Gender Diversity / Politics in games (was Tropes Vs. Women)

[Unofficial Who]

Article here about Brianna Wu post GG forgiving those who abused her in the past.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/05/gamergate-threats-brianna-wu/

 

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despite the attempts to discredit her, wreck her career and destroy her sense of safety, Wu has now become a vocal proponent of forgiveness for those who apologize and show they have grown.

“Over 100 Gamergaters have written me over the year asking for forgiveness, and I’ve thanked them and forgiven them every single time,” she wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “If I can understand people can grow past their worst moments, I think the rest of us can too.”

The conversation over how to hold people accountable for harming others online has flourished in recent years. If the right account retweets something, calling it out on harmful language or another bone of contention, an army of Twitter users will join in to chastise the original poster. Wu called this “mob justice.”

Though this tactic can sometimes be useful, she said, it raises the question of what happens next. People post destructive things on the Internet. Their comments often live forever on various platforms. But what if those people grow? What if they’re sorry?

Wu said it’s time to talk about redemption.

“For people that have messed up, what is the path back for them?” she asked.

 

 

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Over the years, Wu has posted several of these apologies to Twitter. One from last year reads, in part: “A few years ago I was part of the GG thing online. I said some hateful things, and spread a lot of harmful rhetoric without fully grasping what I was doing.”

The message went on to apologize for hurting Wu and people she cares about. It ended by saying the person didn’t expect a reply or for their apology to be accepted, but Wu did reply.

“Please know your apology is gladly accepted,” she wrote. “Most people are unable to change their views, much less admit a mistake. I respect you for doing both. <3”

But accepting an apology does not equate to absolving someone of their guilt, she said, and does not mean she wants to keep talking to her harassers.

In one email exchange, a person who apologized for making diagrams of her home during GamerGate sent a follow-up asking Wu how she felt about the apology and whether it helped her move forward.

“I accept your apology — but do not mistake me for someone interested in telling you how I am or being friends,” Wu replied. “You clearly do not understand what you did to me or my family. If you really care about my well being, leave me alone and never do this to anyone else.”

 

 

[Unofficial Who]

This ties in neatly to the post above.

 

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Daniel Klein, the now-former lead game designer on Apex Legends, has been let go from Respawn Entertainment, due to sexist and racist remarks he made in 2007. A video and screenshots of his old DeviantArt blog posts began circulating online last month, referring to women as having "moron chromosomes" and comparing African people to animals. Klein has since apologised, though it seems his days working on Apex are over.

After his 14 year-old comments began to surface last month, Klein took to Twitter to apologise, and explain that he has worked over the years to become better: "I take full ownership for the things I said, and I'm embarrassed, sad, and angry at my younger self for saying this stuff. I hope it is obvious that I don't believe these things anymore."

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/apex-legends-lead-designer-fired-over-old-racist-and-sexist-comments?

 

His statement 

https://twitter.com/danielzklein/status/1425208160566927362

 

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"I have poured so much energy into becoming a better person since then, and right now I'm just very depressed because it feels like I'll never be able to make up for who I was.

"I said racist and sexist things, not because I deeply believed any of them, but because I knew I could get a reaction out of people. That does not excuse anything I said; the impact of my words was the same regardless of what I believed.

"I'm mentioning this because with the help of a lot of people who loved me in spite of the shithead I was sometimes I was able to make progress on the journey to becoming a better person.

"If my story can help one person out there in a similar position to see that there's a way to become better, it would at least serve a purpose."

 

It's similar to the James Gunn issue where someone says some awful things and then years later apologises and moves to a more progressive political stance.

 

Here's why he was fired a few years ago from Riot.

 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/7/17827796/riot-games-employee-depart-women-only-pax-west-event

 

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League of Legends developer Riot Games has been dealing with allegations of a sexist work environment for the past month, and two employees who defended diversity efforts left the company yesterday, anonymous sources confirmed to Polygon and Kotaku....
 

Then, there’s the PAX West controversy. Riot received major backlash for making some events open only to women and non-binary people, barring men from attending. Male viewers could still rewatch the panels from Riot’s Instagram account, but the policy was vilified by League fans on Reddit and elsewhere.

Klein was one of the Riot employees who spoke up in defense of the PAX West decision and explained it to Redditors who voiced their criticism. The rift between Klein and League players widened as he called some of them “manbabies” in statements.

 

It's interesting to compare the two stories I guess although the lesson from both is that if you do decide to be a better person and apologise be prepared for consequences and know that being forgiven isn't just automatic. And that others may use it to harm you. That's why doing the right thing is sometimes the hardest thing.

[Unofficial Who]

I suspect this is going to have a large impact on the industry succeeding where a certain movement did not.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/china-slows-new-game-approvals-calls-for-less-effeminate-men-in-videogames/?

 

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Word of the slowdown followed a meeting between Chinese officials and representatives of Tencent and NetEase, an internet technology company. The purpose of that meeting was to reinforce the need to enforce restrictions, and also to lay out other content guidelines: Games with a "wrong set of values," including "gay love," are to be avoided, according to the report, and the companies were also instructed to ease up on monetization and profit-focused game mechanics.

"The authorities ordered the enterprises and platforms to tighten examination of the contents of their games," a separate report on english.gov.cn, the official English-language website of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, said. "Obscene and violent content and those breeding unhealthy tendencies, such as money-worship and effeminacy, should be removed."

...

University of Hong Kong associate professor Geng Song told AFP (via Yahoo! News) that the crackdown is driven in part by the perception that "effeminate men are physically weak and emotionally fragile," and are thus unable to effectively defend the nation from threats. Gaming itself may also be seen by some leaders as "contributing to a softening of character in young men," Lancaster University Chinese Studies senior lecturer Derek Hird added.

 

[Dudley]

Yep, because if China doesn't want something, it's going to start affecting us.  It's why BMWs are now all hideous.

 

 

Tencent for instance own Riot Games and Funcom outright and have stakes in Epic, Dontnod (imagine their games without LBTQ), Frontier, Sumo, Activision Blizzard, Ubisoft, Paradox, Remedy, Roblox, Platinum....

 

Oh and Discord.

 

[Wiper]

Well, that'd be funny* if it weren't so grim. An extra chilling effect on non-heteronormative characters and non-traditonal gender performativity in video games, just what we need!

 

Well, I guess after the US spent so much time inflicting its moral values on the world via the Hays and Comics Codes, it's only fair that another state gets a go of the direct-intervention anti-progression machine.

 

 

* the idea of games, an industry whose big budget games are still massively skewed towards American mainstream culture needing restrictions on its representations of gender and sexuality is genuinely quite funny. In reality, this will be driven more by adventure games (like dontnod's, as mentioned above) and visual novels and the like, but the idea of, say, Gears of War being too effeminate tickles me.

[Protocol Penguin]

 

7 minutes ago, Wiper said:

Well, I guess after the US spent so much time inflicting its moral values on the world via the Hays and Comics Codes, it's only fair that another state gets a go of the direct-intervention anti-progression machine.

With respect, please stop with the whataboutery. There’s a big difference between a totalitarian genocidal dictatorship and a (deeply flawed) liberal democracy which at least allows freedom of expression and thought. Yes, I’m well aware of the dark side of America, but lowering it to the level of an overtly totalitarian state like China… That’s not cool.

[Darren]

8 minutes ago, Protocol Penguin said:

 

With respect, please stop with the whataboutery. There’s a big difference between a totalitarian genocidal dictatorship and a (deeply flawed) liberal democracy which at least allows freedom of expression and thought. Yes, I’m well aware of the dark side of America, but lowering it to the level of an overtly totalitarian state like China… That’s not cool.

I think your sarcasm detector might be on the blink.

[Protocol Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Darren said:

I think your sarcasm detector might be on the blink.

Hope so.  

[TehStu]

On 06/08/2021 at 02:38, Unofficial Who said:

Article here about Brianna Wu post GG forgiving those who abused her in the past.

Thanks for posting this and the subsequent stories. Without room to grow, there's no real benefit in doing so (unless you're suddenly inclined to consider karma or similar), so why would people? And so they persist, whether believing their harmful words or not. Society makes no progress either way.

 

I think genuinely forgiving people might actually be one of the more difficult things you can possibly do. He says, as someone the entire world is designed around and has received no harm.

[SMD]

21 hours ago, Protocol Penguin said:

 

With respect, please stop with the whataboutery. There’s a big difference between a totalitarian genocidal dictatorship and a (deeply flawed) liberal democracy which at least allows freedom of expression and thought. Yes, I’m well aware of the dark side of America, but lowering it to the level of an overtly totalitarian state like China… That’s not cool.

 

Lmao

[Unofficial Who]

More detail.

 

https://7news.com.au/entertainment/china-to-ban-effeminate-male-video-games-c-4127625

 

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China will reportedly ban video games that do not promote "correct values" and "accurate understanding" of the country's history and culture, a leaked internal document shows.

That includes a ban on any portrayal of "effeminate males", the promotion of same-sex relationships, and the showing of characters who have no "clear gender".

 

"If regulators can't tell the character's gender immediately, the setting of the characters could be considered problematic and red flags will be raised," the memo says.

Similarly, male characters who wear female clothing could also be pose a problem for regulators.

The crackdown on the video game industry goes beyond social issues related to gender identity or sexual orientation, according to the memo.

Beijing says video game plots should not "have blurred moral boundaries", and players should not be given a choice of being good or evil.

Games that "distort facts or deliberately provoke controversy" will also receive scrutiny from regulators. Equally, "historical figures with established narratives must not be refashioned".

 

[Gabzy]

Lol, so what are they left with?

[Dig Dug]

I’m going to guess this is entirely in response to the popularity of games such as Genshin Impact.
 

If they forced those “moral boundaries” standards it would have such a massive negative impact on the industry as games would either have to be completely rebuilt to meet those standards or be heavily altered for their Chinese releases by removing any sort of character choice (kill/spare etc).

[RubberJohnny]

We should probably break the China stuff out into it's own thread as it's kinda a separate topic, and can includes multiple topics like the Blizzard Hong Kong stuff. (And this one doesn't seem to get much traffic anymore). 

 

But yes, it's hard not to see these as moves targeted at Genshin - just released a Japan kingdom ("kinda looks Japanese tho"), highlighting Venti as problematic, etc. Not coincidentally Mihoyo just announced they're moving the servers to Singapore next patch.

 

The weirdest thing in there is the complaints of effeminate males as western, when everything they're complaining about we consider Asian - that whole BTS androgynous style, the obsession with suits, the emphasis in all the character stories about how hard they work and how admirable that is, it's so culture-specific, and it's not our culture!

[Alan Stock]

I don't know much about Genshin aside from the odd promo material, is it the character designs that you think are the sort of things they are against? Lots of effeminate males etc?

[Unofficial Who]

On 03/10/2021 at 18:18, Gabzy said:

Lol, so what are they left with?

 

Kind of what some guys wanted games to return to a few years back. To quote Douglas Adams who seemed to predict the backlash against non-traditional sci fi.

 

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“In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.”

 

[Unofficial Who]

Just putting this out there, I'm going to put in a request for this thread to be locked and moved to the new politics folder. It was started almost ten years ago to talk about a kickstarter and then became the central megathread for most political and current affairs issues but it's become mainly redundant now. What was seen as niche discussion is now spread across the forum in smaller dedicated threads that are easier to follow. This has occurred fairly naturally (look at the recent Activision thread for one example.)

 

There's also a technical issue where megathreads start losing the ability to show new posts and we're probably getting pretty close to this happening here.

 

I'll be putting in the request here https://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?/topic/324402-politics-folder-trial-starting-soon/ if you have any strong thoughts against locking or moving post over there. If a new megathread is called for feel free to start one.

 

Thanks again to everyone who contributed over the past ten years, I know I learned a lot of things from posting here.

 

[Fry Crayola]

I don't think I could disagree more, and I don't believe a thread starter should own the conversation when it's not a personal topic. 

 

This is a thread of discussion of an issue in the context of games. If a gaming forum can't find space for that discussion in the games discussion folder, something's fucked up.

[SMD]

Leave this as a general discussion thread and make a new thread for news items i.e. the next fucking horror from ubisoft and activision

[Unofficial Who]

30 minutes ago, Fry Crayola said:

I don't think I could disagree more, and I don't believe a thread starter should own the conversation when it's not a personal topic. 

 

 

Totally agree with that. Over in A and F there's some discussion about this, so far it looks like that majority are in favour of it staying and maybe only locking when it approaches 1000 pages.

[Dig Dug]

If this topic wasn't here I'd have never joined the feminism society in university. My interest in games and care for the wellbeing of the medium set me on a better path because this thread existed. I think it should stay where it is as a discussion of the industry and culture which surrounds this medium we all love dearly.

Games needing to be better can be an indicticment that our society as a whole needs to do better but not all of us can fight the battle on fall fronts at all times. At the very least we have seen a slow change in games which has built up to the events of the last few years where the bad behaviour at companies such as Ubisoft, Activation and many others have come to light. While I can understand the positives of a politics folder I also agree that putting threads like these in their own box allows them to be conveniently hidden from the people who need to be inconvenienced by them the most.

Video games do not exist in isolation, they are media. Media is a product of culture and threads such as these allow us to respect them as such.

[Qazimod]

Despite all of the drama that unfolded at the height of GG awfulness, I'd like to believe that the thread at least made people think about the games they play - the narratives, the portrayal of characters - in a new way, and that could only happen because it started in the Discussion folder.

[Fry Crayola]

Yep. I think the thread has been excellent at encouraging some more critical thought about the medium beyond its worth as pure entertainment.

[Alex W.]

I don't think this needs to be moved to the politics folder any more than a thread about social issues in film and TV, music or books should. We don't move threads about game music to the music folder.

[Anne Summers]

A new politics folder? Whose idea was that and where can I rant at them about how potentially dangerous the idea is?

Politics is an intrinsic part of everything that involves people and society. Divorcing the political element of any of the subjects we discuss on here - games, films, tech, comics etc -from the "core" (whatever that means - it's actually meaningless) of the subject is a terrible idea.

[JohnC]

24 minutes ago, Anne Summers said:

A new politics folder? Whose idea was that and where can I rant at them about how potentially dangerous the idea is?

Politics is an intrinsic part of everything that involves people and society. Divorcing the political element of any of the subjects we discuss on here - games, films, tech, comics etc -from the "core" (whatever that means - it's actually meaningless) of the subject is a terrible idea.

Here's a thread. You're going to love it.

[Dudley]

23 hours ago, Anne Summers said:

A new politics folder? Whose idea was that and where can I rant at them about how potentially dangerous the idea is?

Politics is an intrinsic part of everything that involves people and society. Divorcing the political element of any of the subjects we discuss on here - games, films, tech, comics etc -from the "core" (whatever that means - it's actually meaningless) of the subject is a terrible idea.

 

But Anne! People voted narrowly a year ago for a thing that if you squint hard and lose all sense of basic reasoning might be the same as part of what they've arbitrarily decided to do!

[Ste Pickford]

I don't go in the politics folder. I'm just here for games talk (and comics and films), and this is game related, so please keep it here, as that way I'll get to read it.

[Festoon]

On 19/11/2021 at 10:27, Anne Summers said:

A new politics folder? Whose idea was that and where can I rant at them about how potentially dangerous the idea is?

Politics is an intrinsic part of everything that involves people and society. Divorcing the political element of any of the subjects we discuss on here - games, films, tech, comics etc -from the "core" (whatever that means - it's actually meaningless) of the subject is a terrible idea.

 

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

[Capwn]

I do miss the trope series, seems to be nothing like it these days? Don't get me wrong, there is loads of content that mentions tropes in games but nothing that is really dedicated to it in videogame specifically.