The Female Gaming Experience [Safe Space]

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Updated August 4th, 2017 - See below

Sexism and misogyny are real and pervade our gaming media. The tropes outlined by feminist frequency have a measurable, negative effect on women and young girls. How do we know this? Because real people report their real, personal experiences of this content every day. Many female game designers, journalists and gamers don't feel safe participating in the hobby and often spend time when they do waiting for the other shoe to drop.

For the purposes of this thread, the above is not up for debate and attempts to do so will result in the user being thrown out of the discussion at the very least. Other threads may be created to have intellectual arguments over these ideas, but this isn't the place for it.

*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.

Safe space means just that. Share your personal experiences and link to others that ring true to you. Vent your frustrations. Point out people, games and other media doing better. Track improvements. Whatever you'd like to contribute is great!

There's also a GWJ thread underway reviewing games for sexist content: Tropes vs. The Recently Released

This is something we talk about on the podcast going up this week, but I'd like to see where everyone is at. So let's start with a question:

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?

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?

IMAGE(http://www.papermag.com/uploaded_images/chloe-moretz-carrie-gif.gif)

Good run-down on the recent events on Polygon.

Industry:
My overall attitude is ongoing cynicism. For the AAA side of things I think we will see little change, maybe some token variety and maybe some of the worst of the tropes will be dampened. At the end of the day, however, the large game companies probably have a very good idea of what will sell their products and will cleave to maximize sales the bottom line (particularly if they are publicly held).

Community: please note this is my take on the gaming community writ large, and not anyone here at GWJ.
My biggest concern is that a vocal crowd (whatever its size) has the potential to hurt the wider view of gamers. I realize this is a little selfish in that it worries me what others will think of me. However in many settings, particularly professional ones, I will now likely have to think a third or forth time if I want to mention I am a gamer. I can live with being seen as a "man child"; potentially being seen as some kind sociopath I fear would limit my effectiveness professionally as I think people would be more likely to disregard anything I say. I realize sociopath is a strong word, but this is my fear so it is not entirely rational.

The way I engage:
This I am not so sure about. I have not played many (most) of the games that are offered as the more egregious examples. I may let the Witcher 2 and Dishonored collect ever more virtual dust in my steam library before giving them a shot. OTOH there are game series (DA, ME, Borderlands to name a few) that I have invested a fair amount of interest in over the years and I doubt I will abandon them. On the whole I may start a process of evaluating much of the content I consume and cutting some of it loose.

Edit - spelling

Somehow I missed this article this week, but a Gamasutra round-up of the week in Video Game Criticism pointed it out:

Tropes vs Anita Sarkeesian: on passing off anti-feminist nonsense as critique

It does a great job of highlighting the most frequently seen logical fallacies used to "debunk" Sarkeesian's (and others) critiques of video games.

There are a lot of fantastic positive articles linked and quoted in that Gamasutra round-up, too.

This week has been really hard for me to handle, as I just couldn't seem to keep my eyes away from all the hate being piled on feminists and their supporters on Twitter. I don't know how the targets of the criticism put up with all of it, but I have immense respect for them going on with their lives and continuing to create thoughtful and informative posts and articles.

To be honest, this summer has been so awful that the awfulness of gamers' misogyny has barely made a dent with me. Seriously, the news this summer might have been the worst of any summer of my lifetime (I'm 38): Gaza, police murdering and bullying and just generally acting like the enforcers of white privilege across the country, Russia (remember Russia?). What I've seen of this "gamer" nonsense is disgusting, but it's the 3rd or 4th most disgusting thing in my news feed fight now. Just a terrible summer all around.

Edit: So awful, I left off ISIS/ISIL and the fact it's funded by the Saudis off my list.

My feeling on the broader culture of the hobby is that it needs to grow up fast, or it'll find itself in the gutter forever. If you want to be as mainstream as movies, well, you don't see many movie audiences shouting the things you hear on Xbox Live at the screen. I was going to write up an explanation of why publishers need to walk away from the money of the misogyny crowd, but history has proven me wrong pretty soundly on that one. The audience okay with misogyny is going to be bigger than the one that isn't for the foreseeable future.

On the personal level, I've walked away from watching college and pro football because I find the two industries disgusting (for different reasons), and I'm sure I could learn to live without this one.

I've been totally out of the loop regarding the events at Polygon and other places, so forgive me if this is off topic. When I met my wife she had a Playstation 1 and was really into Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. It hadn't occurred to me at the time that she was attracted to them largely because she could play a female protagonist. Over the years it became clear she was only interested in games that allowed a feminine perspective. She liked WoW, Mass Effect, and Oblivion, as well as the most recent Tomb Raider game.

A few years ago, after watching a featured episode of the SyFy tv series Faceoff she became really interested in the upcoming game Dishonored, because from the on-air description of the game she got the impression that she could play it as a woman. Imagine her disappointment when we discovered on release day that Corvo was only playable as a dude. It got me thinking though, it wouldn't have been that difficult to make the protagonist (in a first person game like Dishonored) available as a female, aside from changing a few cut scenes. It would have meant the world to my wife to live and play in the city of Dunwall as a woman, and I think alot of other gamers would agree.

The industry has 5 years or so until my daughter is a teenager. (ohmygodshesgonnabeateenager)

My feeling is they had better get this stuff right, sooner than later. Here in Greece, gaming is not seen by teenagers as being such a male only thing to do, but what's available to my students who are girls who want to play is quite limited. GTA and anything like CS are very popular with boys here. The former of course contains lots of stuff to put off...anyone, and the latter has players to put them off playing.

I game with my daughter. I'll be looking for what Running Man points out...strong, female lead characters. And looking out for the tropes. I don't believe in shielding my daughter from these (which would be delusional on my part) as much as I believe in talking about them.

Hoping she sticks to Reus for now.

The PUA nonsense also boiled over this year.

That was the tipping point for me. My wife telling me that she carries her keys to her car. My wife of 16 years. The love of my life who seems invincible to me. That's all I really know first hand and even that was a surprise to me.

I don't know if I ever saw this in the other thread given how sideways it went, but how surprised were women about the things Anita Sarkeesian has been talking about? Or did you just nod and say, "yep, that's pretty much video games right now"?

Where I am at over in the small games scene:

All the people I know who are trying to scrape a living out of videogames have spent the past few weeks under an artillery barrage of ignorant rage staged by a small army of nasty children (in intellect if not in carbon date) with too much time on their hands. Some of my closest friends stand accused of leading some vague conspiracy to seize control of 'videogames' in the abstract (despite their never having earned more than a pittance in return for their years of labour).

My favourite artists and writers are increasingly scrutinized yet no further from being destitute; there is talk of erecting a literal memorial for all the non-cismale writers who left the scene after the institutional sexism and hostile audience became too much to bear.

Not only is there no money to be found in art games, there is no comfort or safety either. The people operating our legal systems and our communications networks continue to tolerate all manner of harassment, threats and assault despite the fact that these actions should be illegal. I admit, I could never have predicted that the future world of our nightmares would be wrought not by corrupt businesspeople or malevolent AIs but by a collective of over-privileged, maladjusted losers.

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'm tempted to just quote Kazooka's post and leave it at that, but I think it's a touch unfair. Given responses by some of the developers of the very games Sarkeesian points out I'm actually fairly positive about the future of the industry.

Saints Row Dev

"I think it's fair to be called out on your sh*t," he said. "I think that it's a sad man that can never be self-reflective. I think that we tried to go and carry ourselves with respect, and try to respect sexuality and respect gender as much as we can, and sometimes we fail but hopefully we'll do better and continue to get better."

I also saw a retweet from a Bioshock 2 dev, unfortunately I don't remember the name and didn't save it, acknowledging the criticism.

Or course Tim Shafer has spoken out too.

I think the right people are being reached. The industry probably won't ever turn around completely, the movie industry hasn't after all, but things will get better.

As for the community though. Outside of GWJ:

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I think the people

Certis wrote:

This is something we talk about on the podcast going up this week, but I'd like to see where everyone is at. So let's start with a question:

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 feel like the the industry is slowly, so slowly getting better. Like molasses, but at least it's getting better. The rising popularity of indie devs has helped steer women and folks into playing games that appeal to them, games that often don't objectify, ignore, or exclude them or default to violence on them.

Conversely, I feel the community is growing worse. Exponentially. I think the 4chans of the world are playing into it heavily for the max luls while inciting the lunatic fringe into alienating and ostracising their fellow female community members, and then continuing to do so to normalize it.

I learned early to avoid feminine screen names. I miss the days of typing out your trash talk when you head shot a cocky opponent. I stopped getting on the mic and playing with pubbies. What used to be weird flirting, bravado, preening, and strutting about team chat because a female is present had become verbal assault, sabotaging, team killing, creepy messages, stalking, harassment... ya know how it goes. For teh greatest luls.

I've stopped reading the comments everywhere that isn't here. I love games, but a lot of the people I seem to share that love with kinda freak me out.

As far as engaging goes, I'll continue doing what I'm doing. Androgynous name, no mic, NO SMILIES IN TEXT, minimal communication, and keep kickstarting the good ones.

I watched a documentary a while ago about gay people breaking into TV. The first few openly gay men to appear on TV were remorselessly attacked by the media and had to weather endless abuse. Those first few pioneers suffered tremendously. Gay presenters and performers are now very common and an accepted part of the TV establishment.

I'm hoping that, rather than being the norm going forward, women playing and writing in the gaming industry now are just the first few, very brave souls who are taking the brunt of the abuse and, eventually, women playing games, in chat and on forums will just be the norm and female gamers of the future won't have to put up with all this crap.

From Polygon:

Nearly 1K developers sign letter to end intolerance in the games community

This last weekend, I went to visit my parents, and was in their local town, small seaside resort. Grainger Games have a store there; they are one of very few high street video games chain stores left in the UK.

They have rebranded some of their stores as Trade Nation, and were relaunching this branch on the day of my visit. They had a big arch of balloons in the company colours...and two very young ladies, 18 at most, wearing extremely tight and skimpy costumes that were supposed to evoke Lara Croft.

I couldn't believe it. This is a growing chain, using a marketing "tactic" that is misogynistic, exploitative, and, at the very least, 20 years old that does nothing but reinforce the stereotype of those who play video games. Even more confusingly, these barely dressed ladies (whom, I want to add, were cheerful, polite and helpful, if absolutely freezing in the drizzle on the North Sea coast) were tasked with approaching small children to give them balloons.

I spoke to the manager, who at least had the decency to be apologetic and shamefaced, saying that it was a directive from above. I emailed the company, but have not received any response. I just can't see how this is still viewed as an even remotely acceptable way of behaving.

Has anyone tried to report abusive behaviour on Origin? When I tried, the only available options seemed to be for reporting an offensive username, and irrelevant things like copyright infringement.

I was lucky enough to be on vacation most of last week so while I was somewhat aware of the harassment of Zoe and Anita I wasn't aware of the exact scale. WTF.

I really liked Leigh Alexander's response to the events and it meshes nicely with a blog post by Jeff Vogel from earlier in the year:

Jeff Vogel wrote:

Corollary 1: The audience for computer games is split into two factions. There are young men (at which almost everything is and always has been aimed) and everyone else.

Add these three statements together, and you have the heart of every debate in video games.

Running Man wrote:

I've been totally out of the loop regarding the events at Polygon and other places, so forgive me if this is off topic. When I met my wife she had a Playstation 1 and was really into Tomb Raider and Resident Evil. It hadn't occurred to me at the time that she was attracted to them largely because she could play a female protagonist. Over the years it became clear she was only interested in games that allowed a feminine perspective. She liked WoW, Mass Effect, and Oblivion, as well as the most recent Tomb Raider game.

Similarly, Demyx has opened my eyes to how important it is for women to have the option to play as a female character. I think a lot of people see gaming as a form of self-expression and that's why as the demographic grows out of white, male, adolescent we're starting to see more requests for non-white characters, female characters, older characters, LGBTQ characters, etc.

Amoebic wrote:

I feel like the the industry is slowly, so slowly getting better. Like molasses, but at least it's getting better. The rising popularity of indie devs has helped steer women and folks into playing games that appeal to them, games that often don't objectify, ignore, or exclude them or default to violence on them.

Conversely, I feel the community is growing worse. Exponentially. I think the 4chans of the world are playing into it heavily for the max luls while inciting the lunatic fringe into alienating and ostracising their fellow female community members, and then continuing to do so to normalize it.

So very much this.

Thank you, Certis, for creating this thread!

I should begin by saying that my experience of the way the industry is (and is not) changing is shaped by the two monthly magazines that I read, by GWJ, and by the few games that I buy nowadays.

The two magazines that I read - Edge, and GamesTM - are slowly, slowly giving more space to female voices from the industry. I don't have the magazines to hand now, but I've definitely noticed more females developers, writers and business executives being interviewed and I'm seeing more female columnists too. But it's still not enough and it's still not happening quickly enough.

I do wonder, though, whether 'crowding out' is still an issue though. The endless hagiographies of late middle-aged male developers (in many cases, whose best years are long behind them) leaves very little room from fresh and female voices. This month's Edge, for example, carries a fawning piece on Miyamoto that spends what feels like a dozen pages telling me very little indeed.

GWJ is... well, GWJ. In my view, one of the most thoughtful, considerate and and progressive communities on the web. That's why I come here, and rarely visit anywhere else (though I'm open to suggestions).

And the games? It's one step forward, two steps back, in my view. The fact that female protagonists are still "notable" tells me everything I need to know. For every 'Tomb Raider' (2013) it feels like there are half a dozen other games that follow the adventures of murdeous male psychopaths. GTA V, of course, took this to a new level by shoehorning 3 of 'em in.

Even games that are lauded for their female protagonists seem to be unable to create similarly interesting female antagonists. At the moment, for example, I'm playing (and loving) Borderlands as a Siren. But she feels a lot like the only woman in the entire game at the moment.

I agree with Amoebic that the growth of the indie scene may encourage more women to play and - more importantly - to create games and to establish their own studios. I also hope that the increasing prominence of Scandinavian developers - based as they are in much more equal societies - will begin to usher in a long overdue change. But I'm expecting it to continue to be a slow process.

plavonica wrote:

...

It isn't just 'gamers' that are assholes. It's the general population of humanity. That doesn't mean that the more educated and good willed among us shouldn't stop trying to make things better. It's just that they have a larger fight ahead of them. Most of it boils down the the general pettiness of human nature.

I've tried to get involved and help out. But I see it as a lost cause. Not because of gamers in general, but because of the human condition. And in the end I just want to share in some entertainment with my friends and family that engages our imaginations and our minds.

This ^

What's been going on with the gaming community lately is nothing more than what's been going on outside of the gaming community, except for the "regulations" are looser and a more Lord of the Flies type of environment is possible than in our more "civilized" locations. Given the anonymity of the internet though, a lot of people's true, rotten-to-the-core natures can come out and shine, and it has.

I remember male characters surrounding and raping female characters back in the first year of Ultima Online. Reporting abuse to EA did nothing. Nobody ever got banned even for the most serious exploits and behavior that would have been considered criminal anywhere else. The levels of vulgarity and sick harassment that went on day after day in that game eventually wore me down (even when playing male characters) to the point where I felt that humanity in general was utterly hopeless, barring a few exceptionally worthy individuals. I began to look at people I'd come across in real life and wonder if the only thing keeping them civil was the lack of an environment where they could allow their violent perversions to run free. It took me a very long time to admit to being female IRL, even to friends. People would just assume I was male even when playing my rare female characters, and I was perfectly fine with that.

Nowadays, I typically don't hide it. I have a female-sounding Xbox Live gamertag and female avatar, play a mixture of male and female characters in MMO's, and will sometimes even get on teamspeak or ventrilo and talk. I've run across a number of guilds, even those made up primarily of males in FPS-type games, who have been extremely respectful. It really does give me hope.

I'm hoping that since the inappropriate behavior of the more degenerate-minded of the gaming community is getting more public attention, the issues will ultimately be resolved, but I still can't help being cynical too, and suspecting that these people will just tend to hide it a bit better than to actually become decent human beings...but we'll see.

Thank you Certis, this thread is a great idea. I'm tagging it primarily to read, listen, and learn, but I will say that the existence of threads like this heartens me even as the vast swaths of the internet seem to have descended into horror.

bekkilyn wrote:

I remember male characters surrounding and raping female characters back in the first year of Ultima Online. Reporting abuse to EA did nothing. Nobody ever got banned even for the most serious exploits and behavior that would have been considered criminal anywhere else.

I had forgotten about the heyday of UO horrors. My wife and I played it together for a while, and while she never experienced anything as extreme as the above, she always mentions getting pk'd and robbed of the dress I'd given her; then the pk'er put the dress on and danced around mocking her dismembered corpse. She felt really violated by that at the time and it stuck with her all these years, so I can see how more excessive abuses would be traumatizing.

My kids play XBL and PSN with their school friends, boys and girls, and within their network they haven't had a single incidence of abuse; I guess playing only with people you know is key.

Good thread. Having just returned from PAX, I'm wondering if there's a huge disconnect between online and offline behavior. The gaming community in person seems on the whole positive and welcome, with a sizable number of women who from what I saw felt perfectly safe. Now, I recognize that as a male observer I may be missing a lot. But For example I was able to strike up a 15 minute conversation with a woman dressed as sexy Morrigan and several other guys and nobody seemed uncomfortable. As a counter example, I don't think women feel that comfortable to just hang out and talk to strangers at the several NFL games I've been to in different cities.

jdzappa wrote:

Good thread. Having just returned from PAX, I'm wondering if there's a huge disconnect between online and offline behavior. The gaming community in person seems on the whole positive and welcome, with a sizable number of women who from what I saw felt perfectly safe. Now, I recognize that as a male observer I may be missing a lot.

I came away from GenCon an PAX East with similar observations. However, I've learned to accept that (1) a lot of it is not happening in front of hundreds of people in the major hallways and on the show floor, and (2) as someone who is somewhat tone deaf when it comes to body language, I probably wouldn't immediately recognize harassment even if it was right in front of me.

That said, acceptance and awareness are the first steps. I stay tuned in to these threads in hopes that I can continue taking steps towards being part of the solution rather than just another oblivious face in the crowd.

Mostly just tagging in here to get this into my post tracker, but a few thoughts on Certis' prompt:

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?

In many respects a lot of what I've seen over the past year has given me reason to be optimistic, as there are genuine signs of progress being made in areas where one might not have expected it. One, that these kinds of conversations are happening at all beyond an occasional surface level complaint about how rotten and unpleasant online communities can be. Two, that media outlets both within the gaming industry and without are actually reporting and commenting on it, and in some cases doing even more (Polygon reviews actively calling out problematic elements of games, for example). Three, that developers, publishers, and creators of many other types (again, both within and without the gaming industry) are noticing and responding. So yeah, despite the gut wrenching awfulness that has been spewing forth in response, I see a lot of reasons to hope that an appreciable shift in the status quo might be happening sooner that I would have expected.

At the same time, I'm finding myself feeling far more guarded and hesitant than I really ever have in the past about interacting with gaming communities. My wife and I used to do a lot of online gaming together when we were younger, mostly FPS games, and that has dropped off progressively over the past few years for other reasons -- mostly that our shared preferred hobbies and pastimes have shifted elsewhere. But while the atmosphere of misogyny may not have been the biggest factor in us moving away from online gaming, it is certainly playing a big part in preventing me from thinking about coming back to it, both as an individual and as a couple.

This year has two major releases that in the past I would have been all over: Titanfall (giant robots!) and Destiny (Bungie!), and ultimately I didn't buy Titanfall and I'll probably pass on Destiny as well. There are many factors involved, not the least of which being general shooter fatigue, but the idea of potentially exposing myself to the current level of toxic bullsh*t is definitely the cherry on top encouraging me to spend my limited gaming time on single player experiences instead, regardless of genre. And of course I'm equally reticent to suggest checking these games out to Luna when she asks if there are games we might enjoy playing together, because frankly, there are other ways we spend our time where we aren't taking on the chance of having our fun ruined by some random angry asshole (again, especially given the current levels of toxicity). Sure, we have always mostly played with close friends or GWJers, but still, it's a strong point in favor of finding something else to do instead.

I was going to drop Luna's name, but was hesitant to. Mostly because I didn't know what happened to her. One of my strongest / best memories of GWJ was you, Luna, Danjo and others playing the Halo 3 beta. That was my first foray into online gaming outside of a little NFL2k on Dreamcast. And it was so positive that that's how I thought things would be forever.

When XBox Live turned really toxic I sometimes wondered if Luna (as well as Mystic) was still playing.

DSGamer wrote:

I was going to drop Luna's name, but was hesitant to. Mostly because I didn't know what happened to her. One of my strongest / best memories of GWJ was you, Luna, Danjo and others playing the Halo 3 beta. That was my first foray into online gaming outside of a little NFL2k on Dreamcast. And it was so positive that that's how I thought things would be forever.

When XBox Live turned really toxic I sometimes wondered if Luna (as well as Mystic) was still playing.

We definitely remember those times fondly as well.

Thankfully, it's mostly that life has just carried us away to other pastimes, which is totally fine; we both have new hobbies vying for our time, my tastes in games have shifted further away from shooters and multiplayer, and games have moved quite a bit down her general interest list. But yeah, despite the fact that we've always mostly stuck to private/controlled/co-op matches, the thought of wading back into those waters at all right now makes it even harder for online games to compete with the other options we have for socializing and entertainment.

Everyone assumes I'm a man online unless they've been told repeatedly that I'm not. Even in games like FFXIV where I have a female character with a female name I get called by male pronouns.

So except for a few places like here, my primary method of engaging with "gamers" is to hope no one notices I'm female.

Conventions are a lot better; I think exhibitors involved with games are very aware now of the ramifications of ignoring or belittling female attendees after multiple editorials started popping up about that kind of treatment a few years ago. Not that they would have necessarily done that before; but now they seem aware enough to avoid that possibility ever happening.

I didn't feel as though I was ignored or treated any differently at PAX this year than other attendees by exhibitors and staff, which is nice. I'm starting to get into that slightly older demographic, or maybe it was the butchy look I was sporting this year, but I didn't get hit on nearly as much, either.

OTHER ATTENDEES, HOWEVER...we're like 97% cool, respectful, decent human beings and I came away with a mostly positive experience. I did notice a few dudes challenging and trying to stump or trip up some of the pretty exhibitors because they assumed they were dumb hired boothbabes, but those women pulled no punches and brought the knowledge, so lots of respect to them for that.

For myself, there are just some dudes that don't see me. They assume I'm standing there because I'm some other dudes lady standing around and not interested in actutally trying the game. Only a couple of times this year where they offered the controller to someone behind me and I had to speak up, but for the most part folks were pretty cool.

I hate the internet sometimes.

I have been struggling for a while to put my thoughts on all this into words, and so far this is all I can come up with.

I think Anita Sarkeesian is right. While I disagree with her semantics at times, I think her points are completely on, and I think anyone watching them with an open mind would largely agree with her. I think most of the criticism I have seen of her work at best comes down to over generalizations, straw-man arguments, and a lack of understanding of the techniques of criticism. At worst, some of her detractors are sexist, misogynist pigs who need to examine their place in this century.

I think the relationship between Zoe Quinn and Nathan Grayson is none of my business. But as it is the purpose of this thread to comment on such things, here it goes. First, I find it telling that I knew this as Zoe Quinn's controversy, and had to look up Nathan Grayson's name. That goes to show me that even though both were involved in the affair, Zoe is getting all the blame. I think it is ridiculous to assume that Zoe and Nathan's relationship was a tit-for-tat to get coverage and positive reviews for her game, for reasons listed above in articles. And most importantly, I think that this goes back to the old cliche, that a man can sleep with multiple women and he is lauded, but if a woman does it she is "slut shamed."

On a slightly unrelated note, the idiots who took down a bunch of gaming networks and who called a bomb threat on a plane to inconvenience a Sony exec can go die in a fire. Seriously, what the f*ck.

I have heard multiple theories about why people would resort to this sort of online harassment. Some people think it is fear, that people see the games they like attacked and are scared that their hobby will be inexorably altered. Some people said that it is a deep seeded sexism that is amplified by the relative anonymity of the internet. I have heard others say that it is the powerless looking to exact power, by constructing conspiracy theories and terrorizing people.

I think that these people are bullies. When my friends and I were bullied as a child, I stood by and did nothing, because I felt powerless. Now, I am a 34-year old man, and I have at least as much power and the bullies. I hope I get called a white knight, or a social justice warrior--that means I am doing what is right. What I want to be called, though, is a gamer. Because I want that term to mean something better than what the people that have stolen that term are.

Amoebic wrote:

For myself, there are just some dudes that don't see me. They assume I'm standing there because I'm some other dudes lady standing around and not interested in actutally trying the game. Only a couple of times this year where they offered the controller to someone behind me and I had to speak up, but for the most part folks were pretty cool.

This can be a thing sometimes because me and my guy both game (he's already up in this thread ) so sometimes exhibitors at PAX assume I'm just Bored Girlfriend and talk mostly to him. Usually wearing a gaming shirt and talking loudly about geeky stuff works though :p

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.

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