Over 1,800 Gaming Professionals Condemn Hate Speech in Open Letter

[RedDeadFred]

It's a nice ideal, and one that I agree with. Unfortunately, due to human nature and the anonymity that the internet provides, there are always going to be assholes who do and say asshole things. Publicly telling them that we don't like what they're doing is not going to change anything. People simply need to try a bit harder at not letting assholes on the internet bother them (I understand that that's easier said than done if it's a large group of people targeting you). Don't give the assholes the satisfaction of even discussing them (yes I'm being somewhat hypocritical right now). Don't feed the trolls. Isn't that supposed to be internet 101. I know these people may not THINK they're trolling, but with the bile they spit at people, they should be treated as such and ignored.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

snip

dude there is such thing as "not a valid comparison", even if i had meant what you said i meant

anyways, yes i do say theres a huge disconnection right now between gaming sites and its readers, how would you explain all those articles that came out claiming the end of gamers? or saying gamers shouldnt be your audience? or that fun shouldnt be the main aspect to be judged from a game? (seriously, fun is not absolutely important for a game now? fucking what?)

the escapist is one of the few sites to take a mild stance on all of this, many sites simply fail to acknowledge theres a whole other side to this debacle, instead labeling us all who are agaisnt zoe as misogynists, or intolerant, or other utterly terrible and disgusting things

 

[R0guy]

Radical feminists? These forums are beginning to look like they've been taken over by some paranoid fringe far right movement.

It'd be super-paranoid to say that someone claiming video games contribute to rape-culture won a GDC 2014 award or anything... Oh wait.

 

[Pogilrup]

I'm afraid that this letter isn't going to help things at all.

IMO it has a subtle tone that feels condescending and demanding.

That and it never asks for the journalists to improve their behavior as well.

 

[Pogilrup]

Can you stop making political/ethical/philosophical statements and start making good games... like in the old times? Please?

A woman can't even play online for one hour without being sexually harassed, nor can she show up at convention and be accepted by all as a legitimate fan of the hobby, or criticize the content of a game without being threatened with assault, murder, and rape of her and her family. And that's just our issue with gender and their still race and sexuality to contend with, so yeah, we need condemnation, and furthermore we need to purge any and every person that thinks that any of the above is acceptable.

Wow that's a lot of self flagellating hyperbole for one post!

Love how you write off ISIS as "tactless" but then claim "millions of lives" (that's "millions") are "ruined" (not "mildly inconvenienced", not "upset", actually "ruined").

The solution - "a purge"

And you probably wonder why few people take this PC posturing drek stuff seriously!

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

You know I'm having trouble taking you seriously.

Thing with Poe's Law and such.

 

[ByzantineEmperorInExile]

Yet another blatant attempt to spin Stephen Totilo's incompetence and game journalism lack of ethics into a "hate speech" story. By now you gotta be really blind to believe these people.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I bet if you put all the stupid things games journalists have said then compared that to all the death threats and stupid things gamers have said just against Anita it wouldn't even be close.

Look at any female game reviewer's comments and see how many comments are about her boobs or how pretty or ugly she is.

Look at the way gamers treated Carolyn Petit for her GTA 5 review.

Gamers have been treating reviewers and journalists like shit for so long it's not even comparable.

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I bet if you took a per-capita number, you'd see that maybe 0.5% of gamers have said stupid shit but I wonder how much the journalist percentage would be. I'm willing to bet a whole hell of a lot more.



There's infinitely more gamers than there's game journalists, hundreds of thousands of times more. It's disingenuous to look at instances of harassment and compare the sheer numbers of them. When 30% of game journalists wage war on gamer identity, that's a MUCH bigger deal than 0.5% of gamers being sexist assholes since 0.5% of ANY group will be sexist assholes and to make gamers a scapegoat for sexism is unfair.

 

[DarkRawen]

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

0_0

Wait... are you actually serious? You would have someone removed from the site for not sharing your opinion?

Wow. That's... wow.

OT: I wish the letter was less ambiguously worded. At this point, it's pretty hard to know if it's harassment of everyone that's considered bad, or of a chosen few, which makes it hard to judge. :/ Obviously, I'd hope it's the former.

Edit: Also, no offence to Tyriless, I simply don't agree with removing the voices of those who don't agree with one view-points.

 

[ByzantineEmperorInExile]

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

0_0

Wait... are you actually serious? You would have someone removed from the site for not sharing your opinion?

Wow. That's... wow.

OT: I wish the letter was less ambiguously worded. At this point, it's pretty hard to know if it's harassment of everyone that's considered bad, or of a chosen few, which makes it hard to judge. :/ Obviously, I'd hope it's the former.

Will you two please take an hour off the forum to cool yer brains and not engage on more kind words that might result in multiple bans and general frustration for both of you and the entire community? I recommend a beer and Netflix.

 

[The Bucket]

Can you stop making political/ethical/philosophical statements and start making good games... like in the old times? Please?

A woman can't even play online for one hour without being sexually harassed, nor can she show up at convention and be accepted by all as a legitimate fan of the hobby, or criticize the content of a game without being threatened with assault, murder, and rape of her and her family. And that's just our issue with gender and their still race and sexuality to contend with, so yeah, we need condemnation, and furthermore we need to purge any and every person that thinks that any of the above is acceptable.

Wow that's a lot of self flagellating hyperbole for one post!

Love how you write off ISIS as "tactless" but then claim "millions of lives" (that's "millions") are "ruined" (not "mildly inconvenienced", not "upset", actually "ruined").

The solution - "a purge"

And you probably wonder why few people take this PC posturing drek stuff seriously!

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

I literally cannot fathom what you find so disagreeable about his post. He accused you of hyperbole, that doesn't even qualify as an insult. Unless this is some kind of next level irony i'm not getting.

 

[DarkRawen]

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

0_0

Wait... are you actually serious? You would have someone removed from the site for not sharing your opinion?

Wow. That's... wow.

OT: I wish the letter was less ambiguously worded. At this point, it's pretty hard to know if it's harassment of everyone that's considered bad, or of a chosen few, which makes it hard to judge. :/ Obviously, I'd hope it's the former.

Will you two please take an hour off the forum to cool yer brains and not engage on more kind words that might result in multiple bans and general frustration for both of you and the entire community? I recommend a beer and Netflix.

Huh? I haven't engaged with this person before, nor posted in this forum, I was just addressing their former post... ):

Edit: Also, I can't see any issues with my language, I was simply expressing surprise/shock over that someone would go that far.

 

[ByzantineEmperorInExile]

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

0_0

Wait... are you actually serious? You would have someone removed from the site for not sharing your opinion?

Wow. That's... wow.

OT: I wish the letter was less ambiguously worded. At this point, it's pretty hard to know if it's harassment of everyone that's considered bad, or of a chosen few, which makes it hard to judge. :/ Obviously, I'd hope it's the former.

Will you two please take an hour off the forum to cool yer brains and not engage on more kind words that might result in multiple bans and general frustration for both of you and the entire community? I recommend a beer and Netflix.

Huh? I haven't engaged with this person before, nor posted in this forum, I was just addressing their former post... ):

When you walk the streets and a drunken dude pukes on you, you don't stop to argue about morals or how you don't deserve the puke.

You go home and clean yourself and forget about it.

 

[AkaDad]

I bet if you put all the stupid things games journalists have said then compared that to all the death threats and stupid things gamers have said just against Anita it wouldn't even be close.

Look at any female game reviewer's comments and see how many comments are about her boobs or how pretty or ugly she is.

Look at the way gamers treated Carolyn Petit for her GTA 5 review.

Gamers have been treating reviewers and journalists like shit for so long it's not even comparable.

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I bet if you took a per-capita number, you'd see that maybe 0.5% of gamers have said stupid shit but I wonder how much the journalist percentage would be. I'm willing to bet a whole hell of a lot more.



There's infinitely more gamers than there's game journalists, hundreds of thousands of times more. It's disingenuous to look at instances of harassment and compare the sheer numbers of them. When 30% of game journalists wage war on gamer identity, that's a MUCH bigger deal than 0.5% of gamers being sexist assholes since 0.5% of ANY group will be sexist assholes and to make gamers a scapegoat for sexism is unfair.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, game reviewers are shit on by gamers. Female gamers told to stop reviewing and make sandwiches. Reviewers being accused of taking bribes.

Then journalists say they wish those asshole gamers to figuratively die off it's a fucking outrage. How dare they say hurtful things! Show us some respect!

It's fucking hilarious how people get indignant when they're on the receiving end.

 

[ByzantineEmperorInExile]

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, game reviewers are shit on by gamers. Female gamers told to stop reviewing and make sandwiches. Reviewers being accused of taking bribes.

Then journalists say they wish those asshole gamers to figuratively die off it's a fucking outrage. How dare they say hurtful things! Show us some respect!

It's fucking hilarious how people get indignant when they're on the receiving end.

That is not what happened, that is not how it happened, you should check your facts and stop believing the bullshit news that are being sold to you. Seek the truth. Think for yourself. And try to do so calmly.

 

[DarkRawen]

I'll make this clear for you by what I mean by purge: I want you removed from this site. You're shouldn't be welcome here. The existence of your account and your ability to comment is a detriment to community and has no value. I would like to see The Escapist take a heavier hand in moderating people like you. You're viewpoints are terrible, and have no business to be expressed. I will take ever opportunity I can to make my disgust known to the moderators, the editors, and to the content providers not to tolerate your comments and others like it. I have and will continue to submit feedback to encourage they lower the threshold of suspension and outright banning, until this site and the community it represents becomes a little more bearable. Maybe it won't change a thing, but maybe it will. In short, no this isn't posturing. I want you gone, and I'll keep pushing for it until it happens.

0_0

Wait... are you actually serious? You would have someone removed from the site for not sharing your opinion?

Wow. That's... wow.

OT: I wish the letter was less ambiguously worded. At this point, it's pretty hard to know if it's harassment of everyone that's considered bad, or of a chosen few, which makes it hard to judge. :/ Obviously, I'd hope it's the former.

Will you two please take an hour off the forum to cool yer brains and not engage on more kind words that might result in multiple bans and general frustration for both of you and the entire community? I recommend a beer and Netflix.

Huh? I haven't engaged with this person before, nor posted in this forum, I was just addressing their former post... ):

When you walk the streets and a drunken dude pukes on you, you don't stop to argue about morals or how you don't deserve the puke.

You go home and clean yourself and forget about it.

Edit your mistake, then, because this is quite rude, and pretty uncalled for. :/ I didn't engage in the conversation before that, yet you told me to calm down for words I haven't used.

I'll leave the thread and go to sleep, just stop acting like it's my fault for simply disagreeing with the notion of pushing for the removal of someone one does not agree with. ):

Edit: I'm sorry for having derailed the conversation as well, I suppose I should just have kept quiet from the start. :/

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I bet if you put all the stupid things games journalists have said then compared that to all the death threats and stupid things gamers have said just against Anita it wouldn't even be close.

Look at any female game reviewer's comments and see how many comments are about her boobs or how pretty or ugly she is.

Look at the way gamers treated Carolyn Petit for her GTA 5 review.

Gamers have been treating reviewers and journalists like shit for so long it's not even comparable.

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I bet if you took a per-capita number, you'd see that maybe 0.5% of gamers have said stupid shit but I wonder how much the journalist percentage would be. I'm willing to bet a whole hell of a lot more.



There's infinitely more gamers than there's game journalists, hundreds of thousands of times more. It's disingenuous to look at instances of harassment and compare the sheer numbers of them. When 30% of game journalists wage war on gamer identity, that's a MUCH bigger deal than 0.5% of gamers being sexist assholes since 0.5% of ANY group will be sexist assholes and to make gamers a scapegoat for sexism is unfair.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, game reviewers are shit on by gamers. Female gamers told to stop reviewing and make sandwiches. Reviewers being accused of taking bribes.

Then journalists say they wish those asshole gamers to figuratively die off it's a fucking outrage. How dare they say hurtful things! Show us some respect!

It's fucking hilarious how people get indignant when they're on the receiving end.

They're still only a tiny miniscule fraction of us "gamers" as a whole. Use a different word. If you used "black people" instead of "criminals" in a story regarding daily gun violence just because some criminals happen to be black or "women" instead of "prostitutes" in a story about prostitution just because some prostitutes are female, do you think that'd be acceptable in any way shape or form?


You don't even know they're "gamers". They're "people who post horrible shit online" as far as you can know. Anyone with a phone or PC can do that. They're not us.

 

[The Bucket]

I bet if you put all the stupid things games journalists have said then compared that to all the death threats and stupid things gamers have said just against Anita it wouldn't even be close.

Look at any female game reviewer's comments and see how many comments are about her boobs or how pretty or ugly she is.

Look at the way gamers treated Carolyn Petit for her GTA 5 review.

Gamers have been treating reviewers and journalists like shit for so long it's not even comparable.

If you didn't engage in all the shitty behavior then I'm not talking about you, so don't bother me with your comments telling me how great you are and that it's only a handful of gamers that act like dicks.

I bet if you took a per-capita number, you'd see that maybe 0.5% of gamers have said stupid shit but I wonder how much the journalist percentage would be. I'm willing to bet a whole hell of a lot more.



There's infinitely more gamers than there's game journalists, hundreds of thousands of times more. It's disingenuous to look at instances of harassment and compare the sheer numbers of them. When 30% of game journalists wage war on gamer identity, that's a MUCH bigger deal than 0.5% of gamers being sexist assholes since 0.5% of ANY group will be sexist assholes and to make gamers a scapegoat for sexism is unfair.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, game reviewers are shit on by gamers. Female gamers told to stop reviewing and make sandwiches. Reviewers being accused of taking bribes.

Then journalists say they wish those asshole gamers to figuratively die off it's a fucking outrage. How dare they say hurtful things! Show us some respect!

It's fucking hilarious how people get indignant when they're on the receiving end.

If you step outside gaming for a moment, you'll see this is true of virtually every hobby. You can't stop assholes being asshole; you can report and condemn the ones who go too far (as we all should) but there are always more. That doesn't give you the right to climb up into your ivory tower and attack the whole group for the actions of a few.
And regarding reviewers taking bribes; as with everything there are people who take things too far; but after the Kane and Lynch debacle, the Dorito incident and many more examples of unethical behavior, games journalists shouldn't take healthy skepticism as abuse

 

[AkaDad]

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, game reviewers are shit on by gamers. Female gamers told to stop reviewing and make sandwiches. Reviewers being accused of taking bribes.

Then journalists say they wish those asshole gamers to figuratively die off it's a fucking outrage. How dare they say hurtful things! Show us some respect!

It's fucking hilarious how people get indignant when they're on the receiving end.

That is not what happened, that is not how it happened, you should check your facts and stop believing the bullshit news that are being sold to you. Seek the truth. Think for yourself. And try to do so calmly.

I've been gaming for close to 40 years. I've been online close to 20 years. I've watched this all play out. How dare you accuse me of lying and being some propaganda receptacle who can't think for himself.

Asshole gamers have been giving the hobby that I love a bad name for way too long, I and others are fed up with it.