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How Women Became Gamers Through D&D
An anonymous reader writes: To add some historical context to the currently controversy surrounding attitudes toward women in gaming, Jon Peterson provides an in-depth historical look at the unsurprisingly male origins of the "gamer" identity. It also examines how Dungeons & Dragons helped to open the door for women in gaming — overturning a sixty-year-old dogma that was born when Wells's Little Wars first assumed the "disdain" of women for gaming.
Gammer gamers of old,
Whose mettle proved hard,
Taking scalps untold.
Even the grizzled grognard!
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Sex change!
Maybe, just maybe most games appealed to more males, so males were more drawn to them. This is of course a consequence of sexism in early decades discouraging women from taking up programming and making games themselves.
This is all being corrected, naturally, it's just going to take time.
There isn't disdain for women in gaming, it's just that women are the minority in games and tend to play games that the majority looks down upon (The Sims, Candy Crush etc), although even this is changing. There are plenty of girls who play GTAV, Injustice, COD etc and are amazing at them.
Articles like this don't help, they hurt. They spread FUD and misinformation without any facts, only serving to promote a continuation of the idiotic war of the sexes.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
The idea that there are few women gamers has always been a myth in the first place. Sure there are certain genres where men and boys dominate the demographic, but there are also genres where women dominate the demographic.
The idea that women "don't belong in gaming" or are "under-represented in the gaming community" is a myth perpetrated by the same kind of childish mentality that thinks "l33t speak" makes one cool and special.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
"Jim Dapkus wrote one of these: he loved the game but expressed concern that it offered little by way of roles for female characters. He complained that a “witch or female counterpart to the magic user is not listed,” aside from the lone illustration in Men & Magic of a “Beautiful Witch.”"
So women don't want to be a magic user, barbarian, thief, ranger or paladin (all arguably sexless) but... a "witch"?
O'RLY...
Dear /. owners, fuck off with your daily sexual harassment.
overturning a sixty-year-old dogma that was born when Wells's Little Wars first assumed the "disdain" of women for gaming.
The quote is "for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books." Nothing about disdain.
And judging by the gaming friends I've interacted with over the years, the quote holds true for gaming even today. The ratios are close to even in social games (including MMOs), not so much for shooter/wargames.
The idea that misogyny is some how rampant and women like Sarkeesian are specifically targeted because there women is in itself sexist. Never mind that people disagree with Sarkeesian scamming that kick starter harder than the girl scouts selling me cookies or Gaben stealing my wallet every quarter. The bigger issue here is that none of these women can take criticism or have someone disagree with them at all without screaming misogyny. What can be more accepting and gender nuetral than judging you by the content of your character and your work and products? You don't get to demand to be treated equally then scream that your a special snowflake when that doesn't work out in your favor.
Hell, even the trolls don't care there women. There looking for public targets that get riled up at the push of a button. Find a male dev that cries on television when he gets made fun of and they will tear him a new one too. This is for every single public figure ever.
How Women Became Gamers Through D&D
Yup, lump them all together as one homogenous mass. They love that.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Shit, worst initiative roll EVER.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
several marriages have emerged from my gaming group, Lots of dating, I've been running games since I was 13, I'm 49 now. In college, I was running groups that were always co-ed. after college, once I was married, I was running games with a mix of married and unmarried couples. Nowadays I pick my gamers based on whether their kids get along with my kids.
Retirement is going to rock, a bunch of old fogies, rollin' for initiative.
I've seen a surprising number of women that see gaming as a "boys thing". That is slowly changing with age, but it is still more prevalent than with men. When I was a kid, only nerd played video games or PnP games. Real boys splayed sports. That has changed now, and it is perfectly acceptable for all boys to play games, and most people are even coming around on male adults gaming. With girls/women, there is still a more prevalent view of it not being "normal" to be in to gaming.
Funny thing is, it'll come form women who do play games. They play something like Angry Birds or Farmville or the like. Despite being a video game, they don't see it the same as playing on a AAA video game on an Xbox or the like. It is different in their mind, probably because they have a hangup about gaming being an ok activity for a woman.
The good news is that it has been changing, and is continuing to change. I think before long it will be to the point where video games are just something most people play. Different people will have different interests in types of games, but it won't be a "kid thing" or a "boy thing" or a "geek thing" it'll just be an activity that is ok for anyone to partake in, much like TV is now.
Also, DnD is like playing house with goblins and swords. Too bad the goblins are real.
I've never seen any rage against female gamers. That's certainly not what "gamergate" was/is about: game journalism. Feminist (not necessarily female) journalists were the target of their ire.
Gender-issues aside for the moment, game journalism is rotten - financial and/or romantic relationships between game journalists and games publishers is normal. I hope that doesn't get lost in the noise about misogyny - even by the falling statanrds of journalism generally, blatant conflicts of interests are uncool.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
sort of gatewayed me into D&D...... Deedlit was a role model :)
It may not be as ubiquitous as some would make it out, but that rage certainly exists. I was witness to it happening to a woman in a multiplayer shooter, and it was so over the top and angrily aggressive it really shocked me. If I hadn't seen that, I might have felt the way you do. It put me off multiplayer games for a long time.
Regarding journalistic ethics, the facts of the Zoe Quinn case don't support that there was any improper relationship. Grayson never reviewed any of her games, and the only time she appeared in any of his columns was well before they were involved. So that's kind of a red herring.
The most egregious violations of journalistic ethics in game media are the ones that happen in the biggest sites, like IGN. It's a little suspicious that there was no outcry from the gamergate types about those situations. Certainly the gamergate people aren't all hateful monsters, but they're giving cover to the hateful monsters that are out there..
You are welcome on my lawn.
you don't know what you are talking about. You must be young. Back in the early days of D&D (and I'm talking nearly 40 years ago - so if you relate to that, you are in your 40s, 50s. or 60s), we had plenty of women in our groups (my best friend's mom was even a passionate player) - and it wasn't odd, or revolutionary, or reactionary, it was just normal, that wasn't even a consideration then, and it remained so all the way up to the 90s (and the same was true for comic books, science fiction or fantasy novels, anything currently commonly associated with being a 'geek'), coincidentally when the world wide web became mainstream. The considerations seemed to begin appearing when 'nerd' became a fad, became a source of bizarre credibility of some sort, became codified, became Internet and social media currency. Back then, people pretty much just loved what they loved and participated in what they wanted to participate in, the rest just didn't matter. Wendy Pini was a woman, Madelaine L'Engle was a woman, Margaret Weis was a woman, ad infinitum and nauseum, and at the time, nobody thought twice about it. Millennials - a term I don't particularly care for, but it simplifies things in this case - seem to have both revised history (as children often do, until they know better, because their own experience of the world is inherently limited by comparison) and manufactured conflicts where before there really were none. Pretty f***ing silly. I feel for this generation that was robbed of experience and a history of their own because of the way they were raised and the vicarious, networked world they grew up in, never having the opprtunity to experience anything directly. I have never seen a generation so thoroughly obsessed with their own version of 'boys vs. girls' while simultaneously claiming to decry such notions. That is truly a pity. The rest of us will continue to enjoy what we enjoy and get on with our day, and not feel the need to justify or apologize for any of it. Like what you like and do that thing. It's that simple.
even by the falling statanrds of journalism generally, blatant conflicts of interests are uncool.
Someone should have told that to the editors.
Florian Mueller
doing Ask Slashdot
save your ire for
the clickbait whore
journalism it's not.
Burma Shave [tt]
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yep, the rottenness in game journalism isn't about any one journalist, but about the high frequency of conflicts of interest: almost no "gaming" publication even has a formal ethics policy to rule that out in the first place (while e.g. every major newspaper does).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
There generally isn't any rage. The problem is you have a whole swathe of 'journalists' who are pushing their wheel-barrow full of opinion that there's oppression against women and other minority groups. Part of the backlash towards the 'journalists' is how duplicitous they are, but also how heavily slanted they push these view-points, to the detriment of their main readership and audience.
People suspected that at first it was just provocative click-bait. But when it started to become visible that a lot of the authors genuinely believed it, people started to see it more like a conspiracy. The 'journalists' have always run the line that any criticism is misogyny or bigotry, closed comments and then proceed to stroke their ego's about how brave they are. I'm no bigot, but I really hate constantly being preached to like as if I am one. Then to top it off, this holier-than-thou attitude completely turned on its head when people started uncovering mountains of evidence that the 'journalists' have no ethics in their work, since having relationships with people they cover, or actually having monetary ties with them is completely fine, according to them. It has really turned into an us vs them issue and I can't see it finishing any other way. They want to continue doing what they do; have a soap box to infect everyone with their miserable lives!
I for one have decided to 'check-out' from games; I'm no longer spending any money on games with anyone for anything. I'm not pushing a boycott, I've just decided that the well has been so poisoned, that I don't want to be supporting anyone with my custom. This is all due to the constant propaganda that gamers hate women amongst other minority groups, and the constant pandering of the industry to promote that fiction. So much of the industry has been goose stepping together on this issue, and so ready to throw their customers and readers under a bus. I feel like this has been an abysmal failure on the part of the games industry.
Regarding the improper relationship between Grayson and Quinn, the official line of kotaku is contradicted by the chat logs released by the boyfriend. In any case, the time line wasn't 'well before' either. An article was published 31st of March, which featured Quinn, written by Grayson, and then they supposedly started a relationship merely days later...
In the chat logs, Quinn admits that her relationship with Grayson got close at a Las Vegas trip, approximately two weeks before the article was published. So either Quinn is lying and backdated her relationship or Grayson/Kotaku are lying and moved the date forward... While the relationship ultimately doesn't matter (but it did happen, and Grayson should never have written the article he did), kotaku went back and edited numerous articles by various authors, one of which, Patricia Hernandez, was also covering games from people she was living with, and in relationships with. Then the 14 or so 'gamers are dead' articles also sprung up all within hours of each other.
Regarding rage, have you ever played a game of DotA? That has an awful community. No one is saying that abuse doesn't happen, but why should only abuse against women be remarkable and others not?
OK, but it seems the sites the gamergaters are complaining about aren't "publications" at all, but rather just blogs.
Does Slashdot have a formal ethics policy? Does 4chan or Reddit (the source of much of the gamergate activity)?
Take it to other areas: Do you think Motor Trend has a published, formal ethics policy? What about the PSICOP website?
I'm sorry, but the whole "journalistic ethics" gamergate complaint seems to me to be a way to give cover to some very ugly and unseemly sentiment. Look at the articles that have generated the most complaint: They've been written by or about feminism. When Polygon posted such an article, it caused paroxysms of bloody-murder screaming from the gamergators and they've got a formal ethics policy. No, this isn't about "ethics", it's about territory. There's a group of people who believe gaming is their marked territory just because they happen to have pissed all over it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm sure you know that the article which "featured" Quinn was about a reality TV show and not a review of a game or of Quinn.
Again, "the article" was not a review of a game or of Quinn's work, so where exactly is the violation?
This is the stupidest of the gamergate arguments. "You shouldn't be outraged about abuse, because there's so much abuse."
It's pretty funny. The #gamergate people are so ridiculous that no response is required. They just don't matter. Even with their touchdown dance over Intel pulling some ads from Gamasutra (and by the way, new Intel ads are coming to Gamasutra), the truth is that nobody really cares. Like other loud but numerically insignificant culture warrior groups before them, they're croaking into the wind. People just slowly edge away from the embarrassing, smelly person on the bus. And make no mistake, giving cover to men who would stalk and dox and threaten a family out of their home because they don't like something they wrote is smelly and embarrassing.
As John Scalzi put it: "Face it dudes: "Gamergate" is a toxic thing. You can't say you support (it) WITHOUT explicitly standing with those who hate and harass women."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Does Slashdot have a formal ethics policy?
Of course! You never send documents over e-mail in MS Office formats, only in plain text, or at least PDF.
Ezekiel 23:20
Right -- there is no controversy about women in gaming. Not about women playing games, and not even about women making games.
There's a controversy about women (mostly two particular women) criticizing games and gamers on feminist grounds, and there's a controversy about one woman game developer who was involved in some rather public relationship drama involving game journalists. And there's a controversy about all their journalist supporters conspiring against gamers -- which the damn fool journalists went and set afire by proving their opponents right (on that point at least) by launching a coordinated attack in their respective publications.
As John Scalzi put it: "Face it dudes: "Gamergate" is a toxic thing. You can't say you support (it) WITHOUT explicitly standing with those who hate and harass women."
Yup, much better to stand with the side protecting a domestic abuser and - by their own word - rapist.
... or do what anyone sane would do and stay the fuck away from the whole mess until one side decides to take a open stand against the scum in their ranks.
I have been on the receiving end of plenty of disdain about my gaming, from multiple members of the opposite sex.
I am male.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
4chan and Reddit was a knock-on effect. Both sites heavily censored discussion of gamergate in the early days, choosing themselves to side with the gaming publications and ban all discussion of their ethics.
you think Motor Trend has a published, formal ethics policy?
I'd bet all the large car mags do - if a reporter had a significant financial stake in a particular manufacturer, for example, that would matter to the editor. I remember when Car&Driver was accused every month of being a wholly-owned subsidiary of one Japanese brand or another (for daring to point out that the Japanese cars were, well, better), and was pretty uptight about ensuring there was no truth to the regular accusations.
I'm sorry, but the whole "journalistic ethics" gamergate complaint seems to me to be a way to give cover to some very ugly and unseemly sentiment.
Possibly. There's certainly ugly sentiment - longtime gamers are quite upset about the longtime prejudice against them, about being stereotyped, about being told they're no good or their games are no good. This was just another Jack Thompson event, and people are still pretty bitter about the original.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
As John Scalzi put it: "Face it dudes: "Gamergate" is a toxic thing. You can't say you support (it) WITHOUT explicitly standing with those who hate and harass women."
It's this sort of utter bullshit that offends me. I hear it constantly from the left - all arguments are ad-hominum. "If you disagree, you can only be a racist." "If you disagree, you can only be sexist." "If you disagree, you must be a Nazi". And on and on like that for decades.
And then discussion sites ban all discussion of the issue. It's the most frequent leftist argument of all: "I'm right because SHUT UP".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I'm sure you know that the article which "featured" Quinn was about a reality TV show and not a review of a game or of Quinn.
Again, "the article" was not a review of a game or of Quinn's work, so where exactly is the violation?
As I understood it, the article singled out Quinn's game as being exceptionally good, and while it's not a full on paid-review (as was erroneously reported by many) it can still be considered an endorsement - hence the reaction (or overreaction, depending on your view).
This is the stupidest of the gamergate arguments. "You shouldn't be outraged about abuse, because there's so much abuse."
It's only a stupid argument because you've deliberately misrepresented it. Parent never claimed that one shouldn't be outraged, only that your reaction should be gender agnostic (outrage or otherwise).
It's pretty funny...
Why is it that responses to gamergate have an unfortunate tendency to resort to ad hominem attacks (see: "'gamer' is dead" articles) that aren't very productive?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's very easy to respond, because clearly, you're not entirely informed. The violation is, and the accusation was from the very beginning of getting free publicity. Nowhere did I say that a review of the game was made by Grayson. However, it is worth pointing out, that after the failure of the game jam written about in the article, Quinn decided to use this publicity to 'start' her own game jam, which had no date, no location, no judges, and was accepting donations into her personal paypal account... Why was her game jam website registered on the day the article was published? Surely you aren't going to say conincidence. It was definitely cronyism; that's why the article should never have been written. Grayson should have recused himself from the whole thing, due to his building relationship with Quinn, which arguably had began before the article was published.
There has also been significant criticism that the game jam which failed, was sabotaged. Other people involved had come out to say so, and it was all because Quinn took umbrage to their transgender policy, yet wouldn't say why. Furthermore, there was no fact checking to a previous claim of harassment from Quinn, relating to wizardchan. That appears to have been completely made up by Quinn for free sympathy and publicity. None of the publications fact checked anything, just ran with it and got her game greenlit after it had failed previously.
This is the stupidest of the gamergate arguments. "You shouldn't be outraged about abuse, because there's so much abuse."
You could try to read what I wrote, and you'll see I'm not saying that at all. I guess that's why you need to misrepresent what I've written. I'm asking what makes abuse against women special, compared to any other abuse. I don't like getting harassed and abused as much as anyone else, but I don't see why abuse leveled at women deserves any special place considering how toxic some communities are. More to the point, why is abuse against straight white males completely unremarkable, and ignorable?
So, if you want to make me guilty by association, because I do support GamerGate, then I guess you're no better than all the harassment produced by anti-GG people, such as more recently Briana Wu, teasing a disabled woman (cameragirl) on twitter, and Devin Faraci, who has labelled us as worse than ISIS (yes he went there, and wasn't the only one), so why haven't you just gone out and called me a fucking aspie terrorist already? You're explicitly standing with bigots!
Gamergators are the real victims. Clearly, it's the people who are intolerant of their intolerance that are the real intolerant ones.
They're just engaged in a righteous crusade for journalistic ethics, as you can clearly see if you read the 4chan and Reddit forums where the movement started.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You would be wrong.
Where is the "longtime prejudice" against gamers? Is the industries 30 year history of tailoring games to "longtime gamers" evidence of this prejudice?
But this time the gamergators are Jack Thompson - crying victim, making ridiculous claims and generally whining about how awful everyone is being to them. How unfair it is that abuse is being called out. How unfair it is that gaming publications are finally trying to include female writers, writing about things that affect women gamers. How unfair it is that there are now female characters in games. I was just reading an interesting exchange on a gaming site about how gamergators intend to boycott games with female protagonists, just to show those feminists. I've seen the (ultimately deleted) comments are Rock Paper Shotgun. I haven't heard such whining since they started letting black students into the University of Georgia (yes, I'm that old). "It's going to ruin our culture!" And they've suddenly developed an expertise in "journalistic ethics", the same way the hard-core racists became experts in phrenology in order to give some authoritative air to their pitiful cries.
Death threats. By name. Publishing the home addresses, personal information and names of children. If someone telling you that some of your games are sexist brings you to this level, psychiatric treatment is more appropriate than a hashtag campaign.
When you have been a privileged class, as male gamers have been for decades, it's hard to see things start to change. But the hard time you're having doesn't make the change any less inexorable. There has never in history been a successful campaign to stop a culture from changing.
I've been playing computer games avidly longer than most gamergators have been alive. I will continue to play computer games avidly long after gamergators have become a sad footnote to the history of gaming (which was about a week ago). The only threat to "gamer culture" is coming from their continuing embarrassing behavior. It smelled from the day Adam Baldwin (!) gave this sorrowful movement a name.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"I've received an anonymous death threat, therefore my opponents are scum" is pretty fallacious "reasoning".
I'm sure you know that the article which "featured" Quinn was about a reality TV show and not a review of a game or of Quinn.
Amazing. There's a conflict of interest right there and you just don't get it because it doesn't precisely fit the mold of whatever you think a conflict of interest is.
Kind of like claiming bribery isn't bribery, if you pay for the bribe with a credit card rather than the stereotypical suitcase of cash. Because crooks only pay for bribes with suitcases of cash. Seriously.
Well, then why did the gamergate movement provide over $70,000 to help women make video games (the fine young capitalists) while absolutely no mainstream 'journalist' outlets covered it at all. It happened on no publicity at all, yet still went through. I think it proves a point that you're position is laughably ignorant.
That's why I became a racist, sexist Nazi. So I can answer with "Yes, I *am* a racist (or sexist, or Nazi). So what?"
It's fun to watch them gibber as their minds break. Easier to herd them into the camps, too.
Sheldon: I've never played D&D with a girl before.
Penny: That's OK sweetie; no-one has.
- The big bang theory
Well, you've clearly decided all gamers are evil. Whatever makes you happy. That was the mainstream view for most of gaming's history after all - from the moral panic over D&D, to the various attempts to outlaw violent video games, you fit right in.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's this sort of utter bullshit that offends me. I hear it constantly from the left - all arguments are ad-hominum. "If you disagree, you can only be a racist." "If you disagree, you can only be sexist." "If you disagree, you must be a Nazi". And on and on like that for decades.
PopeRatzo's bio labels himself as an "leftwing extremist", so go figure.
There was a study out there that actually men and women gather "trash talk" post both, but men do receive twice the rate. The difference ? Men most probably ignore being told they are "faggot" or long accepted it as being part of the game voice-over-game, but women seems to take offense far more quickly when they are told they are "bitches" or whatever other stuff. Make of that what you will, some colleague think women should toughen up, personally I think trolls/trashtalker should tone down, probably we have both irrealistic expectation.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I do not want to hear this anymore.. .. I used to play tombraider and I loved it, and I bet women love it too. I love GTA and my girlfriend love it too.. She burn more cars then I do.
There is no such thing as games for men or games for womens. There is fun simulations of the world. And guess what womens live in the same world as men do.
Just stop this, I agree with ealier poster that said "a screwdriver does not need to have a pink handle for women to use it".
I dunno about the rest, but I can't actually side with someone who is a self-confessed rapist. If she defines herself as such, no one sane should be running to her defence.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
You can throw in a bunch of easy slams against stupid arguments, but the fact of the matter is most of this "issue" isn't an issue. The cry sexist crowd is starting to get down it's straw men arguments pat. Perhaps your argument is there are sexist people that are also gamers? Guess what, there are sexist, racist, you name it, people, in ANY group of people. Hence, why gamers don't really like being all categorized as sexist. Which is what's happening.
Not to mention, there's been female protagonists / characters in games, long ago. Since you're so old, maybe you've forgotten phantasy star ? Did playing Alis turn you off to that game ? No? Because it doesn't matter, this whole discussion is bullshit.
Women dress slutty / have unattainable bodies ? Have you seen the DUDES in these games ? I mean, I guess we can start a whole puritan put on some clothes movement, but again, this whole discussion is bullshit.
Women characters are treated badly in games ? How many dudes have you seen beat up, shot, killed, etc. Again, this whole discussion is bullshit.
Women are harassed online ? No shit, so is everyone else. Maybe gamers are assholes or trolls, but that's not sexism.
Good link to UoG, now you're calling us sexist AND racist. Want to compare this to the holocaust next ?
Male gamers are a "privileged class" ? What privileges have we had, exactly ? Producers produce the content that we buy ?
This is the high horse with which you can go ride to hell on.
Are you sure that your bad experiences do not just come from the fact that you're a racist sexist nazi? I'm not saying you are, just want to point out that I know from personal experience that there are a lot of racist sexist nazis out there who have no idea that they are one.
Also, what about this constant rightist/leftist bullshit, is this alleged dichotomy really still relevant where you live? Because where I live it sure isn't, except perhaps for the extreme left and right totalitarians who tend to agree on almost everything anyway and sometimes switch their allegiances several times during their lifetime.
Always have to make life complicated. I don't care what sex you are. All I expect depending depending if the game is for fun or serious competition you help either make it fun or bring your 'A' game.
I figure its those little pamphlets that really brought girls into D&D.
http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Dark_Dungeons_(Chick_tract)
When you have been a privileged class, as male gamers have been for decades, it's hard to see things start to change. But the hard time you're having doesn't make the change any less inexorable. There has never in history been a successful campaign to stop a culture from changing.
Yeah, privileged with being losers. Thank you very much.
I was in 3 different long lasting D&D groups in the 1980s. I think most of us would have loved to have girls join, but no girls played with us in that decade. Whenever we got the balls to ask a girl to play they just looked at us like we were crazy, like they would get nerd cooties. I went to a D&D convention in New Haven at that time and I remember there was only one girl out of about 500 guys. She was very popular, with a whole lot of guys wanting to be in her group.
There certainly was a social penalty for me being a nerd at that time, but I didn't feel I had a choice. I loved gaming and it was part of my identity. At that time, however, I think there was a larger penalty for female nerds coming from the non-gaming community than for male nerds. Any girl joining our very small and admittedly not very attractive group probably would have been marked as a pariah by mainstream social groups.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
It's more the fact that the GamerGate supporters were more willing to believe that it was all some giant conspiracy and these victims were sending death threats to themselves, and then creating a fake harassment campaign on social media, rather than believe a woman.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The gamers behing GamerGate make a really good point: that they like their games violent and showing b00bs, female bare skin and women in scant armor, and these games should not cease to exist merely because some people are offended by them.
The journalists against GamerGate make an equally really point, though: that such games do not belong in mainstream titles intended for all audiences; they should be distributed through special channels as the soft porn they are.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Rather than believe someone they didn't trust in the first place you mean. Their gender had nothing to do with it. And yes, some people were willing to posture about that being a possibility. It is not an unknown tactic used by certain people.
It is not a "giant conspiracy" for someone to threaten themselves or make up a threat. Nor is it a conspiracy for a single supporter to send the threat. Both happen. No one knows if it has happened in these cases but asserting it is not even a possibility is disingenuous.
I actually think the threats are completely unrelated to the whole thing. Just some asshole or assholes capitalizing on the current tension and media attention.
I'm reasonably sure that girls that like books are more intelligent that the ones who don't. And if they like boys games, they are more likely to develop competitive behavior, which in turn make them better and more focused to whatever they do besides gaming. So, yes, the statement is likely to be true regardless of what the PR police thinks (and yes, I know thats an oxymoron)
A good response is "if you don't support war you support the terrorists!" Or if they use 'left' as a personal identity: "Oh, I see you went to the George W. Bush school of political rhetoric".
Not even close.
I've been an avid gamer for 30 years. It's pretty easy to see that most gamers aren't evil. Even the misguided gamergators aren't evil. They're just sad and unwilling to accept that their world has changed around them.
And the last thing I would ever want is any part of video gaming outlawed. I don't know what in anything I've said in this discussion I would have led you to believe any of those things, but I think our conversation has given me some insight into how the #gamergators think, and how easily they construct enemies in their own minds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The journalists against GamerGate make an equally really point, though: that such games do not belong in mainstream titles intended for all audiences
Softcore porn? I dare say 99% of the nasty things in games you can also find in mainstream TV, movies, music, comic books, etc. Species (omg Natasha Henstridge bewbs!) showed in the same theater that showed the first Power Rangers movie (which had a scantly clad amazon woman btw, and there were always one or two female rangers, HURRAY FOR KID'S SHOWS)
Just like movies, games do have their own ESRB rating system. It's up to responsible parents and sales clerks to use the rating accordingly, not blame it on gamers and gaming culture who play them.
I'm pretty sure that's not why I think Obama is a terrible president. I'm pretty sure that's why I won't vote for Hillary. I'm pretty sure my stance on immigration has nothing to do with race ("favor people with college degrees - give them all greencards before any of the lettuce pickers"). I'm pretty sure my opposition to ISIS, and their self-declared freedom to rape any non-believer, isn't because I'm sexist.
And on and on. But rationality doesn't matter, People use a list of proscribed leftist beliefs as tribal identification, and anyone who diverts from rightthink in any way can only be a racists sexist Nazi, because they're clearly out-tribe and unpeople!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"Conflict of interest"? This is a friggin' blog about games. We're not talking about The New York Times here. It's a blog. If they want to write about how good their mom's apple cobbler is, it does not violate any "journalistic ethics".
Somehow, khallow, I knew you'd pop up on the side of #gamergators.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's pretty easy to see that most gamers aren't evil. Even the misguided gamergators aren't evil. They're just sad and unwilling to accept that their world has changed around them.
And they are right to be sad and unwilling.
You said it yourself: most gamers aren't evil. So the world most gamers live in aren't the cherry picked strawmen that journalists and feminists attack. It is they/you who are conjuring conspiracy theories and creating imaginary enemies. At worst, gamergate is merely returning the favor.
"The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction."
#gamergators are just gamers. Most gamers (myself included) give approximately 0 fucks about gender issues, feminism in gaming, or any of that BS and just wish the SJWs would be noisy somewhere else and let us get back to gaming. But it sure would be nice to have game review site that reviewed games on their merits as games, not on whether it's the kind of games one is "supposed to" like, and especially not based on whether the game is from the game company the reviewer is currently sleeping with someone from, or renting an apartment from, or the like.
Now I feel a burning need to re-install Duke Nukem Forever and play it through again. I blame you for this Ratzo - the blood of triple-breasted aliens will be on your hands.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Just two examples out of your long list of false equivalences and logical fallacies.
1/ Just because you can find a few games where females are the protagonist, or are simply portrayed decently, does not contradict that these are vastly outnumbered by examples of appalling portrayal of women in completely mainstream games.
2/ There is no equivalence of harassment across the board. For instance, threat of some form or other of sexual assault has different psychological impact for different categories of people, depending in particular on how strongly these can relate to a very concrete danger of a similar assault happening to them in real life, or simply to other forms of harassment they routinely receive in real life. I'll leave you to figure out which categories of people I am referring to.
To deny the obvious truth that women as a gender are far less inclined towards games, or at least the same types of games, as males ought to be entirely uncontroversial, and not counted as an "assumption".
Denying this obvious truth out of some well-intentioned desire for equality-through-isotropy is bullshit.
It's one thing to say you're a democrat and I'm a democrat but we disagree on Obamacare.
It's another thing to say that I'm a Nazi because I believe in the way they support the economy but I don't believe that anti-jew crap. Well, you could say that, but the antisemitic part of being a Nazi is such a fundamental part that by supporting the Nazis you are supporting the antismetic part just by being a part of the group, even if you disagree with that particular principle. At some point you have to say I can't support this main tenant of a group and I'm going to go find a group that doesn't stand for such a horrible thing. For me, any group that have a policy that specifically mistreats or alienates another group, is too much for me, even if they have other sane tenets.
I would suggest you investigate more about GamerGate. My understanding is that they prey on having reasonable people in the group that want reform in the industry but aren't sexist to keep their momentum against the minorities of the gamer community going and to make themselves look like a bigger weight in the game market than they are. (See for instance them getting Intel to stop supporting Gamasutra). As a woman, I can't condone GamerGate because of the way they treat minorities, even though I agree that sites that review games like IGN are a bit too in bed with companies like EA to give impartial reviews.
I have seen a very strange, to me, behavior.
Some Background Information: For some time I have been a member of a clan for an on-line FPS game. The clan gathers on a voice chat server. The clan is broken up onto small teams. You have to formally ask permission of a Team Leader to join that team. Each Team has it's own channel in the voice chat server. You can jump between channels an play with other Teams, but you are really expected to play with your own Team when they are available. You can leave a Team and join another Team with little to no excuse required, but it must be done formally between both Team Leaders.
The Observation: By playing with different Teams and joining in on general conversations, I have determined that there is only 1 woman that is a member of our Clan out of about 200-300 members. That 1 woman is a member of a Team. Judging from my experiences playing with each team, both while she was present and when she was not present, I have observed the fact that the Team that she is a member of is the most misogynistic of all the Teams in our Clan. If I had to rate on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is no misogyny and 10 is constant misogyny I would say that most of our Teams are 1 or 2, where the Team she is a member of is about a 3 or sometimes 4. When she is playing on that Team, I have observed that there are more comments, leaning towards the 4-5 range.
Why does she stay with that Team? I have observed that when she plays with the other Team there are little to no misogynist comments. So, she could switch Teams and be rid of most comments. I have heard of no factors that would keep her there, like a husband/boyfriend/relative. She does not initiate the comments, but when they occur she does not rebuke them. She usually responds with something witty or if not then makes no comment. However, her profile picture in the voice chat client is almost always something racy/sexy/suggestive that is updated frequently.
The best theory I have is that she is seeking attention and is willing to put up with the comments to get it and the nature of the other members of her Team make it so that she gets more attention from that Team than she would from any other team in our Clan. Her profile picture and pattern of responses seem to suggest this. Therefore, she does not leave that Team because that is where she knows she will get the most attention.
Does her presence on that Team make the Team more misogynistic? I have insufficient data. Perhaps if she switched Teams, I could make a comparison of pre-switch and post-switch and draw a conclusion. I can say that the Team in question has a much higher percentage of players I would describe as "A-holes".
Or conversely, did she join that Team because it was more misogynistic? A case of being drawn to the "Bad Boys". Again, insufficient data.
"Conflict of interest"? This is a friggin' blog about games. We're not talking about The New York Times here. It's a blog. If they want to write about how good their mom's apple cobbler is, it does not violate any "journalistic ethics".
Thank you for pointing out once again the problem with your reasoning. It's a "blog" is completely irrelevant to whether a conflict of interest exists.
khallow, I knew you'd pop up on the side of #gamergators.
And once again, no matter what side of the argument you fall on, you come up with something that makes rational people squirm.
Do you think that's true ??
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Is this relationship story even important to anything? Yet everyone keeps bringing it up. It's character assassination, in other words a way to ignore what the person is saying if the person is not 100% pure.
Gaming journalism has always been wannabe unprofessional journalism, even when it was men reporting on men. There's nothing new here except as a way to discredit views you disagree with.
"for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books."
Clearly the "boys'" applies to both "games" and "books". So, no, the author of the quote is not saying "that reading a book is something boys do", as you have misstated.
Furthermore, a girl who likes "boys' games" and "boys' books" is more intelligent, from a male perspective. "She gets it! Why don't any of the others?" could apply to video games, bacon or the 3 stooges. Similarly, you probably think that males that don't share your worldview are troglodytes. See how that works? (That's not a question for you, per se, as the answer, in your case, is 'doubtful').
In the end, your position makes no sense, because as a feminist why do you care what a dead man thinks, or a living man for that matter. "Boo hoo hoo, you think women are more emotionally fragile, boo hoo hoo, now I'm sad", makes about as much sense as all of this current noise.
Real gamers are still playing games, SJWs and GamerGaters are sad and I'm starting to think possibly the same set of people.
I understand that cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian, who made the statement that the best thing men could do to support women was to believe them when they say they are being harassed, has had a death threat made against her. Are the police involved? If somebody made an anonymous death threat against me I'd call the police and expect them to take it seriously. How is this being handled in this case (I don't know how things work in the USA).
I knew you'd pop up on the side of #gamergators.
Come now, it couldn't have been that hard to guess that one of slashdot's most vocal advocates of liberty would be against censorship, while one of slashdot's most vocal "leftist extremist" would be all for silencing the opposition.
This is just absurd. You're basically inferring what that disbarred lawyer Jack Thompson was saying, that graphic violent video games causes actual violence.
You still misrepresent the position behind GamerGate. The gamers with it are against being preached to by journalists who are vehemently pushing their moral standard on everyone. Just look at bayonetta 2 reviews from polygon. Sure the game has its art style, but what is otherwise critically praised as a good game, they knock it down, purely because of the imagery it shows. They say it's a bad game because it has a voluptuous female protagonist. Again, they say it's a bad game because it doesn't adhere to their moral standard, rather than actually being a bad game. It just doesn't make sense.
In the grander scheme of things, it's not that important, it is what got the ball rolling though. Again, people were generally suspicious about the nepotism and cronyism, but there never was any solid proof. Even the firing of Jeff Gerstmann, people knew that it was probably due to pressure for the bad review, but there wasn't proof of anything, and certainly no names to attach to it, just two very large companies.
This time, it's different. There's names, there's evidence, there's clear indications that from some, they've been participating in some very dubious ethical practice. There's clear examples of a general antipathy from game 'journalists' towards their readers (many 'gamers are dead' articles in a few hours). The point is, to deny that Quinn did anything wrong, would basically admit that GamerGate is a beat up over nothing. It became a lot bigger than Quinn, but don't forget, it wasn't just the relationships she had, she also concocted that there was a harassment campaign against her last year, after her game didn't get greenlit. Because it followed the narrative many of these 'journalists' want to hear, they didn't do any basic fact checking, just took her word for it, and she reaped massive publicity for it.
I don't think it's character assassination, but if you do, you should have a look at what happened to Max Tempkin and Brad Wardell. They were accused of rape, and the 'journalists' had a field day defaming and character assassinating them without a shred of evidence, just an allegation. Now, they've all found their morals when one of their own (i.e. self styled social justice warrior [yes Quinn called herself that iirc]) got some unwanted attention that was very damaging to the movement because of the incestuous relationships in the industry. The logs from the gamejournopros list proved that they had absolutely no intention of covering it. They didn't, they banned discussion, banned people who mentioned anything. Certainly haven't apologised when they defamed others though, they just went back and tried to quietly sanitise their articles. That's why GamerGate is all about journalistic integrity and ethics; the 'journalists' have clearly demonstrated that they are unrepentant and unapologetic about not having any.
You don't play games because you don't like game journalists? Do you not read because you don't like the NY Times Book Review? Not use the computer because you don't like BYTE?
Anyway, I would think the larger problem with game journalists is that they're clearly in the pocket of game manufacturers, not that they made a tiny bit of an issue over standing up for some woman who said video games are sexist.
Yes I heard all about the "listen and believe" nonsense. What a farce. As if enough people didn't think she was a con-artist before so she's gone right out and said "hey don't question me; just believe everything I say."
Public figures, especially ones that purposefully stir up controversy like Sarkeesian, get death threats frequently enough that police get a lot of reports. There seems to have been some questioning of whether or not there were police reports for some of the incidents; couldn't find the actual reports (I have no idea how true this is) and police always explicitly instruct not to publicize the threat. The most recent one I believe the police issued a statement that they investigated and found no credible threat.
Hopefully they can track down the people behind this nonsense and put an end to it.
Spend five minutes on most MMO public chat channels and I you'll likely be cured of ever wanting the tag 'gamer' associated with you.
Straight while male gamers. The most oppressed class on the planet!
Not only that, but tiny games that don't in any way deal in large amounts of money. But did they get all up in EA's face and send death threats Andrew Wilson? Not so much.
"Adult women are now the largest demographic in gaming"
Sure, that's a valid statement...when you include casual gaming like Bejeweled and Farmville. When you drill down to AAA titles though the truth comes out, which is that women are a tiny fraction of the marketplace.
Except that Angry Birds and Farmville and Bejeweled and Candy Crush are making serious coin and better ROI than the "real games", There's a reason EA (y'know, your "real game publisher") bought PopCap (y'know, makers of *sniff* "casual" games) for 1.3 Billion dollars.
So, yeah - pretty sure game publishers are including "casual gaming". And you sound like an idiot for excluding them because it's not your particular flavor of teabagging.
The gamers behing GamerGate make a really good point: that they like their games violent and showing b00bs, female bare skin and women in scant armor, and these games should not cease to exist merely because some people are offended by them.
The journalists against GamerGate make an equally really point, though: that such games do not belong in mainstream titles intended for all audiences; they should be distributed through special channels as the soft porn they are.
And from watching the Women vs. Gamers, she's not even arguing that the games shouldn't exist - just that they shouldn't be the *only* games that exist.
Is it seriously that controversial that the game industry could use more games that aren't "male loses girl to another guy, and then proceeds on a (possibly bloody rampage) to "reclaim" her? (Fun question: how many games could that sentence refer to?). I got a little girl growing up, and it would be nice if I could point her at more than a handful of games at each age-group that had some interesting role models for her.
AFAIK, only a very small minority of women became gamers through D&D.
Call of Cthulhu, though, attracted a lot of women to role-playing, mainly because the game was actually about role-playing (and solving mysteries) rather than trying to find who had the bigger sword.
I for one have decided to 'check-out' from games; I'm no longer spending any money on games with anyone for anything. I'm not pushing a boycott, I've just decided that the well has been so poisoned, that I don't want to be supporting anyone with my custom.
Just play games. Ignore them. Do what YOU want to do. Just play games. You are in control of your life, not them. They are outside. You are inside. Just play games.
Fuck 'em.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
How can i convinge my girl to play league of legends with me? She doesen't want to hear this ideea. I don't know exactly why she thinks she isn't capable to play it.
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