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Gay Guild Recruitment Disallowed From WoW?
Fireball394 wrote with a link to an article on the site 'In Newsweekly'. The article, entitled "Blizzard of GLBT gaming policy questions", discusses the application of a harassment warning on a player who was recruiting for a GLBT guild. From the article: "In her follow-up letter to the company, Andrews explained that there was an obvious misunderstanding and that she was not insulting anyone, but merely recruiting for a 'GLBT friendly' guild. The response from Blizzard was, 'While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we do feel that the advertisement of a GLBT friendly guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Sexual Orientation Harassment Policy is to be temporarily suspended from the game. However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning.' Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using 'GLBT' was inappropriate as, the company said, it may 'incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game.'"
I get the feeling blizzard made a similiar assumption, but from what I can see from the original recruitment, it was just supposed to be a GLBT _friendly_ guild... so no ban on hetrosexuals in the first place. I am truely baffled why 'friendly' must mean 'everyone else is banned'
This has utterly nothing to do with freedom of speech.
I agree with you 100%. Online gaming is a haven for homophobia. The amount of gay-bashing that goes on in in-game chats would be considered intolerable in even the most conservative circles in the real world.
A few years back, a small online FPS game I used to play decided to extend its anti-biogtry policy to protect against gay-bashing. The backlash was severe, and many players left in protest after being repatedly kicked from the game for using offensive language.
Fortunately, the developer running the game stuck with it despite the many rumors circulated that he was gay -- I can't help but admire the fact that he never bothered to defend himself against the rumors. I think he eventually responded in an interview something to the extent of "No, I am not, but I don't feel the need to defend myself against these rumors because I find nothing offensive about it"
Gamers can be so immature. This is probably the biggest reason I no longer game online. These people give the impresion of being 13 years old, and you later learn that they're actually grown adults. Pathetic.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
There's nothing wrong with a gay guild from the perspective of total in-game immersion. Homosexuality is not something artificially created by contemporary society - it will exist in any environment where humans, and indeed other species, are present. There's no republican gene that would cause an elf to magically align his or her self to what is, compared to the number of possible outlooks on life, a relatively narrow band of thinking. However, where nature can only incline you to be attracted to one gender or a combination of the two, then probability says it is definitely going to happen.
Take a mythology with 10 races, all of whom are loosely based on humans. In total, you're going to have as many gays over all as, for example, dwarves. Your argument appears to equate homosexuality (an inherent characteristic) with any of a number of artificially defined concepts, such as religion or political alignment. If it's ok to base a guild around in game concepts, say all those who worship some in game deity, why is it not acceptable to base a guild around concepts which exist both in game and in the real world? Would it be a violation of Blizzard policy to create a race of herbivores? I think not. Why then is it wrong to differentiate between (loosely paralelled) homosexuals (herbivores), bisexuals (omnivores) and heterosexuals (carnivores)? If anything, denying the existence of homosexuality within the world of warcraft reduces its verisimilitude and only serves to alienate people further.
And what about when people use the words "Christ" and "Jesus" as expletives in the game? The people that complain about the use of "gay" in a derogatory sense never seem to complain when the words I mentioned are abused.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
People have found ways around this in the past. I have been in a covertly gay MMORPG guild. We were gay, yeah, but ask us outright and you wouldn't get a straight answer. Sometimes closeting and ghettoisation is, pragmatically, the best option from the gay point of view, even today. A military friend of mine can attest to that.
But closeting shouldn't be enforced from above. That's utter crap.
And I don't think the hypocrisy lies in homophobic slang being permitted de facto (and don't tell me it isn't permitted - it is): I think the hypocrisy lies in the fact that straight identity roleplay is permitted in the game while LGBT roleplay is not.
On RP servers or RP-oriented servers and guilds in most MMORPGs, RPed in-game marriages are fairly common. Consequently, a similar issue arose in DAOC a few years ago when a couple players attempted to have a gay marriage in game. Straight marriages in game were, as I say, nothing new at all. I'd attended a couple. There was even a player (very good RPer) on my server who specialised in presiding over marriages there. But much hullabaloo arose over whether an RP gay marriage ceremony should be permitted by the admins. After a great deal of ambiguity and fractiousness, the ceremony was permitted. But of course it had to be. Either you permit relationship RP and you permit gay RP, or you tell people outright, "all creatures in this world are asexual and incapable of romantic association of any kind - RP it that way". And while that's an equal solution, asexual civilisation really is a little hard to take in a conventional fantasy RP contexts. At least unless you give me a little backstory.
Karma: Chameleon (comes and goes)
I totally disagree.
The fact is that discrimination against GLTB people is fairly common in WoW. Usually when I'm confronted a person who gratuitously uses descriminatory language, I just tell them to knock it off, and I've had about a 50% success rate with this strategy. Some will apologize and tell you that they have several gay friends, and that they totally didn't mean it like that. Some will tell you about Sodom and Gomorrah and how 'that lifestyle' leads straight to hell, and while I find it quite hilarious that people actually believe that in this day and age, I can see how for some people it would get quite frustrating. Which is why a GLBT-friendly guild has a place on WoW - it would be a place where you can play the game and not have to deal with discriminatory fuckwits. It makes even more sense when you consider that, when you join a guild, you often don't know the GLBT-friendliness of your fellow guildees. And if you do find out subsequently that some of them (especially a guild leader) are not terribly enlightened, you face a tough decision about whether or not to stay with the guild (most of whom may be really good people). I've had this happen to me - I eventually quit, because the guild leader was one of the less enlightened folks. Joining a guild advertised as GLBT-friendly would alleviate all of these problems.
Blizzard has a LONG history of turning a blind eye to assholes and jerks, simply because they're a large portion of their fan base. Every time I reload Diablo 2 I'm reminded of why I remove it; "oh yes, I'm surrounded by scum".
I'm just not sure that there's as much mischief to be made out of this as Blizzard seems to think. What are they going to do, call them fags? Oh noooo.
Braxor begins to cast Bruised Feelings.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
The purpose of LGBT groups is usually just to give people who feel out-of-place a home. Sometimes there are LGBT activism, dating, or topic-discussion groups, but a lot of LGBT gatherings or LGBT social groups are more just symbols of pride.. like having a LGBT distributed.net team or something.
I'm not sure what the woman's intent was in creating the group, but it almost seems like WoW is doing a don't-ask-don't-tell approach to eliminating sexual harrassment.
If sexual orientation is part of contemporary life, what reason is there for eliminating it from fantasy worlds?
Some things ARE often said to stir up trouble; chances are that a "communist pride", "white power", or "hetero warriors" guild would be considered offensive to a majority of players, and those sorts of things would be discouraged.
But, unless they have reason to believe a LGBT guild would make a significant number of players uncomfortable...
I dunno. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm not familiar with WoW and I don't know how much of a social game it is (is there a lot of role-playing? is there a lot of interaction with other players, or not?)
Maybe you could argue that there's no reason to have a LGBT-specific guild, but then if someone wanted to make a "slashdot users' guild" or "U.K. players' guild", you'd have to deny those because of irrelevancy to the game, also.
I think they feel that this may stir up some gay-bashers, but, I would argue that the people who are being actively aggressive toward others (the gay-bashers) should be punished.
Perhaps the LGBT guild was intended to annoy some gay-bashers in the game, but that's passive-aggressive.. I wouldn't really call it a case of harrassment.
If I put a "I vote democrat!" bumper sticker on my car, does that mean I'm harrassing republicans?
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
That's actually a good standard to apply. One should look at something that they're doing considering GLBT people and replace the word "gay" with "black", "homosexual" with "african-american", "gay culture" with "hip-hop culture", etc, and see if what you're stating sounds horribly racist. If it does, don't do it.
FSB hits! FSB hits! Your democracy dies. Do you want your possessions identified?
To apply this in more detail, I've "translated" part of the article.
Original poster: OZ [the name of her guild] is recruiting all levels. We are not 'Non-caucasian only,' but we are 'Multicultural'!
Blizzard: While we appreciate and understand your point of view, we feel that the advertisement of a "non-caucasian" guild is very likely to result in harassment for players that may not have existed otherwise. If you will look at our policy, you will notice the suggested penalty for violating the Racial Discrimination Policy is to be "temporarily suspended from the game". However, as there was clearly no malicious intent on your part, this penalty was reduced to a warning.
Blizzard's stance was clear that recruiting for a guild using "non-caucasian" was inappropriate as, the company said, it may "incite certain responses in other players that will allow for discussion that we feel has no place in our game."
Gamer John Blatzheim, who heard of Andrews' situation, e-mailed Blizzard to express his concern of a double standard that game masters would send her a warning that she could not use "non-caucasian" as an advertisement to express a safe place for black gamers after an incident a few months ago where a drive-by occurred within the game and players yelled in general chat, "Don't trust the n******!"
"Many people are insulted just at the word 'African-American' or any other word referring to race," Blizzard responded to Blatzheim in an e-mail. "Also to discriminate against other players, such as not allowing any caucasians into the guild simply because of their race, could cause extreme offense to a large percentage of our players and should be avoided."
MLK Champions and The Spreading Pride, two large black guilds are currently formulating a letter they plan to submit to Blizzard requesting a more detailed explanation as to the intent of this reinterpretation and execution of the racial discrimination rule. As the spirit of the discrimination rule seems to have been reinterpreted from protecting non-caucasian players, to keeping them silent.
There are various types of servers that players can experience the game on. One of the options is to play on a role-playing server where players actually play as their characters, rather than through their characters. "We have determined that advertising race is not appropriate for the high fantasy setting of the World of Warcraft and is therefore not permitted" was another of Blizzard's responses. Does this mean that if a player has a character on a role-playing server that they play as black that would be violating the policy?
FSB hits! FSB hits! Your democracy dies. Do you want your possessions identified?
What I don't see is how a GLBT guild would even be considered by players, even if they are of one of those orientations. It seems like it's just a way to flaunt it. I don't see how your sexual orientation is that big of a deal to warrant needing to start a guild that's focused on it.
You're playing an online ROLE-PLAYING GAME. Personally I don't even THINK about the orientation of other players, or even if the person playing that female Night Elf is really a female. It just doesn't matter in the context of playing a game.
The guilds I play in and with are guilds of people I ENJOY playing with. I'm sure there's a few people in my guild that have different sexual orientations. I don't really care. It doesn't matter, especially for playing a game. I play with them because they're good people to play with.
It just seems to me that forming and advertising a GLBT guild seems to be mainly for the purpose of flaunting it and sticking it right in people's faces.
I don't have a problem with other-oriented people having EQUAL rights, but it really bugs me when some groups start clamoring for SPECIAL rights.
If you do something that might cause a bunch of 13-year-old losers to sexually harass you, it's your own damn fault!
A lot of chatter on the guild chat channel is "Hey, how ya doing?" "Oh, not much, just got back from dinner with my girlfriend/boyfriend" Blahblahblah.
Anyway, a LGBT guild would be guaranteed not to have other guildies then going "OMFG U fagortz pAt rob3rts0n sez ur dizeezed!". In other words, a good way to keep from getting harassed by juvenile pricks.
So, it's not asking for SPECIAL rights. It's simply a way of avoiding idiots. What's wrong with that?
I call bullshit.
Look, this person was tryig to form a guild. Completely legit.
They wanted to make it specifically GBLT friendly. Completely legit.
To say that this is inappropriate becuase it may cause others to harass people is akin to saying a women who wears shorts is responsible for being raped, or a black person who goes to church is responsible for the KKK burning the building down.
The way Blizzard is trying to enforce their harassment policy is, ironically, highly descriminatory. They are not trying to protect the GBLT players, but rather to protect themselves from pissing off thier core constituency by enforcing a policy that they have.
This is truly offensive.
Guilds on non-rp servers are essentially just teams of players who have chosen to pool resources and work together.
In the case of WoW, they're mostly necessitated by the fact that most end-game contents requires groups of 20-40 players. So guilds exist to arrange which 40 players, of which mix of classes, with what equipment, supported by what crafting professions, will tackle given challenges. In larger cases, they sometimes have rigid organizational structures, ranks and rules for promotions, guild banks that lend money, and complex systems for determining in what order players get the equipment that these runs generate.
(If that sounds like a whole lot of no fun to you, we're agreed. I can't stand giant raids or giant raiding guilds. I play with a handful of real-world friends, and we only created a guild to stem the flood of people inviting us to join theirs.)
So they certainly exist in the absence of roleplaying, and they're just some combination of functional allies and friends.
Usually when people talk about wanting a gay-friendly guild, they simply want the ability to say racy things like "Sorry I can't play on Thursday, it's my boyfriend's birthday" without having to deal with 14-year-old-homophobia from their own guildmates.