Sexism and gaming

Links234

The senior writer on Dragon Age II has decided to leave developer BioWare after ‘graphic threats’ were made to kill her children.

Jennifer Hepler was working on sequel Dragon Age: Inquisition but is quitting BioWare this week to go freelance, in large part thanks to threats she and others of the team received in the wake of Dragon Age II’s release. The game was unpopular with many hardcore fans and although Hepler was able to ignore most of the threats and abuse on the BioWare forums and Twitter she also received emailed death threats and threats against her children, as well as abusive phone calls.

I find this shocking, but sadly not surprising. I know it's easy to dismiss this kind of thing as impotent nerd rage when it's not directed at you, but it's part of a greater trend of pushing back against women's perceived encroachment into a 'boy's only' activity.


For some backstory on this, Straight Male Gamer told to 'get over it' by Bioware.

Yet recently, it's been noted that Nearly half of all video gamers are women:

According to the "2013 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry" report, produced by the Entertainment Software Association, 45% of all game players, and 46% of the most frequent purchasers of games, are female. Adult women make up 31% of the game-playing population.

So many of my female friends are gamers, both me and my other half are big gamers, but I think the general trend is that we prefer single-player games that are story driven, rather than multiplayer games. The perception of gaming as being an exclusively boy's interest is very, very different from the reality.

What do you think?

buttonteaser

i think its so bizarre that this would happen. like you said nearly half gamers are women.

i think its a power thing, the men dont want to be upstaged by women even if its online with mulitplayer.

i have noticed it before playing games with guy friends they will make any excuse as to why they lost to me in a game. it kills them.

but the whole threatening to kill her kids is taking it to a whole other lever. its scary if its gone like that

um7y1h83ge06nx

Is it sexism or is it vitriol from a minority of gamers.

A male that meant to be developing a game called Fez 2 packed it in because of internet abuse.

Some of the Call of Duty developers got terrible advise in recent weeks after they made tweaks to some if the weapons.

Some gamers appear to be gob****es and will advise anyone.

meeeeh

I'm not sure it's sexist abuse. As far as I can gather the attacks started because people did not agree with her work.

I can imagine that gaming is sexist although I know too little about it to have an opinion. But the example above is cyber bullying and proof that some people should not have access to Internet. And also that something has to be done about hostility on the web.

Lyra Fangs

I really don't think this is a case of sexism. Threats were issued to Ms. Hepler and other members of the (presumably mixed gender) team.

Rather this is a case of the lengths some gamers will go to when they're not happy with a game. I'm sure those threats originated from both male and female gamers. It is disgusting that people will actually do such things to other human beings and to threaten to harm children is sick and wrong on so many levels.

Esterhase

I can't agree that this is sexist abuse. Game developers of both genders receive every manner of threat and insult when they produce something a certain subset of whiny, entitled, trash-talking idiots don't like.

There are certainly problems with sexism in the gaming community, but I don't see this as one of them. Unfortunately, the pond scum that threatened this woman's children will probably never be called out on their behaviour in any meaningful way and will continue to lower the general opinion of 'gamers' as a group. Pathetic.

Morag

Game Dev's and writers do get abuse but women get more of it and it tends to be from morons who think women shouldn't be playing games or be working in the games industry,

smoking_kills

Morag wrote: »

Game Dev's and writers do get abuse but women get more of it and it tends to be from morons who think women shouldn't be playing games or be working in the games industry

Links234; I find this shocking, but sadly not surprising. I know it's easy to dismiss this kind of thing as impotent nerd rage when it's not directed at you, but it's part of a greater trend of pushing back against women's perceived encroachment into a 'boy's only' activity.

Treyarch recently made some changes to the sniper rifles in Call of Duty, Black Ops 2. The abuse Jennifer Hepler got was no different than the abuse David Vonderhaar, lead dev at Treyarch, got. He also got death threats and more. Plenty of videos in the youtube gaming community on Vonderhaar abuse at the hands of gamers. Similar abuse but on a different scale to what Hepler got...

Some folk are very, very passionate about their games, and Dev's often have a different idea what the next incarnation of that game should be, often ignoring gamers input/ideas/philosophy on the game. Lead dev's are the face of the game's and be they man, woman or child they will suffer abuse if they aren't doing it the "right" way according to the players.....

Annasopra

I'm very surprised there is denial in this thread of sexism in the gaming industry. I thought it was very well known and documented.

um7y1h83ge06nx

I wouldn't necessarily deny it,.but in the case of people in the industry getting abuse from the general public, the abusers don't seem to discriminate on grounds of sex when it comes to the vitriol.

Either way, the abuse the people mentioned in the thread have faced is horrible, ridiculous and childish. Some gamers need to cop on.

The Pheasant2

mango salsa wrote: »

I'm very surprised there is denial in this thread of sexism in the gaming industry. I thought it was very well known and documented.

I don't think they're denying the existence of sexism in gaming (which there most certainly is) - they're denying that the abuse this developer received was due to her gender.

Every developer receives insane amounts of hate from mindless sad cases. The developer would've caught the same flak if she were a man too

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

http://kotaku.com/read-polygons-version-of-the-harassment-story-folks-ar-1156385730

her leaving also had very little to do with the abuse she received but that makes for a much less interesting headline I suppose

Arawn

I can guarantee any abuse she got paled in comparrison to the abuse the guys from Mass Effect got. Also Doa 2 was a terrible game.

Also female gamers is a new enough thing, it wasn't too long ago guys were seen as losers and nerds for video games, as women often called men, but once women found out how fun games are they have by and large stopped stereotyping guys as that, but there are probably thousands of disgruntled males who are not impressed by women encroaching into something they got abuse over growing up to suddenly start being big time gamers and not get abuse and are probably taking the abuse they suffered in the past out on current female gamers.

Lyaiera

Arawn wrote: »

I can guarantee any abuse she got paled in comparrison to the abuse the guys from Mass Effect got. Also Doa 2 was a terrible game.

Also female gamers is a new enough thing, it wasn't too long ago guys were seen as losers and nerds for video games, as women often called men, but once women found out how fun games are they have by and large stopped stereotyping guys as that, but there are probably thousands of disgruntled males who are not impressed by women encroaching into something they got abuse over growing up to suddenly start being big time gamers and not get abuse and are probably taking the abuse they suffered in the past out on current female gamers.

Sexism and gaming

Arawn

Lyaiera wrote: »

Sexism and gaming

Yes, I read the title, Care to add anything else other than reiterating the title

Lyaiera

Arawn wrote: »

Yes, I read the title, Care to add anything else other than reiterating the title

If you can't see the sexism in saying, "Also female gamers is a new enough thing" then I'm not going to bother arguing with you.
If you can't see the sexism in saying, "it wasn't too long ago guys were seen as losers and nerds for video games, as women often called men," then I'm not going to bother arguing with you.
If you can't see the sexism in saying, "once women found out how fun games are" then I'm not going to bother arguing with you.
If you can't see the sexism in saying, "by women encroaching into" then I'm not going to bother arguing with you.

Sonics2k

(A bit of background)

I have been a gamer all my life, quite literally playing games on an old Amstrad CPC at the age of 3 and have been hooked ever since then.

I've played all the consoles, and owned most of the great games.

For a good while I worked for Blizzard Entertainment, and was briefly sponsored for Arena and Battlegrounds in World of Warcraft.

On to the topic. Does sexism exist in gaming, yes it does. As does racism, homophobia and general ass-hattery.

I've been reading up on what Jennifer has been going through, and while the comments are disgusting, I don't believe they could be fobbed off as sexist, merely stupid and ignorant.

The sad fact of the matter is that Devs for major games do get massive amounts of abuse, threats and insults, both online and in real life.

I've seen people scream at the top of their lungs and throw things at Greg Street (Lead Dev for WoW), I've sat back aghast and disgusted at the words people use against Devs for Call of Duty, Mass Effect, Half Life, The Elder Scrolls and even Sonic The Hedgehog.

Sexism and other forms of abuse are common from the vocal minority of gamers, but let's not sully a campaign against sexism by simply declaring any words against a female as sexism, would we be so rash to declare it racist if they were black or Asian?

Femme_Fatale

If their gender is what's being used to have a go at them, then it has entered sexism territory.

The Pheasant2

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

If their gender is what's being used to have a go at them, then it has entered sexism territory.

In what way was her gender brought into it?

meeeeh

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

If their gender is what's being used to have a go at them, then it has entered sexism territory.

It is also sexist to think that threats to children affect only women. The opening article was crap, as somebody posted latter (the Kotaku link) it implied certain things without really saying anything.

As I said I believe there is sexism in gaming but know way too little about it to comment. But I do know when a story is being manipulated to fit the agenda ( the article not the opening post). It does disservice to the topic because we have a discussion about the spin and not the actual problem.

Femme_Fatale

No I just mean in general, whether it's a man or woman - if the abuse they're getting is based on their gender, then it can be defined as sexism.

But giving someone abuse, in and of itself, isn't necessarily sexism.

Tombi!

Threats like that aren't about sexism.

It's about idiots. You seem them all over various sites.

There's a difference between losing to a girl and being sexist and being a anti-social idiot who threatens people over a videogame story.

As someone stated above, gaming was mostly limited to guys that were seen as nerdy and so on. These people still exist and they're generally just idiots.

Of course I'm not sure exactly what the threats contained but if there was mention of her being a woman and so on, then it's sexism. But for the most part plenty of idiots do things like that, regardless if it's a woman or not.

Sonics2k

Femme_Fatale wrote: »

If their gender is what's being used to have a go at them, then it has entered sexism territory.

If they said "Women can't make games, dumb bitch" it'd be sexist.

If they said "You can't make games, dumb bitch" it's just being a dick.

tigger123

Arawn wrote: »

I can guarantee any abuse she got paled in comparrison to the abuse the guys from Mass Effect got. Also Doa 2 was a terrible game.

Also female gamers is a new enough thing, it wasn't too long ago guys were seen as losers and nerds for video games, as women often called men, but once women found out how fun games are they have by and large stopped stereotyping guys as that, but there are probably thousands of disgruntled males who are not impressed by women encroaching into something they got abuse over growing up to suddenly start being big time gamers and not get abuse and are probably taking the abuse they suffered in the past out on current female gamers.

That's total BS. I've been a gamer since I was a kid and have never been called a loser by a woman.

Arawn

tigger123 wrote: »

That's total BS. I've been a gamer since I was a kid and have never been called a loser by a woman.

Total bs? So you alone speak for all male gamers?

Ave Sodalis

There's no denying that there's sexism in gaming but, as other posters have pointed out, I think this didn't really have much to do with her being female.

What does irritate me though, as a girl who plays games, is (you see this a lot on MMOs and PvPs) girls constantly telling people that they're girls. It's quite difficult to eradicate sexism when there's girls who thrive of the attention they get from it...

I have to say though, the serious abuse I would imagine, is from those who consider themselves professional gamers. You don't have to be long on WoW or League of Legends to spot them.

The Pheasant2

sup_dude wrote: »

What does irritate me though, as a girl who plays games, is (you see this a lot on MMOs and PvPs) girls constantly telling people that they're girls. It's quite difficult to eradicate sexism when there's girls who thrive of the attention they get from it...

I know what you mean, I've found that a lot of "girl gamers" have an attitude in chat and lobbies when playing online games of "everyone I'm a girl gamer, I'm such a rare sight, please lavish attention on me" and they love the attention they get from the lads in the lobbies of CoD or what have you.

However as previously mentioned, of course there are a huge number of female gamers who play offline games and just want to play games for the purpose of enjoying them, but are less prominent in terms of the public image of women in gaming