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Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

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Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#171

Post by sillysaurusx »

madamelic wrote: post #119
kook_throwaway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known. Gamers talk down to everyone on video games and have since they have been invented. This sounds like a new group of people entering an existing space and not understanding the dynamic (namely incessant shittalking). I can't even count how many strang…

Sorry, should've been more specific. It's not trash talk. I can handle trash talk. It's stuff like "Ah, a f_cking girl. Cool guys, now we are going to lose", before the round even starts, or "Get back to the kitchen, B_TCH" or just harassing me until I leave the game, either through team-killing or preventing me from playing. And if everyone is "behaving", I get treated differently in PUGs than just another team memb…

Just wanted to say, as a male, I had this exact experience. I was playing Pavlov VR using my wife's account. Steam profile avatars float next to people in that game, so people assumed I was female. I didn't have a mic, so I couldn't correct them. A group of people started repeatedly asking whether I was female, not for any purpose other than "hurr durr female," and then ultimately hunted me down. I forget exactly what the game was (there are custom games, so it changes from map to map) but it was exactly the feeling you describe here, of "this is totally unrelated to anything in the game."

It was eye-opening, and I'm sorry you have to deal with it.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#173

Post by madamelic »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #158
madamelic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken? No chance DEFH is out of line. The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use vo…

> considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. ... In Saudi Arabia? > It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known. It's common for men to talk down to men on video games too ("talk down to" is a very mild phrasing). Turns out there are a lot of jerks who…

> 'm not sure which game you're talking about, but I suspect you misunderstand the criticism. There have been thousands of female video game characters going back to the dawn of the industry. Many titles which prominently feature female characters have done very well (e.g.., Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, etc). I'm guessing there has never been significant controversy because a video game featured a female character, though no doubt there has been controversy about specific characters (e.g., Battlefield 1's and Battlefield V's wildly disproportionate emphasis on female WWI and WWII combatants) or about the cringe deployment of token diversity characters.

My point is that there is any controversy when there is a game where the female main character is not explicitly sexualized. You are absolutely right that there are beloved female main characters, but they are almost always shown and viewed in a sexualized manner rather than as a human being.

And yes, there are definitely 'sexualized' men (God of War) but they never seem to be explicitly in there as sexual objects rather than as part of the story. Like, if you took Lara Croft out and replaced her with a red square, would that game be regarded as the same? Probably not.

People legit get mad about Aloy (Horizon Zero Dawn) being unattractive and "looking manly". Maybe not a massive controversy, but enough that I, someone who passively follows video game news, know about it.

I agree thought that my original post was poorly worded and not specific enough about my perceived reception of female characters in video games. I was trying to incorporate "female main character" and "unattractive female characters" into one point and failed.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#174

Post by munk-a »

username90 wrote: post #135
madamelic wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look up what sparked Gamergate. It was largely based in men getting mad about women calling games out for being misogynistic. I am sure some was valid criticism. I am not really a fan of "every game must be progressive", etc. but the fact men got mad that women dared criticize video games should say a lot about the state of the video game industry. Not only that, but also, for a long time, video games just weren't ma…

> "female gamer == Candy Crush" It is mostly true though. Of course all genres has some women but they skew very heavily in that direction. Strategy games etc barely has any women at all, especially the more complicated ones. Instead they mostly play puzzle games, and more social games like mmorpgs or story based games like rpg's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Genre_pr...

I don't know what mmorpgs you've been playing but they hardly count as social games anymore. I used to play MUDs and those tended to be pretty evenly gender divided and all about that social aspect (at least the ones I played). MMORPGs today are closer to either the MOBA or an RTS with twitch based responses and tactical understanding being key to play at the top levels.

I don't have a full knowledge of everything, but I can say with certainty that there are several women who can clean up in AoE2 - even with its top echelons being male dominated (and a relatively non-toxic community from what I've seen). I think that women tend to go unseen intentionally in a lot of video games, avoiding mic use if possible and masquerading as men to avoid sexual attention and abuse.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#175

Post by crooked-v »

madamelic wrote: post #162
fxtentacle wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, the gamergate controversy was about a female indie developer dating a male indie game journalist. I can imagine why that would make people search for conflicts of interests.

This is fascinating. I'll have to look into this more. From my brief understanding, there are multiple narratives of what "true" Gamergate is. I could very likely be wrong and have been misled about the core issue of Gamergate. Thanks for the kind correction!

The post you're responding to is just repeating the same 'just asking questions' crap that led to the harassment campaign in the first place.

What actually happened is pretty well-documented: a woman developer made a short game about dealing with depression to which various people then responded with rape and death threats; her ex-boyfriend lied about her sleeping with a gaming journalist in exchange for good reviews (the only things said journalist ever wrote about her work was before they met); and thousands of people then jumped on that as a justification for further harassment, doxxing, and wild conspiracy theories that persist to this day.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#176

Post by [deleted] »

munk-a wrote: post #120
Daishiman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's debatable. CS was overwhelmingly male and wasn't prestigious until recently. We're talking about the same career that's been known as a money-printing machine for the past 25 years?

And fifty years ago it was incredibly female dominated - the "male shift" in CS is easy to observe and pretty handily defeats any of those false claims you'll see about "men's brains being wired" for programming. It's important to remember that men muscled women out of programming initially once the field became seen as something more than a secretarial position.

[deleted]

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#177

Post by sandworm101 »

Appeal to public opinion is generally a great idea but there is a risk. Activision gets no sympathy from me, but I also don't think the answer will come from the masses. I'm not sure that most gamers really care about sexism in the gaming industry. Video games are synthetic, we don't really see the people behind them. At least in movies we see the actors. If push comes to shove, I think most gamers will still be lining up for the latest AAA title no matter what they hear about the company that created it. Imho change therefore has to come from something other than public opinion. This lawsuit is exactly that: the government enforcing a code of behavior because the market clearly cannot do it on its own. The system is working.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#178

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

adamrezich wrote: post #153
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been a gamer for over 30 years now I can assure you that "toxic gamer culture" is very much a thing. You think swatting people is something a healthy culture of good-natured ribbing does?

I didn't say it wasn't a thing, and taking things to that extreme isn't really having a good-faith discussion. I said that "toxic gamer culture" has always been a thing, until these large corporations realized that sanitizing it could, in theory, lead to more people playing their AAA games, thus resulting in higher profits. what's controversial about this statement?

The way you start by questioning weather or not making things less toxic is a good idea and put quotes around "toxic gaming culture" sure makes your post read like you were brushing off the whole thing as some kind of overly-woke-brigade cancel-fest or something.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#179

Post by psyc »

pmarreck wrote: post #56
yosito wrote: post #16

Does anyone have any more specific information aside from "widespread sexism"? It would be good to know exactly what is prompting this walkout, and exactly what changes they're hoping to achieve with it.

Honest question: Guys often "rib" each other, it's part of the culture among males. When you throw women into the mix and they get "ribbed" (perhaps for being "one of the guys," as it were) does this often become sexual harassment? Perhaps the culture of "ribbing" needs to go away for everyone, or at least from the workplace, but it has always been the case for me that a close friend or acquaintance typically only "r…

I've witnessed ongoing sexual harassment in the game industry, and there is nothing good natured about it. Often it was ribbing, but it was also overtly sexual, demeaning, and clearly a game to see how badly they could affect the victim before she went to HR. Which never actually happened, at least not that became public knowledge.

I was ribbed a lot too, but obviously not sexually. And I still really could have done without it.

Re: Video game developers at Activision Blizzard say they'll walk out Wednesday

#180

Post by [deleted] »

madamelic wrote: post #21
0x500x79 wrote: post #13

This seems to largely match a lot of the same things that happened with Riot Games over the last couple of years. I am hoping that these actions can help spread awareness of any issues that may be present at Blizzard and past, current, and future employees won't face the same issues. It is a long road to be traveled to get there. I hope that the current WFH situation doesn't detract from the walkout. A lot of the vis…

> is the DFEH out of line, or is the industry just that broken? No chance DEFH is out of line. The tech industry is strongly biased in the favor of white men in my opinion and video games even more so, considering women playing video games only became socially acceptable a few years ago. It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use vo…

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