Gaming Community takes a stand against anti-equality gamers

I can direct you to a thread in System Wars from a few weeks ago where a thread was made concerning Bioware announcing a new game. Apropos of nothing, someone decides to bitch about Bioware's trend of having gay characters.

dumb thread still is dumb

Oh, you mean like when anti-feminists take one or two examples where a feminist does or says something and use it to paint all feminists the same way? ;O)

No, saying something has been debunked and actually debunking something in reality are two different things. Anti-feminists like to claim they have debunked a lot of things but their arguments usually don't hold up from what I have seen. LOL Like when they say the pay gap has been debunked by pointing to a single study while ignoring the majority of statistics. Sorry, that isn't actually deunking it. LOL You can say you debunked something but that doesn't mean you actually did.

I noticed no one had a response to this... Yes, anytime a dev wants to make a game that may appeal to certain demographics they get upset and start flaming the company for "ruining their games."

And these are the same hypocrites who tell feminists to just enjoy the games that the devs want to make. LOL Its funny how quickly their view changes.

LOLOLOLOLOL!

With so many insults being dropped freely like that, I can imagine why people didn't answer. They don't expect a discussion out of it. But since you invited, I'll bite. I hope this is actually a sign of being open for discussion.

I'm guessing you guys' points are coming from articles like this one and the OP? Articles that instead of trying to see the bigger picture are guided from bias to assess the present situation of gaming, resorting to anecdotes instead of statistics, studies, etc.? In that one example linked, did that change anything on Faith's final design? Did devs have to succumb to a vocal minority? Well, no, but that's just anecdote right? Like the OP and the linked article itself.

Is the majority of the console and PC demographics just white sexist men like he said? No. Women are the majority in gaming now. The majority of gamers are above 18 y.o., and from these ones, 36% are women, 35% are men. But what do women play the most? From that same article:

"So what games have women been playing all these years, now that we know they haven't just been wasting time trying to get their Facebook friends to give them free lives on Candy Crush?

Casual computer games, mostly. The report ranks online and mobile puzzle games, board games, trivia games, and card games as coming in second to the boom in social games, which more than doubled in popularity between 2012 and 2013."

So, who's the main consumer of the so called hardcore and mainstream console and PC gaming? Still men. If you see the study from which that Daily Dot article came from, you'll see on page 12 that casual games on consoles amounts to only 2.3% of sales, while on PC they amount to 28.3% of total games sales. That's corroborated by this Wall Street Journal article, based on more studies, with the same ESA one among them.

"The growing number of female gamers largely comes down to a surge in so-called casual mobile game, a genre of games boosted by the fast adoption of smartphones, executives from game companies say."

From all these graphics, info and the input from gaming companies executives, we have the conclusion that, although women represent 52% of the gaming audience, that does not translate into an equal proportion in the generation of revenue.

This is some pertinent data on the audience. Now to the dev and publishing scenes. This article seems to be a great source, since they gathered their info from many different companies and the group Women in Games International. The article starts by saying that in E3 2014 there was a majority of men characters and protagonists (though there're Alien: Isolation's Amanda Ripley, Lara again on a new TR, The Order's Isabeau and Evolve's Maggie).

The Women in Games International CEO said that's frustrating that there's still a prevalence on male protagonists, that she's been in the industry for 9 years and the situation is still the same. Though she also said that:

"12 to 18 percent of the industry is women and many game developers and publishers have problems finding and retaining female employees. Van Sickle said change is happening, but it’s slow going."

So it's hard to find a female employee on gaming. Though that's slowly changing.

Ubisoft's CEO said the following:

“The more women we have playing games, the more we will be able to have a balance between women and men in the games,” said Yves Guillemot, CEO of Ubisoft.

So they do have an eye open for that market. It's not like they want to alienate that share of the money.

Actually, it seems to me that the conclusion is better translated in the EA's CEO statement:

“My thesis is that it’s a male-dominated business,” said Patrick Soderlund, executive vice president at EA Studios. “I’m not sure that flies, but I think it overall may have something to do with it — that boys tend to design for boys and women for women. I’m just happy that we have a game with a female heroine.”

So, I guess I'll say it again in other words: the problem is structural, and not ideological. There is no boogie man behind this. No cis white sexist misogynistic masochistic sexist nascissistic pervert sexist white men (redundancy intended) holding the industry from diversifying. Women are being integrated, but it's being done on their own pace. Women are rarer to find on the business side of it, like said above; women are less probable to spend on high profile games, which are the ones with leading roles under scrutiny. These are all natural consequences of it. This is clearly not a resistance against women. As it's being said in this years E3 (article already linked), and recent surveys on the market (ESA's study and WSJ's article), women are welcome and an increasing audience, and can become as big as they are in the casual market; from a developer's perspective, it's just a matter of more women showing interest to work with games. On the consumer's side, it's a matter of women spending more with high budget games. With that, barriers will naturally be dismantled, like they are slowly being. It's a work in constant progress, not something that can change overnight after all. Because by seeing all that... it simply has no structural means or financial reason to.

How are cis and white insults? I'm cis and white. All it means is that my gender matches my sex and my skin is white. Nothing wrong with that.

Are you really denying that a lot of gamers are racist and homophobic? Sorry but you need to face reality, racism, sexism and homophobia are still very common. I'm not saying all gamers are, or that most gamers are, but there is definitely a lot of them.

Odd that you didn't once address what I said. Why don't you try again and this time read what I said. I'm not talking about woman being allowed to play games. I'm talking about developers being allowed to make the games they want to.

Is that all you got? I guess I was right. There wasn't a discussion to be had to begin with.

You, flatout moving the goalpost... but I'll answer this as well. Don't forget to actually answer that previous post though.

Calling people racist, homophobic, sexist, etc., is insulting. Of course calling someone who is one is just affirming the fact. But when you're generalizing, stereotyping, it's not only insulting, it's worse. It's hate-speech.

How many is a lot to you? Do you have anything to base yourself on to know if that's a significant proportion of gamers to begin with? Are you basing that on your twitter feed and your friends twitter feeds? Great. On articles from outlets that doesn't hide their bias? Which write based on anecdote and assume the rest, to conform to their ideology? Even then these homophobics, racists, sexists are still the minority even amongst those registered in forums, twitter, internet outlets in general. How many gamers even actually take their time to discuss games and gaming related issues online? They weren't enough to change Mirror's Edge and plenty of other games with female protagonists. You have no ground to prove that the backlash from those gamers is enough to scare devs and publishers to the point of changing a characters' gender.

And next time, read the answer before you post. If it's too big for you, I can't help you. The developer's side of things is addressed there. For example, the CEO of Women in Games International, an organization that advocates women representation in games said herself that it's rare to find women to employ, and they are hard to retain in the industry. This is an issue of lack of interest for working in the area. There are other points made there on that. I even started the argument with a counter-anecdote, a game where such gamers backlash didn't scare the developer studio at all. And I went further then the anecdote, because I was actually trying to make a productive discussion there. Try to be respectful next time. Or you'll be left yelling at the wall and self proclaiming victory alone because no one answers you.

where did I say that the racists were anything more than a minority? Is it really that hard for you to accept that there are racist people in the world?

Again I wasn't talking about females being accepted into the game industry. I was talking about people making the games they want to make. Saying that women don't want to join the industry has nothing to do with anything I said. Men can also make games with female or gay characters.

So you keep changing the goalpost. This is what you said:

And I proved you wrong with facts and reason that such a thing doesn't happen. "Their" racist h. s. community doesn't scare them... this is not a sexist thing, this is a structural thing, financial thing, creative thing, etc. Read the posts and actually try to fight the points made. Yours are all done.

I'll let the examiner end this talk for me. Have a good night.

Any industry that generates 10s of billions of dollars will eventually become political.

It's inevitable.

IGN just posted a terrible article defending Anita, Zoe, and Phil all at once. These people aren't fighting for equality, they are fighting for personal gains via middle class politics (ahem feminism). Is every site losing integrity? It seems like that's what's happening.

I love it when anti-feminists basically destroy their own arguments in their endless tirades about exaggerating & misrepresenting the situation and the points feminists make. The endless denials of the obvious and well-known existence of gender inequality, the blatant fury and obsessive extremism that they constantly accuse feminists of possessing - it all serves to reveal just how clueless, hypocritical and irrational anti-feminists really are. Especially people who actually think that Anita Sarkeesian is a con artist for receiving more donations than she asked for - that's just a really easy litmus test for checking if someone's an illiterate idiot.

Does this look like the right woman to represent gaming to the world? Joss Whedon retweeted her is this how you want video games to be looked it. Please for the love of god if you like video games watch this ENTIRE video and tell me you're ok with the false image she's building of gaming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI&feature=youtu.be

Boohoo, somebody made mistakes in the process of attempting to review and criticize almost 200 games, obviously they're untrustworthy lying hacks who are intentionally trying to make an entire field of entertainment (that they invested thousands of dollars and several years of their life in) look bad! Also this really justifies an exceptionally large and intense amount of rape & death threats for reasons.

It's manipulative. And it's done on purpose. You think this is the only example? All of her video does this. Everyone has debunked her I thought no one took her seriously anymore that gives a shit about gaming. White knights who aren't into video games may retweet her because it makes them feel better about themselves but a person who is into video games you dissappoint me.

She got paid $160,000. She doesn't disclose where she spent the money. She puts out a video every few month. The game footage isn't even hers. Sometimes she wears the same clothes and makeup in her videos (means the footage was taken the same day) and releases them months apart. It's proven most of the game footage isn't her, but taken from lets players. But when she drags naked ladies around I believe t that's hers, because no one is a psychopath to release a video of him draging women around in Hitman for no purpose at all. I can just imagine her or her boyfriend capturing that footage because they couldn't find it on their own. Her making terrible shit like this proves my point that she's not the right person to present gaming or women in games. Joss Whedon and millions of his twitter followers now think people who play games drag dead bodies around for fun and games encourage that behaviour.

-death threats

Why hasn't she contacted the police. She was threatened,says had to leave her house, feared for her safety yet there are no police reports, nothing. Only her tweets and all journalists who took her word for it. Did you donate money to her yet? She needs a bodyguard these threats are legit and serious.

What they really mean by "end the hate", is . .

Only criticize the groups of people that they tell you to criticize.

These devs that signed this , are constantly spewing hate speech about Americans, Christians, Asians, Jews, White people, conservatives, and many others .

As long as you "hate" those groups, they have no problem with "hate speech".

Guys, you didn't realize yet that feminism vs. gamers was something dropped into the discussion as a diversion to the real issue making devs make such a campaign against their own audience? Don't waste your time with a discussion that the people actually arguing it (not just slandering each other) aren't really disagreeing with. The vast majority is for equality in gaming. But if they don't spread the word that it isn't so, make the few radical gamers a hyperbole of the stereotype there always existed inherent to gaming culture, and make a villain out of it, people will continue talking about the discovered ties they found of journalists funding devs, giving awards to friends, lovers and people they funded, etc.

Exactly, more than half of the devs that signed this aren't even really game devs either. There's community managers and Mo-Cap directors on that list.

I made a game in flash! Consider me a member of the industry now.

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1s7k8i1

Thanks for sharing. I really enjoyed reading that. Crappy people are everywhere and I don't think we'll ever be rid of them in gaming. The sad truth is, the Internet gives the scum of the Earth a voice. Unfortunately, they tend to be the loudest. Gaming must evolve and move on without them. Ignore their complaints, mute them when possible, and for the few that participate in criminal activity, prosecution when necessary.

The fact that gaming media outlets scream the number 600 without actually examining the source, looking into how many actual devs are involved is amusing... there are even game testers there.

They really didn't think this counter move through. They're fucking losing it, they can't stand much more pressure. Expect more and more dirty laundry, ridiculous tweets and stupid ass articles to come from this.

This is why I do not let my wife play video games or watch cable television unsupervised. They don't know how to correctly handle it and need a man to tell them what they're seeing.

political correctnes doesn't have a place in art imho.

I find "political correctness" tends to be code for "don't call me out on my bullshit."

Like when bigots railed against the "ground zero mosque."

I'm just waiting for the day I can finally play as a trans gender woman non-white character and go on an amazing journey of emotional growth where every character is equal and no race/creed/nationality/gender/sexuality/whatever is evil or portrayed in a negative light.

ROFL

No, no I don't. I like being the bad ass knight...and I like saving the princess too.

It's not alright to threat anyone or even do death threats. But when someone like anita sarkesian doesn't even have open discussions and just criticizes a whole medium. Same with Zoe Quinn. Nobody of the big sites have even mentioned it and instead go against it like IGN with posting this on their website

Exactly. People who complain about "Political Correctness" are basically saying that they want to be able put down other groups of people while not having to deal with any consequences. Now there are plenty of groups that I like to talk trash about: Social Conservatives, many types of Republicans, religious fundamentalists, anti-feminists/sexists, homophobes, racists and a certain segment of the gaming community but when I make comments about them I don't hide behind some "Anti-PC" shield. I don't say, "Oh we'll you're just being PC if you don't just sit there in silence and let me say whatever I want about your group, even though it would be kinda of funny to flip that logic around on them.. LOL I'm intellectually honest about my dislike of large percentages of these groups ;O)

Okay. I can agree with most of that. It doesn't particularly have anything to do with what I said, but okay.

Though on another note, what's wrong with criticizing a medium? People say they think, for example, that stage musicals are stupid. So what?

it's not wrong criticizing it, but at least have some facts or evidence to support your claim and not just spewing out crap when you are a critic. But if you're just saying your own opinion to your friends and saying something sucked is alright imho.

No the vast majority of gamers provably don't give a shit about equality in video games, or that much about about gaming period, as they tend to be casual. The loud minority happens to be people who continue to misrepresent and misunderstand the basic message of Sarkeesian and other critics - we simply observe an overall trend and bias in games and other media where a very specific demographic (white male) are ridiculously overrepresented, with most other characters written poorly.

Now, in the interests of good writing and fairness it's obvious that we would argue for female/minority characters to have better writing, representation, .etc in video games and media and general. This does not mean that we, who are enthusiastic enough about gaming to detect and criticize its obvious flaws, are intent on destroying the image of gamers in the eyes of the public. We would simply like a shift in gaming culture to make it friendlier and more open to female/minority gamers, much in the same way that civil rights groups in the U.S. fought to change the culture to accommodate women and non-whites, rather than destroying the country outright.

But there's always this reactionary element that reacts to criticism like that in the same way that a six year old would, making shit up about the other side's message and bombarding them with a torrent of completely unwarranted incivility while ironically whining about their own oppression and persecution and the supposed "poor behaviour" of feminists. The hilarious thing is that this immature bitching and tantrum throwing is infinitely more damaging and self-destructive to the "image" of gamers than Sarkeesian's videos could ever be, much like how people today have a very negative opinion of historical Americans due to their racist and sexist attitudes.

You don't have any clue what you are talking about do you? Shooting in advance and staggered releases are extremely common practice - because you don't want to exhaust your audience by chucking a movie's worth of video time at them in one go, and you want some level of discussion between each release for the message to actually take root. You may recognize this practice from other forms of entertainment, such as fucking TV shows.

Not to mention that simply shooting the footage doesn't mean that the video is actually complete and ready for release, because we have these things called "editing" and "production" which tend to be rather time consuming especially for someone who might not have a lot of technical expertise. Keep in mind that this person was also busy trying to get through 183 fucking video games while being bombarded by death and rape threats and giving presentations at a variety of universities and seminars. That last thing tends to require a lot of preparation and traveling, which, if you think about it, takes up a lot of fucking time.

It's none of your fucking business what she does with her money, not to mention that based on their previous behaviour, shitheads would just accuse her of lying anyway. If you're one of those idiots who think that she "scammed" people out of their money, then I implore you to open a fucking dictionary and look up the meaning of "donation". There's nothing particularly questionable about taking extracts from LPs (oooh look, another time-consuming endeavor that could explain the time gaps, rather than some ridiculous extortion theory), because last time I checked those things aren't copyrighted intellectual properties and are basically accessible for free anyway.

As for your last assertion - if you had done any basic research on the issue you'd know that she did, in fact, contact the authorities. For obvious reasons the police aren't very capable at dealing with a million anonymous death threats from bumfuck nowhere. Reasonable people would condemn the appallingly uncivilized and immature behaviour of her detractors instead of criticizing and picking apart this woman's every move and demanding absurd amounts of information about her private life, but as we can see from your post you're not a reasonable person and those who are being reasonable are already doing the right thing anyway.

That is a good answer. Thank you.

Starting to like your trolling.

the difference in this matter is that people like Anita Sarkesian are doing it in public and aren't taking criticism. That's why

Yes, pointing out the truth is trolling. ;O) I know people like you don't want anyone calling you out on your intellectual dishonesty.

Keep it going, it hasn't been done before.

What about you stop trying to claim things you have absolute no proof of.

First it was that all conservatives were bad parents and it was only there parents disowned their kids and now its that everyone tired of just how far out political correctness has gone, is because they are out to oppress others.

Do you ever stop to look at your own hypocrisy? and perhaps look at all the judgemental nonsense you spew out on this forum?

It's called trolling. Stop falling for it.

Ya, you're right and its not even the only account this person uses.

FINALLY!!! It sinks in... I was wondering how long it was going to take.

Stop claiming things I have no proof of?? Thank you, I have been waiting for this moment. ;O)

Oh you mean like claims that most feminists are anti-male? That we all want more rights than males? That we think all males are pigs? And all the other claims you guys make about us? And yet you anti-feminists have no evidence actually showing that to be a fact?

Congratulations, it took a while but you guys are FINALLY starting to see the light. LOL I honestly didn't think you, of all people, would be the one who finally said those words. And you didn't disappoint by even adding the comment about hypocrisy, which is probably completely lost on you, concerning your own posts.

Game. Set. Match. Thanks for playing. ;O)

Note: You missed two other sweeping generalizations that I made recently as well. LOL

Trolling so hard. Put LOL randomly more, people will actually think you're that stupid.

And here come the ad homs. I'm assuming you have evidence of that claim. No, of course not.

The trolls!

Accusing people of trolling is always the last resort of people who have no arguments left. ;O) Its the equivalent of the guys who yell "hacks" when I beat them in games.

If you were legit you wouldn't be fighting for shit in video games. People are getting their heads cut off, women are literally property in multiple countries and are sold into sex slavery daily. Instead you prod on about people that basically are whoring themselves to further their standpoint in the industry. I don't take anything you say seriously because you're a dime a dozen and don't really stand for anything real in this world.

Let me agree with you on one thing. In mario bros, we need more transgendered people and women. In a game where people eat mushrooms to get bigger and you can shoot fireballs i need realism and equal rights.

This thread is shit and is nothing but a troll.

Say ad hom, strawmen, LOL and put that smiley face in your reply, it'll make me laugh and provide hours of entertainment for all!

This whole thing seems to have gotten real crazy... All I know is that I'm pretty sick of playing a white male in pretty much every game. I welcome some new perspectives that this whole situation is bound to bring some to gaming. Even if this could be some kind of campaign to distract from the journalistic integrity stuff going on, I don't care. Diversity in games is a real issue and this has enough steam to make some changes with that, which excites me. I could even care less about journalistic integrity at all when it comes to gaming... I can make up my own mind about games, I don't need a journalists approval of something. All I need from gaming journalists is to tell me what games there are and to show me some game play and tell me some info about the game. You don't need journalistic integrity for any of that...

fwp.

Barbariser, where do you get your premise from? Upon which data does it stand on? I point you to my post #106 in this thread, I gathered a ESA study and a few more articles that address those issues and bring data on how demographics are distributed in gaming, which types of games they spend more on, etc., and it shows the opposite of that. That there's no actual overrepresentation in relation to what consumers of said products are actually buying them.

The vast majority of buyers of high profile games, which are the games with leading roles under scrutiny, are men. Also, it's rare to find and keep women working in the industry, and the CEO of Women in Games International, an organization that advocates integration of women in the industry and audience, didn't bring reactionism or sexism as factors (of course it exists, but it doesn't seem to be more relevant then actual interest for the industry). From what the CEOs of companies like Ubisoft and EA said, the market is open for cattering to said demographics, but it's still not at that point yet, though it is improving. Also, there's a cultural (but not necessarily sexist) tendency for women to design women, and men to design men, on the development process. This was mentioned by the CEO of EA. I see that this is the kind of thing that won't change overnight. It's a process, an ongoing process, and women are actually becoming a bigger audience in other genres, and intrating more into companies, and the change follows in the same proportion.

For your last paragraph: I hope you don't take my answer as that kind of behavior, but as an actual attempt into discussing things.

Edit: here we go again. Don't you guys see? This topic was wrought into all this to divert people from discussing the issue of gaming journalism ethics resurfacing with more strenght and repercussion than before...

And?