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[GillianSeed79]

I usually agree with Boogie on everything, but I'm not sure I can go along with his strawman on this one. Besada's post is excellent. I've been playing games for close to 30 years. His post sums up my exact thoughts on this whole thing way more eloquently than I could have ever hoped to accomplish. Part of my problem though is that if you agree with a viewpoint such as Besada's, you get labeled an SJW extremist or someone who is just generalizing and stereotyping all gamers.

 

[plagiarize]

Should have guessed this thread would turn into a shitpile.

I thought the video was fine. He's obviously responding to overzealous, ridiculous articles like Leigh Alexander's. It should be pretty obvious when the gaming media goes on a general rampage calling "gamers" pieces of shit that people who identify with that label aren't going to like it, no matter what some internet dirtbags have done.

I'm mostly just shaking my head at all this drama and politics over labels. People seem to think that if they can attack and create labels, somehow it will fix things. My biggest complaint with the internet "Social Justice Warriors" is their futility. It honestly makes me upset seeing all of this energy wasted towards not fixing the problems they claim to be mad about and that I would love to see actually fixed. Attacking the term "gamer" doesn't separate the shitheels from anyone else. Changing the term doesn't make them go away. Calling everyone collectively a dirtbag doesn't make the actual dirtbags go away.

This isn't how you fix a problem.
This is how you feel good about yourself online by attacking and arguing with people who want the same problems fixed that you do.

This is what gaming media looks like right now.

If you don't think that a very visible and angry discussion about an issue can impact that issue I recommend you check your history books.

I can't fix the problem of people who are bigoted, but I can do something about the problem of people who are bigoted feeling free to spew their bigotry in our community, and in doing so, and our community becoming more inclusive to non bigots, generation to generation our community will become less bigoted.

But yeah, to do that, you have to draw a line in the sand.

Showing support isn't doing nothing.

 

[Lime]

Alexander's article (and others) attacking the word "gamers" miss the point. The point is not that "gamers" are all terrible human beings. the point is that "gamers" includes a subset of terrible human beings, who are often given passive cover by a much larger group that identify as "gamers".

Passive cover involves anything from ignoring them when they're online being misogynist, racist, douchebags to attempting to redirect every inclusion thread into a thread about themselves. Both of these are behaviors we see regularly on GAF. Multiple people in this very thread have said, "It's not my problem."

Well, yes it is if you take issue with the culture at large thinking we're all giant douchebags. All movements and groups contain offensive elements. How we deal with those elements often shows us what sort of group we're looking at. Do we embrace them? Do we pretend they aren't there, because it makes us uncomfortable to be associated with them? Do we call them out when they step outside the line?

Part of culture is creating acceptable social mores for groups. It's not that gamers are all terrible people -- I clearly don't believe that, given I've been a gamer for 35 years, moderate a gaming board, and have a ton of gamer friends -- it's that gamers don't do anything about the terrible people in their community, which makes it appear to outsiders that we approve.

A gedankenexperiment: On GAF, if someone starts a thread about how all Asian people are actually fifth columnists from China, what would you expect? If moderators left it up and no one got banned, what conclusion would you draw about GAF and the moderators? Many people would draw the conclusion that either we agree with the thread maker, or at least we don't find anything wrong with what he's saying, otherwise we would act upon it.

And that's what's happening here. Gamers's unwillingness to stand up to the extremists within their community makes it appear to people that we approve, or at least don't disapprove, of their actions. It allows shitbags to use the rest of us for cover. I'm not sure why so many people are upset about Alexander's attack on gamers, when the attacks of these people, the ones who threaten to kill in our names, are often ignored, or treated as the price of being involved in the industry.

When gamers routinely shut down these dickholes, gamers will start to be seen as something other than these dillholes. When someone's wife can get online to play a game without someone calling her a slut, or a whore, or weirdly a nigger or faggot, then people outside the industry may stop seeing gamers as misogynistic, racist, scum.

I hope people understand and act on this, rather than allowing themselves to get their feelings hurt over some journalists that swung too wide.

Thanks for posting this. It really gives me relief.

 

[SparkPeople]

i agree with this but i don't think it's any kind of excuse for the game industry. this is our community and our responsibility, we should be making things better here and setting a positive example for other fields of entertainment.

If gaming is 'our' community then why aren't we seeing the same amount of criticism of movies, comics, and TV shows consistenly?

Because this has happened before, and we got what we wanted in the form of the occasional bone thrown. Shows like Star Trek, Walking Dead. Movies like the Bodyguard, even comics will throw in occasional gay and interracial pairings (there was an OT on this yesterday) to boost sales and get in on the advertising of gasp an interracial/gay couple so we all feel good about ourselves, but everything else stays the status quo.

Last time I checked, we weren't being told to stop watching shows that didn't have a diverse cast, nor boycott action movies because they cast women in a bad light (I.e. Taken). They went on to be huge money makers. The communities weren't lambasted as bigots, nor was there a consistent series of videos made to highlight the lack of agency of women in these productions.

We all know it's bad, we all know that sexist representation are rife within media, but is gaming suddenly the new target when overall progress has been so piecemeal?

Oh I definitely agree, minorities are woefully underrepresented in Hollywood, and there are many lazy, sexist/racist tropes that are perpetuated in film and TV.

I do get the feeling though that the online community for video gaming seems to have particularly bad issues with sexism - the pushback and vitriol that we've been witnessing in response to basic criticism of sexist cliches is absurd.

It's vitriolic idiots who are ruining a good argument with tones and threats.

You have industry outsiders coming in and saying "what you guys are doing is wrong" which evokes a basic reaction of "who the fuck are you to say this?" and things spiral out of there.

 

[staticneuron]

Expressing a view does not equate to 'trying to force'. Why do people always imply that Anita has nefarious aims?

Well it probably comes down to a few things. I came across videos of here saying that she would like to play games but she doesn't like shooting people, (around 14:50 mark)giving the impression she doesn't play games. Another with her speaking about her issues with 4chan and the best way to deal with negative comments (mostly by disabling them) (around 1:12:50).

This all takes place way before the kickstarter campaigns and raises a few questions while answering others. Like the reason she shows so many examples and uses evocative wording while describing certain games that make no sens at all because of the context of those games.... simply could be because she hasn't really played them, or has only played enough to try to make her point. The questions being raised about 4chan is, if she knew about them, why did she act surprised when she received the comments and went on news reports implying that this was the result of gamers as a whole, instead of a targeted attack by a group she was familiar with. basically she made it seem like 4chan represented gamers as a whole and reaped the benefits of that.

We could go on but that is my issue with Anita. Not with feminism per say, I actually do not know that many real feminists, but just with her topics and how they are very skewed.

When some asshole or troll tries to make someone else's life miserable with their words, you fire back. Tell them how not acceptable it is to call Anita X, Y, Z despite how you might feel about her videos.

Ohh, so you are saying getting into a war of words with trolls is the best way to get them to stop?

That's not universally true, sadly. In that thread we had multiple people starting on the very first page who questioned if she had made the whole thing up for publicity, who characterized what had happened as just being mean things typed online that would never amount to anything, and who put forwards the idea that she wasn't remotely upset by the threats and was just leveraging it for publicity.

Yes, we had many people saying they disagreed with her and thought the threats were wrong, but that isn't all we had. Most if not all of the people who posted the kinds of things I mention above were rightly banned, but they still felt that NeoGAF was an appropriate place to post such comments... and we can help change that.

There is a world of difference between questioning whether the person is being truthful and condoning a particular act.

The thing is, she kinda isn't.

What she's doing is applying basic literary criticism to games. Nothing more. Literally nothing more. Have you seen her videos?

I teach introductory critical theory in university. Feminist and gender theory is something we do in first year. Because it is essential and insightful. And you know what? We actually go much further than Anita does in her videos.

I think Anita is actually very gentle and thoughtful in her analysis. And not in any way radical. Really. This is just what actual criticism looks like.

Have you? I am still wowed by what she said about Hitman Absolution sequence in the strip club.

Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. Its a rush streaming from carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.

If you have played Hitman Absolution, do you remember that sequence? Felt compelled to kill the strippers and derive pleasure from it?

This circles back to the point I was mentioning before that either she hasn't actually played the game or she is presenting this horribly skewed view on purpose.

 

[Shig]

I never said I disagree with her, but I disagree with her methods. Anyone can do research, and do it endlessly, but without action there is no change.

Everyone has their role. Frank Miller can cram a funnybook full of pointed social commentary and innovative sequential storytelling, but ask him to throw his hat into another arena and he comes back with Robocop 3. Paula Deen can cook a mean southern dinner, but ask her for social commentary and she's a tone-deaf loon. Roger Ebert was a great film critic, but his one film credit was a trainwreck.

There's no shortage of people in this world that we have to demand those who prove effective at one thing must move onto something entirely different, and there's all kinds of cautionary tales against such urgings. The idea that you can't criticize the food if you didn't stir the pot is hogwash.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

I can't fix the problem of people who are bigoted, but I can do something about the problem of people who are bigoted feeling free to spew their bigotry in our community, and in doing so, and our community becoming more inclusive to non bigots, generation to generation our community will become less bigoted.

Of course you can. Do you really think that there are no reformed bigots? People change their minds and opinions all of the time.

 

[140.85]

Thanks, Boogie. Well said.

 

[pixlexic]

I don't know .. I agree that using blanket terms like "men" is just lazy and doesn't really pinpoint the issues and problems as individual.

It's literally using the same generalist attitude that caused the problems in the first place.

 

[FF Seraphim]

Exactly. Targeting the assholes just...continues the asshole train, so to speak. We need to drown their voices out and muffle them, not hunt them like prey.

Several people in the thread want to hunt them, however. And that's a huge fallacy, IMO.

This would also be difficult to do for several reasons. The assholes while being a smaller group will generally always be louder because of the ridiculous actions they might take to be heard. And it should not be the job of the rest of the community to keep shouting them down, we actually have lives to live.
So instead of words we take action (charities, educating the gaming community on progressive social actions, etc...) and when words are needed there will be no reason for us to yell.

 

[-Kees-]

Alexander's article (and others) attacking the word "gamers" miss the point. The point is not that "gamers" are all terrible human beings. the point is that "gamers" includes a subset of terrible human beings, who are often given passive cover by a much larger group that identify as "gamers".

Passive cover involves anything from ignoring them when they're online being misogynist, racist, douchebags to attempting to redirect every inclusion thread into a thread about themselves. Both of these are behaviors we see regularly on GAF. Multiple people in this very thread have said, "It's not my problem."

Well, yes it is if you take issue with the culture at large thinking we're all giant douchebags. All movements and groups contain offensive elements. How we deal with those elements often shows us what sort of group we're looking at. Do we embrace them? Do we pretend they aren't there, because it makes us uncomfortable to be associated with them? Do we call them out when they step outside the line?

Part of culture is creating acceptable social mores for groups. It's not that gamers are all terrible people -- I clearly don't believe that, given I've been a gamer for 35 years, moderate a gaming board, and have a ton of gamer friends -- it's that gamers don't do anything about the terrible people in their community, which makes it appear to outsiders that we approve.

A gedankenexperiment: On GAF, if someone starts a thread about how all Asian people are actually fifth columnists from China, what would you expect? If moderators left it up and no one got banned, what conclusion would you draw about GAF and the moderators? Many people would draw the conclusion that either we agree with the thread maker, or at least we don't find anything wrong with what he's saying, otherwise we would act upon it.

And that's what's happening here. Gamers's unwillingness to stand up to the extremists within their community makes it appear to people that we approve, or at least don't disapprove, of their actions. It allows shitbags to use the rest of us for cover. I'm not sure why so many people are upset about Alexander's attack on gamers, when the attacks of these people, the ones who threaten to kill in our names, are often ignored, or treated as the price of being involved in the industry.

When gamers routinely shut down these dickholes, gamers will start to be seen as something other than these dillholes. When someone's wife can get online to play a game without someone calling her a slut, or a whore, or weirdly a nigger or faggot, then people outside the industry may stop seeing gamers as misogynistic, racist, scum.

I hope people understand and act on this, rather than allowing themselves to get their feelings hurt over some journalists that swung too wide.

Thanks.

Everyone who is taking issue with people criticizing "gamers" please go to Brianna Wu's twitter right now. Tell me that what she and many other women have been going through is in anyway comparable. Now is the time, it's been going on for too long. It has to stop.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Ohh, so you are saying getting into a war of words with trolls is the best way to get them to stop?

You don't need always need to respond with a thesis. Simply say that they're being insensitive, unreasonable, and/or rude and exactly why they're making people uncomfortable should be enough. Anything other than letting that shit slide. Don't let the atmosphere where they can just scream whatever they want sans consequences continue.

 

[Lime]

Thanks.

Everyone who is taking issue with people criticizing "gamers" please go to Brianna Wu's twitter right now. Tell me that what she and many other women have been going through is in anyway comparable. Now is the time, it's been going on for too long. It has to stop.

yeah Wu is doing really great work. And she's on point when she states that;

If you think this will get better by ignoring it, you're deluding yourselves. The mob has learned it can bully women out of the industry.

 

[Sakwoff]

I don't know .. I agree that using blanket terms like "men" is just lazy and doesn't really pinpoint the issues and problems as individual.

It's literally using the same generalist attitude that caused the problems in the first place.

Not exactly. The qualitative difference is that one comes from a position of power, one from a position of disempowerment.

(similarly: the problem is structural, not individual)

This is why I think harping on for example Alexander's article is missing the point. Yeah, she kind of misses the mark, but can you really blame her for her anger in light of what's happening?

 

[staticneuron]

You don't need to write a thesis. Simply say that they're being insensitive, unreasonable, and/or rude and exactly why they're making people uncomfortable should be enough. Anything other than letting that shit slide.

Problem is despite hating these horrible acts, saying things like that to someone, won't change their opinion nor will it get them to stop. I do my best in any particular community to report or block if possible. Talking to them in a community, you might get heard. Replying in public spaces like comments of a news article\video or twitter feed simply means getting lost in the noise and imo is not a real way to combat the issue.

There is not a way possible to identify and police the bad elements from the gaming society. You can only try to exclude and oust them from particular communities.

This is why I think harping on for example Alexander's article is missing the point. Yeah, she kind of misses the mark, but can you really blame her for her anger in light of what's happening?

Yes. She wrote an article on a popular site, viewed by many. So yes she should be held responsible for what she writes. It is part of her job description. She should have kept the opinion on her twitter feed. The fact that she didn't changes it from personal opinion, to her professional stance on the issue.

 

[FF Seraphim]

Not exactly. The qualitative difference is that one comes from a position of power, one from a position of disempowerment.

(similarly: the problem is structural, not individual)

This is why I think harping on for example Alexander's article is missing the point. Yeah, she kind of misses the mark, but can you really blame her for her anger in light of what's happening?

You can blame her for the wording that she has used. She has every right to be mad at how women are treated in the industry, no sane person would argue against that. But she is in a position where her words can reach a wide audience and be used against whatever positive movement she was aiming towards.
No matter how angry you are that doesn't excuse maligned behavior towards another.

 

[plagiarize]

Of course you can. Do you really think that there are no reformed bigots? People change their minds and opinions all of the time.

Honest question here... do you have any idea what percentage of reformed bigots reformed as a result of someone calmly explaining the errors of their ways? I'd imagine that such people do exist, but that it would be a very small number.

 

[polychron]

I think that while it's true that most gamers aren't biggots, the fact that gaming has due to the actions of some become so acrid towards women, minority groups, and any "social justice warriors" who speak out in their support is doing the community a disservice.

Given that even in the last few days we've seen people quit because they can no longer handle the abuse, it's not enough to just say "I'm not part of the problem". The problem is preventing the enrichment of games, and so of hurts the consumer, the 'average gamer' not to actively attempt to be a part in solving these issues.

 

[spwolf]

The push in the movie community is there. And not even the defenders of the status quo there would go as low as "but, but misogyny in videogames".

where are the results of this push? Why dont we see this discussion plastered all over movie media?

Funny fact is that movie industry has a long way to go to reach where gaming industry is today with respect to gender equality.

 

[plagiarize]

where are the results of this push? Why dont we see this discussion plastered all over movie media?

Funny fact is that movie industry has a long way to go to reach where gaming industry is today with respect to gender equality.

That's more of an unusual opinion than it is a funny fact.

and it's not like this stuff isn't discussed:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...report-says-20140402-story.html#ixzz2yHZvbMPQ

 

[CombustibleNate]

This is why I think harping on for example Alexander's article is missing the point. Yeah, she kind of misses the mark, but can you really blame her for her anger in light of what's happening?

Anyone can be mad, but when you're in a position like Alexander's, you can't go spouting off generalizations and hateful speech in your articles and on your twitter. Hell, it's probably best left unsaid if you are that angry. She should have rationalized it first rather than acting on impulse or attempting to cash in on the media attention she'd get.

 

[SparkPeople]

Everyone has their role. Frank Miller can cram a funnybook full of pointed social commentary and innovative sequential storytelling, but ask him to throw his hat into another arena and he comes back with Robocop 3. Paula Deen can cook a mean southern dinner, but ask her for social commentary and she's a tone-deaf loon. Roger Ebert was a great film critic, but his one film credit was a trainwreck.

There's no shortage of people in this world that we have to demand those who prove effective at one thing must move onto something entirely different, and there's all kinds of cautionary tales against such urgings. The idea that you can't criticize the food if you didn't stir the pot is hogwash.

The Paula Deen example is terrible. I can see where you're coming from with the other two, but here's the thing; I'm not asking Anita to make a game, I'm staying that to actually criticize the games themselves takes very little work for the result she's aiming for (if she has stated one, I couldn't find it in my brief research), and that if she actually wishes to enact change she needs to put some action into it.

She's already shown that she wishes to engage a community by A) hosting a website B) Maintaining a presence on major social media C) Hosting talks D) Making videos. this discourse engagement is always the first step in enacting social change. It's never the only one. First and Second Wave feminists continuously marched and navigatesthe avenues of power while engaging the public to get their message out there.

Here we have an individual engaging in a social movement criticizing an established group directly without appealing to the avenues of power (I.e. major game publishers). We individually and collectively have limited power in the grand scheme of the game industry versus AAA blockbusters like COD and Madden.

 

[FF Seraphim]

Honest question here... do you have any idea what percentage of reformed bigots reformed as a result of someone calmly explaining the errors of their ways? I'd imagine that such people do exist, but that it would be a very small number.

Does it matter the number? It is a victory if even one person changes their mind and can have a calm and rational discussion on the issue. Speaking calmly on the matter doesn't turn people away and if even the person still disagrees with you, there may be chance for you to keep talking to them and make them less likely to post hateful bile all over the internet.

 

[Oersted]

where are the results of this push? Why dont we see this discussion plastered all over movie media?

Funny fact is that movie industry has a long way to go to reach where gaming industry is today with respect to gender equality.

I think if you are interested enough, your derail warrants a new thread and not a place in this one.

 

[staticneuron]

where are the results of this push? Why dont we see this discussion plastered all over movie media?

Funny fact is that movie industry has a long way to go to reach where gaming industry is today with respect to gender equality.

It does? Are you talking about female representation or females in power (female producers/directors?). I personally think that isn't true on either count.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Problem is despite hating these horrible acts, saying things like that to someone, won't change their opinion nor will it get them to stop. I do my best in any particular community to report or block if possible. Talking to them in a community, you might get heard. Replying in public spaces like comments of a news article\video or twitter feed simply means getting lost in the noise and imo is not a real way to combat the issue.

There is not a way possible to identify and police the bad elements from the gaming society. You can only try to exclude and oust them from particular communities.

The reason you speak up is not simply for them though. There are people who don't need to type anything yet still share not dissimilar views from trolls yet stay silent. There are also people who will just see a rude comment, see it disappear, yet it will still color their perception of that particular community. Showing that there are people within the community who disapprove of bullshit is just as important as blocking/reporting, if not more so because it shows that the community actually makes an effort to build an inclusive atmosphere.

 

[Sakwoff]

Yes. She wrote an article on a popular site, viewed by many. So yes she should be held responsible for what she writes. It is part of her job description. She should have kept the opinion on her twitter feed. The fact that she didn't changes it from personal opinion, to her professional stance on the issue.

I didn't say what she said wasn't missing the point. I said you're directing your ire and energy in the wrong direction.

Lemme just quote this again, because it's really all there is to say on this particular matter (and worded much better than non-native-me could hope to):

Alexander's article (and others) attacking the word "gamers" miss the point. The point is not that "gamers" are all terrible human beings. the point is that "gamers" includes a subset of terrible human beings, who are often given passive cover by a much larger group that identify as "gamers".

Passive cover involves anything from ignoring them when they're online being misogynist, racist, douchebags to attempting to redirect every inclusion thread into a thread about themselves. Both of these are behaviors we see regularly on GAF. Multiple people in this very thread have said, "It's not my problem."

Well, yes it is if you take issue with the culture at large thinking we're all giant douchebags. All movements and groups contain offensive elements. How we deal with those elements often shows us what sort of group we're looking at. Do we embrace them? Do we pretend they aren't there, because it makes us uncomfortable to be associated with them? Do we call them out when they step outside the line?

Part of culture is creating acceptable social mores for groups. It's not that gamers are all terrible people -- I clearly don't believe that, given I've been a gamer for 35 years, moderate a gaming board, and have a ton of gamer friends -- it's that gamers don't do anything about the terrible people in their community, which makes it appear to outsiders that we approve.

A gedankenexperiment: On GAF, if someone starts a thread about how all Asian people are actually fifth columnists from China, what would you expect? If moderators left it up and no one got banned, what conclusion would you draw about GAF and the moderators? Many people would draw the conclusion that either we agree with the thread maker, or at least we don't find anything wrong with what he's saying, otherwise we would act upon it.

And that's what's happening here. Gamers's unwillingness to stand up to the extremists within their community makes it appear to people that we approve, or at least don't disapprove, of their actions. It allows shitbags to use the rest of us for cover. I'm not sure why so many people are upset about Alexander's attack on gamers, when the attacks of these people, the ones who threaten to kill in our names, are often ignored, or treated as the price of being involved in the industry.

When gamers routinely shut down these dickholes, gamers will start to be seen as something other than these dillholes. When someone's wife can get online to play a game without someone calling her a slut, or a whore, or weirdly a nigger or faggot, then people outside the industry may stop seeing gamers as misogynistic, racist, scum.

I hope people understand and act on this, rather than allowing themselves to get their feelings hurt over some journalists that swung too wide.

 

[plagiarize]

Does it matter the number? It is a victory if even one person changes their mind and can have a calm and rational discussion on the issue. Speaking calmly on the matter doesn't turn people away and if even the person still disagrees with you, there may be chance for you to keep talking to them and make them less likely to post hateful bile all over the internet.

You can talk to them calmly. I tried that for a good while. You can even find me doing just that on threads here on NeoGAF from probably as recently as a year or two ago. Do you know what wore me down?

Bigots. So I'm going to tell them what I think of them, and if that turns people away... personally I'm fine with that. Again, calm and rational discussion isn't why the civil rights or the suffragettes or the gay rights movements succeeded. At least I don't think so anyway.

 

[Felix Lighter]

Alexander's article (and others) attacking the word "gamers" miss the point. The point is not that "gamers" are all terrible human beings. the point is that "gamers" includes a subset of terrible human beings, who are often given passive cover by a much larger group that identify as "gamers".

Passive cover involves anything from ignoring them when they're online being misogynist, racist, douchebags to attempting to redirect every inclusion thread into a thread about themselves. Both of these are behaviors we see regularly on GAF. Multiple people in this very thread have said, "It's not my problem."

Well, yes it is if you take issue with the culture at large thinking we're all giant douchebags. All movements and groups contain offensive elements. How we deal with those elements often shows us what sort of group we're looking at. Do we embrace them? Do we pretend they aren't there, because it makes us uncomfortable to be associated with them? Do we call them out when they step outside the line?

Part of culture is creating acceptable social mores for groups. It's not that gamers are all terrible people -- I clearly don't believe that, given I've been a gamer for 35 years, moderate a gaming board, and have a ton of gamer friends -- it's that gamers don't do anything about the terrible people in their community, which makes it appear to outsiders that we approve.

A gedankenexperiment: On GAF, if someone starts a thread about how all Asian people are actually fifth columnists from China, what would you expect? If moderators left it up and no one got banned, what conclusion would you draw about GAF and the moderators? Many people would draw the conclusion that either we agree with the thread maker, or at least we don't find anything wrong with what he's saying, otherwise we would act upon it.

And that's what's happening here. Gamers's unwillingness to stand up to the extremists within their community makes it appear to people that we approve, or at least don't disapprove, of their actions. It allows shitbags to use the rest of us for cover. I'm not sure why so many people are upset about Alexander's attack on gamers, when the attacks of these people, the ones who threaten to kill in our names, are often ignored, or treated as the price of being involved in the industry.

When gamers routinely shut down these dickholes, gamers will start to be seen as something other than these dillholes. When someone's wife can get online to play a game without someone calling her a slut, or a whore, or weirdly a nigger or faggot, then people outside the industry may stop seeing gamers as misogynistic, racist, scum.

I hope people understand and act on this, rather than allowing themselves to get their feelings hurt over some journalists that swung too wide.

Absolutely and refocusing the angry reaction towards the true source of articles like these would be far more productive in the long term.

 

[-Kees-]

You can blame her for the wording that she has used. She has every right to be mad at how women are treated in the industry, no sane person would argue against that. But she is in a position where her words can reach a wide audience and be used against whatever positive movement she was aiming towards.
No matter how angry you are that doesn't excuse maligned behavior towards another.

If every gamer mad about articles like that redirected their anger towards stopping the harassment of women in games it would go along way to stopping this whole mess.

 

[ab.aeterno]

That's the other thing: as a community, we need to stop ignoring, dismissing, or minimizing theses issues as unimportant, drama, politics, not an issue/not my problem. You can't be against this wave of harassment and say that because otherwise you're condoning it implicitly by telling the victims of it that they don't matter.

How do you propose I do this? By voicing my opinion and supporting minority developers and games with minority protagonists? Because I already do this, and can still point out other bad behavior from people who I agree with when I think they're being rude or unreasonable.

See my other posts. I think that support is great, and cheers for it. The support I'm speaking of is coming to support victims of harassment when it happens and pushing back against a status quo that implicitly says harassment is OK. If you do that, then awesome. That's legitimately great. But not everyone is, in fact I'd wager a majority aren't, and that's an issue. The one I'm speaking to.

Good answer. Like I said some number of pages back, violence doesn't solve violence. We need to overpower the negativity, not kill it.

Well, I guess it depends on what you view as violence. If someone is abusing you, pushing back and defending yourself is justified. A lot of this frustration with the community is a boiling-over of long suffering victims of bullying and harassment pushing back against a community that harbors them by creating an atmosphere conducive to their assholery.

I'm not advocating going out and busting metaphorical heads, but I think pushing back is important. Sometimes, it's the only way for minorities to be noticed.

Bingo.

This is what it's all about. At the same time be positive. Tell people their work is meaningful. When you are confronted with a tidal wave of shit, people having your back saying they appreciate what you do is what gets you through.

Well said.

Alexander's article (and others) attacking the word "gamers" miss the point. The point is not that "gamers" are all terrible human beings. the point is that "gamers" includes a subset of terrible human beings, who are often given passive cover by a much larger group that identify as "gamers".

Passive cover involves anything from ignoring them when they're online being misogynist, racist, douchebags to attempting to redirect every inclusion thread into a thread about themselves. Both of these are behaviors we see regularly on GAF. Multiple people in this very thread have said, "It's not my problem."

Well, yes it is if you take issue with the culture at large thinking we're all giant douchebags. All movements and groups contain offensive elements. How we deal with those elements often shows us what sort of group we're looking at. Do we embrace them? Do we pretend they aren't there, because it makes us uncomfortable to be associated with them? Do we call them out when they step outside the line?

Part of culture is creating acceptable social mores for groups. It's not that gamers are all terrible people -- I clearly don't believe that, given I've been a gamer for 35 years, moderate a gaming board, and have a ton of gamer friends -- it's that gamers don't do anything about the terrible people in their community, which makes it appear to outsiders that we approve.

A gedankenexperiment: On GAF, if someone starts a thread about how all Asian people are actually fifth columnists from China, what would you expect? If moderators left it up and no one got banned, what conclusion would you draw about GAF and the moderators? Many people would draw the conclusion that either we agree with the thread maker, or at least we don't find anything wrong with what he's saying, otherwise we would act upon it.

And that's what's happening here. Gamers's unwillingness to stand up to the extremists within their community makes it appear to people that we approve, or at least don't disapprove, of their actions. It allows shitbags to use the rest of us for cover. I'm not sure why so many people are upset about Alexander's attack on gamers, when the attacks of these people, the ones who threaten to kill in our names, are often ignored, or treated as the price of being involved in the industry.

When gamers routinely shut down these dickholes, gamers will start to be seen as something other than these dillholes. When someone's wife can get online to play a game without someone calling her a slut, or a whore, or weirdly a nigger or faggot, then people outside the industry may stop seeing gamers as misogynistic, racist, scum.

I hope people understand and act on this, rather than allowing themselves to get their feelings hurt over some journalists that swung too wide.

Really, genuinely great post.

 

[flatearthpandas]

If you don't think that a very visible and angry discussion about an issue can impact that issue I recommend you check your history books.

I can't fix the problem of people who are bigoted, but I can do something about the problem of people who are bigoted feeling free to spew their bigotry in our community, and in doing so, and our community becoming more inclusive to non bigots, generation to generation our community will become less bigoted.

But yeah, to do that, you have to draw a line in the sand.

Showing support isn't doing nothing.

I never said that discussion can't fix issues; please don't put words in my mouth. I said that attacking and changing vocabulary does not fix underlying issues and the energy exhausted on labels is energy wasted. I said that attacking people who want the same issues solved as you do does not solve the issues. It seems to me that it just splits the community of people who would like to see the issues solved.

 

[JackDT]

#gamergate is a hashtag spun out from the Zoe Quinn fiasco, nominally as a way to demand accountability in gaming journalism, but in practice as a way to relentlessly harass freelance writers and indie developers about tiny exchanges of money until they break down and disengage.

The "Gamers Are Over" thing is four or five people connected to the hobby in some way getting so fed up at how this type of misogynist, destructive behavior has become so prominent that they're expressing their disgust and shame with the hobby and identity by saying they're unsalvageable.

Nobody could reasonably draw the conclusion that what's happening here is that these writers, who are themselves gamers and who associate heavily with other gamers in their personal and professional lives, are actually saying that every self-proclaimed gamer ever is objectively a bigot and a monster -- at least without being willfully obtuse.

This is it. I believe the #gamergate honeslty feel like they are being personally attacked for being gamers, or that people are coming to change their games a la Jack Thompson, but the defensive lashing out is so tone deaf to everything else that I wonder if I'm even on the same planet any more.

After the last two weeks of quinnspiracy rage, campaigns to get rid of Jenn Frank in the name of journalistic integrity. Jenn who spills her guts, heart on her sleeve, as the example of corruption in the gaming industry and a victory for a movement? Endless crap by people who constantly claim to be representing or defending 'gamers', and not a minority but reddit threads that hit the top post of /gaming and where you can't find a single not-invisible dissenting comment in 2500 comments...

I mean, I spent last night playing Dishonored in an Oculus Rift DK2 and I've never identified less as a 'gamer' than today.

 

[staticneuron]

The reason you speak up is not simply for them though. There are people who don't need to type anything yet still share not dissimilar views from trolls yet stay silent. There are also people who will just see a rude comment, see it disappear, yet it will still color their perception of that particular community. Showing that there are people within the community who disapprove of bullshit is just as important as blocking/reporting, if not more so because it shows that the community actually makes an effort to build an inclusive atmosphere.

I didn't say what she said wasn't missing the point. I said you're directing your ire and energy in the wrong direction.

Lemme just quote this again, because it's really all there is to say on this particular matter (and worded much better than non-native-me could hope to):

And I addressed this already in my last post

Talking to them in a community, you might get heard.

There is not a way possible to identify and police the bad elements from the gaming society. You can only try to exclude and oust them from particular communities.

But if you read the articles decrying the term they imply that we can do something beyond that. The truth is we cannot.

EDIT: And there is no reason I cannot continue to speak against/report/block obnoxious users AND take issue with faulty articles and angry jurnos. Human beings are surprisingly good at multitasking.

 

[spwolf]

Honest question here... do you have any idea what percentage of reformed bigots reformed as a result of someone calmly explaining the errors of their ways? I'd imagine that such people do exist, but that it would be a very small number.

what are you suggesting - a bigot test before you can turn on PS4?
Or maybe some government testing where all bigots are sent to gulag?

Or do you think that our community here is not adequately moderated? Do moderators allow for rampant bigotry?

Do a poll and whoever votes differently gets a lifetime ban?

 

[plagiarize]

I never said that discussion can't fix issues; please don't put words in my mouth. I said that attacking and changing vocabulary does not fix underlying issues and the energy exhausted on labels is energy wasted. I said that attacking people who want the same issues solved as you do does not solve the issues. It seems to me that it just splits the community of people who would like to see the issues solved.

Hypothetically speaking (so when I say 'you' here I don't mean shampoowarrior) if you want to see the same issues solved as I do, but your inaction actually works against solving those issues, me criticizing your inaction wouldn't be counter productive to the issue we both want solved.

 

[FF Seraphim]

You can talk to them calmly. I tried that for a good while. You can even find me doing just that on threads here on NeoGAF from probably as recently as a year or two ago. Do you know what wore me down?

Bigots. So I'm going to tell them what I think of them, and if that turns people away... personally I'm fine with that. Again, calm and rational discussion isn't why the civil rights or the suffragettes or the gay rights movements succeeded. At least I don't think so anyway.

When people talk about the Civil Rights movement they prominently point to MLK and Lyndon B. Johnson... I am sure they were very civil in the their approach.
When people talk about Gay Rights movement they know the courts will be on their side in the end, and point to the crazy hateful people showing they are wrong.

I am not going try to stop anyone from voicing their opinion on how they view another person's views, but that is just put yourself on their level and we as a group have to be better than that.

 

[Gowans]

Just watched the video, I've been busy and playing games so missed this, I didn't even know this was going on.

I love Boogie.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Honest question here... do you have any idea what percentage of reformed bigots reformed as a result of someone calmly explaining the errors of their ways? I'd imagine that such people do exist, but that it would be a very small number.

No, but I've seen a lot of people grow up and admit mistakes from their pasts and I've learned throughout life that if you want to change peoples minds the last thing you want to be is judgmental and insulting. If anything that usually fuels more peoples fires then it will put them out.

In fact, on GAF I actually got threatened with a banning for saying someone shouldn't be so rude and accusatory towards another member. I got accused of backseat modding, the person being rude didn't get any repercussions for how badly they were talking to another member (Who didn't say anything offensive or rude in the first place, he was merely asking questions), and the member being insulted later came back into the thread.

He quoted me and said how great it was that someone actually took the time out to try and explain something to him and help him instead of immediately jumping to insulting him and being rude.

I'm not saying that everyone deserves this treatment, and I understand some people do overstep boundaries and deserve to be talked down to. But when you come into the conversation saying that you can't reform people and that you don't care what they think of you, it makes it sound like you're more interested in forcing people out then making them understand what they're doing wrong. And I think that kind of mentality is bad because it won't change any thing. That person is still out there, and probably holds his opinion stronger then ever.

 

[Lime]

That's the other thing: as a community, we need to stop ignoring, dismissing, or minimizing theses issues as unimportant, drama, politics, not an issue/not my problem. You can't be against this wave of harassment and say that because otherwise you're condoning it implicitly by telling the victims of it that they don't matter.

I've been banging this drum for years on end and the results and reactions to this aren't actually encouraging. I'm a bit pessimistic with this, but I'm not saying that we shouldn't do what you're suggesting, but that I don't expect something significant from the people who constantly deny there even being an issue (and thereby hurt the victims who are speaking up about their legitimate experiences).

 

[plagiarize]

what are you suggesting - a bigot test before you can turn on PS4?
Or maybe some government testing where all bigots are sent to gulag?

Or do you think that our community here is not adequately moderated? Do moderators allow for rampant bigotry?

Do a poll and whoever votes differently gets a lifetime ban?

I have no idea what posts you are reading because the posts of mine you are quoting have absolutely nothing to do with your apparent replies. You seem to be very angry about something you think I am saying, but I cannot wrap my head around what that is.

I posted something like 'gamers should actively try to make the gaming community a place where bigots feel less comfortable being openly bigoted' and your reaction was 'WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO WHEN SOMEONE ON NEOGAF THINKS THAT?'

I don't think any of the insanity you just typed up. Not a drop of it.

 

[Mononoke]

No, but I've seen a lot of people grow up and admit mistakes from their pasts and I've learned throughout life that if you want to change peoples minds the last thing you want to be is judgmental and insulting. If anything that usually fuels more peoples fires then it will put them out.

In fact, on GAF I actually got threatened with a banning for saying someone shouldn't be so rude and accusatory towards another member. I got accused of backseat modding, the person being rude didn't get any repercussions for how badly they were talking to another member (Who didn't say anything offensive or rude in the first place, he was merely asking questions), and the member being insulted later came back into the thread.

He quoted me and said how great it was that someone actually took the time out to try and explain something to him and help him instead of immediately jumping to insulting him and being rude.

I'm not saying that everyone deserves this treatment, and I understand some people do overstep boundaries and deserve to be talked down to. But when you come into the conversation saying that you can't reform people and that you don't care what they think of you, it makes it sound like you're more interested in forcing people out then making them understand what they're doing wrong. And I think that kind of mentality is bad because it won't change any thing. That person is still out there, and probably holds his opinion stronger then ever.

Yeah, I think the way they are going about this is wrong. I 100% think that this industry has problems and needs to be criticized. Spewing hatred and harassing someone for having a criticism of this hobby is unacceptable. But this death to the gamer label was such a poor way to try to get people on their side.

 

[PlaysWithSquirrels]

I stopped watching after he said he was a "white cis male".

 

[spwolf]

That's more of an unusual opinion than it is a funny fact.

and it's not like this stuff isn't discussed:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...report-says-20140402-story.html#ixzz2yHZvbMPQ

two articles and 5 movies per year dont make it a fact.... this stuff is way more discussed in gaming community than movie community. I mean I just gave you a list of 15 current movies but lets conveniently ignore facts.

And of course, same people who you label as bigots in gaming community and also bigots in movie community. They watch movies too. They also work and go on their daily rutine just like everyone else... and they express these views or hold them in themselves no matter what part of their day it is. They are always bigots.

It is all part of society at large.

So you want society to change... gaming is just small subsection and reflection of society as a whole.

 

[ronito]

This reminds me of my earlier days on GAF after 9/11 and the arguments I had with other muslims on the thread (where I was very wrong)

"They should denounce this more!"
"But we are"
"They could be more vocal"
"But many of us are plenty vocal"
"But not with enough flair!!!"

I'm sorry guys.

 

[Kiriku]

Absolutely and refocusing the angry reaction towards the true source of articles like these would be far more productive in the long term.

Agreed 100 %. Instead of just having everyone stating they're not a bigot - call out others who are. That will only make things better for everyone (and the word 'gamer').

 

[swazzyswess]

Hey look, another reason to ignore everything that comes out of the "gaming community" and just play and appreciate games created by people doing something constructive and worthwhile. So sick of this shit.

 

[BobbyRobby]

Not exactly. The qualitative difference is that one comes from a position of power, one from a position of disempowerment.

(similarly: the problem is structural, not individual)

This is why I think harping on for example Alexander's article is missing the point. Yeah, she kind of misses the mark, but can you really blame her for her anger in light of what's happening?

Yeah, you should blame her. It escalates the situation.

My question is why is it so important to have the ability to generalize all men or all gamers?

There's tons of people defending this. Why is this a tactic that you guys think you need to employ?

Wouldn't you be better served by not doing this? To many people it comes across as hypocritical.

"Generalizing is wrong, unless our side does is for what we consider to be a noble goal."

Why hold onto this? People don't like to be told how to act by people who won't abide by their own rules.

 

[Tigress]

I grew up Muslim. I heard this sort of ridiculous argument all the time: well if you really don't support terrorism why don't you preface every political opinion you have with a condemnation of terrorism? Why doesn't every Muslim preface every political opinion they have with a condemnation of terrorism? It's the same argument as the conservative meme about black people not talking about black-on-black crime. Oh you're black and you want to talk about police brutality? Well why don't you condemn black-on-black crime first?

Suffice to say, I don't much care for this line of argumentation. People shouldn't have to explicitly distance themselves from extremists, it should be assumed unless they say or do something that would cause a reasonable person to assume they agree with extremists.

Ok, imagine that most people bitching about the evil muslims are Christian and you are trying to point out that there is a problem within the christian culture of lumping you all together as all terrorists (I don't want to get in the discussion on if this is a Christian problem, I just want to use it as an example so just take this as true and if you are christian I'm not trying to accuse you of anything but trying to set up a theoretical situation here).

And some one comes in and goes, "I wish you'd stop accusing me of doing that just cause I'm Christian." All the sudden the discussion has been turned on you to accuse you of being bad and the topic has been diverted from what you were talking about to whether you were accusing all of doing it or not.

Wouldn't you prefer it if the Christian said instead, "Hey, as a Christian I think it is horrible that there are Christians who are doing that and I wish those Christians would stop giving us a bad name."?

Now notice, that had the same affect as saying, "Not all us christians do that", better really cause the person showed themselves as a real example. So the person still could make a point of showing not all Christians are like that. And, it helped you out in your discussion in calling out christians who do that and tells those Christians who are treating all muslims like they are terrorists that not everyone in their culture condone that (and people will put more importance on the words of some one from within their group).

Also, it acknowledges that it is a problem and doesn't try to make it look like you are just over reacting.

By just saying, "Quit lumping me, I didn't do it" all you really are doing is (at best inadvertantly, sadly I think some people do it on purpose) diverting the discussion to something else. On top of that you are trivializing the person's complaint and turning it around on them. And you're really not adding anything. ON top of that, usually when I see the, "hey quit lumping me" the statement is not saying all of group is like this. It's saying it is a problem within the group. And then people take it personally as if the person is accusing them directly. And, on top of that, when people keep doing that, then it means we have to keep putting in disclaimers anytime we want to discuss a problem with a culture overall to make sure some one doesn't personally take offense (like I did there with the disclaimer towards Christians).

 

[eyeless]

I stopped watching after he said he was a "white cis male".

why