[Growing Pains]

"Today, videogames are for everyone. I mean this in an almost destructive way. Videogames, to read the other side of the same statement, are not for you. You do not get to own videogames. No one gets to own videogames when they are for everyone."

About damn time, too. These recent fiascoes simply being the last gasps of a sick culture is the best we can hope for.

When I started this blog 8 years ago, this crap still happened on the regular but there was barely ever a ripple of kickback when it did (or else outright denial that it was even happening). The fact that in the past few years it seems there is more controversy erupting amid the gaming world whenever a high profile example of misogyny crops up and more guys willing to stand up against the loud pockets of anxious dudebros still running amok, has to be some sign of progress.

Related Reading:
The Extinction Burst of Gaming Culture
Why Are Gamers So Angry?
GamerGate's Original Sin
We Cannot Allow This to Become Gamer Culture
GamerGate is Running Out of Heroes

[When Fandom Turns Toxic]

  The lead writer for the Dragon Age series on why they avoid the forums for their own game:

"I imagine that can happen to any online community. Eventually the polite, reasonable folks stop feeling like it’s a group of people they want to hang around. So they leave, and those who remain start to see only those who agree with them— and, because that’s all they see, they think that’s all there is. Everyone feels as they do, according to them. Once the tipping point is passed, you’re left with the extremes… those who hate, and those who dislike the haters enough to endure the toxic atmosphere to try and combat them. Each clash between those groups drives more of the others away."

  It's been years since I've played WoW, but so far as I know their boards are also still highly toxic environments. The Battle.net community was famous for being awful even before WoW.
I know that even ArenaNet didn't want to host an official forum out of similar concerns that it would be too difficult to keep it from becoming an echo chamber of negativity and hostility. What is it about gaming communities that allow us to treat such awful communities where people dump inordinate amounts of vitriol on the devs and each other as normal and par for the course? It's been said that only a tiny percentage of a game's playerbase ever sets foot in a game's official forum (or any forum), so at least we can believe that it's just a minority responsible for the majority of this problem, but it still doesn't remove the bad taste.


Related Reading:
Taming the Forum Tiger

[BBC: Guns, Girls, & Games]

A great BBC radio documentary has just been released, that includes interviews from the gals at the blogs 'Fat, Ugly or Slutty?' and 'Not in the Kitchen Anymore':

"Does the world of video gaming have a problem with sexual harassment?

Women are one of the fastest growing groups of people playing video games and in the US they now make up 42% of gamers overall. But life can be tough for them in this male-dominated world.

For Assignment, James Fletcher reports on recent harassment controversies, the women and men campaigning for change, and whether big gaming companies are doing enough to address the issue."

Listen to it here!

Related Listening:
[CBC Radio] Women and Gaming: Smashing Stereotypes

[The Psychology of Griefing]

  On Massively's Soapbox column, Jef Reahard tries to analyze why people grief, and what indulging in a constant habit of asshatery in games reveal about their 'real' selves: there is no imaginary line between 'IRL' and 'the game' -- you are not magically a 'nice guy' in real life, because in 'real life' you are an asshole to random people on the internet for your own amusement. The very fact that doing that is your preferred means of online enjoyment makes your assholery completely real:

"I've met griefers who consider themselves well-adjusted folks in other parts of their lives, gamers who have fallen into the trap of separating game behavior from "real-world" behavior. The reality, though, is that if you're a bleep in an online game -- and it's a recurring thing -- you're a bleep, period. You're not a part-time bleep, or a bleep on the weekends, or a bleep after the wife and kids are safely bedded down. You're simply a bleep. Regardless of whether certain game mechanics enable your bleephead behavior, the choice to actively make another person unhappy is in fact a choice, and it's yours alone. You don't get to rationalize or compartmentalize it. It simply is what it is, and you are what you are."

  If your main pastime is being a sadistic jerk to people on the internet, how can you honestly believe you are not 'really' a sadistic jerk? Last I checked, 'real life' includes sitting in front of a computer an interacting with others. Interacting with people through games in this way IS what you're doing 'IRL'. There is no magical line that makes what you do to other people in a game less 'real' than anything else you happen to do in your life, and it defines who you are just as much as any face-to-face interaction.

[Online Harassment is not 'Harmless']

...Because sometimes, that internet troll is not 'just' an internet troll:

"John was a member of my World of Warcraft guild, and someone who trolled me frequently. I recognized him instantly from the photos he had shared with the guild. He was misogynist who had been at odds with me for months; he’d called me derogatory names and he was absolutely enraged when I passed my trial in the guild because he believed females shouldn’t raid in what was formerly an all-male guild. Though the officers were initially hesitant to do anything about the situation, exercising their privilege to dismiss his misogyny as casual ribbing, his behavior got too far out of hand (in their opinion, not mine) that they eventually demoted him to a casual rank and he was no longer allowed to raid with them anymore because of his remarks and general attitude.

Ideally, the guild would have stripped him of his status and make attempts to correct his behavior the instant he displayed these traits, but the relaxed attitude of the officers towards misogyny and other issues of gender was common amongst the Warcraft elite. Any attempt to speak out would cause one to be shouted down for being “dramatic,” a commonly used accusation and a dismissal of misogyny as nothing more than a female’s attempt to make a big deal out of nothing, which also served to further empower the misogynists. It felt like a boy’s club, and it was.

I was young, naive and determined to not let John or anyone else ruin the game for me, so instead of finding a new guild despite the hostility I constantly faced, I simply stayed and held my ground. This action, inevitably, made John quite angry. A few nights prior, as I would learn later from interrogating guild mates, John joked to his friends on another forum that he was going to pay me a little visit to snap a few photos of where I lived and 'put me in my place.'

Apparently, John wasn’t bluffing."

This is why I get so pissed of when people dismiss or mock people who are victims of online harassment/threats (such as Kathy Sierra, Mia Rose, and Jade Raymond) for taking it seriously, because 'its just the internet'. In this day and age where so many people put their entire life's information online somewhere, it is completely appropriate to take this kind of thing seriously. Minimizing vicious verbal abuse against ANYONE (be it on a gaming guild, message board, whatever) and tolerating it is irresponsible on the part of community moderators and GMs. I know a certain amount of bigotry and harassment is considered 'normal' in many gaming communities (and is the reason why so many end up homogenous and repellant to anyone who isnt white/het/male), but as I've posted before, for some of these guys, they're not 'just joking'. They don't deserve safe spaces to spew their garbage under some disingenuous 'free speech' claim.


Related reading: 'On Being a No-name Blogger Using Her Real Name'

[Multiple Personalities in the Gaming Community]

The Escapist does a great write-up wondering why 'the Troll' is such a popular online persona for many gamers:

"It's difficult to play popular shooters like Halo or Team Fortress 2 on public servers without encountering racial or homophobic slurs. On websites that cater to gamers, visitors routinely spam comment threads and message boards with unhinged, bigoted troll posts. Our self-contradictions become more obvious as gaming matures and absorbs more people into the fold. The ubiquity of intolerant language and belligerent behavior raises troubling questions about what truly lies behind the mask of online identity."

[The Importance of Moderation Online]

The quickest way to ruin the potential for an inclusive, intelligent online community is to have a poor moderation system (or none at all). Many people fear the accusation of 'censoring' others, or violating their free speech, even though those constitutional rights do not apply to private citizens' control over their own property (i.e. blogs, websites or forums).

The example of the Kathy Sierra debacle and it's resulting debates on web conduct, as well as a more recent event on Wired, illustrates clearly why allowing asshats unrestricted access to a web space quickly spirals the entire atmosphere of the community down the toilet. It eventually becomes simply an echo chamber for the lowest of the low, repelling and silencing anyone whom the trolls do not wish to be heard. Any chance for intelligent, constructive interaction in that space is then destroyed.

The actual side affect of proper moderation of a web community is that a free exchange of ideas becomes truly possible once those who are incapable/unwilling to behave like civilized beings are not allowed to usurp control and set the tone to their own low standards. Your personal web space is your own; do not be afraid to stand up for it.

Related reading:
'If Your Website's Full of Assholes, It's Your Fault'
'How to Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community'

[It's Just a Sexist Genre]

It's pretty obvious that misogynist and homophobic behavior is almost required in most 'geek' fandoms, especially gaming. When the ultimate insults are either to accuse someone of being homosexual, or of being like a woman, it's hard to honestly argue otherwise. Hearing, over and over, that what you are is equated with everything pathetic, annoying, and weak by the people you're playing with, is incredibly tiring and hurtful. And no, the answer isn't "Just shut up and let the asshats talk however they like."

Women are often systematically driven out and/or silenced in many of these places; it's not that we don't exist in your fandom. We need to stop tolerating this kind of thing in order to try to 'fit in',and guys need to start accepting more responsibility for their behavior.

Instead of wondering why you don't see more women around in certain 'geek' communities, or just assuming (wrongly) that 'Girls just don't like [insert geeky interest here]. All of us (especially guys, being the majority) need to decide to step up and start breaking the cycle.