DO SOMETHING instead of treating it as natural or not raising a fuss.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Fucking quote someone saying that. I’m sick of this bullshit being repeated.
As for markbrown’s comments, I’ll be posting in the Tdome since it’s absolutely enraging and is past the point where it feels like I’m being deliberately misread while he’s actively ignoring parts of my comments. This comment will as apply to the other fuckers, like you EnglightenedLiberal since the topic is still going but I’ll move it to the Tdome since markbrown was specifically called out for it.
No, I mean they can force game designers to implement features and policies which can help to prevent this shit in the first place and get rid of the bad actors as much as possible. Ban the assholes and cancel their subscriptions. They can be the ones to leave, but it’s not just going to happen by magic or because some faceless corporation feels like doing so out of the goodness of its nonexistent heart.
But if it does already have a bad reputation for not doing jack shit about bigots/predators/etc. in its social environment, then sure, don’t give them your money. That’s not an obligation anyone has; it’s just prudence. Let them know you might play when they’re willing to provide the kind of environment you expect.
@vaiyt
I don’t know why you think gamers are not raising a fuss. How much of a fuss is necessary? What should a sufficient fuss look like? I’ll probably take part.
As for Penny Arcade. I know they have a bad reputation here. I’ll also say it’s completely justified. However, I would note that unlike Sam Harris, Dawkins, and et al who often give not-pologies and fake apologies, Gabe of Penny Arcade has IMHO given good and sincere apologies. For example, here and here:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/09/04/some-clarification
http://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/06/21/well-that-escalated-quickly (perhaps less-so, but a good start).
I have also been informed that Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) has one of the better harassment policies for conventions, and it’s enforced. Yes, Gabe said completely and utterly atrocious things, on several occasions, but IMHO he’s admits his mistakes, and is trying to get better. (That’s “Gabe”, not “Tycho”.)
Also, bringing this up is a gigantic ad hominem.
Also, GIFT merely posits one causal mechanism for one phenomena (being an asshole). Obviously, there are many causes to being an asshole. Your point is also invalid on that ground.
@JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
It was an honest question. Most of the particularly toxic behavior I see happens outside of the game, like on guild forums, official game forums, and so forth. Then again, I am privileged white male cis, so I am probably not seeing a lot of it. Still again, any group that I am in does not tolerate that shit.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Yeah, I play LoL. Trust me it’s fucking there every goddamn game that some speaks in chat. My Roomie who plays with me is the “Just block, report and let it go” variety. I do all that but it’s too fucking late. Now I’ve almost stopped playing completely because there’s a visceral fear and reaction everytime I go into a game with other people. Calling them out in game is awful and there’s no one doing that which I’ve run into because of the horrid backlash for it and the fact there’s no supporting the people that risk their hides to do so. I’ve been on the comment threads on their website talking about Janna (ugh) and Zyra’s sneak peak reveal and MF and Sejuani’s chainmail bikini before they changed it. I’ve seen it and it’s not pushed back enough and once you speak out, they don’t let it drop. They look you up and hound your fucking steps about it.
That’s goddamn great you’re one of the good League players. I’ve yet to fucking see it and that place is fucking toxic. Riot isn’t doing enough and neither are the players.
@JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness
I do not doubt your statements at all. I merely don’t see it in my games. I wish more was being done. I take part in the Tribunal, and I do my part there. When I do see asshats like that, I am sure to properly report them after the game. Not sure what else I can do.
Words mean things.
@consciousness razor
Missing an “often”. sorry.
@consciousness razor
One way of reading it is:
1- I don’t see that (bad behavior) in any of my games.
Alternatively, I think this is also a fair reading:
2- I don’t see that (“Trust me it’s fucking there every goddamn game that some speaks in chat.”) in my games (e.g. in my experience of playing the game).
In other words, my experience is not so that I see abuse in every game which involves chat, but I still see it from time to time. I also understand it’s far worse for other people.
Okay. Clear as a bell.
Oh, never mind, now you want to dig….
Not okay. Avoid ambiguity, especially when it creates a blatant contradiction just a few sentences apart. At best, it shows you’re not thinking carefully about what you’re saying. Worse is using it as a tool to claim you were right all along, to later cudgel your critics for supposedly not knowing how to fucking read. Even worse is when this becomes a pattern.
#179 EnlightenmentLiberal
When I say call it out when you see it, I mean just that. Say something about it in game (if not while playing then, champ select or after game chat ) so that way people know you stand against and support those being attacked and dealing with splash damage. Fuckers rant and rave about the unfairness of Tribunal and think most people feel like them or that it’s okay to say such things. Change that.
Because how am I suppose to know when others support me if they don’t say it? All I hear is the bullshit and deafening silence. Then there’s the Tribunal which is treated like a joke that few bother with or fear. They just make a new account and come back, angrier and emboldened because only a handful of people deemed them bannable which they wave off as “they weren’t there, they got it wrong.” They come back but it’s next to impossible for their victims to do so.
@JAL
And that’s a feature / bug of the internet in general. What would you have Riot do? Genuinely curious. If they’re not living up to the hype of the Tribunal, then that’s a problem which I can see a fix for. But for people just making new accounts? What can be done to stop that? What would you suggest?
Off the top of my head, requiring credit card information from everyone and banning credit card numbers may work. There’s some negative side effects to that though for customers and for company.
Got anything else?
I hate to sound unreasonable, but I think that complaining about something without some ideas for fixes is not too productive. At the very least, when complaining, you should be thinking about fixes.
EnlightenmentLiberal
I’ll get to this when I can (daughter home now) but I have to point out how you dodge suggesting you step up and speak out.
Also, there’s IP addresses, no credit information and your friends/roommates/whatever will certainly be on your ass if you fuck them over doing it. Of course there’s ways around that too but there’s ways around everything. They’ve know the Tribunal isn’t enough and haven’t bothered trying to go further to make it harder for the assholes. But they’ll never do anything beyond that and will leave the Tribunal lacking because they need the numbers and revenue. Assholes making new accounts actually works out quite well for them. They get to spout better numbers and if they want stuff, they gotta re-buy it all over again. Winning all around. Except for the victims.
EnlightenmentLiberal
Because saying I’ve been a victim of abuse and there’s not enough done to stop it is whining. Because as rape and DV victim who’s been failed by police, I better fix it or shut up. Because it’s all on me.
Think that’s an unreasonable reading and feeling I’m getting from you? Then why’d you ignore my plea for players, including you, to speak up? Abusers put their real faces and names to these things yet I can’t even get nymed “allies” to call it out in game.
@JAL
About IP banning: Many people have ISPs which provide dynamic IPs. Many people have access to proxies. IP banning is generally a last resort, and AFAIK generally not that effective.
As for the other part of your response: I’ll say it again – you said that Riot is not doing enough. That implies they could be doing more. For you to be justified in saying they’re not doing enough, to be justified in holding that belief, you must also believe there are things they could be doing better. I want to know what those things are. Otherwise, it’s looking like you have insufficient or even bad justifications for attacking Riot.
I do not doubt that Riot has an incentive to allow abusers to make new accounts. (One could argue that they have an incentive to prevent that to keep the good gamers. Then it becomes a number’s game.) However, you are getting close to scapegoating and conspiracy-theorist – it seems that you’re asserting that Riot is just an evil corporation out for money at all costs on flimsy or non-existent justification.
EnlightenmentLiberal, why is it the responsibility of the victim to fix the problem? Why isn’t it the responsibility of everyone who isn’t the perp?
Quoted for MF Truth.
Why blame the victim, and not the predator and their support system? Or, did you not read any Morality? Oh, right, old out-dated patriarchcal morality, not modern feminist morality….
@addicted44 162:
Again, yes there are. I’m one, almost all my friends are. Almost all my friends who also identify as gamers are also feminists and social justice advocates and are fighting this on the proverbial front lines. Oh, and most of us? Women. And also victims of game-related misogyny.
Fine and good, and I don’t blame you in the slightest.
I will continue identifying as a gamer, as will my friends. We want to reclaim the name and try to stop being erased like a lot of people seem to be trying to do here – gamers aren’t just the arseholes, in fact I’d say the arseholes are indeed a vocal minority.
False analogy in a very big way.
Of course you can call Al Quaeda terrorists if they’ve engagede in that behaviour. That’s being specific about a dangerous group. You can also call Al Quaeda muslims, because they are. What you can’t do is extrapolate the actions of that group and call all muslims terrorists. That would be wrong, would erase the people in the group who are actively opposed to the terrorists within their group and be incredibly insulting.
No, we’re saying you can’t call gamers arseholes because some gamers are arseholes. That minority of gamers I’m totally happy with giving another name so the problem is clear and the perpetrators, like Al Quaeda. I suggested Dudebros further upthread. Gaming has a dudebro problem. Dudebros have a misogyny problem. To continue the metaphor, Islam has an Al Quaeda problem. Al Quaeda has a terrorist problem. This is an intersectional thing. The misogyny in gaming isn’t separate from the regular kind we all see, and it’s not unique to gamers.
Gamers are not automatically misogynists, and do not automatically support a misogynist system. Not all gamers are dudebros. Some of us are in fact fighting the dudebros. A lot of us are victims of the dudebros. We’re still gamers, and we want to change the system for the better.
EnlightenmentLiberal is missing a important concept of what makes the game unplayable. Riot can do what they can, but honestly the lack of sportmanship and general toxicity of LoL is a cultural thing. And it’s not like culture is static and rigid. “This is just the way it is” is pointlessly fatalistic. If you actually have role models and icons and such that encourage a better community then it circulates like a meme.
And you simply can’t argue that it’s a general internet thing because not all internet games are as toxic as LoL. Right?
I think aiming for ‘safe spaces’ in online games is ridiculous (and nonsensical). The general tone of the whole space should be a lot more welcoming. What passes for acceptable behavior in the many gaming communities is incredibly poor. The concept of ‘sportsmanship’ is missing.
Honestly, “why won’t you tell me how to fix the problem? I want to help!” is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It has been levied against people pointing out thorny social problems for ages. Sometimes the second half, “If you don’t have an idea of how to fix it, you must not really care/it must not really be a problem” is made explicit, sometimes it remains unsaid.
Um, have you seen the skins they have for most of the female characters? If she’s not a yordle, she’s dressed in a sexy outfit. For fuckssake, they put Ryven in a bunny outfit, and they changed her classic look to be less badass and more smokey-eyed.
Also, if the chat function can give me asteriscs when I try to type “ass”, they can use that to blank out the word “rape”. I hear that word every time my team is losing, and it is not okay. It does not compare.
#158 drst
Whereas you and others make the assumption that because I respond to a point already raised in the thread, I’m going on the defensive, trying to excuse myself and my friends, trying to downplay the issue, or trying to derail the discussion.
Even when I’ve implicitly stated – on several occasions – that yes, the problem exists, yes it sucks, yes it needs to be fixed, and yes I try to do my part in calling out instances of misogyny when I see them.
Remember, this isn’t a gaming blog or forum. There weren’t blatantly misogynistic posts, or posts denying the problem existed to respond to.
You know the point I was trying to make, before this all got sidetracked into a discussion of “NotAllX” which I hadn’t even invoked? When I saw people asking where all the good gamers were responding to the issues of GamerGate and such, I was explaining why many of them are unaware of these issues when they arise. Not in an attempt to excuse their absence in the discussion, but rather in an attempt to discuss how we raise awareness among them and bring them into the conversation so we can drown out the voices of the bigots in an ocean of opposition.
I don’t play LoL myself, but from what I’ve heard from friends who do, it’s a total cesspool.
I don’t buy into the theory that Riot is doing everything it can. If that’s the case, why is the problem so much worse in LoL than in other similar games?
@Esteleth is Groot
I am not saying it’s the responsibility of the victim to fix the system. I am saying it’s the responsibility of the person who makes a positive claim (such as the system can be fixed) to meet the burden of proof (such as by explaining how the system might be fixed). I’m not going to wave skepticism and the burden of proof merely because someone has been a victim.
In other words, there is a massive difference between someone asserting:
1- League Of Legends has an incredibly toxic community.
2- Riot Gaming can and should do better to make the community less toxic.
The first is undeniably true. The second is not obvious IMHO. I want to see some justification for that claim.
If the Tribunal system does not have enough teeth, then I am for fixing that. Otherwise I am not sure what else to do. The only plausible system I can see is requiring registration in some way that identifies multiple accounts to the same person, and that will require AFAICT credit card numbers, or driver’s license numbers, or social security numbers, and so on. I am uncomfortable with requiring that at the moment – I need more time to think about it. Maybe it’s not that big of a deal, and Riot should do that.
I am not perfect. Perhaps there’s another, better way. If so, I would like to know it. That’s why I asked. I asked for clarification. When that person claimed to have a plan (implicit in claiming “Riot can do better”), I merely asked for further details. Elsewhere, someone said I should read for comprehension and to try and learn. I’m trying to do that now. (And also calling people out for potentially making unjustified claims.)
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@markbrown
“I don’t know why it is, and thus it must be X.” Classic argument from ignorance.
Possible answers off the top of my head:
I bet it has to do with the format of the game itself lending itself to GIFT. Similar to first-person shooters which also have notoriously bad community, the games are all one-offs with new people, and thus there is no possibility for a reputation to be earned. Unlike say MMORPGs.
I don’t know if you have a similar problem with RTSs like Starcraft. I would bet not. Both have one-off games so it’s hard or impossible to build reputation. However, MOBA games like LoL are team-based with random people found via a match-making service, and most RTS AFAIK do not use this feature, or most people make use of a possible team based matchmaking service far less often. I believe that most trolling happens against members of your own team in LoL and not the enemy team, which partially explains why we see this more often in MOBAs than in RTSs.
It’s possible the game structure also appeals to a different segment of the population (such as younger people).
Maybe cultural inertia in the LoL community.
Honestly, this is a very fascinating sociology question. I would love for someone to do proper study and find the real answer.
There’s no apparent contradiction in saying “the system can be fixed.” So, you show what’s impossible about it, if that’s your assumption, or shut the fuck up already. And drop the bullshit about “skepticism,” because you’re fucking terrible at it.
The first step in fixing it? Admitting you have a fucking problem. And you, personally, have a whole fucking lot of ’em.
Identifying a problem is the first step to fixing it. However, some problems cannot be fixed. If someone is going to assert that a problem can be fixed, then that person bears the burden of proof to demonstrate that claim. In this particular case, except as I’ve already outlined, people making that claim have made only cursory attempts at fulfilling their burden of proof, and consequently I remain unconvinced.
Clarifying a few points here: People have reputations in Starcraft. Starcraft also has team games and uses a very fancy matchmaking system to match with random people of similar skill. Team games are more popular than 1v1 in Starcraft AFAIK.
And this is not accurate. I don’t know if LoL uses the term ‘BM’ (bad manner) but it’s not like it doesn’t exist in Starcraft. It’s there, it’s just far less common (TeamLiquid thread where people post BM). Part of the reason is that Starcraft built up a style of sportsmanship. People say “gl hf” (good luck have fun) and “good game” all the time. It’s like a handshake before a match.
The community also has figures like Day[9] and HuskyStarcraft who encourage a positive outlook while playing. There were other community figures like Orb and IdrA who did a lot of BM, and it caused a lot more people to emulate them. But eventually they got harshly punished by the community. Manner is a meme. It gets replicated and circulated around a community.
Another reason is that a lot of the more toxic people moved to LoL from Starcraft.