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Rolling Stone: They Fought for Diversity in Gaming. Then the Abuse Began

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FOR ASHLEY JOHNSON, the chance to be a voice actor in the post-apocalyptic video game The Last of Us Part II was both a risk and irresistible. It was her first gig as a video-game protagonist, as her character, Ellie, moved up from a supporting role. But Part II wasn’t a paint-by-numbers sequel: It killed off a beloved character; it featured a lesbian lead on its cover; and it subverted the dynamic of the original, which followed a white man as he protected a young girl from danger. As Johnson awaited the game’s release in June 2020, she knew it wouldn’t be for everyone, but she was “shocked,” she says, by what happened next.

A contingent of gamers, angered by a lesbian lead character and the game’s progressive politics, not only protested The Last of Us Part II, they sought to punish the people who made it. Johnson, who is for the first time opening up about the abuse she endured, says her Twitter DMs were flooded with threats of violence, including a user telling her he’d “rape her straight.” They doctored images to make it look like she’d posted vulgar content online. And they superimposed her face and those of others who’d worked on the game onto images of characters being sexually violated or even beaten to death with a golf club.

“Some of the shit I was reading, I was like, ‘I cannot believe someone sat behind their computer and put their fingers on the keyboard, and that’s what they chose to write,’” Johnson says. “This hatred and anger, and being on the other end of that, for something I cared so deeply about, was hard.”

Johnson’s co-workers faced similar abuse. Studio president Neil Druckmann, who is Jewish, was hit with a wave of antisemitism and threats to his safety on social media. The most horrific abuse, Johnson says, was directed at Laura Bailey, her co-star and the voice of another lead character, Abby Anderson. Users were upset that Abby, a woman in a world full of human-eating monsters, has a muscular physique, and turned her character into a transphobic meme.

The Last of Us Part II saga is not surprising, sadly. For more than a decade, as women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ+ community have fought for representation in the space, they’ve been met with backlash from a group of gamers, mostly men, who prefer it remain exclusive. The conflict hit its apex with 2014’s Gamergate, a mass harassment campaign against female video-game critics and developers.

Today, it’s clear the abusers have failed. For all the cruelty they unleashed on its makers, they couldn’t keep The Last of Us Part II down — the game was a massive commercial success and won Game of the Year at the 2020 Game Awards, as well as honors at the Golden Joystick Awards, the British Academy Games Awards, and more. And while members of marginalized communities continue to face abuse online, it hasn’t stopped them from making the gaming world — its developers, characters, executives, and audience — more diverse than ever.

If many men today act like video games belong to them and them alone, it’s because they grew up with a video-game industry that told them exactly that. “Hit Her Game Spot,” reads a 2004 headline in Electronic Gaming Monthly for a piece about how to manipulate “your girlfriend” into playing video games. The article includes six strategies and a backup: “If all fails and she refuses to touch your joypad, the least you can do is feed her some lines the next time you’re geeking out with your gaming pals.”

The article is typical of an era when near-naked women were the norm in video-game advertising, and Kotaku managing editor Carolyn Petit, a video-game critic for more than a decade, says that bygone messaging is still driving harassment. “Everything in the gaming space sent a message very intentionally to young straight men that games are for you,” Petit says, “and they’re here to fulfill your every power fantasy.”

But a decade ago, the industry started to realize it was losing out by pushing away more than half of humanity. More games featured prominent female characters, and offscreen, female critics were gaining prominence as they pointed out sexism in popular games and gaming culture.

Then came Gamergate, when what began as an unfounded attack on a female video-game developer metastasized into an all-out assault on female writers and developers. After an initial explosion of attention, Gamergate left the headlines, but for women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals in gaming, the harassment never went away.

There's more, but this is basically a long hit piece against men brining up things like an old EGM ad from 2004 as some evidence of a grander thing instead of just demographic marketing of the time.

I feel like there are just some people that can't be on the internet, specifically because they can't handle it in any form, even with miniscule things as those are turned upside down into bigger deals than they actually are. I don't support harassment or anything and that should be addressed in the gaming space when it pos up, but some of the liberties taken here is rather bizarre.
 

dave_d

Member
So pretty much as poorly written screed as that "Adam ruins everything" about women gaming? (Where if you knew anything about what he was talking about you knew he was COMPLETELY full of shit.)
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
lmao what's with all the hot takes from game "journalists" lately? Starfield is in trouble, racist gamers ruin Forspoken's launch, and now this.
This is a Sony planted story, not a journalist story. This is a style of marketing. Similar articles came out timed around Ghostbusters. You don't get this out with people from the show unless it's part of the plan.
 

Clear

CliffyB's Cock Holster
You could make a life-long career of saving kittens and you'd still get some knobheads giving you shit about it on the internet!

That's just the nature of some people, especially given the quasi-anonymity that social media offers.

Trying to make it into progressivism vs assorted -ism's is transparently opportunistic nonsense.

The reaction to TLOU2 is in some ways noteworthy, but mainly due to the sense of ownership some "fans" assert over properties they love. Which to me is more about this shit-golden age of narcissism that social media has apparently birthed.
 
racist gamers ruin Forspoken's launch, and now this.

What? Isn't Forspoken protagonist lady white?

Edit: Just saw protags black, the hair threw me off, as well as the lighting, you know for all these studios talking about diversity and inclusion, they sure like to cement stereotypes and don't want natural hair and limit how the dark the skin is. Unless they're also implemented stereotypically. Seems to be just checklist lip service and they don't really care at all.
 
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SJRB

Gold Member
iu
 
What? Isn't Forspoken protagonist lady white?

Edit: Just saw protags black, the hair threw me off, as well as the lighting, you know for all these studios talking about diversity and inclusion, they sure like to cement stereotypes and don't want natural hair and limit how the dark the skin is. Unless they're also implemented stereotypically.
Basically they bait & provoke people by making blatant race related content, and when criticzed for being objectively bad quality, they can cash in on the accusations of racism.
 

Rykan

Member
"We wrote our sequel to intentionally antagonize the demographic who propelled the success of the first game, and they dared hit back at us" okay
Citation fuckin' needed here,

What "demographic" are you talking about here? and how were they "antagonized" in any shape or form?

How are you even going to attempt to justify this sort of behavior over a video game?
 
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RafterXL

Member
"We wrote our sequel to intentionally antagonize the demographic who propelled the success of the first game, and they dared hit back at us" okay
This is pure revisionist history. Everyone loved Ellie in the first game and the backlash with TLoU2 had absolutely nothing to do with her or the fact that she is a lesbian.

This is just pure invention to make themselves out to be victims and promote, and boost, it because there is a huge audience of people who care more about "the cause" than anything else.
 

Doom85

Member
What? Isn't Forspoken protagonist lady white?

Edit: Just saw protags black, the hair threw me off, as well as the lighting, you know for all these studios talking about diversity and inclusion, they sure like to cement stereotypes and don't want natural hair and limit how the dark the skin is. Unless they're also implemented stereotypically. Seems to be just checklist lip service and they don't really care at all.

Her skin tone seems to generally match the skin tone of her voice actress. What, are you giving the voice actress herself shit for not being “dark” enough? Bruh.
 
The sweatier online and TLOU PT2 did give gamers a really bad look. I’m a gamer but sadly alot of us to represent the more reactionary nature of our hobby. I don’t think it’s wrong to point out an obvious truth. Many gamers are very anti social and they portray that behavior in the most edgy way possible. Not the majority but VERY vocal online. Normalization of the medium has helped a ton but it’s a wider problem with the current socialization of humans in an every growing isolated world. Gotta be better.
 

Atrus

Gold Member
As anyone on social media can attest, the world is full of people you wouldn’t think were actual, functional human beings.

People who admit to a litany of mental illnesses, low levels of education or low grades, trolls looking for attention, and the outright malevolent get to comment on issues and things on the same level as everyone else.

There’s no real screen for this. Maybe you can develop an algorithm for that screens for fucktards but you’d need a level of intrusive monitoring that wouldn’t be acceptable or if limited to a site, would require ages to collect data for analysis.

Any given thing shouldn’t be judged by the loudest and most insane from 8 billion people.

Screening and filters should be better so as to weed these things out, people who cross the line to criminality should be brought to Justice and suspended from platforms, and bots rooted out, but you can’t be shocked at any sort of backlash.

I like LoU and LoU2 but LoU2 has plenty of valid criticism with respect to the character of Abby and the writing. This shouldn’t be dismissed if they plan on a Part 3 and want to avoid the fate of the recent Star Wars trilogy.
 
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yurinka

Member
I'm tired of this kind of articles.

Obviously personal attacks and online harassment sucks in all cases, people shouldn't do it even if are and should be free to dislike something and to mention it publicly respectfully.

But in all cases, that also happens with people or characters and people who are white, male and heterosexual. And also happens with everything in internet, not only with games. There is nothing special with games.

The thing is, this article is another case of them playing as victims trying to hide the criticism about other topic, things where they fucked it up because behind 'oh they are bigots attacking us because something we're of X group'.
 
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hey sure like to cement stereotypes and don't want natural hair and limit how the dark the skin is. Unless they're also implemented stereotypically.
Japan sadly isn’t good at designing black characters for the most part. They tend to utilize Jim Crow era like stereotypes to portray us. Big red lips, talking like shaft etc. it’s gotten somewhat better but still a ways off. I think that’s the argument for representation. People tend to more accurately portray those of their specific demographics well.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
Citation fuckin' needed here,

What "demographic" are you talking about here? and how were they "antagonized" in any shape or form?

How are you even going to attempt to justify this sort of behavior over a video game?
I've never found Naughty Dog to be a developer worth anyone's time--the braindead movie-style of Uncharted was one of the worst things to happen to gaming, now we have cinematic linear popcorn trash everywhere as a result--and I didn't care to finish the first LOS after trying it. So it's not exactly my fight, just rather amused by the cycle of trying to create a game with *obvious* agendas then crying when you're hit for it. If you want to get edgy & political, you're creating a fight, expect a bloody nose or simply don't do it.

The story is just a thin prop for gameplay anyway... there's nothing worse than these developers who actually believe they are on par with filmmakers or novelists and that they have real narrative ideas to offer the world, and in turn just write obvious inversions of expectations everywhere, like a college freshman who just discovered TvTropes
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
This is pure revisionist history. Everyone loved Ellie in the first game and the backlash with TLoU2 had absolutely nothing to do with her or the fact that she is a lesbian.

This is just pure invention to make themselves out to be victims and promote, and boost, it because there is a huge audience of people who care more about "the cause" than anything else.

I, for one, am absolutely livid that the developers turned Ellie into some tranny lesbo in the game that I never played. This blatant queerness has turned me into a misogynistic homophobe, and it is all the developers' fault.

/s
 
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Rykan

Member
I've never found Naughty Dog to be a developer worth anyone's time--the braindead movie-style of Uncharted was one of the worst things to happen to gaming, now we have cinematic linear popcorn trash everywhere as a result--and I didn't care to finish the first LOS after trying it. So it's not exactly my fight, just rather amused by the cycle of trying to create a game with *obvious* agendas then crying when you're hit for it. If you want to get edgy & political, you're creating a fight, expect a bloody nose or simply don't do it.

The story is just a thin prop for gameplay anyway... there's nothing worse than these developers who actually believe they are on par with filmmakers or novelists and that they have real narrative ideas to offer the world, and in turn just write obvious inversions of expectations everywhere, like a college freshman who just discovered TvTropes
And which part of TLOU 2 was so utterly despicably political that it justified the abuse that is described in the article?
 
Her skin tone seems to generally match the skin tone of her voice actress. What, are you giving the voice actress herself shit for not being “dark” enough? Bruh.

That's not what I did at all, but you're just proving you don't get the actual problem, and are indirectly proving my point.

The braindead movie-style of Uncharted was one of the worst things to happen to gaming,

It didn't start with Uncharted, it's just was a popular spotlight effort due tot he change from the first Uncharted 2 the second, and how it was associated by identity with the PS3 and it's turn around.

Uncharted 2 was just the end result of where games like Indigo and others were going.

With that said, the movie approach does harm replay value imo.
 
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Kimahri

Banned
DDSs9cNXcAEB7U1.jpg

Thank you for this insightful article, Ms. Favis.
What exactly are you trying to say? She has two visible piercings and now that means what to you exactly?

She looks perfectly normal. Quite frankly, more girls looked like this than not back in my home town when I was a teen in the 90s. Everybody had an eyebrow piercing back then.

So again, what exactly are you trying to say?
 

Majormaxxx

Member
What exactly are you trying to say? She has two visible piercings and now that means what to you exactly?

She looks perfectly normal. Quite frankly, more girls looked like this than not back in my home town when I was a teen in the 90s. Everybody had an eyebrow piercing back then.

So again, what exactly are you trying to say?
Not saying anything in this particular post. Just sharing a selfie from the article's author. It's better to view the article as the work of its author and not as the product of a nameless rolling stone writer.
 

sainraja

Member
This is a Sony planted story, not a journalist story. This is a style of marketing. Similar articles came out timed around Ghostbusters. You don't get this out with people from the show unless it's part of the plan.
How do you know this for sure?
It makes sense to write articles or talk about things when they are relevant — Ghostbusters being released, the show being out now — so I don't see that being a clear indicator for a story being "planted" or being part of some "marketing".
 
well this is a fucking bizarre take, wtf dude. That's literally what actress just looks like

the fuck is wrong with you.

Nothing, you don't get the problem I'm talking about because you're 100% disconnected from it. So you're not understanding what I said so are simplifying it to a completely different argument I never made, just like Doom85.

The issue has nothing to do with the actor. It has to do with the pattern of choice in this type of representation. It's something that people are bothered by in various media who are actually impacted by it, therefore, you and he not being impacted by it won't actually get the issue.

This is why all this race diversity stuff can end up backfiring and being much more harmful despite the "belief" studios are addressing a problem.
 
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