Prove to me that the Gaming Community Excludes Women

Dizchu

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Vault101 said:
the fact that both of these things exploded the way they did (sarseskian and quin) I think speaks for itself
I think it's more complicated than that. Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn have done objectionable things. Not harassment-worthy, but enough to make the argument that the only problem people have with them is their gender highly questionable.

I'd prefer for the discussion to go beyond them though, the amount of baggage they bring to discussions like this overshadows the gender aspect of the discussion. Also I could do without more conspiracy theories about how they're using "social justice" to "sabotage American culture" or whatever the Gamergate fringe believes these days.
 

laraem

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Anita has done dry cultural analysis 101 level stuff, what the heck can be objectionable about it. Really you want a sign that there's a problem? It's that Anita's videos are deemed extreme and controversial.

You know there's also the continuing argument that men are the biggest consumer of hardcore games and thus of course the women might be more likely to be sexy and potentially underdeveloped. That has been said way more than it should be (including in that video from Christina Hoff Sommers that some people love so much)
 

Thaluikhain

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
I think giving GTA a pass because it is satirical is problematic. The Saints Row series, while its humour is less dry than GTA's, can get away with it better. I love GTA's humour but there are a lot of people that play GTA, some of them are completely sexist idiots that will take it at face value. I wish it had a badass female player character, if anything it'd be different. I didn't agree with everything the journalist in question said but she did not deserve the amount of shit flung at her for having the audacity to give the game a 9/10.
Yeah, satire doesn't always get round the issue, it has to be done just right. It has to be very close to what it's satirising, and there's problems with Poe's law.

DizzyChuggernaut said:
I think it's more complicated than that. Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn have done objectionable things. Not harassment-worthy, but enough to make the argument that the only problem people have with them is their gender highly questionable.
Which wasn't the argument made, mind. It didn't "explode the way it did" based on whatever objectionable things they did.
 

Dizchu

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laraem said:
Anita has done dry cultural analysis 101 level stuff, what the heck can be objectionable about it. Really you want a sign that there's a problem? It's that Anita's videos are deemed extreme and controversial.
I don't want this thread to become about her but people are voicing their objections to the means in which she makes her videos for example taking other people's materials without permission (even after those involved contacted her about it) despite her gigantic budget. A lot of the outrage came from dishonest actions like this, even if there was an anti-feminist (not necessarily misogynistic) opposition running in parallel. Maybe there are some that see her as a threat simply for being a particular type of feminist but it's unfair to characterise the whole backlash that way.

You know there's also the continuing argument that men are the biggest consumer of hardcore games and thus of course the women might be more likely to be sexy and potentially underdeveloped. That has been said way more than it should be (including in that video from Christina Hoff Sommers that some people love so much)
Christina Hoff Sommers' video troubled me as much as Anita's videos. Perhaps more considering the amount of blind support she got for it. When your opposition is Anita Sarkeesian, people will eat up any counter-arguments you provide even if it's patronising "boys will be boys" nonsense. Again, I think the publishers and marketing forces are at fault for many of the patronising female portrayals in games. They see games as products rather than pieces of art, which is why they think "sex sells" is a worthy pursuit. It's depressing but I think the gradual acceptance of games as storytelling and art will make this problem less prevalent.

thaluikhain said:
Which wasn't the argument made, mind. It didn't "explode the way it did" based on whatever objectionable things they did.
I don't think either of us can say that for certain. My guess is that it was a combination of both, which is why citing it as an example of pure misogyny is an oversimplification.
 

laraem

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She stopped using premade footage apparently and quite frankly LP videos are not owned by the people who make LP videos. So it likely (and I'm pretty sure does) falls under fair use and be real that was but a sliver of the problem, not to mention the objections are often worded as liar/fraud/thief/one who should be arrested. I'm not making this about her but I'm saying that her treatment is evidence of the toxic nature of some of the gaming community vis a vis women.

And yes the publishers are a problem too, it all goes hand in hand. I think the worst thing about the it's for men argument is that it inherently implies that men are not interested in women who aren't sexy and underdeveloped. The argument basically sounds like of course women won't factor in the games are for men and they don't want that. Which I think sells men hella short, and if that i their argument then once more it points to the aforementioned toxic nature of the some of the gaming community vis a vis women.
 

Dizchu

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laraem said:
She stopped using premade footage apparently and quite frankly LP videos are not owned by the people who make LP videos. So it likely (and I'm pretty sure does) falls under fair use and be real that was but a sliver of the problem, not to mention the objections are often worded as liar/fraud/thief/one who should be arrested. I'm not making this about her but I'm saying that her treatment is evidence of the toxic nature of some of the gaming community vis a vis women.
I think the main issue was that she was not utilising her huge budget in ways she said she would. It came off as disingenuous, to both detractors and former supporters. But for the sake of argument let's ignore any of the frustrations people may have with Anita. Let's give get rid of the methods she uses and the way she's gone about things. Let's strip it all down to her and her arguments.

I think it is unfair to label anyone that has a problem with a specific woman as a misogynist. Same with labelling someone that has issues with a particular feminist an anti-feminist. I disagree with Anita and Christina Hoff Sommers yet I consider myself a feminist. Even if someone were to harass a specific woman, I have problems calling that misogyny too, as much as I condemn that kind of behaviour. If Anita was a representative of females as an entire gender, it'd be misogyny. If it were only about her gender there wouldn't be women participating in her criticism.

Now it may seem as if detractors are picking and choosing which women's voices they consider worthy or not (something I don't approve of really, discussion requires a plurality of voices) however it indicates that they are concerned more with what specific women have to say rather than the fact that they are women in the first place.
 

laraem

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I'm saying how they disagree. Again sorry this stuff is so basic non controversial observations and she goes out of her way to say it's ok to like these games and enjoy these games and play these games. Yet it's always Anita is Jack Thompson.

The budget think is frankly no one's business. I've heard next to no one (if anyone actually) who actually donated express dissatisfaction. It all comes from the people who didn't. Their reactions are over the top and in line with the usual reactions to women who don't two the there's nothing wrong with games line that many people like to hear.

GGers refered to Adam Baldwin as Based Baldwin Milo from Breitbart as Based Milo and Hoff Sommers as Based Mom! Guys keep their names the one woman is now Mom, that's pretty fucked up (nit picky but fucked up). Women are often stereotyped into the mother role, Hoff Sommers is a former professor and has a doctorate but she becomes their Mom? Now she'll say she's alright with it and that's fine but doesn't make it less weird.

Again I don't think I'll convince you with that but hey I've been really wanting to say it.

And it's plenty possible to create a toxic community for women but be cool with the right type. Having a lady friend is not a get out sexism free card anymore than a black friend is a get out of racism free card.
 

Hoplon

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
I think the main issue was that she was not utilising her huge budget in ways she said she would. It came off as disingenuous, to both detractors and former supporters.
That would only be an issue had she asked for a large budget, she asked for 6 grand. Plus after taxes and kickstarter fees I'm pretty sure you only get a bout 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the money.

Also interesting thing about ol' AS, she had been doing the series a while, film and books to start with, it was only when she moved on to games that the shit storm happened.

as to your OP, proof is difficult in this medium, at best i can offer anecdotal stories or links to incidences. But as far as I can find there are no large studies on abuse/harassment of women playing video games, and that is the sort of thing that makes it an unfriendly space.

Though perhaps nothing more than this. [http://xbox.about.com/od/buyersguide/a/xbltips4girls.htm] it's not meant in an unfriendly manner, it's not meant to be condescending (though honestly it is) but anything with a "probably best not to mention your not a guy" makes it feel like it's a space that is unwelcoming to women.
 

Zhukov

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Some folks did an experiment where they played online games on XBL, while occasionally playing pre-recorded lines over the chat. Just innocuous things like "Hello everyone", "nice job", "good game" and so forth.

Some of the voices they used were male, some were female.

They found that female voices consistently received negative or hostile responses from the other players more often than male voices. This difference was observed regardless of the skill with which they played. So a skilled player who spoke with a female voice and did well at the game still copped more hostility than a skilled player speaking with a male voice.

No, I do not have the link to the experiment, nor can I be bothered looking it up. Feel free to disbelieve me.

I've also seen this kind of thing in my own anecdotal experience too. I used to run platoons in an outfit (it's like a guild or clan) in Planetside 2 (it's a shooter-MMO). I would be dealing with groups of between 10 and 50 players at a time. Generally speaking, everyone got along fine. There was always a bit of bitching going on behind people's backs, but it was kept suppressed. The only times I saw people get directly hostile was when some of our few female members had the temerity to speak up in the chat channels. They didn't do anything wrong or rude or provocative, just regular gameplay communication. Just a female voice along was enough to provoke insults, taunts and rude questions ("So, just how saggy are your tits?") from guys who would otherwise act politely.

Personally I don't understand how anyone with a functioning set of senses can miss that gaming in general has a bit of an issue with women.
 

Hoplon

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Zhukov said:
Some folks did an experiment where they played online games on XBL, while occasionally playing pre-recorded lines over the chat. Just innocuous things like "Hello everyone", "nice job", "good game" and so forth.

Some of the voices they used were male, some were female.

They found that female voices consistently received negative or hostile responses from the other players more often than male voices. This difference was observed regardless of the skill with which they played. So a skilled player who spoke with a female voice and did well at the game still copped more hostility than a skilled player speaking with a male voice.

No, I do not have the link to the experiment, nor can I be bothered looking it up. Feel free to disbelieve me.
I both believed you and looked it up, think it is this study [http://nms.sagepub.com/content/15/4/541]
 

Thaluikhain

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
I think it is unfair to label anyone that has a problem with a specific woman as a misogynist. Same with labelling someone that has issues with a particular feminist an anti-feminist.
Certainly. However, I think it's fair to say that the majority of complaints about Sarkeesian are based on misogyny. You can't easily point to any individual who doesn't like her and say that they are one of the misogynists (well, plenty of times you can), but statistically, there's a lot of them.

Likewise, those legitimate complaints you mention came after the hatedom, as people scrambled round to find justifications for them.

DizzyChuggernaut said:
If it were only about her gender there wouldn't be women participating in her criticism.
Oh, can o' worms there.
 

Broderick

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I do not have the examples of games you have requested, however, parts of the gaming community does seem to have some problems with women. This is pretty anecdotal, but many female gamers can tell you a story about how they used an in-game voice chat while playing a game and immediately got "women belong in the kitchen" jokes or something similar. While many of these people may just be trolling or just assholes, it does say a lot that it happens so frequently(granted, I do not have numbers on this sort of thing).

As for being actually exclusionary? I don't think that happens as often as some might believe. Sure women will get the occasional misogynistic joke, but I don't think many people actually try and force women to stop playing with them. Hell, in the case of MMO's, some women tend to get "special" treatment(powerful early game items, gold, rare pets). Whether this is the result of people wanting to include women or wanting to treat them different due to ulterior motives is unclear. However, I am sure some women can get tired of that kind of treatment as well, and just want to play the game normally without random people bothering them.

For some more anecdotal evidence, back before I quit WoW, the best guild leader I have ever been under was female. Everyone seem to respect her and her leadership skills; damn good healer too.
 

Zhukov

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Hoplon said:
Zhukov said:
Some folks did an experiment where they played online games on XBL, while occasionally playing pre-recorded lines over the chat. Just innocuous things like "Hello everyone", "nice job", "good game" and so forth.

Some of the voices they used were male, some were female.

They found that female voices consistently received negative or hostile responses from the other players more often than male voices. This difference was observed regardless of the skill with which they played. So a skilled player who spoke with a female voice and did well at the game still copped more hostility than a skilled player speaking with a male voice.

No, I do not have the link to the experiment, nor can I be bothered looking it up. Feel free to disbelieve me.
I both believed you and looked it up, think it is this [http://nms.sagepub.com/content/15/4/541]
Yes, that was the one, thank you.
 

Silence

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MarsAtlas said:
Even in games they can't reject as "not games", they find other reasons to object to the inclusivity. See: Bioware romances. I never heard anybody complain about them before Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2, but once they're including non-heterosexual romances, all of a sudden, it "ruins" the character to be romancable by the same sex in somebody else's completely separate playthrough because the character being romancable by both genders just ruins it because... reasons. HMMMMMMMMMMMMM...
That's something I read now and then and I am really confused.

I just played Dragon Age: Origins and had a lesbian relationship. As far as I know, gay is also possible. The same with Mass Effect 1 (I'm not sure about that one) and 2.

Did they get a backlash because of this? I don't think so. All I heard was that ME3 had a shit ending (nothing to do with relationships) and DA2 being a shit game in general (also nothing to do with it).


So, how can it be used all of a sudden if it was possible before? People who say that have obviously never played a Bioware game before.
 

Thaluikhain

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the silence said:
Did they get a backlash because of this? I don't think so.
IIRC, they did, just that it didn't go very far. Maybe it didn't catch the public's attention and explode.

Excepting, I think for that guy who got really angry that you could have gay romances in, I think, Dragon Age (can't remember if it was that), and that games should be made exclusively about straight people.
 

Erttheking

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DizzyChuggernaut said:
Vault101 said:
the fact that both of these things exploded the way they did (sarseskian and quin) I think speaks for itself
I think it's more complicated than that. Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn have done objectionable things. Not harassment-worthy, but enough to make the argument that the only problem people have with them is their gender highly questionable.

I'd prefer for the discussion to go beyond them though, the amount of baggage they bring to discussions like this overshadows the gender aspect of the discussion. Also I could do without more conspiracy theories about how they're using "social justice" to "sabotage American culture" or whatever the Gamergate fringe believes these days.
Yeah but Total Biscuit turned off all the comments for his videos too, and the Nostalgia Critic took let's play footage from other people in his "are game's art" videos. Yet they haven't been getting massive hate crowds.
 

DrWut

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I find the dogma that games are filled with misogyny hard to believe. Diverse games are overwhelmingly celebrated.

Look, gaming is huge. There are millions of millions of gamers. Whatever "controversy" there was with Mass Effect romances was so small that it was a storm in a teacup. Nobody says that just because 4 bigots complained against Black Heimdall there is a huge problem with racism among moviegoers.

As for voice chat, if you go into a game where the average player is 13 years old and thinks girls have teh cooties then you will get crude jokes and stupidity.

And no, not all criticism of Sarkeesian is based on misogyny. I personally can't stand her because of her blatant cherry-picking, her insinuation that just because a game ALLOWS you to do something is ENDORSING it (another example is the recent Polygon review of Tropico 5) and the very bold and mostly baseless assumption that what she defines as misogynistic tropes cause misogyny, which is what has people comparing it to Jack Thompson. The "if you think you can't be affected is because you are more affected" is just a hilarious cherry on top of the joke cake.

Anyway, moving on. I think most people agree that more and better representation of women, minorities etc. in gaming is necessary for games to evolve as a medium. But then we have two horrible camps:

1-Childish idiots who think women are coming to take away their games and they are all fake gamer girls and make sure to troll Sarkeesian et al as hard as posible.

2-Permanently concerned and outraged people that calls for people being fired because they drew a sorceress with big tits. Which is completely unacceptable in itself, and I don't care how much post-modern lingo you throw my way. Same with the Spiderwoman cover.

These two camps are fueling each other on a permanent rage wheel that could power a fucking solar system if properly harnessed, and THAT is the problem with video games.