The Female Gaming Experience [Safe Space]

@femfreq [11:16 AM - 2 Sep 2014] Police: If you keep getting these threats for your work why don’t you stop? - Me (incredulous): Um... because I believe it’s important.

BadKen wrote:

@femfreq [11:16 AM - 2 Sep 2014] Police: If you keep getting these threats for your work why don’t you stop? - Me (incredulous): Um... because I believe it’s important.

I am glad that the cops can victim blame as well as the internet can.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This whole situation the last few weeks has made me seriously question how much I want to be engaged with gaming as a whole. Specifically, it was this article linked in the now-locked Tropes thread that really pointed out not only how much of a pattern this is with gamers but the extent to which the demands of this group are catered to.

But you hate games! Just kidding. I hate them too. So many of them are puerile garbage or sophomoric nonsense venerated by those too young or myopic to know better; my fallback belief is that the lunatics run the asylum, every facet of the creation, promotion, and discussion of video games revolving around the all-powerful whims of know-nothing teenaged boys. Sometimes, and last week no less than any other, I want to hurl my Xbox out the window, bellowing, "Fuuuuuuuu*uuuuuuuuck video games!"

But that's not totally the case. And deep down I still like them, or at least a sliver of them, or at least the potential of a sliver of them. I want them and the conversation around them to be better, ever since I first read Kieron Gillen's NGJ manifesto (journalism!), since N'Gai Croal dared to criticize the RE5 trailer (when I first learned about privilege). I don't want the state of affairs dictated by a vocal minority, so as long as I want to enjoy video games, I'll try to do my part to steer them in a better direction. I can definitely sympathize with just checking out though (if so, just hit me up on BoardGameGeek—not without its own problems but they're positively quaint in comparison).

It's not game related, but I felt good the other day.

I'm skyping with 2 other people the other day, 1 woman, 1 man, in a creative think tank, creating a new TV show to pitch. We were really into it. 5 hours flew by without us noticing. We got the main plot, themes, storylines down, and went on with the characters. I was surprised as to just how ingrained in our minds it is that the lead of a show (but also movies, games, etc.) is always male.

I realized this because I read this thread. So I was the one that said, I love all this, the backstory, the kicker, the tragedies, the motivations, everything. Now, let's make it a "she". I found myself repeating lines from the previous Female Experience Thread, and they just went with it. Loved it. The woman was actually kinda surprised. "You know what? Hell yeah let's make it a woman!"

So that's my story. I guess I have contributed to the world, even if in some small capacity, but at least it's something!

Please tell us the original premise wasn't about a male stripper.

Well in the middle of all of this I am proud to say our GWJ run Team Fortress 2 server is a safe haven for every gamer regardless of gender. I know all of us who have admin privileges on it have a zero tolerance for any "guests" being offensive. We will kick and/or ban any idiots who can't play with respect. Feel free to pop over to the TF2 thread and join us for safe multiplayer fun.

The_Judge wrote:

Well in the middle of all of this I am proud to say our GWJ run Team Fortress 2 server is a safe haven for every gamer regardless of gender. I know all of us who have admin privileges on it have a zero tolerance for any "guests" being offensive. We will kick and/or ban any idiots who can't play with respect. Feel free to pop over to the TF2 thread and join us for safe multiplayer fun.

On the other hand, I unfriended Goodjers (and some of their real-world friends we were playing with) for their use of homophobic slurs while we were playing BF4 on PS4.

I understand the sentiment of giving up the hobby because of assholes (whether it be the ones making the games, the ones playing the games, or the ones commenting on the games). I just like to think that there are enough good people out there that our hobby doesn't need assholes to survive--and that we can enjoy our hobby.

pseudoprime1979 wrote:
BadKen wrote:

@femfreq [11:16 AM - 2 Sep 2014] Police: If you keep getting these threats for your work why don’t you stop? - Me (incredulous): Um... because I believe it’s important.

I am glad that the cops can victim blame as well as the internet can.

She can ask for their supervisor's name. Any boss worth their salt will take her concern seriously.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This whole situation the last few weeks has made me seriously question how much I want to be engaged with gaming as a whole.

I have a similar feeling. I left the games industry last year because I felt it was internally rotten (both in what it makes and the culture within the industry). I'd stopped identifying as a "gamer" some time before, but lately I'm glad to have set myself apart.

I still occasionally fire up a game on occasion but I've gone from reading every post that went up on on RPS and Kotaku to staying vaguely informed through word of mouth and Twitter (and by the latter I mainly mean Switchbreak!). I'm more interested in reading about the culture and games journalism itself than staying abreast of new releases these days.

I liked Dan Golding's The End of Gamers piece. Kinda sums up recent events for me.

Floomi wrote:

I liked Dan Golding's The End of Gamers piece. Kinda sums up recent events for me.

That's a good one, and there's this related piece which was linked in the Idle Thumbs forum today.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

This whole situation the last few weeks has made me seriously question how much I want to be engaged with gaming as a whole. Specifically, it was this article linked in the now-locked Tropes thread that really pointed out not only how much of a pattern this is with gamers but the extent to which the demands of this group are catered to.

Thanks for linking that. It really does feel like since we "won" against Jack Thompson that it's basically been a case of the mob eating its own. Remember how hard Penny Arcade went after him? A few years later those same tactics were applied with that peripheral maker and the dickwolves controversy. And it feels like the rest of the internet hate machine is just firing against anything and everything lately.

What upsets me is that this is how part of the gaming community has always operated, it just didn't happen in the open. Here's one example of a designer on Heroes of Might & Magic III: Armageddon's Blade receiving death threats:

Now, while this mix of fantasy and science fiction had always been a staple of the Might & Magic RPG franchise, it was new to the Heroes series and there was an angry backlash from Heroes fans. As soon as we released the preliminary concept art, the fans became so upset, they immediately organized a boycott of the game and New World management ordered us to come up with a new concept for the expansion. One fan was so angry at us for even considering introducing science fiction elements into the Heroes series that he sent a death threat to Greg. Naturally, this rattled my designer, but when our management made light of the threat, Greg was so incensed that he quit his job.

That was in 1998/1999, and isn't that far off from the Mass Effect 3 ending firestorm. Part of the reason this upsets me is that it doesn't feel like there's any real solution short of getting as many platforms as possible to moderate (or better moderate) how their platform is used. Even then if feels like people will just find other ways to spew their toxic bile.

EDIT: I was also thinking back today on the launch of The Escapist and it feels like there was genuine optimism nearly a decade ago when it seemed like games were finally getting mainstream recognition. I can't help wondering if something went amiss between now and then

pseudoprime1979 wrote:

I understand the sentiment of giving up the hobby because of assholes (whether it be the ones making the games, the ones playing the games, or the ones commenting on the games). I just like to think that there are enough good people out there that our hobby doesn't need assholes to survive--and that we can enjoy our hobby.

Seriously this. This site is one of the best communities I've found for interacting with other gamers and it's places like here and the good vibes at PAX East that keep me from despairing too much about the state of things. Don't ever let a very vocal minority of asshats deprive you or anyone else of your hobby or other things you enjoy in life.

Awesome! I think it's a great idea to separate this topic from the Tropes vs Women topic. A lot of gaming experiences got lost in the midst of the rest in the previous thread.

Certis wrote:

Given all the debate, turmoil and arguments addressing long-standing issues in the past few weeks, how are you feeling about the industry and community in general? Will it affect the way you engage?

I've been mostly watching from the sidelines, recently. It's also because I missed a lot of what's been going down lately, but there's also a sense of weariness. Sometimes, I just get tired of speaking up, fighting back, particularly in the face of people who dismiss my own personal experiences. Those haven't been too bad, thankfully, and few and far between, but still.

I love games, I love talking about games, and always will. No way I'd let other people deter me from my hobby. But the internet isn't a very friendly place, and I'm definitely sticking mostly to single player games. This particularly shows when I read comments on Twitter, or Polygon or PCGamer articles. Some of those are just downright horrifyingly hostile. Thankfully, GWJ is a safe space, in my own experience, so I'll just retreat to the comfort of our little community. That's basically my way of engaging. Engage if you can and if you don't have the strength, retreat and assume defensive position. If that even makes any sense.

RoughneckGeek wrote:
Top_Shelf wrote:
pseudoprime1979 wrote:
BadKen wrote:

@femfreq [11:16 AM - 2 Sep 2014] Police: If you keep getting these threats for your work why don’t you stop? - Me (incredulous): Um... because I believe it’s important.

I am glad that the cops can victim blame as well as the internet can.

She can ask for their supervisor's name. Any boss worth their salt will take her concern seriously.

In this case she's going to the proper authorities instead, the FBI.

The FBI defending civil liberties? Long wait for a train that don't come.

It took me having a daughter to even realize that I've been playing as generic beefcake dudes much of my gaming life (or, mustachioed plumbers, blue bombers, etc). Not until then, did I think that maybe something was wrong with the representation of females in games. And, I was definitely always happy to see some gratuitous lady action in my games (not any more).

I'm not as in tune to this as many of you, but I'm definitely seeking out experiences that offer a female experience equatable to the male one. Mass Effect does a good job; Nintendo should go with the 3D World shift and keep Peach a playable character.

Many of the games I used to play (pre-daddy days) just aren't going to happen. Probably ever again.

With the argument/context not being up for debate in this thread (wisely so), I'll stick to my response:

I am an optimist, and I choose to hold out hope that the true d-bags are the exception, not the rule, and that eventually they and those who are just pretending to be true d-bags for the sake of trolling, will soon understand - partly thanks to our vigilance, but hopefully through their self-awareness - that people simply don't want to interact with others who act like buffoons, be it in-game or real life.

In the interim, I'll continue to associate primarily with GWJ when gaming as I have for the past few years, and when I run into idiocy of any flavor I'll call it out for what it is. All I can do, really, and I love games too much to let bad apples spoil the bunch.

pseudoprime1979 wrote:

I understand the sentiment of giving up the hobby because of assholes (whether it be the ones making the games, the ones playing the games, or the ones commenting on the games). I just like to think that there are enough good people out there that our hobby doesn't need assholes to survive--and that we can enjoy our hobby.

That's kind of the crux of Sarkeesian's videos as well: it's totally possible to be critical of parts of a thing that you otherwise enjoy on the whole.

That's a really good summation of the problems, Clocky.

nel e nel wrote:
pseudoprime1979 wrote:

I understand the sentiment of giving up the hobby because of assholes (whether it be the ones making the games, the ones playing the games, or the ones commenting on the games). I just like to think that there are enough good people out there that our hobby doesn't need assholes to survive--and that we can enjoy our hobby.

That's kind of the crux of Sarkeesian's videos as well: it's totally possible to be critical of parts of a thing that you otherwise enjoy on the whole.

Sure, and I'm a big proponent of that. I'm a fan of Japanese games, and they're frequently very problematic from an American perspective in their treatment of women and minorities, and I think it's important to recognize that you can be very critical of something that you love. Your love doesn't exempt it from being problematic, but being problematic doesn't mean you can't enjoy it.

But what has me so down on gaming right now, in some ways, is that, like Floomi said, it feels like gaming is rotten both inside and out. We have hordes of entitled fans who lash out at companies for decisions they don't like, whether it's with the content of games or with the business surrounding them; who lash out at commentators like Roger Ebert and Anita Sarkeesian for leveling any kind of criticism of gaming from an outsiders' perspective; who lash out at gaming critics and fellow fans for not heaping appropriate amounts of adoration on a given game; who lash out at game makers for not catering to them. And it's sad that when I say "lash out" I don't mean make angry Twitter posts. I mean death threats and doxxing and organized campaigns to make people's lives hell.

And the corporate response to those hordes is to court them. You have Sony and Microsoft out on stage at E3 vying to present themselves as the most gamer friendly so that the hordes will buy their consoles. You have EA and Bioware remaking the end of their game to try to mollify people who just didn't like how the story turned out. You have who knows how many stories about games going in less inclusive, less diverse, and less artistic directions because of (valid) corporate concerns that the gaming population wouldn't bring their dollars if the end product didn't look enough like them. And you have a development structure at almost every major studio where human resources are so horribly mismanaged that only dedicated super fans are going to be willing to work in perpetual crunch mode for lousy pay, carried on by the prestige of making video games; but that mismanagement selects out any number of opportunities for diversity as people who are outside of the demographics likely to be dedicated to gaming, or who are older and have families and might be able to bring a more mature perspective, turn away from even thinking about working on games.

It's rotten. I love games, and I love gaming, but right now I hate a lot of it, too.

Top_Shelf wrote:
pseudoprime1979 wrote:
BadKen wrote:

@femfreq [11:16 AM - 2 Sep 2014] Police: If you keep getting these threats for your work why don’t you stop? - Me (incredulous): Um... because I believe it’s important.

I am glad that the cops can victim blame as well as the internet can.

She can ask for their supervisor's name. Any boss worth their salt will take her concern seriously.

Someone did an informal poll in one of the P&C threads about who would feel safe about making a complaint about the police and I think most of us answered that we wouldn't feel comfortable going directly to the police to make a complaint.

Clocky's post is interesting... it reminded me of what is going on in r/gaming and r/thesims right now. Reddit is a bastion of misogyny, though there are excellent subreddits and some very interesting conversations to be had there if you avoid the places where the jerks congregate. The general gaming subreddits are mostly pretty bad, though. And boy do they hate EA.

I think probably The Sims is seen by the Angry Gamer Brigade as a "female-centric" game or a "casual" game. It is certainly played by a lot of women, and nobody gets dismembered in it. So r/gaming has decided that The Sims 4 is pure sh*t, created by the bastion of evil, EA, who keep making horrible games and charging money for them.

I ran head first into this and experienced a microscopic taste of the misogyny a lot of women commenters on gaming receive regularly. I dared to comment about The Sims 4 in r/gaming, and in a positive way. There is a lot of ridiculous exaggeration going on in the threads there about how the game is awful because it doesn't have this feature or that or because EA wants to make a series out of it like every other The Sims game. When called on their bullsh*t, even very politely, the denizens of r/gaming get nasty and the downvotes start flying.

In contrast, the subreddit r/thesims is made of sims fans and probably has a higher than average concentration of female posters. Coincidentally, the sentiment towards the new Sims game is generally positive there, with a lot of members posting screenshots and stories about how they are enjoying the game. There are even several threads complaining about the noxious atmosphere in r/gaming (and also in r/games, the "serious discussion" sister subreddit of r/gaming).

So yeah, the intersection of Reddit and gaming is probably not the best place to expect to find reasonable discussions. But the hopeful thing is that there are subreddits that the Angry Gamer crowd stays away from, or at least where the typical member is better behaved, like r/truegaming and r/thesims.

I think probably The Sims is seen by the Angry Gamer Brigade as a "female-centric" game or a "casual" game. It is certainly played by a lot of women, and nobody gets dismembered in it. So r/gaming has decided that The Sims 4 is pure sh*t, created by the bastion of evil, EA, who keep making horrible games and charging money for them.

I don't think it's the "Angry Gamer Brigade" as much as it's the AAA and indie darling games journalism space as a whole. In general, it's mentioned, but it's rarely more than a news blurb. For example, rock paper shotgun just has expansion announcements and maybe a news story when someone does something weird with the game. Same with Polygon, who's just publishing press releases.

Some guy called 'Russ Pitts' has written a great feature about Rhianna Pratchett over on Polygon.

Is she... playing a guitar... with a bowl full of mayonnaise?

Hypatian wrote:

Is she... playing a guitar... with a bowl full of mayonnaise?

How else would you play guitar?

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
Hypatian wrote:

Is she... playing a guitar... with a bowl full of mayonnaise?

How else would you play guitar?

That's how I play.

Hypatian wrote:

Is she... playing a guitar... with a bowl full of mayonnaise?

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/2OuDzzO.jpg)

Well.

Apparently Jenn Frank has now decided to quit writing about games. The final straw was when she was chosen as [em]the[/em] example of "corruption" in the two-sides-to-every-story article Al Jazeera ran on GamerGate. Completely missing, of course, the same important context that the original accusation was missing, which she should never have had to even state in the first place.

So that's two* (so far) of the women I've most respected in games journalism--women who were [em]reasonably well established[/em]**--driven to say "f*ck it, game over, you win, I don't have to put up with this sh*t, so I'm not going to".

I don't think the open letter is at all sufficient for this bullsh*t.

I'm just... Ugh.

[size=9]* That I know of.[/size]

[size=9]** Not that this doesn't mean that they didn't need other sources of income to help pay the bills, like most freelance writers. Which is why a lot of women who do freelance work have Patreons, strangely enough.[/size]

I am somewhat disturbed and somewhat hopeful that this is spilling out into the mainstream-ish news. I have a sinking feeling the balance would tip more towards 'disturbed', but I'm on vacation and missing most of the twitter yelling.

I don't want to focus too much on my own experiences, since I'm in enough privileged categories to avoid the most obvious negative attention. I am a bit hopeful that the industry is gradually shifting, after witnessing the response from some of the developers to the 2013 IGDA/YetiZen party (Which was, by what I heard, itself an improvement over the somewhat unrelated 2012 party). I don't know how things were this year, but my sense is that some of the veterans are starting to pay more attention.

Students, on the other hand, can be as clueless as all get-out sometimes. But I know a lot of people who are trying to address that problem at the start. Of course, offering an academic critique of games seems to sometimes get labeled as "pretentious", which, now that I'm looking at it in retrospect seems to have a strong correlation with this current mess...

That really sucks (EDIT: comment about Al Jazeera source probably doesn't belong here)