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

very sad

http://www.blog.radiator.debacle.us/2014/02/an-alternate-history-of-flappy-bird-we.html

the internet was harassing Dong Nguyen for making a game, which is unacceptable. -- links to tweets where ppl are yelling at him for taking it off the website; probably over-the-top but his one link to how the internet harassed Nguyen disproves his argument.

it seems to me like flappy bird has been really embraced. it's super popular and everyone i know loves it.

I definitely saw some twitter weirdness about the guy before he announced he was taking it down. But I have no idea if the race thing has anything to do with it.

And the abuse directed toward him for taking it down doesn't disprove that there was abuse directed toward him beforehand. That's a pretty odd thing to claim.

it's just that he cites that particular link as evidence that ppl disliked the game. he continues in the next paragraph:

This harassment was also completely baseless, because (a) the game is rather well-made, if you like these sorts of insta-death reflex games, (b) Flappy Bird lets you restart quickly, which is usually a huge monetization point -- why would a supposedly-greedy mobile game developer monetize their game so inefficiently?, (c) if you look at the actual pixels, Nguyen clearly did not rip any art, and who cares if he wanted to put green pipes in his game?

if he can't correctly parse a bunch of ppl being upset bc a game they like is being taken away from them, maybe he lacks the skills to do a more complex sociopolitical analysis of the racial context of the game.

Hm, okay, I get what you're saying - he didn't provide the right evidence, it kind of scuppers his argument. But personally I've seen stuff that backs up his claim... But yeah, I can't be arsed to look for it myself now, and he should have done the work anyway, not me.

Robert Yang Fartmaster • a day ago −
Hey "fartmaster" -- almost every mainstream outlet has made a point of announcing Nguyen as Vietnamese. I don't think that, itself, is bad, because I'd agree that's newsworthy given the state of the mobile market... yet it certainly plays a role... like whether you think he's just expressing his love of Mario (what, so your fandom of Mario is more genuine than his?) vs. he's somehow now a conniving thief who's claiming he invented the idea of pixel art pipes that he drew himself?

like what is even the argument here? that ppl are being racist against the vietnamese designer homaging a japanese video game icon by relying on the old shopworn vietnamese are thieves (?????is this a thing????) stereotype?

i noticed more than a few articles that announced his "theft" of assets as a settled, done deal, with tons of angry comments about it, which was just BS

it's a good time to hate on the Asian man

i wonder if this is more due to the fact that there's a sort of concept of the non-Japanese-east that is all pirate-y and stuff -- if this game was made by someone from north america, or europe, or even japan, it wouldn't be stealing -- it'd be "reference" or "homage" or something. but since he's from some place where they steal software and there's no "tacit knowledge" of the "relevance" of "video game" """history""" there it must be theft?

idk i have a terrible head cold and that might not make any sense but :( @ ppl picking THAT particular nit, wtf, seriously.

i'd be interested to see if there was some precedent for this in western writing about eastern music, ie. "(person from asia) ripped off this part of this song" in the same breath as "(person from USA) sampled this song"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/female-journalist-gets-rape-threats-over-comic-book-criticism.html

This is from the world of comic books, but this seems to be the most relevant thread to this topic. Dunno if it needs a parallel one on ilc.

Because it was created by a straight white male, this checklist will likely be taken more seriously than if it had been written by virtually any female gamer.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/4/23/5640678/playing-with-privilege-the-invisible-benefits-of-gaming-while-male

I like this relevant Cracked podcast ep, as Jason Pargin begins to peck away at defining the problem:

http://www.earwolf.com/episode/shockingly-sexist-messages-in-the-modern-world/

porting the invisible knapsack to consoles

http://www.wired.com/2014/05/fighting-online-harassment/

iot found that persistently negative players were only responsible for roughly 13 percent of the game’s bad behavior. The other 87 percent was coming from players whose presence, most of the time, seemed to be generally inoffensive or even positive. These gamers were lashing out only occasionally, in isolated incidents—but their outbursts often snowballed through the community. Banning the worst trolls wouldn’t be enough to clean up League of Legends, Riot’s player behavior team realized. Nothing less than community-wide reforms could succeed.

interesting

http://i.imgur.com/1KdE2r4.png

France.

Seriously??

what am i looking at here

oh igi. well, let's hope that was randomly generated, then --

http://www.craveonline.com/gaming/articles/700065-awful-trayvon-martin-reference-found-in-watch-dogs?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=awful-trayvon-martin-reference-found-in-watch-dogs

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/07/04/hearthstone-tournament-no-women-changes/

http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2014/08/kotaku-and-zoe-quinn-accused-of-exchanging-positive-press-for-sex/

Yikes!

*rmde*

Voice your comments below, but please, please keep it civil and free from personal attacks.

I mean is this just something that gets tacked to the end of everything written for this site, because it's completely against the gleeful "just desserts" vibe of the rest of the text

i wasted 10 minutes of my breathing life scrolling through this dude's operatic 4 part tumblr post and didn't see anything about trading good press for sex? are they just inventing that out of the 'she had sex with a games writer' accusation or did i miss it?

no it's in there - but i don't think he accuses her of doing it for favors.

anyway, o_O at this thing. honestly i feel pretty bad for this dude. he got gaslit pretty bad.

on a scale of not-very-likely to utter horseshit this seems like utter horseshit

just checked that developer's twitter feed and she seems to have undergone/is undergoing a barrage of harassment from 4chan shitboys. i'll assume this blog post ref'ing a tumblr is trash

there's no mention of this on kotaku?

"If you’re not a huge fan of Kotaku or the infamous social justice warrior / indie developer Zoe Quinn, you’re in for a treat."

grossest sentence

http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/95188657119/once-again-i-will-not-negotiate-with-terrorists
basically, looks like the internet took the side of a douchebag ex-boyfriend in humiliating and degrading this woman, to no one's surprise

i think as a rule that private relationships should be kept private and i don't think - whatever she did - that it deserved whatever kind of heat she's now getting from the psychopaths on 4chan. still, i find the guy's narrative very believable + sympathetic, and i can understand if he really went through that why he'd want to hurt her publicly. i still think trying to do so is a shitty thing to do, and appropriate for this thread.

cheating is bad and ugly breakups are bad but airing out your dirty laundry on the internet is fucking bitchmade and siccing the cheetoh-dust army on your ex who works in technology is evil

yes, i agree. ppl are shit.

He's scum for taking it public. End of story.

trading good press for sex?

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, August 19, 2014 8:36 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think he accuses her of doing it for favors.

― Mordy, Tuesday, August 19, 2014 8:42 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok soooo--if he *doesn't* accuse her of doing it for favors, the writers are inventing the quid pro quo? which isn't, say, airing your ex girlfriend's sexual history in a giant tumblr post and blasting it at 4chan knowing they'll spew horror at her level of crazy irresponsible and shitty and misgynistic, but is pretty irresponsible and shitty and misogynistic?

yeah when you have been wronged & lied to there's a strong impluse to LET THE WORLD KNOW but damn if some shame wouldn't be a perverse help to this guy right now. what is it with nerds and total disclosure these days? the "hypocrisy" of the normals has its uses, guys...

xp yeah i agree, i wasn't speaking against your post Mordy

my basic takeaway is that most people involved in videogames should be set on fire, which is too bad because I really enjoy videogames and I think the screaming would keep me up at night

GameBurner 2014 - The Baconing

RIP upper m m s

Xp

a lot of ppl are upset bc in general the gaming media is horrible and it seems like a journalist gave a designer good publicity without disclosing that they were in a relationship. while i agree that the cheating + the lying + the gaslighting are probably not in the public interest, i can understand why ppl already enflamed about compromised journalistic standards would take interest in this story.

like i'm sure they didn't trade sexual favors for good coverage. the good coverage was pretty minimal and that seems unnecessarily vulgar. but i wasn't allowed to review books written by ppl i had once taken classes w/ in college years prior bc of the conflict of interest. otoh there seem to be far worse stuff going on in gaming media, like blatant payola for coverage stuff.

cheating is bad and ugly breakups are bad but airing out your dirty laundry on the internet is fucking bitchmade and siccing the cheetoh-dust army on your ex who works in technology is evil

― goole, Tuesday, August 19, 2014 9:59 PM (51 minutes ago)

^^^

can we not call it bitchmade tho like