32 replies to this topic

[Heffay]

http://www.polygon.c...ate-open-letter

Good. I'm sure there will be a few who will pine for the status quo ("But I *like* misogeny! Why can't I tell women that they are here to serve me??"), but it needs to change. Society has done it a number of times in the past (race, sexual orientation), and now it's time for the next step.

Edit: Make that over 2k now. And this needs a LOT of explaining:

Mike Forst (IT Manager at Piranha Games)

Manager? Congrats on your promotion, Mr Forst!

Edited by Heffay, 04 September 2014 - 01:06 PM.

[KhanCipher]

Except a certain person that goes by the name of Zoe Quinn now made me skeptical whenever someone cries that they're being harassed now. I'm refering to the whole wizchan "harassing" zoe, which the escapest editor in chief straight up said that they ran that story without confirming the evidence, which was maybe only 1-2 pictures of "anon" just starting some ****... And said editor also defended it by saying "it was the right thing to do", except someone cried wolf and the internet found that there was no wolf to be found.

I've been trying to keep track of what has happened with zoe quinn from the past few weeks, and well i'm seeing that both sides harass, and for a good portion of it it really looked like one side wanted to silence the other side because they were more "noble", and said same side said a lot of nasty **** to TFYC which is odd since they have the same goals as that side, but then i remembered that TFYC accepted donations from 4chan, and "you shouldn't accept donations from 4chan"... Hell a lot of indies went on a hate train against TotalBiscuit all because he wanted to be professional and stay neutral in the argument till it cooled down.

Also, you want to know the all-around best way to get a reaction on twitter is? It's ****/death threats. Which by biting you're fighting a war on their homefield.

tl;dr: imo, Most of the problems with harassment come from the joke that is game journalism.

[Heffay]

KhanCipher, on 04 September 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

tl;dr: imo, Most of the problems with harassment come from the joke that is game journalism.

0.2 seconds on any video game forum proves you wrong.

[KhanCipher]

Heffay, on 04 September 2014 - 02:30 PM, said:

0.2 seconds on any video game forum proves you wrong.

Weird most of my video game forum experiences usually tend to have people being critical continually being ignored (even when they're civil, and are making good points), and eventually they start getting angry and that soda pop bottle is eventually going to burst.

(and i've lurked on the Combat Arms, Alliance of Vailiant Arms, Need for Speed World, and War Thunder forums. And i sometimes visit the WoT forums from time to time)

[Bilbo]

While I applaud the effort, the anonymity of the internet makes this a near impossible battle to fight. Short of forcing people to show who they actually are there will always be someone.

[xengk]

Is this about #GameGate?

[Heffay]

xengk, on 04 September 2014 - 03:23 PM, said:

Is this about #GameGate?

That's just one straw in the whole bale. It's been an ongoing issue for a while now.

[Punkass]

Heffay, on 04 September 2014 - 01:04 PM, said:

http://www.polygon.c...ate-open-letter

Good. I'm sure there will be a few who will pine for the status quo ("But I *like* misogeny! Why can't I tell women that they are here to serve me??"), but it needs to change. Society has done it a number of times in the past (race, sexual orientation), and now it's time for the next step.

Edit: Make that over 2k now. And this needs a LOT of explaining:

Mike Forst (IT Manager at Piranha Games)

Manager? Congrats on your promotion, Mr Forst!

I agree with this. This is a good thing.
PS. You're still a tool Heff.

[IllCaesar]

Its sad that "don't be an *******" and "call other people out for being ********" needs to be the premise of a petition.

Now I'm not afraid to admit that I've been a jerk online, I think most, if not all, of us have at one time or another. We just need to keep that little devil on our shoulder in line, and if we see it on the shoulders of other players, tell them to flick it off like a bug. A good friend keeps your dickish behaviors in line and calls you out for being a ****.

[KhanCipher]

I find it a little odd that there's so much "Gamers are dead" articles being ran very recently, i guess someone forgot to tell marketing divisions of game publishers.

http://www.slate.com...r_but_they.html (the article has a whole load of articles that i'm refering to.)

And then there's recent Sarkeesian being "harassed". I say it like that because there's no proof and all we have is just her word. If i remember the last time gamers took someone's word at face value involving harassment correctly, it ended with a chan forum full of depressed people that couldn't have possibly done it at all getting all sorts of harassment. But there's there's plenty of difference between the two situations, right?

http://www.polygon.c...d-death-threats

what's bad in this whole thing is that honestly knowyourmeme seems to have the most unbiased articles of the events that are unfolding with this sh*t show.

http://knowyourmeme....ts/quinnspiracy
http://knowyourmeme....alists-game-jam
http://knowyourmeme....es/vivian-james
http://knowyourmeme....vents/gamergate

Listen, i am all for having more diversity, but going around painting all gamers with the "sexist, racist, bigots" brush isn't going to fix anything. Women should come into the industry by choice and choice alone, hell the game industry is more accepting than what it was back in 06. I feel like game journalism only wants to amplify the noise that bad apples make and completely ignore that there is a lot of good. What we should be doing is stop giving them full articles dedicated to painting all gamers in a bad light just because of the bad apples, but don't fully deny that they exist.

*drops mic*

[Lily from animove]

When people would realise how mankind works for like one million years and that everythign is sex related after being grown up, then they may finally understand that sexualisation is a vital part of both genders.

sexualising women is as much in our nature as sexualising men. Yes women do this too.
And since gaming is mostly done by guys the sexualisation of girls is of course more present.



This picture is quite close to the truth and it does not only sexualise the women. The amount of womens who react to exactly that kind of man is also very high. They just don't let that knwo everyone so openly as man do it when they see a sexy female.

The whole discussion is just senseless. Both sides have their fantasies, and most women even forfill these fantasies for their man/boyfriends. Because they also like to be sen as sexy. And when man go lifting they also do it because they know women think its sexy. And most women do like and react to that too.

And of course in mostly male genre games you will see more sexualised womens. Because it addreses males.


And the harassment part? Thats hardly truly gender related. People in the internet harass each other anyways. They just take the first thing they find. And this is usually "eeew ist a gaming girl". And lets be honset if it wouldn't be that, they would just use something else.

If designers want to change something, they should make more games adressing girls. But since they are a lower Playerbase, they are less profitable. Maybe in some years when the new generation is grown up this differs since todays girls are also consuming a lot more time in front of PC's and consoles.

[Heffay]

KhanCipher, on 04 September 2014 - 07:16 PM, said:

Listen, i am all for having more diversity, but going around painting all gamers

Since you're such a big fan of knowyourmeme, let me use that to explain what you just did:

http://knowyourmeme....n-are-like-that

To suggest that women don't face a hostile environment just because "not all gamers are like that" ignores the problem. People should treat **** jokes and general misogyny (as the example I posted above) the same way they handle insults like "***" and "******".

It's tough to explain this with the word filter, but suffice it to say that jokes at the expense of women should be handled with the same level of disdain as jokes about sexuality and race.

[BlackBeltJones]

Heffay, on 05 September 2014 - 05:03 AM, said:

It's tough to explain this with the word filter, but suffice it to say that jokes at the expense of women should be handled with the same level of disdain as jokes about sexuality and race.

Would you say that jokes at the expense of women are a more serious offense than jokes at the expense of men? or humans in general?
Is there any joke or humor that is not at the expense of someone?

[Heffay]

BlackBeltJones, on 05 September 2014 - 10:46 AM, said:

Is there any joke or humor that is not at the expense of someone?

A horse walks into the bar, and the bartender says "why the long face?"

[Darth Futuza]

Heffay, on 05 September 2014 - 11:41 AM, said:

A horse walks into the bar, and the bartender says "why the long face?"

As a representative of the United Council of Horse Rights, I am here to say that that is discriminatory and is a disgusting caricature of horses! Take your sick disgusting biggoted jokes back to the trash where they belong.

[BlackBeltJones]

"take a stand
and there’s always someone on hand
to hate me for standing there"

Edited by BlackBeltJones, 05 September 2014 - 12:53 PM.

[Ryvucz]

Heffay, on 05 September 2014 - 05:03 AM, said:

Since you're such a big fan of knowyourmeme, let me use that to explain what you just did:

http://knowyourmeme....n-are-like-that

To suggest that women don't face a hostile environment just because "not all gamers are like that" ignores the problem. People should treat **** jokes and general misogyny (as the example I posted above) the same way they handle insults like "***" and "******".

It's tough to explain this with the word filter, but suffice it to say that jokes at the expense of women should be handled with the same level of disdain as jokes about sexuality and race.

That's what the fox said!

[990Dreams]

Translation:

We can't take other people making fun of us through a computer, so we are going to write an angry letter and hope and dream it will change the hearts of humans who have nothing better to do with their time.

Do I support tolerance? Sure. Don't violate my personal freedoms in doing so. I'll tolerate others, as long as they also tolerate me. Until then, why should I? All that's going to happen is I'm going to get bullied by the same group I tried to be tolerant towards.

This relies on people being kind. This relies that gamers are good people. This relies on it that people will change because of a stupid letter. Words are powerless.

"'We hold these truths to be self evident,' those are words! They founded America!"

It's actions that follow words that get the point across to people. People died to follow up those words. Now obviously the developers won't die trying to improve online communities. But they need to enforce these rules. Then it will register to the idiots who are trolling "maybe they're being serious."

A comparison of how stupid this letter is is how if I were to start a hashtag campaign against ISIS. Deploy the hashtag bombs and exclamation point missiles! They don't care. Similarly, people will continue to be racist, or sexist, or 'bigoted' (yeah, that's another topic) until the developers start to crack down on these people. The MWO community is better than most, but still.

TL;DR This won't change people, and people (I won't name who) are still going to hate people (once again, I won't name any groups)

Edited by DavidHurricane, 06 September 2014 - 01:52 PM.

[DAYLEET]

Game Journalism is dying and it's kicking all the way down, it has become irrelevant. Who ever goes to those website anymore? No one, they only quote information we already know from the source. They are at the center of countless controversies. Gamers do their job better and they also can earn money doing it. We are in a transition that will become a revolution so yeah it will be harsh and take some times.

Edited by DAYLEET, 06 September 2014 - 03:22 PM.

[NextGame]

Heffay, on 04 September 2014 - 01:04 PM, said:

http://www.polygon.c...ate-open-letter

Good. I'm sure there will be a few who will pine for the status quo ("But I *like* misogeny! Why can't I tell women that they are here to serve me??"), but it needs to change. Society has done it a number of times in the past (race, sexual orientation), and now it's time for the next step.

Edit: Make that over 2k now. And this needs a LOT of explaining:

Mike Forst (IT Manager at Piranha Games)

Manager? Congrats on your promotion, Mr Forst!

Cannot support this unfortunately. While on the surface the basic message is straightforward and seemingly innocuous, this petition is a vehicle for SJW publicity, who quite frankly need kicked right out of gaming.

I will not go into the semantics here, there's plenty of material across the internet right now to peruse. I would urge people that if they are interested in the subject matter that they do their legwork before taking a stance. Do not fall into the trap of being used as a tool in a cause that you might not actually agree with, something that can happen very easily in this particular battle given the nuanced tactics that are being employed.

I was hopeful that #gamergate would bypass this little island of the internet, somewhere I thought I might be able to get on with, you know, gaming. Sadly it seems that this wont be possible.

I've said it elsewhere, and will reiterate, the developers with the most integrity and awareness of their customer base will steer clear of this petition.

Edited by NextGame, 07 September 2014 - 04:40 AM.