Gaming Fat, Ugly or Slutty?

Specofdust,

I accept your reasoning, though I don't necessarily agree with it in its entirety.

My perception of the net is that of an open forum; a place of debate; a place to broach ideas and concepts, to argue the merits and absorb, evolve those ideas and concepts. A collective consciousness.

Mine is, perhaps, a very Utopian ideal, certainly somewhat self-contradictory and therefore a somewhat flawed one; But that's my viewpoint. Ultimately the principle is based around equality of voice and the raising of awareness without hate, fear, subjugation or segregation.

A truly anarchistic state, if you will; and I'm not referring to the Websters dictionary definition of anarchy, but it's original roots as a "truly" democratic ideal where each and every persons voice counts in unified concensus. Again, the principle in itself is flawed, and almost certainly naive. But.. Aim for the stars and you might just reach the moon.

Which is also why I can accept your own views, but not necessarily agree with them.

 

specofdust. Going by what you are saying, you think the females on this forum be verbally attacked by anyone who feels the need, and they should also like it or lump it? Or are you saying they should only be abused in gaming?

 

You do realize that is possible to trash talk without actually degenerating into racism, sexism, or other "ism's" right? Trust me, it is possible if you learn to express yourself. I don't think anyone wants to eliminate trash talk, it's part of the game, but at what point do you start calling foul?


In the "odd game"?
I wish. If I play in peak hours, I will be harassed pretty much every day, and I don't mean the typical "you suck". This goes way beyond that. Much of it crosses into outright verbal abuse, sexual harassment and stalking. Read some of what I wrote earlier in the thread.

It's not just ruining my game, it ruins yours too. Confrontations ruin games, drive people off, and in the end, means less people playing.


Why does discrimination have to live on? You don't need it to justify free speech, or the internet. We don't need discrimination, the world would be a better place without it. You make it sound like it's a beautiful thing and that the world will be a horrible place without it. What are you going to save next, Polio, Aids, Herpes?


For the record, you don't have free speech on most of the internet, the only rights you have on a website, chat forum, or game system are those granted to you by it's owners. It's private property. If you want to speak freely, you have every right to start your own.

 

I'm not sure if you intended to have a "should" or a "could" there so I won't answer in the affirmative. However you're simplifying the issue or at least misunderstanding.

This forum is a private entity and so has whatever rules the owners choose to employ. That said, if the owners chose to enforce no rules I wouldn't really care if people insulted each other on the forum, no. This is not limited to women. I have no problem with people insulting each other on the internet, which is the crux of this issue.

I wouldn't, because I understand that some asshole I've never met on the internet insulting my mother means nothing. If it offends you then leave or block the person.

Honestly I tend not to play online games too much these days because it's a fairly poor experience. But that's not because of insults, that's just because most people are stupid and so the sorts of games I would like to play often don't work due to a lack of cooperation.

If confrontations ruin my game though, then I will leave. I suggest you do the same. I just don't want to see some oppressive social etiquette or legislation built up on the internet whereby people offend hugely and get perma-banned for shouting some abuse at the person who just killed them in a video game.

Like I said earlier, there is a limit to what I think is acceptable and that's where it crosses into your real life. I'm not saying that you should ignore situations like this, just that everyone gets insulted on the internet.

Of course you need to allow discrimination to have free speech. If I can not air my prejudices (not that I have many, I tend to not give a **** about what anyone is) in a venue which has no private rules on the matter then I do not have free speech. This is not discrimination in anything more than a verbal matter, but this is to what I referred.

The world would be a better place with more intelligent decent people in it. Banning something does not create that situation.

Free speech is a negative right only removable by government. The fact that private venues may have their own rules does not impede my freedom of speech as I may always leave, or set up my own venue, or go to another which will allow me to speak how I please.

I'm not saying that I would be unhappy if there were some games servers where people were banned for being anything other than perfect ladies and gentlemen to each other - that would just be fulfilling a niche in the market. But it seems like a lot of people want an internet wide solution to the issue of anonymous online abuse and I think this brings with it too many undesirable encroachments upon a beautiful thing.

edit: Subv3rse, I'll say two in response to your earlier post. Firstly, if you wish to see equality of voice, you must accept hate, fear, and attempts at subjugation. Secondly, don't use Webster's dictionary, it's a horribly arbitrary attempt at being different - the hipster of dictionaries if you will. OED's where it's at.

 

I really like the stuff you are putting on to the site. First it was a bit shocking but now I just have to laugh at it. I'm a man and get abuse from poor players but nothing like this. The sort of thing that is shown on the site should never happen. Gamer is a gamer regardless of gender. There are a lot of really good women players out there. Keep up the good work.

 

Specofdust: You talk about abuse not being a problem in games, but obviously isn't acceptable in real life. Just out of interest, where do you draw the line between abuse in a game and abuse in real life?

Reading FUoS, it seems alot of the verbal abuse takes place outside of the games - private messages, emails and the such. I recall one entry of a guy who set up extra accounts to avoid the blocks put on him.

Where's the cut-off point? Are emails still part of the game or part of real-life? What about phone calls?

The way I see it, the point of FUoS was not to try to limit freedom of speech, but just to chronicle (in an amusing way) the levels of abuse female gamers recieve, which from what it seems most gamers had no idea about.

On the subject of free-speech: yes discrimination is necessary for totally free speech. This isn't about stopping people saying certain things though, it's about encouraging people not to choose to say those things in the first place. I agree banning smack talk is a bad idea, but surely you agree that you'd rather people chose not to use discriminatory abuse, even if they were allowed to?

 

I get what you are saying, however, it's not always that easy for all games. Take Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood for example, it is my drug of choice after all. I have been avoided by so many people on xbl now (for being aggressive apparently... in free-for-all modes - go figure!) that combining it with the horrible matchmaking I can struggle to get into any games at all. So quitting out because someone is abusive to me means not being able to play. Avoiding doesn't mean I'll never be put in a lobby with them, but it doesn't help with the already dodgy matchmaking that's for sure.

There's also the issue of not being able to join your friends half the time as they show as 'unreachable' for absolutely no reason whatsoever meaning you're stuck playing with randoms. As I said before though I actually don't mind the abuse I get as most of it makes me laugh. Well the xbl stuff does anyway. It's nearly always from 11yr old kids anyway, at least that's how they sound in their messages...

 

there was an interesting thread on guildwars I remember.. this girl said she was new to gaming and joined a guild..

they setup ventrillo and it was mainly a pve starters guild.. so they would do dungeons and later advanced to hard mode.. but then they decided to take the guild into pvp

so what ended up happening is.. the guys at the top end of pvp (guild vs guild), they've got skills.. so any pve clan going in is going to get steamrolled

just the way guildwars pvp is.. if your running some crazy builds, you probably won't win.. one of the guys she really liked to talk with, instead of realizing he was out of his element and accepting he was nothing but a carebear in a wolfs den- decides to start yelling at her and placing a lot of blame on her play style

after the match she was so frazzled by it, she logged off and started crying.. this is what's so messed up about competitive multiplayer gaming.. especially shooters and anything beyond http://www.kongregate.com/games/Mazapan/you-have-to-burn-the-rope for consoles

 

I'd wait till he'd run out of steam and then send a text reply: "u mad bro?"

 

I'd rather listern to bile than snobbery

 

Finding a better community does help quite a bit, it's a shame more developers aren't willing to put in better support to counter abuse. Dedicated servers where hosts can enforce friendly (or at least non-abusive) environments, easy to use and powerful muting tools in game, and the ability to block contact with troublesome gamers. It confuses me why many developers release games designed to have heavily social interactions but make fatal mistakes such as not allowing players to mute text chat in game or take measures to prevent blocked players from being matched together in future games.

 

I know what I'd send him.. play the middle of this track back

http://www.myspace.com/thejerkyboys...0&pfc=EmbedPopOutPlayer&offnw=1&uid=-1&ltpm=1

 

So in other words, don't play online, got it, thanks.

You're a big help.


By the way, coop in L4D2 is awesome. It encourages you to work together.

 

I don't. Works for me.

I also don't associate with the Max Power crowd, although I like customised cars. I tend to steer clear of LAN parties, several computer forums, IRC and keep exposure to Facebook to a bare minimum. All because I don't like the crowd or the dynamics.

As I said before, opening the Internet up to the mainstream public ruined it for me. But I agree with Spec that freedom of speech is important and that unfortunately the price for it is having to put up with idiots having their say too. On the other hand that does not mean they can't be subjected to social control, or left to wallow in their own little social miasma like a pub that others know well to avoid. As a result they do not get to bother the rest of us, who can get on with our own socialising in our own social niche.

tl;dr: life's too short to hang with assholes. Just find yourself better company.

 

I take that point and there's certainly a level of 'If you play in certain communities and find you don't get on with them, go elsewhere' involved.

However, there's also an element of 'The behaviour discussed in this article isn't just limited to specific communities and is something that needs to be addressed to stop these attitudes permeating through into the world outside of games.'

There's no flat, fit-all solution.

Yes, if you don't like the playground then maybe you should play elsewhere.

On the other hand, if you don't like the playground because you're being bullied in it - and everyone around you is just accepting that behaviour as normal even though they'd otherwise agree that it is reprehensible - then maybe everyone needs to learn to stand up to these bullies. That is, after all, the point of this article; to show people how bad it has got so that, next time they see it, they can tell the bully to back off.

 

I understand where the fat, lonely losers-cliche comes from. People who put up with the online-gaming communities really can't have many social options. A person with even the slightest bit of self-respect wouldn't put up with that crap. Quit today, people. Don't try to change online gaming. Evacuate the scene before you waste your life in front of a cold plastic screen.

 

I skipped the last few pages of comments, but I think it's a real shame that people have to put up with this. I've been playing Eve Online since 2004, and I've been in various corps which all had female members at one time or another. Every single one of them was treated as an equal, yes there was banter, yes there was flirting, but us guys do that amongst ourselves anyway.

I rarely play outside of communities and I always disable ingame voice anyway, just because of general asshattery, discrimination aside, I hate mic spam so the groups I'm in always use teamspeak or ventrilo.

 

i'm yet to meet a sexy female gamer, online or offline lol

 

Absol-bloody-lutely!

L4D2 playing the No Mercy campaign on Expert - best multiplayer experience of the last five years.

 

I don't understand this differentiation some people seem to want to make between 'Real life' i.e. walking down the street and about town, and 'Not Real Life' i.e. computer gaming.

The character on my screen, and the stuff he/she/it does is 'Not Real Life'. I, and the human beings I play with when online, are 'Real Life' at all times. The stuff we say to each other whilst in a game is 'Real Life' at all times. It is not my imagination.

Hence it shouldn't make the slightest jot of difference whether whoever it is that is abused, is abused whilst walking down the street, or by someone who hides behind anonymity whilst playing a computer game through the internet. In all cases the abuser is a moron who is getting gratification from making someone else feel bad. That is just not cool.

And yeah, we all need freedom of speech, but to be honest, if an ultimate freedom of speech means I am perfectly protected in my right to go and make another human being feel bad simply because I can, then to be honest a 'slightly less than ultimate' freedom of speech would be rather more appealing. One of the key areas that could solve this and many other problems would be 'Consideration' for others.

Unfortunately, in the majority the only people who will engage in discourse with a subject like this, are the people who wouldn't condone stupid abuse on the internet during games or whatever anyway. The fools who do, wouldn't get involved with something as wordy as a good forum like this.

I want to see gaming be representative of our society as a whole. And there are ALOT of women out there.