Video Game Culture - In Need of Serious Self Reflection?

[Inigima]

Can we talk about the harassment of Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Jenn Frank, Mattie Brice, and other women in the industry in this thread?

Edit: missing words required for that sentence to be parseable English

[Relic]

Can we talk about the harassment of Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Jenn Frank, Mattie Brice, and other women in the industry thread?

I should hope so.

[Guy Kilmore]

Can we talk about the harassment of Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, Jenn Frank, Mattie Brice, and other women in the industry in this thread?

Edit: missing words required for that sentence to be parseable English

It is also being discussed in the Women and Minority in Geek Culture Thread. http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/96553-women-and-minority-in-geek-culture-part-the-4/page-18

[eyenon15]

I don't think multiplayer rudeness can be attributed to gaming culture.

Most of these equate to chat rooms with no moderation, there will be a lot of inappropriate talk in situations like this regardless if the people are gamers or not. If anything multiplayer gaming is remarkably civil in comparison to other internet places that have no moderation.

I'm speaking for games like sports games like FIFA, madden, nba, or rpg/shooters like mass effect and call of duty.

I'm not as familiar with how multiplayer works with MMOs.

Also most of my experience comes from playstation network, which seems to receive less complaints than xbox live.

[Kalbear]

Depends heavily on the chat rooms. Chat rooms for this board have never been heavily moderated and have not devolved into the kind of inanity that talks about stalking women in a joking manner, as an example. Other chat rooms do not appear to devolve that way either. Where they do devolve are places where the culture is eerily similar to gaming culture - heavily male, white, young.

[TerraPrime]

I don't know if I'd go that far. Pretty much every game encourages some level of sociopathy; after all, even the most generic RPG rewards you for breaking into peoples' homes and stealing everything not nailed down. But I don't see us all becoming thieves. GTA may glamorize criminal behavioral to an uncomfortable extent, but that's not really that different from The Godfather or Goodfellas.

I do not think there is a one-to-one link between playing GTA and going out to steal cars, no.

I think contexts matter, too. GTA and games like that strive to be realistic. It renders a simulated version of real cities. It uses contemporary music. The characters are supposed to be renditions of contemporary peers. There is no denying that there is fun in simulating behavior that is otherwise illegal in real life. It's pure escapism and that's not my beef here. It is the cumulative decisions in game play design that I hae trouble with.

[eyenon15]

Depends heavily on the chat rooms. Chat rooms for this board have never been heavily moderated and have not devolved into the kind of inanity that talks about stalking women in a joking manner, as an example. Other chat rooms do not appear to devolve that way either. Where they do devolve are places where the culture is eerily similar to gaming culture - heavily male, white, young.

This forum is moderated, playing 8 on 8 call of duty match is not. There is no comparison whatsoever.

The moderation of this forum is extremely heavy is comparison to a multiplayer game with zero moderation.

How many mods does this forum have? Gotta be close to 10, it's ridiculous to claim this is anywhere near the same moderation as multiplayer games.

[Kalbear]

The chat rooms of this forum, however, are not moderated at all.

[TerraPrime]

This forum is moderated, playing 8 on 8 call of duty match is not. There is no comparison whatsoever.

The moderation of this forum is extremely heavy is comparison to a multiplayer game with zero moderation.

You didn't understand Kalbear's reference. The chat room he was referring to was not the chat room here, but an IRC chat channel and then later the ezboard chat client.

[eyenon15]

The chat rooms of this forum, however, are not moderated at all.

I didn't know there was such a thing.

Who was it that was joking about stalking women in this chatroom?

[eyenon15]

Oh and aren't adult women the biggest demographic in gaming industry now? Is this the young, white, male gaming culture of which you speak?

If a joke about stalking a fictional character is your smoking gun, you have nothing to complain about.

[Lyanna Stark]

I think it's fairly interesting how different games develop different "cultures" (and I can't quite tell why most of the time) on MMO's it can even be noticeably different between servers.

City of Heroes for instance had it's flaws (creepy role-playing, whining on the forums...) but nothing like the hostility I saw in say, Warhammer Online, or even SWTOR.

I agree. And you klnow, funny you mention SWTOR as a game with a lot of whining and hostility since I found it to be pretty ok. :lol: I guess after like 8 years of WoW (I skipped MoP), my bar is set pretty low.

Funnily enough, when I started playing online in 1999-2000 in Unreal Tournament (the original!) people were really quite polite. This was an FPS, highly competitive, but back then "gg" actually meant "good game" in a non-sarcastic way and people actually did say "gg" almost all the time. I saw virtually no whining, no slurs, no spamming, trolling or anything and I played online relgiously for months and months. The worst you'd get was complaints about someone "camping" a spot which normally quickly led to that guy getting shot down.

Nowadays I would never, ever in a million years play FPS games online. They strike me as a cesspit of awfulness, harrassment and trolling. And you know, I say that as someone who has withstood WoW, SWTOR, WAR, WildStar and FFXIV.

Oh and aren't adult women the biggest demographic in gaming industry now? Is this the young, white, male gaming culture of which you speak?

If a joke about stalking a fictional character is your smoking gun, you have nothing to complain about.

Depends what you define as "gaming" and which games you're looking at. If you look at Facebook gaming, then women are a huge group, defintely. If you are looking at games like "Call of Duty" or "GTA" then no. RPGs like "Dragon Age" and "Mass Effect" seem to pull closer to 50/50.

I'm not sure what the stalking is about but in general, jokes about stalking is not very funny.

[Theda Baratheon]

I didn't know there was such a thing.

Who was it that was joking about stalking women in this chatroom?

You misunderstood. The point was that sort of shit is not okay here, but would be considered fine in gaming chat rooms. (Even though it's not)

[Daeric]

Not just computer games either: rpg.net calls acertain kind of D&D campaign "murderhobos".

Actually that's just the joke term that a lot of D&D players refer to their characters as, due to most of time adventures not having a fixed address and traveling around a lot killing stuff and taking their stuff.

[eyenon15]

You misunderstood. The point was that sort of shit is not okay here, but would be considered fine in gaming chat rooms. (Even though it's not)

Then that's just repeating my point, that's what I already said.

Because there is zero moderating of multiplayer games, there is moderating here.

[Kalbear]

Also, this looks like one hell of a fun game.

[Theda Baratheon]

Then that's just repeating my point, that's what I already said.

Because there is zero moderating of multiplayer games, there is moderating here.

Then you were told there was no moderation in the chat room...this is like a roundabout.

[eyenon15]

Then you were told there was no moderation in the chat room...this is like a roundabout.

Ok, where do I find this non moderated chatroom that no one ever said or did anything bad in.

That no one ever did anything as bad as joking about stalking a fictional character in.

[Lyanna Stark]

Then that's just repeating my point, that's what I already said.

Because there is zero moderating of multiplayer games, there is moderating here.

Not technically true. A lot of MMOs have some sort of game masters and you can report other players for harrassment etc. The main problem is that this may be enforced in some cases (gold spammers, maybe racists) but ignored in others, and that there often aren't clear enough guidelines for what is acceptable behaviour. Very often too much stuff is tolerated within the community as well, and reporting is frowned upon. You also run into problems with how many people you are actually going to report in a day. After all, you are playing an MMO for fun, not to be some sort of hobby police. I sometimes go on reporting sprees but just as often I just shut my eyes and ears or ignore it.

Spend some time in WoW battlegrounds or LookingforRaid and if you don't believe me, you will after that. Truth.

[eyenon15]

Not technically true. A lot of MMOs have some sort of game masters and you can report other players for harrassment etc. The main problem is that this may be enforced in some cases (gold spammers, maybe racists) but ignored in others, and that there often aren't clear enough guidelines for what is acceptable behaviour. Very often too much stuff is tolerated within the community as well, and reporting is frowned upon. You also run into problems with how many people you are actually going to report in a day. After all, you are playing an MMO for fun, not to be some sort of hobby police. I sometimes go on reporting sprees but just as often I just shut my eyes and ears or ignore it.

Spend some time in WoW battlegrounds or LookingforRaid and if you don't believe me, you will after that. Truth.

Yes, in my original statement on the subject I said I'm not totally familiar with how MMOs work. Sorry, I didn't repeat that on every following post.