Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

Am gladdened by how easily they are taken apart by rational minded commenters on that thread. The GGers are just so eternally trollish, aren't they?

not so much "trollish" as "stupid"

trolling implies "I am saying this just to get a response, regardless of whether I believe it or not"; these dummies greatly believe what they're arguing in, they just don't have a defensible position to argue from and don't realize it

They do have a coherent position: politics doesn't belong in games, politics being anything that doesn't conform to their own cosseted world of straight white boy supremacy

Oh, and it's okay to kill anybody who thinks otherwise

i'm convinced it isn't just GGers but either a problem with video gamers at large or maybe a problem with online culture? i signed up for Steam last year and it was the first time i interacted with a gaming-only forum and sweet jesus it was an infinite cesspit of tribal shit-talk and consumerist self-victimization.

Speaking of which:

http://www.zam.com/article/328/vaping-congressman-accused-of-using-campaign-funds-to-buy-videogames

San Diebro.

Ha I was hoping this revive was about Tracer / Overwatch Butt Controversy! BTW the animated shorts + trailer for this game are great space opera / superhero nonsense. So much fun.

Thanks to the silliness I've now gotten genuinely excited about Overwatch despite:

1. I hate FPS; they're incomprehensible and usually dull
2. I hate team FPS on PCs; talk about a niche audience I'll never be a part of

But seriously this lore makes no sense (I've read both the easily accessible wikis devoted to this game and nope) so I'm GOOD TO GO. Bright colors, weird characters, cartoon "physics," backstory that exists for no reason and basically about as well thought out as Pacific Rim, but no movie to justify any of it, this only gets better from here. I look forward to the inevitably phone game about collecting shit that I also won't play. This is the kind of inscrutable, inexplicable cultural artifact that I love caring about for no reason. It's pretty close to art, and for art, that's always been good enough.

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/28/11318706/overwatch-blizzard-worldbuilding

I am so rooting for this to become Blizzard's gaming's "Smile"

Can we have a separate overwatch thread about my dumb opinions

is overwatch out of closed beta yet? it looks more fun than other blizzard games to me but i haven't gotten to play it yet

actual release isn't until May 24 IIRC

blizzard is probably a fun case for complaints about characters -- not sure if they still do this, but they used to have two completely separate offices for a lot of their games: one did plot/cinematics, and the other did the actual gameplay and in-game art/models. the plot didn't even come in until they were 2/3rds of the way done, especially on the first couple diablo games

Ah no, Overwatch has been designed very much around being one of everyone. That's why the original complaint mentions that there are eg sexy assassin ladies in Overwatch, but Tracer's not actually (been presented as) one of them.

There's a giant Russian female bodybuilder, a Korean pro-gamer with a mecha, an Egyptian jet pack security guard, a Swiss medic in a wingsuit, a French sniper, an English pilot, a Chinese climate scientist, and that's just the women. It's ridiculous.

From the article it sounds like the character/cinematics shop just started drawing superhero ideas on the wall and then later decided to make a Team FPS with MOBA elements out of it.

interesting, I figured it was the gameplay ppl just spitballing, and then the story side threw together some bios and decided why these people are fighting and wtf they are fighting for

they've definitely shifted into a "let's create an ongoing property" model, with recognizable characters showing up in other games

why make a generic RTS like warcraft when you can make some characters and then plop them into a card game, a RTS, a MMO, with a built-in audience that plays multiple game types! and the stuffed animals and action figures are for fans of any of the games

valve kinda stole their MOBA based on their own characters when they somehow judo flipped Dota 2 into their own IP. theyre also doing it in hearthstone and heroes of the storm.

overwatch is another animal, but I guess tracer is gonna be in heros of the storm as well.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-game-is-forcing-some-players-to-be-women-and-theyre-freaking-out

Rust developers are heroes

we get the heroes we deserve

MIND BLOWN, I know

heh, that's awesome

"We understand this is a sore subject for a lot of people. We understand that you may now be a gender that you don’t identify with in real-life. We understand this causes you distress and makes you not want to play the game anymore," they said. "Technically nothing has changed, since half the population was already living with those feelings. The only difference is that whether you feel like this is now decided by your SteamID instead of your real life gender."

http://i.imgur.com/5DtlFY9.jpg

https://reneedezvous.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/anchorman-that-escalated-quickly.gif?w=490&h=275

That FB chat screenshot... is that guy whining that girls never play the games they buy because she didnt reply to him after 5-10 minutes!?

probably too busy playing games instead of complaining about them on fb

trayce it's worse than that really

the guy is actually whining because she wasn't there to instantly answer his questions on facebook. men deserve timely responses to their questions.

feeling really great about my relative anonymity online, and lucky i've never had to deal w/ any bullshit

http://nymag.com/following/2016/04/how-social-autopsy-fell-for-gamergate-trutherism.html

because clusterfucks like this are so disheartening on a deep level

reading that was super depressing but the last sentence made me lol

Yeah, very depressing. The original idea was a fucking terrible idea, too.

I've read the Social Autopsy 'exposé' blog post as well, and it basically has no new information that isn't listed in the nymag article. Just a series of "COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT" accusations. I'm sure she meant well, but her idea was awful and dangerous and now she seems like a complete crank.

ugh that.. gave me a headache

to be fair, the "people making anonymous shitty comments" problem is very real and widespread, and localized personal bullying of the type where kids (and adults) stalk and harass people they know is given a new dimension with online commenting/messaging

that's a very small portion of the world of online harassment, though. and people versed in the whole spectrum of online harassment -- as the targets of gamergate definitely are -- would have a lot to contribute, including knowledge of the gaslighting, reverse-sympathy ploys they're targeted by regularly. and "social autopsy" seems to have fallen for their tactics, completely

that story is so bizarre though
harassment victim starts kickstarter for funding the doxxing of online bullies
...while unaware of what doxxing is, and that it actually a preferred tactic of what hate mobs do nowawdays
...then buys into hate mob conspiracies that targets prominent anti-bullying victims
...who she then goes into accusing of leading a racist hate mob against her...
the stupidity of this is off the charts

one of the sad/funny observations from the reporter how this woman's conceptions of online bullying are already outdated, she was mostly familiar with anonymous facebook comments - so quaint in these days of Swatting and obscene phone calls to your mother and boss in the middle of the night

quaint but still an issue, even if it seems relatively benign to the more jaded of us

Yeah she comes across as someone very young/inexperienced so to read she is 26 suprised me.Maybe I'm just too immersed in this stuff, but she's really misread everything and it seems plain as day.

The weirdest part was I assumed the tweet screenshots were made by a GG guy, until I got further down in the story.

a psychologist speaks "women in tech are often "fatally compromised with victimology psychosis."" http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/18/11452564/would-you-want-to-work-for-this-guy

*toilet flush emoji*

a true shitbag

lol WildTangent founder thinks games are art

Ugh this guy. I can't begin to imagine how sheltered the lives of modern technology employees must be to think that any amount of hours they spend pushing a mouse around for a paycheck is really demanding strenuous work," he writes.

...because working for 24 hours without sleep and a break, regardless of wether you're just "pushing a mouse" (wtffff) is just FINNNNNE. Tell that to my ex who almost had a breakdown because of cunty bosses with attitudes like yours mate.

On the one hand, great photo for that piece. On the other hand, that guy had somebody take that photo - no need to write the piece, really

Yeah all thats missing from that pic is a fedora tbrh

there were some really great alex st. john pictures in pc gamer magazine back in the day. you know, when all video game developers had to be interviewed with really dramatic lighting, looking like they were weird digital messiah figures

haha omg:
https://medium.com/@milistjohn/i-am-alex-st-john-s-daughter-and-he-is-wrong-about-women-in-tech-4728545e7c0e#.oenw3y9qj

My name is Amilia St. John and I am the daughter of Alex St. John. Yes, that one. For those not following the horrific toddler meltdown my father has been very publicly broadcasting over the past few days, here is a short summary

Yeah that owns