GameOverHate Knowledge Center

A continuously updated collection of links & media addressing hate in gaming communities and inclusive gaming. Hit 'submit' to drop us a link.

[inclusivegaming]

Adam Sessler talks with Manveer heir about his talk "Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where do video games stand?"

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We must reject stereotypes in games - Manveer Heir

GamesIndustry's James Brightman reports on the talk Manveer Heir (Bioware Montreal) gave titled "Misogyny, Racism and Homophobia: Where do video games stand?"

"I want us as an industry to stop being so scared... Let's create a game that changes the core experience for the player... let's find a way to challenge the majority and the minority perception of how we deal with race, gender, sexual orientation and all other sources of social injustices we have in our world. Let's not be scared to ruffle feathers and let's be open and honest about our intentions. Let's push and engage in a new discourse as a result of these dynamics. And let's do all of this because what we are currently doing is absolutely not working," Heir said as his voice got louder and louder. "But this problem isn't solved with words, it's solved with action. It's solved not only with intent but convictions and a little bit of courage. It's solved by fighting, by challenging your team to do something a little deeper and making something that's important to you. It's solved by you here in this room. And that is our ability to change and impact the world. This is the way to push the art form. This is our way to challenge ourselves and others. Wherever we stand today as an industry, I am confident that we will stand somewhere far better tomorrow as long as you right here are willing to be an agent of change. I sincerely hope you are ready for that challenge because I sure as hell am!"

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The Creepy Side Of E3

You might not have heard about the security guard that groped a journalist at this year's E3. Or the writer who gave a PR woman his business card by slipping it in her dress. Or the women presumed to be booth babes simply because of the way they looked.

Tina Amini (Kotaku) writes about the constant and multiple types of harassment women face in game conferences like E3

"When you're female and working in or alongside this industry people make assumptions. Assumptions that you just know aren't being made about your male counterparts. But I brush it off and answer the question matter-of-factly, because it's all I can do to try to defend my legitimate interest in games when, meanwhile, I dedicate my livelihood to it.

That much is tolerable—expected, even (sadly). But after speaking to a few female journalists and PR reps who attended E3 this year, I learned that, in the midst of all the excitement, they were unhappy to admit a more offensive common theme of this year's show: they called it the "creepy-rapey-E3.""

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Extra Credits talks about "the rampant bullying, misogyny and hate speech that occurs within the gaming community" and suggests a few solutions to adress this.

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I Help Make Video Games, And I'm Sick Of The Hatred From Gamers

An anonymous developer does a guest editorial for Kotaku, sharing his frustration and sadness towards the gaming industry.

"Granted, feedback is warranted. If we fucked up and our game is broken, you should tell us. I don't ever want to ship a broken product. But stuff like "I hope the idiot people who made this just kill themselves after they kill their family" makes me want to quit my job and move to another industry. Seeing statements like that spread across the Internet—seeing insults hurled at hard-working developers who love the games they work on—just makes me lose hope in people. (...)

I'm relatively new to the field—I've been working in games for five years—but I have never seen this level of hatred in any other industry. Do thousands of people say they want to kill Tom Cruise if he plays a scene in a way they don't like? They might criticize it, but they don't tell him to go kill himself because they disliked what he did. Honestly, at times this hatred makes me not want to work in games anymore. (...)

So before you send death threats to people, or give out zeroes on Metacritic, or write unnecessarily mean things about games you've spent just a few hours on, remember that what you're playing is the culmination of years of someone's life. Usually it's not just one life, but tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of people who wake up every day at the crack of dawn thinking about the experiences they're going to create."

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DayZ, Dark Souls and the pleasures of being a jerk online

Dennis Scimeca (Polygon) writes about a current trend in online games where players are encouraged to act as "jerks" online (banditism, griefing, ganking, trolling)

"Video games that encourage players to treat one another horribly is feeling less like a quirky design facet of a few games and more like a bona fide trend.

The sensitivity to the pain of others, which is something I cherish, flies straight out the window as I wallow in heaping abuse on people in Grand Theft Auto Online.

I can’t imagine what I’d be like if most of the online games I played were similarly structured to encourage griefing. I think I’d be worse of a person for it, and I wonder how many people would be right there beside me."

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Gaming is my safe space: Gender options are important for the transgender community

Jessica Janiuk (Polygon) writes about gender identity in games, VR sets and escapism.

"While all of these gender positive things happen, there’s a flip side. When trans* folks come out, many times we are met with fear, ridicule, and hate, even in the safe space of the gaming world. Often times the reaction is as if there was some sort of deception involved, as well as the "ick" factor. I think people turn to the stereotype scenario of the "creepy old dude" posing as a sexy elf maiden. The truth is that we’re not deceiving anyone or lying about our identities. It’s actually the opposite. We’re being totally honest about who we are and how we see ourselves. The body is what feels dishonest to us, the character's gender is real."

[inclusivegaming]

How games saved my life

Anyone that loves video games knows that the popular perception of our medium is not the most favorable. It is associated with violence - mass murder in some cases - immorality, misogyny and immaturity. How Games Saved My Life is an attempt to contribute to the conversation, and provide evidence of the positive power of games - a reality that is infrequently explored. It is a space for the skeptical, those that loathe the medium, and those that love it alike.

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Queer Mechanic is a regular feature on GayGamer by Mitch Alexander. Each month it showcases a new game mechanic that could be used in games that include or focus on queer identity or culture.

"Queer Mechanic is a thought experiment, to see both what we could add to games, and to recognize what’s been missing from them; it’s a challenge, both to readers, to come up with novel, interesting and effective ways to use them, and to developers, to include them in games; and it’s a discussion for a more inclusive, more varied, and more innovative future for the games industry."

So far these features have focused on allowing customization of a character's gender and sexuality, having different body types available for players (based on the different gay sub cultures), introducing game mechanics related to the experience of "coming out" , having fluid gender representations, transgender characters and supporting a transition mechanics and subverting the "male gaze" and gender representations.

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Deep Down the rabbit hole of ingrained games industry sexism

Brenna Hillier (VG24/7) addresses CAPCOM's announcement that their upcoming title "Deep Down" won't have female playable characters and explains why this is yet another manifestation of the ingrained sexism present in the video games industry.

"Publisher: Women aren’t interested in games. And that’s why we make games that omit women altogetherrrrrrrrrrr [sic] oh my god I’ve just heard the words coming out of my own mouth. Female: There it is. Developer: Holy shit. I see it too. Sir, sir – if we make games that don’t treat women like sub-human dust bunnies fit only to be rescued, kidnapped, lusted after or left out of the picture altogether, women might buy more of our games. Maybe – maybe it’s not that women aren’t interested in games, but that our games actively discourage women from enjoying them in preference to literally any other form of media!"

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Why the fighting game community is color blind | Polygon

Mitch Bowman (Polygon) writes about the e-sports fighting scene and how it became so racially diverse despite its still terrible gender balance.

"If you attend any sizable fighting game tournament, you'll notice two things about the crowd almost immediately. The first is the presence of virtually every race under the sun. The second is the almost complete lack of women."

"This inclusiveness within the games themselves sets fighting games at odds with the majority of popular eSports games. First-person shooters are almost always filled with identical Caucasian soldier types, and RTSs and MOBAs generally sport a variety of aliens and/or monsters, with a few hypersexualized white girls thrown in for good measure.

League of Legends, arguably the most popular competitive game in the world right now with a roster of 116 playable characters, didn't have a single black character until the introduction of Lucian a few months ago. He was character number 115 — and his alternate costume makes him look white."

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Anjin Anhut explains how disruptive innovation might end up saving geek culture by making it gender inclusive.

"In short: There never was a time in geek culture in which women had equal access. So why do we pretend, that they should have yielded equal returns but somehow failed to do it? (...) 

Modern geek marketing needs to understand that they are stuck in a hole and need to stop digging, despite what the data says. They need to stop being scared by female geeks and embrace them. (...) 

We create opportunity by being vocal. We voice our frustration with how things currently are and progressive marketers will see an unsatisfied customer base. We go out a show them what we want, through fan fiction, armor fixes and independently produced content, and progressive marketers will see a demand. We have to keep being visible. But most importantly, we have to got the backs of those who are driven. They will face a lot of backlash and rejection from the establishment and from the pampered male demographic, both seeing their way of doing things challenged and rejected, reacting with hostility. We need to encourage the young game makers and artists and provide safe spaces and resources for those creators, who have been pushed to the margins because of their gender , race, sexual orientation or views."

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She Was Harassed By A Games Reporter. Now She's Speaking Out. | Kotaku

Rachel Edidin (Kotaku) discusses the continuous harassment women face in the gaming industry

"As a woman in game development, I have only so much political capital to spend before I get dismissed as a chick, [as] crazy, hysterical, shrill, stupid, not a real woman, not a real gamer," one developer tells me. After six years in the industry, she says, "I've been soaking in it so long, I mistrust my own internal calibration."(...)

According to a 2013 survey by Game Developer Magazine, women make up around a fifth of that workforce; they're paid an average of about 25% less than their male counterparts. At professional events, they are frequently assumed to be clerical staff or day labor. Online and at work, they face a gauntlet of harassment from fans and professional peers.(...)

There are things you learn, when you're a woman in the game industry, that do not appear in training manuals or HR handbooks: how to grit your teeth and keep your head down and keep moving; how not to be a buzzkill or a squeaky wheel; how to deflect without confronting. You learn the same lessons that women learn everywhere, reformatted for a professional context: that it is your responsibility to anticipate and absorb a continual stream of microaggressions and outright abuse. Harassment is so common and so thoroughly normalized that learning to dodge and absorb it becomes as routine as carrying an umbrella."

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David Gaider, lead writer at Bioware, writes about the inclusion of queer characters in RPGs.

"there are people out there for whom the presence of any gay content will automatically render it “the gay game”. (...) These are the same people for whom the mere existence of a gay character, or a plot that deals with gay subject matter, really anything that forces them to acknowledge that homosexuality so much as exists, is going to be a personal insult. I remind myself that it’s not that much to include, and really it’s very little in comparison to the entire rest of the game…and thus, considering what it means to those fans who receive that validation almost nowhere else, it’s not too much to demand a bit of tolerance and compassion from the portion of the audience for whom this content is not even intended.

Really I’d just like to get to a point where this sort of thing doesn’t need to be discussed, where it’s simply expected. Again, it seems like the presence of a discussion at all leads some to moan about how it’s all everyone even talks about, and how it dominates the videogame industry…as if it could, as if that’s a thing that’s even remotely happening, or as if the issue’s already settled and couldn’t everyone just talk about something more relevant to me now?

The more that gets said, the more it reinforces my belief that there’s a place for such discussion right now, that it’s needed, even amidst all the other concerns that I must deal with day-to-day which have absolutely nothing to do with who I choose to date."

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Mike Foster (Massively) writes about the hypersexualized female characters in MMOs.

"I'm guilty of creating the character, sure. I chose "female" on the creation screen. But everything that comes after that stems from my choosing from options presented to me by the developer. In TERA, the options for new female character range from "half-naked, hypersexualized elf" to "half-naked, hypersexualized human." (...) overall, choosing a female character in a game like TERA (i.e., many modern MMOs) traps you in an inescapable loop of hypersexualized design. This creates something of a conflict for me and players like me. On the one hand, I enjoy playing female characters that I find attractive. On the other, choosing these characters might send the message that I'm supportive of their hypersexualized design. When games don't provide me with the body options to make my character more realistic but do insist she stays pantsless for most of her leveling life, the only act of defiance available to me is creating a different type of character (male or monster or whatever) than what I actually want to play."

[inclusivegaming]

Video games need more women€“ and asking for that won't end the world | The Guardian

Keza MacDonald (The Guardian) addresses the "five common arguments against developers adding more female characters – and why they are wrong".

"Here’s something I’ve noticed: whenever you talk about female protagonists in games, you always hear exactly the same responses. Always. I’m not talking about the absolute meat-heads here; the ones who genuinely think that women aren’t really proper people and don’t welcome their presence online or anywhere. I’m talking about the people who don’t seem to understand why this stuff is even an issue. Why is having female characters such a big deal? Aren’t we living in a post-race, post-feminist world where we don’t need to get so angry about these things? Well, no, we’re not, unfortunately, and though great progress is being made, it is important to keep these issues in mind if we’re ever going to break through the narrow marketing-defined definition of what games and gamers are. So here are five of the most frequent responses to recurring requests for more playable women in games, and why they’re misguided."

[inclusivegaming]

PBS Game/Show argues that the term "gamer" has become a weapon to exclude people who don't fit a particular demographic.

«As game designer Raph Koster said: "the worst possible fate for games would be for them to become nich". I shouldn't have to say this but games are for everyone. We don't have endless debates over who is a "music-er", "movier"; those are just things everybody does and that's quickly becoming true for games too. (...) Having a label like gamer turns people away, it creates the illusion that a gamer is just one type of person when really the gaming population is so much more diverse and it's confiding the medium to a certain type of game that gamers like. (...) So what if you don't want to play a game that involves killing orcs of headshots? Games and gamers should not be limited to certain types of experiences. Will we ever get rid of the word "gamer"? Probably not, but maybe we can probably shift the definition.»