Dan at GameGal pointed out this out to me, a nice post over at Joystiq on my “I’m the Pink One” editorial that went up a few days ago. It’s always a little frightening when you know someone is making a comment on something you’ve written, especially when that someone is male and your piece could be described as (oh my God, no!) “feminist”. Even normally bright, insightful game guys can turn snarly when they feel their innate right to testosterone-induced gaming is being threatened. Which is why I was downright happy to see that Joystiq found the topic worthwhile enough for a real constructive discussion, and readers seemed to agree, judging by the number of posted comments. (Although, I admit, I couldn’t bring myself to read through them; sometimes doing that is interesting, but more often it’s just unsettling). The point being, thanks to Joystiq for the post and for caring about gender equality on XBL. Not if we could just solve racism, bigotry and general stupidity, we’d be set for a pleasant round of Halo 2.
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August 20th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
I read through the comments- they generally share the tone of the original article’s author.
One sentiment repeated several times in the thread is one I have a hard time disagreeing with- the fact that there are and likely always will be a percentage of “jerks” who participate in online games. The anonymity of the Internet affects some people in a strange way. They say and do things for no other purpose than to be offensive.
I guess I get offended pretty easily. I don’t like “open” FPS games for that reason- I feel the “smack” talk some people think is a requirement is totally inappropriate. I like to play the game, learn from other players, and compete- I see no reason to throw insults around. The only way I was able to get rid of the “jerks” on my open game server was to make it not open- to password protect it.
Personally, I’d be more inclined to say “let’s get rid of the juvenile behavior and insults” than to narrow the focus to a purely women’s issue. That said, treating female gamers better will probably result in improvement in how we treat everyone…maybe?
August 20th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Getting rid of juvenile behavior would definitely help the women’s issue thing, but I really think it goes beyond that. Even if there were no more “jerks” that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be discrimination in more subtle forms. Also, while it would make the whole affair less offensive, it wouldn’t actually solve the problems at hand (the way men view women’s roles in gaming), only cover it up with black tape. At the moment, even if it can be unsettling to go on Live, at least you get some real info about what guys think of us game girls.