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

maybe not coincidentally, the latest femfreq video talks about sexualized character animations

RPS has a decent summary:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/29/overwatch-tracer-pose/

The grown-ups acquitted themselves well, the man-babies are generally melting down but what is new? You might if you were inclined raise an eyebrow at Blizzards 'clarification' "No, we didn't like it anyway, this was just confirmation", though it's amusing to see it turn the "As long as the developer was going to do it anyway then their views can't be questioned, silly gnats" wing of GG against the "What's wrong with being sexy?" wing.

not sure what to think about the recent treehouse drama. i'll have to ask my wife- nintendo is about the only gaming either of us do these days.

I wasn't following any of this and I'm just reading about it today, but man, that is a terrible move on Nintendo's part. Their statement on why they fired her is really bad too. It's not enough just to assert that you're anti-harassment.

Yeah it really felt like an ass-cover on their part. And anyway, even if she was let go for other reasons it doesnt diminish how she was harrased (accusing her of pedophilia ffs) for something she didn't even do at Nintendo. How fucking malicious and stupid are these GG peopl ahhhhh no dont even bother answering that :(

http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming-has-a-white-male-terrorism-problem

“Find another hobby or you’re going to die.”

ban all gaming imo

ban all multiplayer gaming

also, ban gamers

Ban men tbh

That is an upsetting read.

Upsetting and unsurprising, which when I reflect upon it makes it even more upsetting; how did things get to the point where THAT is what is considered to be "normal"? That shit should NEVER be "normal".

unsurprisingly has responses that are nothing more than "this is bullshit, gtfo troll"

so depressing.

also i didn't know about those guys caught right before shooting up the Pokemon World Championship, damn

wait waht

linked in that article - last summer in Boston, apparently:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/pokemon-world-championship-alleged-shooting-plot-foiled/story?id=33279253

I thought we talked about that on here

maybe, too much of my memory is reserved for cheat codes

must have missed that one - fucking hell :(

https://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/if_you_dont_like_the_sjw_crap_ruining_games_do_not_buy_siege_of_dragonspear/page1

follow the link. there's apparently a negative review campaign by these sexists.

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