Gamers Launch Harassment Campaign Against BioWare

KingPut wrote: My daughter told me she signs up for online gaming using a guys name because guys will harass women playing. I said really? are you serious? Well I guess we find a-holes everywhere. They're even harrassing Jennifer Hepler, a writer for Old Republic. Being a dad of 2 daughters this really pisses me off.

http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=7832

One of the strange parts of going to a university (Marquette) that was an early adopter of Internet technology is that I'm still completely conditioned to assume that 90% of all female screen names are actually men as that's precisely how it used to be on the old MUDs, IRC, newsgroups and the like. In the Guys used to fall all over themselves to heap gear, attention, and the like on "women"--and the requests (and responses) for cybersex were kind of breathtaking. The entire attitude toward gender online was, at best, sophomoric.

Now, since the advent of the World Wide Home Shopping & Pornography Network, the number of actual women online has increased enormously, but the attitudes toward them have not. If anything, the net's broad reach into homes and the huge increase in both younger users and the general masses (in 1988, if you had an email account and USENET access, chances were good that you were at least at university or in a highly technical profession; in 2008, you basically needed nothing more than buying a cup of coffee at Starbucks) has increased the douchebag quotient by a couple of orders of magnitude.

Ultimately, this is one of the reasons why I refuse to use public voice comms in any online game. I don't need to hear any whining, bitching, or degrading shit. I've yet to find a single bit of gameplay that is enhanced by the intrusion of other people's voices...

I haven't really seen it myself. I played Battlefield 2 online (Sony Playstation Network) for the better part of a year with a couple of tough talking chicks who dropped into our games at some point and were easily as good as the guys. (We use voice comms so they WERE women).

No one harassed or talked down to them. Maybe that's an anomaly. I don't know. That's my own experience. I don't play a lot online but my work buddies had a thing going with Call of Duty that later morphed into Battlefield for awhile.

I have been saving this article from the The Escapist for when my girls are ready to start going on the Internet. Whitney Butts nails it, and she nails it in 2005. THAT'S SEVEN YEARS AGO. The Internet is a cesspool.

If you think Penny Arcade is on the wrong side of this, you are mistaken. In fact, they invented the equation that most aptly describes it:

The vilest, sexist, racist disgusting nonsense poisons almost every random encounter on the Internet. You have to work to find people you can trust to not be awful griefing monsters. I recommend joining the communities at co-optimus or the like to find a pool of gamers you can trust.

jeb wrote: If you think Penny Arcade is on the wrong side of this, you are mistaken.

Well, if you think Penny Arcade is on the right side, go read about their Dickwolves handling. From where I sit, encouraging fans to heckle and hassle rape victims is in no way the right side. But hey, these women need to learn to take a joke right?
(If you do read about this, I'm not referring to the actual comic strip, but their handling of the criticism.)

Regardless of that, I'm not a fan of super coarse language as humor. Not offended, I just find them base and unfunny. Personally, I'd rather my kids not be part of a culture that think terms like 'fuckwad', 'shitcock' (or whatever Penny Arcade/Kevin Smith phrase is used for laughs) are acceptable.

Jeff White wrote:

jeb wrote: If you think Penny Arcade is on the wrong side of this, you are mistaken.

Well, if you think Penny Arcade is on the right side, go read about their Dickwolves handling. From where I sit, encouraging fans to heckle and hassle rape victims is in no way the right side. But hey, these women need to learn to take a joke right?
(If you do read about this, I'm not referring to the actual comic strip, but their handling of the criticism.)

You and I sit in different places.

Anyone who has played on xbox live in an active shooter for more than 30 minutes and thinks that the videogame subculture is not toxic to women, homosexuals and minorities needs a serious readjustment, full stop. It's no surprise that this kind of misogynistic bullshit comes out of that community. I don't need sweeping generalizations. I've experienced it constantly on my headset and on internet forums.

Gary Sax wrote: Anyone who has played on xbox live in an active shooter for more than 30 minutes and thinks that the videogame subculture is not toxic to women, homosexuals and minorities needs a serious readjustment, full stop. It's no surprise that this kind of misogynistic bullshit comes out of that community. I don't need sweeping generalizations. I've experienced it constantly on my headset and on internet forums.

This varies greatly from community to community. If you're doing the pubbie thing on XBL then sure, you get the mouthbreathers that no respectable community will take. If you find a good server community in TF2, CS:S, etc. you'll have pleasant comms.

It's like pick-up gaming at a convention versus game nights with friends. I'm not going to have a furry who doesn't bathe and insists on playing his Mary Sue fursona in a one shot with pregens or a sulky rage quitter who refuses to finish a game in my home playing games with me. World of fucking difference.

Well, on one hand, I agree with you. You can forge a group of people who aren't horrible people, it's how I play. On the other hand, it's sort of making my point for me. If you enter the population at large (pubbies, open/random play in WoW), you find the kind of hideous scum of the earth that make up our hobby. From there you have to then make a big effort to find a sub-population/community of non-hateful people to play with, however you want to do that. I suppose you could argue that all the good people have selected themselves out of the general pool, but my overall sense is that there are more hateful misogynists and racist pricks than there are sane people on these services (or otherwise normal seeming people that anonymity expresses their inner racist/sexist/homophobe).

It's worst with shooters on Xbox but I've had the problem to a greater or lesser extent with most of the games I've played (PC, xbox, forums, etc).

Taking anything on the internet seriously is proof you shouldn't be on the internet. Same goes with playing games on line. Don't do it until you are fully prepared.

The sexism against women is very pronounced on the net and in live gaming. It's obvious, clear, un-apologetic, and easy to spot. I don't like it but at least it's easy to spot.

Same thing goes with bigotry against certain nationalties, sexual preferences (the awful response to that transgendered reviewer on gamespot for example) or colours of skin. It's obvious. Anyone can see it and be warned against it. It's not an accepted part of our society and this article is more proof of that.

The sexism that goes on from gaming companies towards young men is subtle and in my opinion maybe even more insidious as a result. No one spots it, we all accept it, and no on seems to be writing big articles about it. I see a new article on sexism in gaming written for women every couple of months. It's a known and acknowleged problem. I've never seen one the opposite way and I know it's there. I just don't think even the fans being treated that way see it. Ever. Even after they've been soled a copy of Duke Nuke'em they still don't see how the companies expectations of them are about as low as could be. They're pandering in a way that would be inexcusable if the games were aimed at women.

I think that the same attitude that's condesceneding towards male gamers is encouraging these problems where women get brow beaten and teased on line. It encourages young men to think they should be sex addicted gangsters when they grow up watching out for their own race and treating women poorly. We have to stop supporting that before the problem will go away.