The Female Gaming Experience [Safe Space]

EDIT: Sorry, I was reading and responding to threads in bump order and I didn't know this one was any different from Vermintide or the Doom Catch-All etc.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

IGN's understanding of pacifist mode is that it's only to prevent starting PvP accidentally.

Players will also have the ability to declare themselves as a “pacifist,” meaning their attacks won’t start PvP at all -- this is to prevent players jumping in front of someone's bullet to start a fight.
Mermaidpirate wrote:

I'd almost be ok with it if after a player started with the minimal damage hits, you had the option to press a button to go into invulnerable/pacifist mode. A 'no thank you' option.

I'd like them to go one step further and give pacifists the ability to kick people who attack them. "No, thank you" and "goodbye".

The pacifist mode is truly underwhelming then. The very little that's been said about the ability to ignore individual players doesn't sound like it'd be easy to use to prevent harassment either (you'd either need to know in advance who'll be harassing you or use it after you've already been killed) as it likely just makes it harder for them to find you and doesn't truly block them (but wouldn't do anything about stream snipers watching your stream and figuring out where you are that way). It would at least cut out chat based harassment though.
Being able to unilaterally kick people from one of Bethesda's server for initiating PVP seems a bit much to ask, and would probably be used more to harass women streamers than used by them against would-be harassers. Once private servers are allowed I can't imagine it won't be an option for whoever's running it, but hopefully there'll also be an option to set the entire server into pacifist mode to disable PVP entirely.

Wow, Tamren. Thanks for explaining internet harassment in the Female Gaming Experience thread. That’s some special kind of mansplaining there.
I hope you take five minutes to think about the spectacular double standard here. Just try and think about what it’s like for a woman who games, who streams.

We have a lot of dudes posting in this thread again.

Thanks for clarifying all.

*mod*
This post is out of scope for this thread so it's been removed. - Certis

*UPDATE*

This thread is also primarily for people who identify as female to share their experiences. If you don't fit into that category please keep your contributions short and supportive.

I’m done being polite when all I’ve had, all my life, is harassment, insults, condescension, men talking over me and ignoring me. Men grabbing me without my consent. Being harassed and afraid in my home.
Polite got me absolutely nowhere. So no.

You call for mixed spaces but studies show that even when women have 30% of the talk time, men think they monopolized the space. I mean just look at this damn thread. It’s supposed to be a safe space for OUR voices because we’re being drowned out everywhere else, but just LOOK AT IT. Three quarters of the posts are men. AGAIN.

*mod*

Removing since original was also removed. Moving on. - Certis

Fellow dudes, starting now we will be removing posts that don't strictly follow this part of the OP. Consider it good practice in listening. No more warnings.

*UPDATE*

This thread is also primarily for people who identify as female to share their experiences. If you don't fit into that category please keep your contributions short and supportive.

Stengah wrote:

Being able to unilaterally kick people from one of Bethesda's server for initiating PVP seems a bit much to ask, and would probably be used more to harass women streamers than used by them against would-be harassers.

The way they've talked about the multiplayer structure, I've assumed that it's heavily instanced. I wouldn't want to kick someone out of the game entirely (well, I would, but I don't think I'd be able to), but it would be nice to kick them or me over to another instance where we don't have to see each other anymore.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
Stengah wrote:

Being able to unilaterally kick people from one of Bethesda's server for initiating PVP seems a bit much to ask, and would probably be used more to harass women streamers than used by them against would-be harassers.

The way they've talked about the multiplayer structure, I've assumed that it's heavily instanced. I wouldn't want to kick someone out of the game entirely (well, I would, but I don't think I'd be able to), but it would be nice to kick them or me over to another instance where we don't have to see each other anymore.

Gonna take my response to the Fallout 76 thread.

To expand on my earlier comment a bit (Stengah and I cross-posted): one of the ongoing issues with harassment in the video game community is that the consequences of harassment still fall largely on the people who are being harassed. That is, if you're being harassed, you're the one who needs to quit and rejoin to go into a different instance; you're the one who needs to maintain a whack-a-mole blacklist; you're the one who needs to find a private server or guild or forum community; you're the one who has to "only play with GWJers".

It's not the harassers who get cut off from open engagement, who have to watch out who they play with, who have to filter who they come into contact with; it's the harassed.

Segregation and isolation are always the solutions put forward, and it's always the victims who are expected to segregate and isolate themselves.

So maybe unilaterally kicking someone from an instance in Fallout seems like a bit of an extreme method, but they get to do it to me. They get to harass someone until that person quits, and their victim cannot do anything to make them go away even though they're the ones causing the problem. It's the victims who have to ignore, avoid, filter, and isolate, and they have to do it by themselves.

And they have to do it by themselves, because that's the policy moderators are forced to follow.

It doesn't get talked about much, but victims of harassment pre-filter their experiences, too. I had someone message me that his wife totally lost interest in Fallout 76 for the same reason I did despite previously being really interested in it. She is not playing a game she wants to play as a preventative measure against harassment. I hear that from women all the time.

Or here's another example: I had a good friend quit the MMO we were playing because he was being harassed for being gay. Recently, we talked about jumping back into that game, and do you know what that looked like? Researching which servers are queer-friendly. Finding out which ones have queer-friendly guilds, and are those guilds active, and what's the rest of the server culture like? Where was it safer to play? (Note: "Safer" not "safe". You can still get harassed in a safer space, but maybe not everyone will silently watch.)

I just want to ask people: when was the last time you were excited about a game but didn't buy it because of the potential behavior of other players?

When was the last time you opted out of matchmaking because you didn't know if one of the players you got matched with would harass you? Not wondering if your team mates would suck, or if you'd get stuck with the dope who can't work the elevator, or if you someone's going to play their character wrong, or if someone's going to get mad if you lose.

When was the last time you researched servers before creating a character on an MMO? Not "join Blackhand because that's where my buddies are" but actually research them to find out which ones are friendlier to people like you? Hell, did you even know that there are queer servers? Like, that's common knowledge in those communities. Minorities cluster together for safety, even in gaming.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just tired and frustrated and depressed by the whole situation. No one f*cking does anything about it. I just wish that games let you get away from people who are being sh*ts without either you having to be the one that quits, or without having to try to convince a room full of people that the person harassing you is actually harassing you.

But most likely, I just won't play anything.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm just tired and frustrated and depressed by the whole situation. No one f*cking does anything about it. I just wish that games let you get away from people who are being sh*ts without either you having to be the one that quits, or without having to try to convince a room full of people that the person harassing you is actually harassing you.

Rainbow Six: Siege recently implemented a system of automatic, immediate suspensions when certain words are used in text chat, beginning with 30 minutes and escalating from there.

Some players, as you can imagine, have gone ballistic over it. Ubisoft, to their credit, has barely given such players the time of day. They have not made the topic open for discussion.

One of the few times they have responded to a comment about it (spoilered for use of slur in a tweet):

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gUiTYIm.png)

The system isn't the most flexible, and it has a lot of what could be considered false positives (you'll get a suspension for typing "Schwarzenegger", which might be a bit much). But I am so happy to see a big-time game (5th highest player count on Steam), and one in the FPS genre to boot, taking at least one step to push the burden of bad behavior back onto the perpetrators.

While I'm not necessarily concerned about being harassed as a woman specifically in Fallout 76 should I choose to play it, I went through this entire free for all PVP experience during the years I played Ultima Online, and though there are things I highly enjoyed in that game despite all the aggravations, I have no desire to "go home again" so to speak. Those years are over and done and gaming in general has evolved since then.

I've had my share of "camping out" during MMOs whenever someone has harassed or annoyed me, and then logging on somewhere else with a different character until I was sure the character I wanted to play was safe again, but why should I have had to stop playing a character I wanted to play just to not be harassed?

I would think that game devs would know by NOW that if there is even a remote possibility can be used to harass someone, players *will* find a way to use it, so either Bethesda is extremely stupid (which I don't believe) or they really don't care about the issue outside of tossing in a couple ineffective measures to try to "pacify" dissent.

Cloquette hit the nail on the head. It’s about being forced out. About being made to forgo certain experiences. With the surprising exception of GW2, i don’t play multiplayer games anymore. I stopped playing TF2, even though I was really good at it. I declined a friend’s repeated invitations to play PUBG together. I’ve steered clear of ESO. I have absolutely no inclination to try Fortnite.
It’s actually a reflection of things we do in real life to protect ourselves. We wear shoes we can run in, should we have to, when we go out. We don’t stay out after a certain hour. We move in groups. We tell friends where we’re going, if we’ve arrived home safely.
Really great post, Clocky.

Bekkilyn, I’m thinking that devs aren’t willing to address it, and there are probably a couple of reasons, but essentially because it’s a costly endeavour: both in $$$ and manpower (one requiring the other anyhow) and because this would probably lose them customers (the griefers). Just my hypothesis though.

Eleima wrote:

Bekkilyn, I’m thinking that devs are t willing to address it, and there are probably a couple of reasons, but essentially because it’s a costly endeavour: both in $$$ and manpower (one requiring the other anyhow) and because this would probably lose them customers (the griefers). Just my hypothesis though.

That's actually another concern. If they are less worried about losing the griefers as customers than they are worried about losing other customers (and they will lose customers either way), then I must question if it's a game I would really want to play.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It doesn't get talked about much, but victims of harassment pre-filter their experiences, too.

Eleima and I play in SWGOH.
I spoke out once in our guild when we had some people who weren't from GWJ about their comments. We did finally boot them but it took some time. I sent OP a private message about a joke that I felt was inappropriate...and even knowing his opinions and fully believing I'd be supported (mostly), I was STILL nervous about making the request and had thought through whether even making the request was worth it and what I'd do if dismissed.

I wouldn't have thought of "prefiltering", but it makes sense.
I don't play MMOs.
Loved Warcraft 1-3.
(Taught calculus in summer session for the first time when husband brought home Warcraft. I was away from the house from 8am-9pm, then would come home and play for a bit. Had a dream where I had to teach the orcs calculus before they'd build anything.)
When Warcraft went to online, I stopped playing entirely.
I wouldn't have thought my choice was because of harassment, but it probably did play in to making online not even worth trying.

This still. What year is it again? https://twitter.com/ElineMuijres/sta...

Ouch! The contradiction just gave me whiplash!

Mermaidpirate wrote:

This still. What year is it again? https://twitter.com/ElineMuijres/sta...

It's like they didn't even bother to put 2 and 2 together...

I am 100% for more women making porn games for women though!

Completely agree with you, Pyxi. In fact, we’d be better off with MORE women making porn games (maybe we’d get more that actually speaks to us). But as Éline Mujires put it so perfectly in one of her follow up tweets, that’s not the way to do it.
The company put out a statement, in the aftermath of all this but it’s more of a “oops, the marketing company we hired to do this doesn’t align with what we think” blah blah blah... (not buying it)

"... some of the marketing imagery provided to us do not [sic] reflect their expressed view on inclusivity. We're sorry for that and apologize if anyone was disappointed."

... but we used that imagery anyway and their check cleared, so suck it, losers.