Fanbois: On notice
This one goes out to the fanbois.
Every time someone tries to point out a potential problem in a game’s treatment of women and/or minorities, you flip your shit.
Now, you’re actively trying to shut down sites that make you nervous.
We currently fight enough efforts to try to ban or otherwise censor videogames. The people who are pushing these efforts rely on public opinion of gamers as a bunch of degenerate ne’er-do-wells with problems differentiating the violence in videogames with the real-life impulse. When we try to explain that no, we’re not like that, it doesn’t help to have a bunch of racist, homophobic, misogynistic assholes flaming civil rights sights, and shutting down servers, and otherwise errupting like some ungodly form of herpes on whatever forum their homecave directs them to.
So I’m saying this because you’ll be very sad if you reap what you’re currently sowing.
Grow the fuck up.
Accept that sometimes, developers and studios make the wrong decision. It doesn’t make you less of a fan.
Stop being such assholes.
And if you can’t do these things, then just stick to playing games and leave the internet alone.
Capiche?
August 6th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
And here I thought that games, especially coupled with the Internet, were supposed to bring us closer, not rip us farther apart. What do ‘fanbois’ have to gain from being overtly malicious and attacking those who enjoy the same hobby as they do?
To the ‘fanbois’: don’t display your ignorance and homophobia to people who may be just like you and probably enjoying your games. The Internet may give you a (mostly) anonymous identity but that doesn’t mean you don’t show that you are major dicks.
And seriously: stop using the words ‘fag’ and ‘homo’ or even ‘Jew’ as insults over online play. It’s childish, immature, offensive, and not creative at all.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
Sadly, the ones who should read this most likely won’t. This needs to be heard and implemented on gaming servers, at LAN parties, etc. Take away the cover of their anonymous avatars and make it personal.
August 6th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I recently applied to the guild Templar Knights on Mug’thol and was told they don’t accept women, after there were posts about how my gear is good and they liked my application. So, I posted that they should judge me on factors that I can control, instead of things I can’t (my gender). Their response to this was to post porn on the thread. WTF?
August 7th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Sean Gonsalves at Alternet.org explains privilege and how racism is alive and well. And gives a fair argument towards reparations, but that’s just my take on it.
August 7th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I just read a really facile argument against reparations: that the decendant of a rape victim should not receive “special compensation” from the descendant of their ancestor’s rapist, without mentioning, of course, the ongoing molestation, harrassment, and general hostile environment that the current descendant of the rapist enjoys.
I’m actually thinking of working up a more coherent essay/blogpost about this, but it requires time that I don’t have at the moment. Hopefully, while waiting for my turn on Saturday, I’ll be able to cook something up.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Does anyone know if there exists any sort of organization which supports, runs and maybe regulates game servers which hold very strict rules about racism, sexism, homophobia and the like? It seems like something of that sort would be great to have around for people who would like to play games without feeling constantly hated or even unsafe. They could work with Valve on Steam, Games for Windows and Xbox Live.
August 7th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Well, it’s sort of a server-by-server thing and I don’t know if there’s a good list out there. If nothing else, I hope there isn’t because it’s just a big red target for the sorts of trolls we’re talking about. I know that the Ars Technica server for Counterstrike used to have a pretty good reputation for no dipshittery while playing (considering how notorious CS servers are, that’s saying a lot).
The problem of course is that someone has to moderate this stuff. I had a NWN server set up for a while (haven’t had it live since my move). If I opened it up to the public, I would obviously want a no misogyny, no racism, no homophobia rule (along with a pretty low tolerance of such rejoinders as “you’re retarded”). But the easiest way to screen for that is just to restrict access to your server to only people who can be “vouched for” in the sense that they aren’t assholes, and then restricting by IP or password. But that’s a lot of work and you can miss the people who need this sort of environment the most.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:10 am
I know in Battlefield 2 servers, many run keyword filters (with the “1337″ spelling derivatives and tally such language. Once a warning; twice a boot. Three garnered you a ban. I don’t know if it’s something built into BF2 or a 3rd party plugin, but it was *most* effective. Admins didn’t even need to be around to regulate their servers. I’ve seen something similar on a number of other FPS servers running EA’s Battlefield line, so I suspect it’s something designed for that game line; but it might be available more widely.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:48 am
Nymphalidae:
To be fair, girls only guilds also exist, there was one in GW that didn’t didn’t let me join for being male…so there.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Bork: That’s a false dichotomoy.
When women create women-only guilds, it’s usually because they want to create a safe space ingame to insulate themselves from harrassment. Men create men-only guilds because they hate women.
There’s a difference there, and it’s not a little one.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Exactly, MP.
Also: The default for most guilds is “men only” in practice, if not proclamation. They may not claim to be men only guilds, but for a lot of guilds it’s the norm.