FlarePhoenix

I thought it was so when they were building the website, they could say "We're building a Giant Bomb".

@hatking: Well considering they were victims of the attack just as much as we were, I think the fact they are giving us anything is more than enough. This is one thing that's really going to need to be worked out if we are ever going to be able to move to an all-digital future: what happens when a service is forced to go down for whatever reason. I mean if a physical store was burnt down, would you expect them to give all the customers some sort of compensation because they couldn't use it for a period of time?

Except the argument isn't "doing nothing makes you as bad as the sexist" it's "claiming sexism doesn't exist in the gaming community is as problematic as sexism in the gaming community".

It's not that hard to bait people when they jump onto your boat, start a fire, cut themselves up and throw themselves on said fire, before you've even bought the fishing line.

It's a loaded question because, even with laws and legislation, you're never going to get rid of online assholes completely. I mean, so many crimes have laws against them and they still happen. My method may not stop every last person who is an asshole on the internet, but imagine the young kid who thinks spouting racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs makes them seem more mature. Imagine how quickly they might learn if other people refused to play with them, and made it clear that kind of behaviour is unacceptable.

By choosing not to involve yourself with someone being a dick on the internet. Say you're playing an online game, and one of the players starts shouting homophobic slurs. If everyone else playing stopped and left the game (or booted the guy making the slurs if that is an option) it would soon send a message to that person their behaviour is unacceptable. Sure some people might keep doing it just for no good reason, and it's not going to change someone's attitude overnight, but making those kinds of people feel unwelcome will go a long way to changing the attitude of the online community.

Giving those kinds of people any sort of attention, whether positive or negative, isn't going to help anything because attention is all they're really after. They want an audience, and as long as people keep giving them one they'll keep doing what they're doing.

I know, right? I actually found it to be a fairly well thought out argument myself. Unfortunately, too many people have a kneejerk reaction, and react with hostility as soon as one of the -isms is mentioned.

Whether or not the idea of a "true gamer" is irrelevant to the discussion, and is simply misrepresenting the argument I was making. Like it or not, there are people who are trying to absolve games of a sexism problem by claiming anyone who is sexist must not be a part of the gaming community. If someone plays video games, even very casually, they are part of the gaming community (even if they don't frequent forums or conventions all the time).

Aren't you doing exactly what Jim Sterling is talking about? By attempting to section off people who try to claim gaming doesn't have a sexism problem, aren't you ignoring the problem rather than confronting it directly. Calling people who try to claim gaming doesn't have a sexism problem "unintelligent" and brushing your hands of the matter isn't helping anything.

Yes, gaming does have a sexism problem, and I'll go as far as to say it has more of a problem than most other forms of medium. But that doesn't mean I believe all gamers are sexist because they're gamers, despite how much you're trying to make it look like I do. All it means is I am willing to admit there are quite a few problems in the community, and burying your head in the sand isn't helping matters.

I would argue gaming does have a sexism problem fairly unique to itself, because, for the longest time, video games were seen as a male-exclusive hobby. Although female gamers have always existed, they didn't exist in any meaningful quantity until much, much later. This means video games were targeted towards young boys, and even to this day they are still seen as the dominant market.

It also doesn't help that games cost a lot of money to make, and not a lot of developers are willing to take a risk and make something that may not return as big a profit as they would like. Since, as I said, young boys are seen as the dominant market, including things in a game young boys like (hyper-sexualised women, action, explosions, etc...) is going to be seen as the safer option.

Gaming has a sexism problem whether you like it or not, and honestly I'm not sure how to solve it. It's become so ingrained in the community, it is often seen as just another part of it. It's going to take a lot of work to fix, and burying our heads in the sand is going in the wrong direction.

Also, I don't know about you, but when it comes to sexual harassment towards women, regardless of location or format, I often see a large amount of people trying to claim that it must be the woman's fault for some asinine reason. Victim shaming exists, and it happens all over the place.

Wow, way to totally miss the point of his argument. At no point did he say people who do nothing about sexism in video games are sexist themselves; in fact he even went as far to say if you don't want to discuss that side of games, and only talk about the games themselves, that is perfectly acceptable.

His entire point in the video, if you actually bothered to listen to it, is that people who try to actively claim a distance from the problem of sexism are contributing to the problem itself. In the example he gives specifically, he is talking about the people who tried to shrug off the harassment towards Zoe Quinn by claiming it wasn't done by "real gamers" but by frustrated forum users. He is calling out the people who tried to claim gaming doesn't have a sexism problem by claiming people who are sexist are not true gamers.

All he is really saying is trying to claim gaming doesn't have a sexism problem is as damaging as the people who are causing the sexism problem. That's all, really. He never once says doing nothing makes you as bad as the people being sexist. All he is saying, is there is a problem of people trying to claim gaming does not have a sexism problem by coming up with vague and stupid parameters to section off the people being sexist. He just wants people to admit that gaming does have a few problems, one of them being sexist, that needs to get sorted out, and trying to claim gaming has no problems is a problem in it of itself.

I think every console I buy is purely for a game I want. After all, there isn't much point buying a console if there aren't any games you want to play on it.