The longer I stay on the Internet, the closer I come to being convinced that the anonymity needs to vanish. I'm not convinced yet, but studies upon studies have shown that people feel so much freer to be scumbags when their names and faces aren't available.
Some collection of people that formed openharassmentdata.org commissioned a study to figure out some of the who, how, and wheres of online harassment. I'm sure any data on this is bound to be fraught with issues, but one statistic in particular was worth nothing.
A startling 62% of respondents who said they’d been harassed online said it happened on Facebook. Twitter came in a distant second at 24%.
If getting rid of anonymity was supposed to solve this problem, it's doing the exact opposite. And why wouldn't it? Getting rid of anonymity goes both ways, and only makes targets more vulnerable. There's nowhere to hide in a world without anonymity, and that safe space to hide is several orders of magnitude more important for the harassed than the harasser.
Unless we live in a world where people have to throw out their Social Security Number when they register for sites and suffer jail time for calling each other c---s or f-----s, where mega corps and the government strictly monitor the internet for the mildest of transgressions, you can't solve the problem by stripping away anonymity. That road goes scary places. These places need much better, and prompter tools (preferably with actual people at the helm, looking at you Youtube) for responding to the issue, but if we accept certain freedoms there are unfortunate downsides we have to have safeguards in place for.
I honestly can't say I'm surprised by the result of that study, although to be conclusive I think you'd need quite a lot more. Anonymous identities is one the best tools my female friends have to avoid unwanted interactions online, especially in games.
Banning anonymity online is an old idea that I think ought to be put out to pasture. Ancedotally I've seen plenty of sites try it, it doesn't work one bit imo. Some people are just shameless and will not stop unless they are made to stop.
Honestly I don't think increased punitive measures will solve much and like you I think many of the possible solutions could very well be worse than the disease.
I think the focus should be on design & tools that seek to prevent harassment (and encourage civility) as opposed to punishment. I wish I knew what those tools might be.
To me it seems there is some key part of human interaction that is missing online that lowers empathy and inhibition. Whether that's something as simple as seeing the other's person face, or maybe just the sense of their physical prescience or maybe it's just the opportunity for easy conversational access that a socially inept would never have in person or something else altogether I can't say. But whatever it is, it allows a small number of often very determined people to act in a way they probably never would in person. Often for the worse.
The internet has always had a pretty abrasive discourse as long as I can remember, but it seems to have really gotten significantly more polarized, vicious and radicalized in the last 3-5 years. Not just in games, but everywhere (Sports, Politics, the Scientific community, Atheist community, Social movements like BlackLivesMatter etc etc).
5 years after the fact, You just saved me 6 bucks Majormitch. Saw this on sale on PSN and was about to bite on it till I saw your review and the Quick Look.
I never could decide if Uncharted was a Tomb Raider derivative or a straight Indiana Jones derivative .
And hey there's no shame in being a Soap Opera star. From what I understand from friends who have worked in Hollywood that Soap stars are often highly respected by their peers because they get to work on their craft every day. I mean if you think about it, Soaps are all about playing a huge range of characters it's a great place to "git gud" at acting so to speak.
Thanks for really thorough writeup Grant. So decent but not Project Diva class is the basic takeaway?
I'm pretty on the fence about getting this one, never been a rhythm game guy, but I do like Persona so I figured this might be the game to try to see if the genre will hook me this time since it has story beats to keep me invested. Guess it might not be though based on what you said about the focal points. I'm not very skilled at these games, so anything like that that makes it unintentionally tougher would probably break me.
Dang Dan, you've been doing great. No matter what happens you ought to feel good but what you've accomplished so far.
Really sorry about the Spider, that stinks that have your gaming derailed like that when you are in the groove. Props to you though dealing with it like you did, I know when you have a phobia like that it's tougher to deal with than you let on.
@slag: No kidding. Kinda glad I've got a little less spending money this year than I did the last few. This time around, maybe I'll have the patience to wait for deeper sales for a lot of these games.
That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for any of us. No point in paying full price for something you aren't going to play right away anyway.
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