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Blizzard Techs Talk Login Times, Not Gay Rights
Shane Dabiri and John Lagrave took an interview with Eurogamer, and used the opportunity to talk about the login problems that have been plaguing World of Warcraft since Christmas. As techs, they're not there to talk about the ongoing discussion involving Gay rights in their game world. Kotaku, however, is not under any kind of restriction, and reports on legal movement against the company by Lambda Legal. The group is organized around procuring civil rights for people in the GLBT community, and sent a strongly worded letter to Blizzard's legal team. From that letter: "We are very concerned that Blizzard's policy, as expressed in the foregoing statement, discriminates against LGBT gamers. Although preventing harassment is an admirable goal, a requirement that LGBT people remain invisible and silent is not an acceptable means of reaching that goal." Blizzard has already removed the warning from the player in question, saying that it was an 'unfortunate interpretation' of their EULA.
Keep your goddamn politics out of my game. I play to escape reality dammit...
Nuff said.
WoW is not a discussion board, where speech is expected to be on-topic; Slashdot is.
You might have a valid argument when GNAA posts start getting blammed so that nobody can see them. But as long as people can still see the mess at a -1 threshold, I don't care. The moderation system is not about freedom to be heard, it's about allowing people to allow gems to float to the surface of the cesspool.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
The sharks smelled blood in the water eh?
What players do in their own private areas (houses, guild halls, whatever) is their own business, but in public areas, Blizzard has the full authority to define their own rules; it is, after all their own sandbox. I don't agree with Blizzard's decision, myself, but they have full authority and right to enforce whatever policies they want on -private- services.
~ Wizardry Dragon
That interview was about as content-rich as a blank sheet of paper. That corporate speech is nothing but disappointing, indicative of an attempt to avoid committment and responsibility, to avoid offense, not by being considerate, but by being nothing.
As far as it goes, it doesn't go very far.
medieval times, which WoW is based on
What?!? Because it features the use of swords and plate armor prominently, it's "based on" medieval times? Nice try. What about the magic, orcs, and undead guys? Medieval times on which planet?
It's a fantasy world. Owned and created by Blizzard. Period. Full Stop. End of parchment. If Blizzard can make magic 'work,' gravity go up, teleportation a science, slavery legal, and dead people sexy, they can make homosexuality anathema -- in their world. Play there, or not. Support them with your dollars, or not. If they can nerf your character's dexterity and strength, what makes you think they can't nerf your... whatever you call it. Lord knows there's plenty of competition for your MMORPG dollar. Come play Eve; in space, no one cares who you shack up with.
All these people confusing MMORPGs with reality are starting to scare me...
I have the right to refuse service to anyone whom I deem, so long as the service is considered a private and not a public service. WoW is not a school board, it is a gaming community, and Blizzard can refuse service to anyone at any time for any reason it sees fit. I'm sure that's part of the Terms of Service you're *supposed* to read before installing the thing. Now, I'm a Canadain, so I'm no expert on the matter, but I'm 99% sure the U.S. Constitution does not gaurantee you the right to play on a WoW server of your choice. ~ Wizardry Dragon
I'm not sure if it's accurate to say "gay people existed in medieval times".
In the past people weren't gay - they just either did or didn't have sex with members of the same sex. It was considered something you did (or didn't do) and not a matter of personal identity. The ancient greeks, for example, would probably not have made sense of the question "are you gay or straight?".
So it's entirely possible that modern homosexuality - far from being as old as the human race - is actually a fairly modern construct. Personally I think that the discinction between "gays" and "straight people" is largely artificial and that sexuality (defined as inclination, not as actual partners) is more of a spectrum than a binary decision. It's for social and political reasons that in recent history the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" have been applied to people and not to behavior or inclination.
Anyone know of anything additional about this?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
One could easily argue that they aren't denying a service. GLBT users can still login, play, join a guild, enjoy the game, whatever. As I understand it, all they are (were?) being prevented from doing is broadcasting that a particular guild is GLBT-friendly and from engaging in same-sex marriage in the game world.
For the former, one could even argue that a GLBT guild is discriminatory against straight users. Assuming a "straights only" guild is against the rules, I have no complaint here.
For the latter, it's a medeival game world. Translating real-world modern social issues to be compatible with a game world like that just doesn't work...Blizzard created that world, they could simply state that the society does not permit homosexual marriage and let that be the end of it.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Exactly. I think if one wants to truly be "tolerant" then one must also tolerate other people's intolerance. The fact is that everyone is intolerant of something; the people who make "tolerance" their biggest issue are often the very same people who seek to suppress those who don't agree with their idea of tolerance.
If they can nerf your character's dexterity and strength, what makes you think they can't nerf your... whatever you call it.
I think I speak for us all when I say the word you're looking for is MOJO.
-stormin
(don't nerf my mojo!)
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
So they can setup a policy that every avatar has to look like a naked 11 year old and it is perfectly legal?
Of course not. They have to abide by laws, if they are behind closed doors or not. And the fact that they are a private service doesn't affect that. They can't say no women are allowed to play. They can't discriminate on the basis of religion. And they can't say you are not allowed to say a guild is GLBT friendly because it might offend people when the game's chat has the word "fag" show up more then any other single word.
In fact, based on some things I've read, Blizzard might even be in violation of their own agreement by restricting a GLBT friendly guild when other religious guilds actively promote themselves as such. Both could easily attract people wanting to cause problems, yet only one is warned.
And if they set up a restaurant on their private property, they'd be able to refuse service to blacks?
Think your arguments through before you post them.
Final Fantasy XI has full in-game marriage, complete with wedding dress, rings, and a ceremony. However, Final Fantasy XI refuses to allow gay couples to get married.
And yet, there's been no complaint about this. No one cared. "It's just a fantasy game."
I guess it's only because WoW is so popular that we're hearing about this in the first place. It's just people purposely trying to raise trouble to get "their issue" into the press. Unfortunately, it's working.
And since when does one have the right to play LBBT characters in a role playing game for heaven's sake? If you don't like the rules, then leave. Not liking the rules is not an excuse for demanding that anyone else has to change to meet your own standards. Blizzard was at least trying to create a conflict -- make that harassment -- free area for everyone to play in. Some people just have to go push things wherever they are, and then we get a big mess for everyone else.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I am not MMORGing to drag this crap into my fantasy world. Why do people need to drag real life into fantasy relaxation? There are no ways in which to have "straight" relationships in the game unless it's role-played. So role-play the relationships... if a younger player or an insensitive player bashes you, go after the player through the abuse channel or game masters... Even as a "straight" person, if I were to see "Prince Valliant" and "Prince Charming" getting married on my server, I wouldn't really care, except to ask if they need anything tailored like their Tux's or cooked for the reception but after that what they do with each other is their own business. Same for "Snow White" and "Cinderella" doing the social interaction thing. Now for guilds that are restrictive based on real world associations, I am the Guild Leader for a Guild in WoW and it's based "primarily" on IRL friends that are all Bouncers in the various Detroit night clubs. We have other members but it was started based on location and profession. I don't agree with groups that include color, creed, religion, sex, sexual preference... think about all the things that are violations of the harassment policies at your work. I don't want to be exposed to all that while trying to relax and slaughter things. I wanna be brain dead and happy. Please leave real life issues at the door with your street clothes. I wanna don my armour and wreak havoc on the Murlock population without wondering what kind of socio/economic/racial overtones may be interpreted in the aftermath.
That's pretty much what Kinsey found in his study.
Blizzard's policy is in no way worse than the US military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. The harshest evaluation you could possibly make with any claim to fairness would be to say that the two are equivalent. And "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is apparently legal.
Blizzard is restricting people from TALKING about sexual orientation, be it their own or that of others, in certain circumstances. They're not denying gay people any sort of "service," because they don't know or care what the sexual orientation of their players even IS.
There is a difference between "making something an issue" and "defending your rights."
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
Tolerant. It was a guild for people who were tolerant of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. No requirement to be a member of one of those three groups. You just had to stop using OMG F4G!!!!11!!one when someone ganked you.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages by Paul Halsall, 1988.
Homosexuality.
IANAL, but the definition of public is something around the lines of 'an open and freely available service provided by state or federal autorities and protected by law.' (Not free as in beer, folks)
Now AFAIK, a MMORPG service is not offered by state or federal authorities, nor is it freely available, nor is it open.
~ Wizardry Dragon
While I appreciate the source material i think you may have failed to really appreciate my point. I was simply pointing out that there is a difference between:
A. homosexuality as behavior
and
B. homosexuality as personal identity
I am of the opinion (albeit I'm no expert and have a lot to learn on the topic) that while A is universal B is a relatively modern pheonomena. Your own sources seem to corroborate this. Examples:
Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it.
Sex is the action, and has nothing to do with identity.
those we would now call homosexuals
Meaning that they weren't so-called at the time. Was this because of oppression - or was it because the idea of associating sexual preference with identity and not with just behavior had not yet arisen?
Very clearly there were distinct types of sexual activity in different periods and areas, but these activities do not seem to accord with any particular social organization of homosexuals:
Again - evidence of the action but not of developed identity-awareness. Subcultures may eventually provide evidence that this type of homosexuality did exist, but your articles haven't established that yet.
With the decline of the Roman Empire, and its replacement by various barbarian kingdoms, a general tolerance (with the sole exception of Visigothic Spain) of homosexual acts prevailed.
Again - they key word is acts. This is still the behavior-centric conceptualization.
The subtext throughout all of these articles is simply this: people were having gay sex in the middle ages, and they were having gay sex in the Roman era. That's fine and I think it's historically unarguable. Even the Bible refers to homosexuality going back to Soddom. So that's not in question.
But what these articles all discuss is the behavior. This is not the same thing as the socio-cultural identity, and that's what I believe is a recent development.
I'm not falling into the trap of thinking that people in the middle ages were somehow fundamentally different than we are now. Evolution doesn't work that fast. But modern societies do tend to have distinguishing philosophical trends and I think this is one of them.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
This is wrong, as a matter of fact. I realize that you are Canadian; but in the US, there are statutory limitations on the absolute freedom of private contracts, in addition to the common law exclusion of contracts contrary to public policy.[1] There are, for example, Federal laws prohibiting employment or housing discrimination on the basis of race; and state and local laws that also prohibit various forms of class-based discrimination. Some of these apply specifically to sexual orientation. At least some of these laws apply to business conducted with the public, not just that of public entities, like school boards.
The courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of these laws, on the basis that there is a compelling public interest in having a fair society. In fact, Colorado tried to amend its state constitution to prohibit any legislation protecting civil rights on the basis of sexual orientation. The US Supreme Court ruled that the state amendment violated the US Constitution.
[1] The common-law exclusion means, for example, that a contract to commit a crime is unenforcable. I would be very surprised if this does not apply in Canada also.
You're the one confusing MMORPG with reality. The characters in the game are part of Blizzard's world; the players who control them are not. No one is suggesting that Blizzard should have to create or accommodate gay characters, but they sure as shit should accommodate gay players. And it is the players seeking a gay-friendly playing environment that Blizzard has reprehensibly shut down.
I think that only Trolls should stfu. So please abide.
One doesn't, and this isn't what these players sought. They sought a group of players who don't spew sexuality invective like it's punctuation. Which, I have to say, seems entirely reasonable to me.
Any restaurant can retain the right to refuse service to anyone. Usually it is posted in big bold letters in the entrance. However, YOUR comment takes the argument way out of context. Blizzard doesn't refuse anything to homosexuals. They do require that guilds not post Political/sexual/non-game/etc issues for recruitment on their general forums pages or in game spam in general chat.
Honestly how god damned hard is this to understand. Blizzard won't allow you to recruit in general chat based on being a republican, stripper, democrat, straight guys only, ETC. Their opinion has been if it is non game related keep it inside your guild halls aka your own forum. Blizzard has even stated it is fine for guilds to recruit based off of previous things on Blizzards RECRUITMENT forum but not on the general forum.
Personally I think it was a group of disgruntled homosexual gamers that wanted attention so they broke the rules and then claimed it was blizzard's fault. It wasn't the only reason this is still in the news is because it is easier to blame blizzard than it is the minority. Sure they are a minority but they still broke the rules. I personally hope blizzard bans the people who posted the recruitment based off of sexual orientation in the general forum. It is out of place an unwanted. If I want to find a guild I can go to the recruitment forum.
Are only gay-friendly guilds allowed or will staunch fundamentalist Christian guilds be equally tolerated?
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
I wanna don my armour and wreak havoc on the Murlock population without wondering what kind of socio/economic/racial overtones may be interpreted in the aftermath.
You insensitive genocidial monster! Merlocks are fish-people too! Have you ever though about their feelings? Have you ever tried to talk to them, rather than just wipe out their villages and roll to see who gets the chest loot? Of course not. Why, it just makes me seeth, I-RRRRRRRAALLLAARALALLALALALALALLALALA!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I'm a lawyer - although civil rights is not my area of specialization - and it's not that simple. The world of "I own it & I can damn well do as I please" is long gone. A court would most likely find the WoW is a "public accommodation" and since it engages in Interstate commerce and uses the modalities of Interstate commerce it is subject to non-discrimination laws. However - Gay is not a protected class of people so Blizzard can do as they want with regard to gays - but just because you own something doesn't mean you can set ALL the rules.
I've always wondered what a staunch fundamentalist christian is doing playing a game with people pretending to be undead necromancers worshipping made up God's, wandering the countryside killing others.
Seems as out of place as an AA meeting in a liquor store.
And since when does one have the right to play LBBT characters in a role playing game for heaven's sake?
Why would you not have the right to play a LGBT character? My husband and I played DaoC for a while, and he played a female character, as did I. We also played our characters as lovers. By your logic that would not be allowed at all. It's a game that reflects reality. In reality the gay and lesbian population hovers around 11% to 14% in every culture. It exists as a normal part of the range of human behavior, always has and always will no matter who dislikes it.
Just because they set up an arbitrary rule, that is only inforced haphazardly, does not mean it's just. There used to be rules about race, that your argument was used to defend. "Why can't they just sit on the back of the bus. It's the way the rules are." "Women just are not able to vote, they don't have the sense. That's just the way the rules are."
I would be upset if I were to enter a game like this, and couldn't play with my husband, just because someone didn't like that we were opposite genders. Where I couldn't even reference we were in a committed relationship, and everyone around me used invectives that demeaned my sexual orientation.
It costs nothing to be tolerant of another person. If they aren't harming you, or themselves, people should be allowed to pursue their happiness in any way they want. It won't hurt 'the children!' to see and be exposed to different things. (As the 'for the children' argument is always next up.) That is a teaching oppurtunity for good parents to explain the families values.
Nothing hides evidence like a stew. -Gus Pratt
Gay-friendly != gay-only. Your comparison is inaccurate. A better one would be to ask if staunch fundamentalist Christian friendly guilds be tolerated -- in which I would guess that the answer was yes.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Blizzard has not said Homosexuals can't play their game. On the contrary, they want everyone playing their game. What they've said is you can't make a blatantly homosexual guild, as in the name, and you can't recruit on the general board based on that. They impose similar restrictions on religions, politics, straight sex, etc. The idea is that it's a role playing game, and real life factions are supposed to stay out of it to a degree. They don't want a "republicans only" guild any more than a "gays only" guild, though they want both groups playing the game.
Here I go, waiting for the intolerant 'tolerants' to down-mod me:
WOWC is a game, not a platform. This doesn't come down to 'equal rights', it comes down to using the game as a means to push an agenda. (Yup, I said it, go ahead and reach for that troll mod - but isn't someone being sued over an in-game policy?) Blizzard doesn't have a checkbox when you are signing up that says "are you gay?". They aren't restricting people from playing if they adhere to a certain behavior pattern, it really doesn't matter to them what you do outside of the game world.
What they are trying to do IMHO is keep their game from becoming a platform for this group or that group to advertise something that is, whether you like it or not, highly controversial. It's supposed to be a game, not a soapbox.
Now, those of you who seething right now, would you be as upset if this whole thing were about religious groups?
Why do people continually place real-life weight on games and the things that happen in them? It's a pretend fucking place, why don't they just pretend that in this place, GLBT doesn't exist. But this leads to another question, why...WHY WHY do people INSIST on dragging what they do with their penises and vaginas into a GAME? Are people that sick and depraved of actual human contact that they need to flex their sexual muscles in a game? Fuck man, get a girlfriend / boyfriend / he-she friend and let the rest of us play the game.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
Let me put it to you this way.
Take a question of preference and of action. Say the question is "do you like strawberries?" You might like them, I might not (ok - who doens't like strawberries? but it's an analogy). So you like strawberries and you eat them. Do we have a name for that in our society? No - we just say that you eat strawberries and you like them. A movement? Not that I know of. An agenda for strawberry-eaters? Well, I guess to eat strawberries.
No consider a similar question of preference and of action. Do you like meat? Do you eat meat? In this case we DO have a name: we have vegans and vegetarians for people who don't eat meat (or animal products, depending on how hard core you are). If you happen to not eat meat one day - are you a vegetarian? If you're a vegan and you don't realize there's animal products in jello and eat it - do you stop being a vegan?
See what I mean? In this case we have a cultural identity that is based on an action or preference but then takes on a life of it's own. What I'm saying is that historically being gay was kind of like eating strawberries. It didn't mean anything other than what it meant. Now being gay is like being a vegetarian - it's not about what you do (or want to do) anymore - it's about who you are.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
(I a male adult of the bisexual persuasion, who recently began playing WoW with my boyfriend, who is gay himself.)
The virtual world offered (for a fee) to Blizzard's customer base, however removed from reality, is very much populated by real players, (script farmers notwithstanding,) which have a given sexual orientation, whether or not this fact is relevant to the actual game play. In this game, individuals will find all sorts of reasons to relate to each other and/or form guilds, possibly based on real-world geographical proximity, shared/anecdotal game history, stereotypical familiarity or whatever they might see as relevant criteria.
While playing the game, it didn't take long before I learned about fun things like the "/kiss", "/hug" and other such commands, and I also quickly confirmed that these actions were possible between any players, regardless of perceived gender or race. On the other hand, MSN Messenger's original emoticons assumed that a hug was given by a boy, and returned by a girl.
Which of these two services may be adding some restrictions of expression, knowingly or not, to its users?
Now, let us imagine that the next time I play this game, I should decide to form a new guild, or join an existing one, based on a common interest in photography. Which means that as we all wait endless minutes while everyone gets ready for the next raid, we can all chat about something we have in common, photography, something that others around us might be at least mildly interested in, and might even have something to share with the other guild members as well.
Obviously, if I simply lacked any interest in photography, I'd join some other group, or simply keep marching on my way, because in the end, I am playing this particular game in order to have a little fun, period.
MMORPG players can be harsh in general. As long as the gay guild wasn't obnoxious about it (Spamming general chat with Guild Recruitment Notices....which would be unnacceptable from any guild) and willing to put up with general slander which you'll get for doing anything on an MMORPG (heck, I was running for the zone in EQ once and the train following me killed off some female party member of another group...I thought I was going to be lynched there was so much testosteronic chivalry going on), then I say let Blizzard pay it no mind.
People are obnoxious enough when you know them. People who are anonymous on the Internet are unbelievable. Fact of life. But the presence of a gay guild sticking out the inevitable abuse will only breed acceptance as people get bored with the bashing.
Occasionally one of the girls would forget to /tell and my cover would be blown in a party, and some male players that were shamefully hitting on me earlier would become enraged and ask for their (quite expensive) items back. Then they would regail me, accusing me of being gay... odd, considering they never objected to my 'girlfriend' coming along (who was indeed Brian, my very awesome, very straight roommate)
I hardly think that a change of Blizzard's policy is going to fix the social problem that permiates much of nerdom as thick as it does Alabama. Play who you want. On planet Warcraft, homosexuality is discriminated against. That is a role you choose to play or not.
Speaking of which, would a handsome man like you like to escort me as I try to find my epic?
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
wts [Flask of Mojo] x 20, pst with offer
Bungo!
One could, but that would have nothing to do with the subject at hand.
The guild in question is GLBT friendly, not GLBT only.
If you still want to have a problem with their membership policies then you will also have to have a problem with _every_ guild which doesn't have a completely open door to everyone who wants in.
What I'm saying is that historically being gay was kind of like eating strawberries. It didn't mean anything other than what it meant. Now being gay is like being a vegetarian - it's not about what you do (or want to do) anymore - it's about who you are.
Being homosexual is just being homosexual. Not every homosexual bases their cultural and political philosophies on their sexuality.
Of course, some of them can and have been persecuted to the extent that their sexuality does become a personal and political issue. For many, this political and cultural side of their own private sexuality is unfairly thrust upon them, most often by people who are not even homosexuals themselves.
If being homosexual is now a political issue, it is clear that this has not occurred as a result of the actions of homosexuals, but rather as a result of the politicisation of private sexuality by others.
May the Maths Be with you!
So why should gay & lesbians, who probably "aren't against straights," have to be ok with watching some guy and his girlfriend attempt to perform tonsilectomies on each other in public and "accept that it's ok?"
Maybe they find that as disgusting as "2 hairy guys tonguing each other in public."
Just because you can't imagine looking at a hairy butt and thinking, "love," doesn't mean there aren't people in the world that DO look at a hairy butt and think, "love."
They are not looking at yours. So why should it matter to you?
Reread:
Blizzard's actions were to allow hatred to go unchecked (using "fag"/"gay" in the perjorative is the behaviour that's creating a more hostile environment, which is what Blizzard claims to condemn), and spanking GLBT folk for wanting to group together to improve their WoW experience.
Blizzard's TOS claims that they don't want to have a hostile player environment vis-a-vis sexual orientation, race, religion, etc.
This has fuck all to do with civil rights (Blizzard != the state), but rather Blizzard not enforcing their TOS on their property. That's the point.
Calling someone a fag in an insult runs counter to that TOS, yet Blizzard does nothing.
You can still hate whomever you like, for whatever reason. Again, this isn't a civil rights crusade, it's the misguided application of their own freaking policies.
hooked up funny
Would the Lambda Legal folks be as supportive of a guild in World of Warcraft that advertised itself a heterosexual only guild? What about a guild that required all members to be white men that hate black people? The problem is that by coming to Blizzard with this complaint, Lambda is asking Blizzard to make an exception for one single group. They want it to be ok if GLBT announce pro-GBLT guilds, but I would venture to guess that they would oppose a guild that was in favor of less politically correct ideas.
To PROTECT everyone, Blizzard made a decision that would address the issue, but it doesn't seem Lambda Legal likes the idea of everyone getting fair treatment by the game policies.
By Blizzard setting a fairly strict policy, they deal with all sides with one simple rule. If a guild wants to be 'pro' anything, they should take the time to put their values on a 3rd party website and direct people there. That way everyone gets equal treatment, and isn't that the main idea anyway?
Don't forget people who only have sex with themselves (slashdotters.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the problem is more that sexuality, whether it be homo or not, should not be an issue in a teen rated game. We have friendster and true.com for meeting partners. Sexuality has no place in WoW, and blizzard made the right move, in that case. It's not that you cant be gay and play WoW, it's that you cant have a clan that promotes sexual content in the game.