Wow, dude, regarding the second half of your message, talk about an arrogant, patronizing statement reeking in privilege. There are a lot of women ‘deep into gaming.’ The person you just wrote your message at is a hell of a lot deeper into gaming than you will ever be. And the game community, at least in terms of players, is already diverse. That’s one of the reasons for issues currently being discussed. Reactionary gamers who don’t want to share their community.
And her point is not that you should stop feeling empathy for a woman, but that given that most in this thread are men talking about the experiences of women it’s likely certain aspects are not appreciated or understood. In your life experiences as a man, have you ever seen or experienced the sheer terror that harassment can engender on a target? She’s just pointing out that certain perspectives are absent from this discussion, don’t get your back up.
I just wanted to thank you for this. I've been keeping my peace during this entire, err, poopstorm, but I'm getting tired of the prevalent attitude that "there just aren't many women in games, so who cares hurr durr." I am a student of animation and game design, through several industry conventions I have accrued a large network of industry professionals and students who are now making their way into said industry. At one of said conventions, a very interesting tidbit of information was shared with us regarding the ACTUAL demographics of the Halo series and The Sims. It's assumed that The Sims is for girls, and shooty space marine junk like Halo is for boys. What they've actually found is it's an even split, 50% of Halo players are female, and 50% of The Sims players are male.
This of course goes back to the old adage assuming makes an ass out of you, and this is exactly what is happening in this "debate." I don't think the majority of people in this conversation understand how the industry works, or who actually works in it. There are a lot of women, mostly in the art departments, but we are all over the damn place. We have grown up with games and followed our passions into the field. What I've seen during all of this is a lot of women professionals being afraid of speaking up, even considering removing themselves all together from social media. The trolls are scaring them because they are overwhelmingly attacking women, especially women in the industry. And this isn't a new phenomenon, this has been happening from the beginning of the internet.
Remember Jade Raymond? How about Jennifer Hepler? Brianna Wu has been harassed for a long time, Anita Sarkeesian has been receiving rape and death threats since she started her Kickstarter a couple years ago. It's ongoing constant abuse that they cannot escape from. How they manage to stay strong in the face of it is beyond me because I would have cut out long ago, changed my name and never touched social media. As it is, I'm seriously considering using a pseudonym when I enter the workforce, I don't want my family and friends to receive harassment because I dared to have an opinion on a hobby I've loved since before I could talk. And these disgusting comments come from our community, it is NOT a small vocal minority. It is the norm. It has been since I was a child.
I have been called every name under the sun, I have been stalked, harassed, and threatened because of video games. And this was long, long before #GamerGate. I learned as a young teen when Ultima Online came out that telling people what my gender was would lead to very bad things. Which is funny, because IRL growing up with a diverse group of friends (I lived in a very immigration-heavy city), all of us played games. Regardless of cultural background and genitalia, we played games together and we loved them. No one was picked on for being a gamer, and no one ever said a word about the girls playing with the boys. It was just normal. This didn't become a problem until the internet happened, suddenly I became an outcast in a community that I'd always been a part of, and why? Because I have a god damn vagina?
It's like the socially awkward found themselves an echo chamber and have just refused to hear any other perspectives. My husband tells me this GamerGate crap is just the internet being the internet, and I've been around long enough to agree that it's mostly what's caused this. But there's also the underlying woman-hating that has always been a part of the online gaming community. It's irrational and it is real. I don't know any women who haven't been a victim of it, and most of my girlfriends have dumped the moniker of "gamer" because why be a part of a community that actively tells you you're not welcome?
I remember my big sister and I asking why there weren't any girl characters to play in most of the games. I remember fighting over who got to play Peach in Mario Kart. Video games have come a long way since the late 80s and early 90s, but they have a long way yet to go. It's not that we were never playing them, it's that the developers never thought to target us as a demographic. I'm getting into game development because I don't want to see that anymore. I'm tired of background women in games used as props or for shock value. I want more strong, female characters. I want to see AAA games with minorities as lead characters, how many mid-30s bald white dudes do we need? I want the industry to tell little girls like me that they're not only welcome, but wanted.
So, yeah. There's one woman's perspective at least on the state of the industry.
GamerGate was never about ethics, and while that's an important conversation to have, you're not going to have it while associating yourself with the "no girls allowed" boys club. Women are a threat, women are outsiders, women who dare to take a stand and speak up are bullied into submission. This has to stop and you have to stop covering for these people. We are not outsiders, we're just like you, we just want to play good games and we'd like some of those games to not be targeted at the 18-25 straight white male demographic, a demographic that is no longer the majority and hasn't been in a long time.
Log in to comment