The Female Gaming Experience [Safe Space]

BadKen wrote:

The most heartbreaking thing about that video for me was the tone of resignation in the women's' voices. Every single woman in the video is like "Yep, sounds about right. Happens to me all the time."

What a f*cked culture of hatred in multiplayer games. And every publisher that runs a game like this is culpable because none of them are willing to devote the considerable resources required to end the abuse.

Something a friend of mine told me once: Maybe not every man has sexually harassed a woman, but every woman has been sexually harassed by a man.

BadKen wrote:

The most heartbreaking thing about that video for me was the tone of resignation in the women's' voices. Every single woman in the video is like "Yep, sounds about right. Happens to me all the time."

I didn't make it through the whole video, but what struck me was the guy who said that the comments were worse than he expected, and, when prompted, said that the "go die" comments were what pushed it over the edge for him. The kitchen jokes, various gender-based slurs - none of that was shocking. It's frustrating how much people have tuned out those things. I'm having a hard time articulating what I mean, but I feel like "go die" is not where we should be drawing the line for shock here. It's just indicative of how much we assume toxicity (and have to, to survive being female in this space), it's just a punch in the gut for a man to gloss right over the specifically gendered slurs in picking out what shocked him about the extent of abuse.

I enjoy Overwatch, but am consistently glad I play on PS4 with no text chat and incredibly rare voice chat.

The awful part is how we all react to this now. Most of us ladies now basically have the reactions depicted in the video: either you get used to it and tune it out, or you learn not to talk (and are effectively silent and thus silenced), or you don’t play multiplayer games.

Not being able to pause the game is only one of the reason I stopped playing multiplayer games.

That video needs to be played for every mother of a child who plays video games.

Nevin73 wrote:

That video needs to be played for every mother of a child who plays video games.

Sure, put the onus on the mother. How about we just use "parents"?

Eleima wrote:
Nevin73 wrote:

That video needs to be played for every mother of a child who plays video games.

Sure, put the onus on the mother. How about we just use "parents"?

Sorry, you are absolutely right.

It would be great if there was an easy way for gamers to set parameters for the types of people they would like to be grouped up with or not grouped up with. It’s a tedious and unforgiving job, to try to curate your friends list to the point where you would always have a like minded person to game with. In fact it’s probably near impossible.

Movie and music streaming sites have algorithms in place that try to predict what you might like. They’re not perfect, but they do work. I wish the same tactics could be used when grouping you with pubbies in a multiplayer game. I would love it if I was never grouped with anyone under 27 years old. And that could be just the beginning.

IDK. It will probably never happen.

MOD

Watch the age discrimination...

sometimesdee wrote:

MOD

Watch the age discrimination...

Sorry. You’re right. Maybe I should have said, “I would love it if I was never grouped with anyone 20 years younger than myself.”, as I’m currently 47.

But really, age is NOT the real issue. The real issue is having to deal with random pubbies who are often incredibly distasteful. The point I was trying to make, was that it would be great if there could be some algorithms in place to automatically group you with the type of people that you would feel most comfortable with.

Let the bigots, gangsta’s, and trolls get grouped with each other. And let the otherwise pleasant gamers be grouped with one another. We’re probably 50 to 100 years away from something like this, but I can dream.

Edit:
Wouldn’t you think that there might be more women gamers online if they could set an option to only be grouped with other women?

RawkGWJ wrote:

Wouldn’t you think that there might be more women gamers online if they could set an option to only be grouped with other women?

It's possible. It's not necessarily the best solution, though. It could stir the possibility for further categories of segregation. Gender? Sexual preference? Race? Rather than subtracting the lowlifes from the mix, for everyone, it's creating a bubble where exclusion reinforces discrimination as something to strive for.

It benefits both those who want a safer space, as well as those who refuse to recognize the rights of others, and do something about their prehistoric views.

Part of the world's problems are clubs for boys only, whites only, heterosexual only, and so forth.

Still, you're not wrong in suggesting that a great deal of people may choose to opt in for the segregation of their choice, to safeguard against unpleasant or hurtful instances.

Is this the most appropriate thread for you guys to have this conversation?

I agree with Clocky.

That being said. As a female gamer, my personal opinion is that I don’t necessarily want to play exclusively with women. I just want to play with other gamers who respect me and who won’t treat me like crap because of my gender. It’s not that hard a concept, is it? ^^

You would think.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Is this the most appropriate thread for you guys to have this conversation?

MOD
As a moderator, I say that no, it's not. Please remember that this thread is, first and foremost, a safe space for women.

Apologies. I will remove this thread from my favorites.

I don’t want to speak for Dee and I’m not a mod, but the takeaway message here isn’t that you should leave the thread. By all means, follow and read the thread. But don’t monopolize the conversation. I get the irony, since I’ve posted quite a bit in the last page, but the purpose of this thread is to give more space for female voices like ActualDragon, Clocky, Pyxistyx, Dee, DiscoDriveBy, Concentric, Yellek and so many others. We’re here, you just don’t hear us. Just take a count of the posts in the last page posted by women and those posted by men, and were still outnumbered. In a safe space.
Just food for thought is all.

Fwiw, guys there's a like button we can use to show support instead of posting.

Back to silent mode I go.

Are more MP games including a report function to deal with assholes or is it still the wild west?

Nevin73 wrote:

Are more MP games including a report function to deal with assholes or is it still the wild west?

Oh sure, there ARE report buttons in plenty of games. Has been since the 90s (The Realm Online, first MMORPG ever and I played it - I feel old).

It’s the utter lack of action after that that’s unfortunate.

That's what I was afraid of.

Report buttons go nowhere. I don't know if it's because moderators are simply overwhelmed and understaffed or if they don't consider harassment to be more than "trash talk", but I've never had a report that had any effect. I think I posted some in this thread about my experiences trying to report things, but I can't find the posts now.

But more than report buttons that work, I want other players in the match to step up and do something. Vote to kick someone who is being inappropriate (and please, initiate that vote yourself; don't wait for us to, because we won't). Speak up. Say something. Even if it's just "knock it off and quit being an asshole", that's better than being silent.

I know it's tough because you might draw that ire on yourself, but looking the other way while someone else gets harassed is wrong.

Blizzard's report buttons do seem to work. Or, at least, I've heard people complain about being muted for sh*tlording (after they got off mute).

On the other hand, Overwatch doesn't have votekick, so, yeah.

Almost all of my bad experiences with Overwatch players have been out of game, unfortunately. Enough to drive me away from it. Report buttons and vote kicks can't fix cultural problems.

So yesterday, I'm watching what is supposed to be my new tribe of Ark people play footsie with their chat names. (Edolf Hitler, RubberCock, IM ON MY PERIOD ATM, & PeriodVulture to name a few.)

I'm the only girl in this group and lucky me, they brought in two more for me to train. The messages are c*ck this, see you next tuesday that, take my jiz, period/vagina jokes and other assorted BS.

So I took a moment out of my busy afternoon to say "Just to kill this early, period/vagina jokes are not appreciated. Grow the F up."

One of the two new guys apologized and I let them know that "I'm not offended, but it gets old really fast, so it is easier to just kill it before I want to hurt someone."

Silly me thought it was over...

New guy #2 chimes in with this: "I'm sorry I don't think that was fair to explode like that on Redacted and after he apologised you say nothing ? I know it's stupid to say something now but my brother is not a mug so don't speak to him like that lets change the way we talk to each other there are more polite ways to speak to people if your not happy with what they are saying :)"

Huh? Or my actual reply: "Um, I did reply to him and let him know that there were no hard feelings. Check your privilege."

NG#2: "I believe you responded with a angry manner ? Saying before you want to kill someone we are all in the same tribe here let's keep a cool level"

Sigh: "if you read anger, you missed the "I'm not offended" at the beginning..."

NG#2: "Well you have a very hostile approach with your messages but I will say no more let's drop it :)"

So I'm hostile and NG#2's version of dropping it was about 4 more messages on how people talk to each other.

I stopped responding to NG#2, one of the other guys piped in and said that our tribe expects more mature communication, when my husband and I play. Neither of us are going to let racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic comments slide.

Sometimes I swear I'm too old for this. If we're playing a game together, then act like the adult you claimed to be before you were invited into our tribe.

This is why most of my online gaming is through MMO's and in "family friendly" guilds. I've even been in a Planetside 2 guild (FPS shooter) with practically all men, and never had a problem because they advertised as being a guild for mature players without all of the trash.

It's ridiculous that you even had to say anything about the behavior, and as far as being hostile goes, period/vagina jokes aren't exactly non-hostile. Is there a better tribe you could join?

When we first started playing, it was a tribe of people we knew personally or people those people knew. I called it "aversion by actual boot to the head." I may not live close enough to smack you, but I can send someone who is (or just call your wife) and have them pass on the boot to the head.

Of our original tribe, only my husband and I still play, but we've gotten to know a guy in Texas, his wife & a pair of brothers they are friends with, expanding us to 5 people that we have fun playing with. The Texas crew grew up together, so they act like bickering siblings occasionally, but know when to reign things back.

The most recent additions are Brits who the Texas guys have played with recently. We'll see if they work out. If the one can't handle me giving him what the rest know is a very gentle reminder, he won't last long. I won't put up with the shenanigans and the core tribe backs my right to play without the BS language.

I really feel for you, RedJen. When that kind of nonsense happens to me in a multiplayer game, I just stop playing. You shouldn't have to do that though. I'm just way too nonconfrontational to deal. I won't stick up for myself, I'll just take my ball and go home. It's the main reason I don't play multiplayer very much.

People tell me I should have thicker skin. I think people should have bigger brains. Big enough to understand when they're being inconsiderate jerks.

Uuuuugh, I'm so, so sorry, RedJen. That just sucks, it sucks to the suckieth power. Kudos to you, though, because you handle it with grace and more zen that I would have.

So a PC Gamer article on Kingdom Come: Delivrance appeared in my thread on Twitter. Spoilers for the game, be warned, but honestly, they weren’t that bad to me despite what some butthurt comments claimed.
In essence, the article just reinforced my strong negative preconceptions about the game.
[spoiler]Basically, it’s just women being portrayed as consumable. Again.
Not to mention that it’s completely forgetting that some people are asexual and don’t want to go down that route.[/url]
Bleh. I have no intention to buy this game, but what I have heard has only confirmed that.

Yeah, I fully expected that from the moment they described it as an "ultra realistic mediaeval RPG", to be honest, and seeing post-release stuff about it was entirely unsurprising.

I didn't have much interest in it to begin with since it's an RPG with a fixed male protagonist (yawn) which I automatically ignore these days, with I think the only recent exception being the Witcher 3 (and even then I'd have liked a "play as Ciri" for all of the game" option)

Otherwise ...no character creation screen = no deal!

Oh, also the lead dev (I think) is/was an ardent 'Gater. So...there's that, too.

I like the idea of a fixed protagonist if it's used as the basis for interesting design. There's nothing about the developers of KCD that would make me expect this to be the case. It's toxic from the ground up.