Men + Women + Gaming

[Gravekeeper]

See but I don't have 4 accounts. >.>

I rarely see actual miners in low sec and leave them alone when I do. They have enough problems to live with if they're mining in low.

I'm really bad at the whole pvp thing because I'm like an anti-ganker. I can't lower myself to the level of the sort of players that come after me. If I see an oblivious nub in a Venture wandering around on d-scan I kindly herd him back to high sec.

The only exception is people who try to take ma shinies in a hack/relic site. I won't scram you or anything but you'd better start aligning. -.-

[AccountingDrone]

See but I don't have 4 accounts. >.>

I rarely see actual miners in low sec and leave them alone when I do. They have enough problems to live with if they're mining in low.

I'm really bad at the whole pvp thing because I'm like an anti-ganker. I can't lower myself to the level of the sort of players that come after me. If I see an oblivious nub in a Venture wandering around on d-scan I kindly herd him back to high sec.

The only exception is people who try to take ma shinies in a hack/relic site. I won't scram you or anything but you'd better start aligning. -.-

Oddly enough, you are actually safer in null than low sec ... all the jerky 12 year old nintendroid script kiddy griefers hang out in low [and also the specific border systems camping the gates.] If you can bootstrap yourself into a null corp to get into null, frequently you can bop around mining and building without being hassled. In null we have corps and alliances, and with a little care you can be perfectly safe as there are treaties providing more or less safe areas. When I was in the Northern Alliance, we were totally surrounded by alliance members, and I had 3 adjoining planetary systems and then one a few empty jumps off that nobody but our corp used.

Hell, people are stunned when I would casually hop into a newbie frigate and jump 36 or so jumps through goonspace ... while we were in a treaty condition with Goons, they would casually pop you, apologize and pay you for your ship if they randomly came across you and felt like it. But they also appreciated someone with the balls to go through their space in a baby frigate too. That is actually how I originally met Vile Rat - I wandered into goon space on a purchase run and after he popped me, we got to talking and ended up as game friends. He taught me a fair amount of fighting - we would pop into the test servers to spar. I had to think long and carefully about not taking the invite into the goons but decided to stick in my regular boring corp.

[Gravekeeper]

I've wandered through null a few times and found it completely uneventful aside from the rare hilariously inept gate camp. Which are usually just in border systems. Once you're in null its largely empty. But anomalies in null also inexplicably kind of suck. Though not as much as they suck in worm hole space.

[AccountingDrone]

I've wandered through null a few times and found it completely uneventful aside from the rare hilariously inept gate camp. Which are usually just in border systems. Once you're in null its largely empty. But anomalies in null also inexplicably kind of suck. Though not as much as they suck in worm hole space.

I lived down a wormhole for a couple months, it was very peaceful ... but I also hated it, getting out was fairly dangerous and there was no station so I couldn't clone in and out at need. But you are right that other than the gate camps [and you never ran into one of *mine*] null is pretty bland unless there is a border war going on. I am an indy, wormholes and anomalies are not my stock in trade.

[lordlundar]

Back on topic.

This blowout was inevitable. Every single issue that had come up was simmering under the surface as it was for a considerable amount of time. The harassment has been going on for a long time (not exclusive to women either but the nature of the harassment is different), the collusion between developers/publishers and the game "press" (and I use the term VERY loosely as they tend to switch between "journalist" and "blogger" whenever they benefit the most from it) has been going on for years (look up Jeff Gerstmann for a really bad example) but no substantial proof. It just happened to be one event that caused EVERY one of those issues to blow up simultaneously (with the exception of Anita Sarkeesian who decided to scream "me too!" for reasons).

I really do hope at the end of it we see gaming turn back into an inclusive hobby instead of "inclusive but only on my terms" that it has been lately, but it's a long road that's going to require those trying to divide, regardless of the reason, to be irrelevant.

And AccountingDrone, while I wouldn't call you an idiot, I will however say your missing the point. Gaming always has been presented as "If you like playing video games you're a gamer" and pulling a "no true Scotsman" argument runs contrary to that.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

lord - you touch on something there. The no true scotsman thing with gaming is ridiculous.

There's a reason I don't cred check every gamer because they didn't play Doom2 death match on dial-up emulated IPX networks. It dates the hell out of me and even though I can lay claim to things like League of Legends, the various iterations of Counterstrike, etc., I come from a background of being happy that other people are playing games. If I wanted to, I could discount a ton of people BECAUSE they were born after me or otherwise didn't go as deep as me. But... I mean why? In the end people were drawn to different things. These days kids would headshot me with ease the way I headshot my way through Team Fortress uno.

The women in games thing is mystifying to me as my friends list has multiple women on it but not a ton because at the time I played they were largely the exception. One of the more interesting trends I've seen in gaming has been the disabling of team chat. That essentially by removing people's ability to be pricks, they play more nicely in general on and off the server.

But you know, it kinda makes sense. When I first started team chat and it was new people weren't really the special level of ass they are today. Everyone was too busy just enjoying the facility to communicate for game reasons and chat while mods were boot happy. I think it was the novelty. Give people the impression that their verbal participation is a removable privilege and they behave better. It sucks, but go figure. When I first remember seeing truly annoying people was Mudding and later Ultima Online - essentially where talking became a necessity of the game where you couldn't silence people without effectively ending them. And yea, I do remember seeing the sexual harassment there. And I've seen it in every variation of those games from call of duty through free to play MMORPG's.

Oddly one of the last series I actually played online for any length of time since then was Mass Effect 3 and that was mainly because it was so damn easy to silence everything.

[Shangri-laschild]

I had just read about the Zoe Quinn thing a day or two ago and it's pretty damn horrible though some bits of it seem to have less to do with actual gaming issues than with people enjoying being trolls.

http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/0...m-the-irc-log/

The whole thing is honestly pretty messed up.

[lordlundar]

I had just read about the Zoe Quinn thing a day or two ago and it's pretty damn horrible though some bits of it seem to have less to do with actual gaming issues than with people enjoying being trolls.

You are very right in that though I would personally amend that to say very little of it is gaming related, despite major gaming press using it as an excuse to say every gamer is a misogynist. The problem is whenever the discussion shifts toward a proper gaming issue something pops up to reinforce the press statements and it ends up back at square one.

The most blatant example has been the most recent where A Breitbart writer (no, I don't like them at all but the writer dealing with this has been handling this as a proper journalist, articles on Slate and Forbes have been doing similar) brought up proof that the gaming press actively colluded to give some very biased reporting and shut down contrary discussion (techraptor has a couple articles here and here), within 12 minutes an article popped up on Polygon about an incident at the GDC in March to try and snap the focus back on the "gamers are evil" narrative.

Make no mistake, I'm against harassment on anyone. I don't like it whether is comes from some troll or a self proclaimed journalist. but it is a separate issue to the journalist issue and using the former as an excuse to ignore the latter is just as reprehensible.

The whole thing is honestly pretty messed up.

No argument here.

[s_stabeler]

the way I see it, the problem is more that the misogynists tend to be the loudest people-more reasonable gamers ( like yours truly) tend to be more interested in getting on with playing the game rather than jabbering on- so the talk functions get overwhelmed with vitriol. What it really needs is for these people to get kicked out of the talk functions for periods of time- even IF it makes the game impossible for them to complete. ( or, for games like the Battlefield series, or World Of Tanks- kick them out of that game)

[BlaqueKatt]

I'll just leave this here

4 Ways Gamers Still Suck at Dealing With Women

and one written by Zoe Quinn herself

5 Things I Learned as the Internet's Most Hated Person

it was all sparked by a single forum post from a jilted ex-boyfriend, but the ensuing outrage was so fierce and relentless that the story made it all the way to The New Yorker

[lordlundar]

Then can I leave this here to show the problem is harassment and vitriol in general:

http://gamergateharassment.tumblr.com/

or does that suddenly make me a misogynist because I'm saying the problem of harassment is not exclusively at women?

Make no mistake, I'm against harassment over all, but I have seen a lot of places involved in this Charlie Foxtrot where people simply saying the problem is people being assholes to others and not some organized effort to shut women out of gaming met with vitriol and hatred themselves with a considerable part of it from people claiming they're trying to stop said attitudes.

*sigh* Like I said in my first post here, I would like gaming to be inclusive again, not just "inclusive but on my terms". Harassment and hate speech from any angle is not justified and it needs to stop.

[AccountingDrone]

I will note that I prefer to play on European servers, even though you do run into the adolescent boy player on both, almost invariably the European tween is not an asshole when playing. On US servers I get obscene whispers for cyber sex, hassled while playing [I pretty much always play a female avatar. If I am forced to play on a US server I will choose a male avatar but I am really uncomfortable as a male.]

I have figured out how to jigger things to play on a european server - I download a British version of the game, and use my GMX Germany email account. Usually it will give me a selection of European servers to choose from. I would assume that if a European picks the US version of a game to download and a generic gmail email account it would give a selection of US servers to pick from. If I can not pick a British version, I pick the German version and then get the server, and then figure out how to get an english language variant of the game - with one game I emailed the CS department and explained that I was a military dependent stationed in Germany and needed the english language version but to stay on the German server and it worked.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

I'll just leave this here

4 Ways Gamers Still Suck at Dealing With Women

and one written by Zoe Quinn herself

5 Things I Learned as the Internet's Most Hated Person

I kinda hate that top article. Mainly because I hate when people simplify things to such a level that it's easy to argue. "We're incapable of Mature Conversations about Gender?" The only thing I've seen in conversations about gender, race, and religion is that people are fine with it as long as you don't disagree. If you take a representative sample of people and tell them things they agree with they're adorable kittens. Very few people are philosophers where things are academic. Hell, dudebro brings up "white male" as a concept three times in the first page. Way to erase a whole lotta gamers Mark.

We will never learn from past mistakes? Where in human history has that ever actually been a thing? Slavery, genocide, and war are going on right now. We're in the midst of Cold War 2 starting because it was barrels of fun the first time.

*shrug* It would just be nice to see people not be so polemic about it. It's really easy to go after annoying jackasses on game servers if you don't indict entire sexes or subgroups of people at the same time. But people always make good 'ole Mark Hill's mistakes and all of a sudden you see people defending people sending death threats because... well the other side thinks their sexist, racist dickheads anyway.

[Bloodsoul]

Maybe it's because I'm older, but… I just want to play the game. That's it. The only thing I'm against (besides assholes in general) is bad lag. For Cthulhu's sake, stop playing on a shoddy, shared wireless! GAH!!

Granted, the only multiplayer online games I even play anymore are SoulCalibur and Pokémon. With the latter I just like to show off the skills I've learned (being one of my favorite series) while also showing off the characters I've created (mostly my own, a few belonging to others).

Much to my own surprise, and not trying to start anything, the skimpy outfits some of my female characters wear tend to receive more compliments from female players. "Oh, she looks so cute!" I guess everyone likes schoolgirls?

Ahem… as for the latter, you can't verbally communicate with other players unless they're on your friends list, and I generally just use the "shout out" option to type silly phrases, like "Apokélypse Now!" or "Use A Jell-O-Power!"

Stupid long story short, I go online to test my skills, show off what I've made, and, hopefully, play against like-minded players, whomever they may be behind the mic. Although I do wish my SoulCalibur skills hadn't become muscle memory, 'cause I hate myself when someone asks me how to do a move and I actually have to pause to think about it instead of straight out doing it… like explaining how to tie a shoelace, I guess.

[KabeRinnaul]

while also showing off the characters I've created (mostly my own, a few belonging to others).

Character Creation was the best thing in SC after a while. In 3, I made Urahara Kisuke and Kurosaki Ichigo from Bleach and Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy 7, and a friend made Professor Hojo from FF7. And in 4, the only one I remember was a friend making Harley Quinn.

Though in 4's version, I did hate how the "Physique" slider made men's muscles larger and larger, while it made women's breasts larger and larger.