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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

#211

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

endtime wrote: post #202
madamelic wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> '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, th…

> My point is that there is any controversy when there is a game where the female main character is not explicitly sexualized Samus Aran?

Your reward for beating Metroid faster is Samus wearing progressively less clothing at the end.

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

#212

Post by bifrost »

slumdev wrote: post #152
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?

It's still not prestigious. Joe Average envies Bill Gates. Joe Average does not envy MS programmer #7413 who does device driver maintenance.

Not entirely true, the "tax them to death" crowd in SF are very envious of "Tech Workers" who are largely programmers.

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

#213

Post by speeder »

crooked-v wrote: post #192
speeder wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wasn't what Gamergate was about at all. What started it was first Doritogate, and later the Zoey Quinn and Anna Anthropy Business (both cases of women getting lackluster or bad games reviewed just because they had some kind of relationship with the journalist, Zoey her boyfriend accused her of seducing the journalist, and Anna Anthropy was roomate of journalist that covered her games). The misoginy accusations c…

> The misoginy accusations came later The misogyny was the driving force from the start. The original 'Quinnspiracy', before it became 'Gamergate', was a harassment campaign organized around the blatantly false claim that Quinn had slept with a gaming journalist to get good reviews of her work (the only mention he ever made of her work was before they even met).

The guy that made the accusations was her former boyfriend, and seemly not a gamer.

Around that time people were also upset with other journalists, the Quinnspiracy thing became just the straw that broke the camel back, and gamers weren't upset because she was female, they were upset because Kotaku kept making shitty articles.

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

#214

Post by username90 »

munk-a wrote: post #174
username90 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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, b…

My link contains a survey of 270 000 gamers on what kinds of games they play, I didn't base this on anecdotes.

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

#215

Post by t-writescode »

oceanghost wrote: post #168
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…

Please don't conflate "white men" with these assholes. I'm so tired of being blamed for the behavior of folks with the same genitalia/skin color as me.

I believe the common response here to this sort of comment is "yes, not all men, but too many men", and that it's the responsibility of men to call out the men they see being that kind of deplorable on their actions, to reduce the frequency of those men.

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

#216

Post by [deleted] »

ehutch79 wrote: post #127
majormajor wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're talking about the same career that's been known as a money-printing machine for the past 25 years? 20 years ago it was fairly frequently perceived as both very nerdy in an unpopular way and in imminent danger of being outsourced entirely. It's sad how many people who had to put up with bullying for their interests back then quickly became bullies themselves when they had the opportunity. Of all people, we sho…

20 years ago i had to show people in a cs course how to turn on their computer. they were only there because of the dotcom bubble. Brogrammers were a thing back then, and were problematic even then.

[deleted]

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

#217

Post by mgkimsal »

stnmtn wrote: post #140
johncessna wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about all those men complaining that a video game _dared_ have a female character or even more so, a non-conventionally attractive one gasp. That was in 2018... That's the _average_ person who is making a video game. Mrs PacMan? Samus? Peach? That was all before 1988

Peach was and still is just a damsel in distress in any non-sports mario game. Samus is covered up entirely by armor, and when she's not she's in a skin-tight suit that shows off every single curve Mrs. Pacman... I'll give you that one.

It's MS Pacman, IIRC. And... while they were shown having a kid together, I don't think any formal wedding ceremony was ever shown. Quite progressive for its day.

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

#218

Post by crooked-v »

bitwize wrote: post #149
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.

Gamergate was a harassment campaign organized against women in gaming. It was organized by men who were assmad that a female game developer released a game with a mental health theme rather than the usual focus on skill and violence favored by men, to critical acclaim. Her dating and sexual history were brought into it because that is a common tactic used by men to undermine women and discredit their achievements. On…

For anyone wondering, there was plenty of harassment, doxxing, and a number of rape and death threats against Zoe Quinn entirely because people hated her short game Depression Quest for being "political" or "not a game", well before the term 'Gamergate' or any of the 'ethics in journalism' conspiracy nonsense even came into the picture.

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

#219

Post by ozarkerD »

FanaHOVA wrote: post #19
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.

Some extracts from the lawsuit: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/activision-...

Absolute degeneracy. I don’t understand how a professional workplace could devolve to this. I have trouble talking about non work matters for more than a few minutes, How do things get this far?

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

#220

Post by mdorazio »

thesausageking wrote: post #208
sandworm101 wrote: post #177

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 lini…

Where they'll feel it the most is in hiring. Everyone in the industry is watching and if they don't fix their house, it will be very hard for them to hire and retain the engineers and designers who build and run their games.

Don’t think I agree with this. Rampant sexism and general abuse of workers has been an open secret in the game development world for many years now, and people still line up to work at the big studios because they love games.
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