The game industry’s problem with misogyny

By Frogboy on July 23, 2014 1:29:48 AM from

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Frogboy

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The Internet is toxic, but its toxicity is usually equal opportunity

One of the more annoying trends in our society has been the substitution of action with rhetoric. This has really taken off in the age of Twitter where people think hashtags are a replacement for actually doing something.

Today I read an Opinion Piece on Polygon called “No Skin thick enough: The daily harassment of women in the game industry” by a woman named Brianna Wu. It's an article I recommend checking out.

However, I do have some criticisms of the piece. For starters, it is a bad piece of journalism. It relies completely on sensationalist emotionalism to back up its blanket assertion (“the daily harassment of women in the game industry”).

Such articles, even opinion pieces, are apparently not open to discussion. As soon as I expressed some criticism on Twitter the haters came out in force. All sense of reason evaporated. My criticism was: Be aware that sometimes allegations of sexual harassment are false (remember what happened to me). Sometimes, some women choose to take criticism/teasing/abuse as being due to their sex.

Let me give you the part from the article that caused me to write my tweet in the first place.

This is the example Ms. Wu provides as an example of sexual harassment women face:

Two things to point out about this: First, anonymous user (which is one of the sources of why Internet discussion can get so toxic) and second, while clearly abusive, this has nothing to do with the writer being female. I have gotten tweets to me very similar to this when I've made a casual tweet regarding a game console. Ask Phil Fish about internet abuse. Trolls will cater their trolling to their target.

The point of my tweet is that we need to be careful on this because *sometimes* the allegation that it's *sexual* harassment is false.

The article provides 4 such anecdotes. The Internet has plenty of vile behavior that many of us run into regularly. But this article tries to make sweeping conclusions with it. I take issue with articles that make sweeping (and arguably sexist) charges against men using 4 anecdotes as evidence.

If we were debating any other topic and someone made a broad, far reaching claim and backed it up with nothing more than 4 anecdotal examples they’d get reamed. But because we are talking about an ism, it is taboo to raise any skepticism about the article’s agenda.

I’ve been in the game industry a long time. I’ve seen its ugliness in many different forms. So let me tell you: This subject matter is delicate and should be treated as such.

So let's look at the responses I got when I tweeted that women sometimes make false claims of "sexual harassment" when in fact what they received had nothing to do with their sex:

To which I respond:

Which gets:

Buzzfeed's Nicol Leffel goes right to name-calling almost immediately.

Ugh. There were much more vile responses than these but I blocked them and now I can't find them on twitter. The point being, even attempting to discuss the topic invites assumptions of sexism and abuse.

There IS misogyny in the game industry but not where the professional victims would have you believe

The misogyny I've seen in our industry is not representative of game culture in general but is a manifestation of Internet toxicity. Let's start with the sexist reaction successful women in the game industry often receive. When a man does something impressive and gets some publicity, they get kudos and support. But if a woman does something impressive and gets the same publicity, their experience is likely to be terrible and humiliating. I’ve seen this first hand and it’s discouraging. But it would be wrong to imply that this is a general issue. Internet culture is toxic.

...But we have to be careful that this issue isn't exploited by opportunistic people to for professional or personal gain.

I have first hand experience with this. Those of you who know me know the hell I went through when I was falsely accused of "sexual harassment" by a former, opportunistic employee who was hoping for a quick pay off.

Let me say it plainly: There are women who will exploit this delicate topic for financial or professional gain. Maybe they’re “journalists” who know it’s a quick, easy way to get their article published on Kotaku. Maybe it’s a former journalist whose just gotten into the game industry who wants her upcoming project to get coverage. Or maybe it’s a young woman mad at her boss who wants to exploit the issue to make money. And of course, maybe it’s a legitimate reporting on a serious problem. But sorry, I’m a skeptic now. I didn’t use to be such a skeptic but 2 years of unwarranted smears and death threats have made me take these claims with a grain of salt.

So what can we do?

I’m an engineer, I’m interested in solutions and I think there is a lot we can do to address this issue:

Punish people who harass other people. I.e. Permanently ban someone who writes the kind of disgusting invective that the article cites. XBox Live and other services allow for an immense level of abuse of all kinds. Don’t tolerate it anymore.
Eliminate anonymous profiles on social networks like Xbox Live, Twitter, YouTube. Game sites could eliminate comment anonymity if they were genuinely concerned about this issue. Anonymity has a place on the net -- forums, groups, etc. But mainstream social networking should not be anonymous. Maybe it's not doable but as long as it is, trolls will be able to exploit this.
(I've changed my mind on #2)
Encourage / Reward those who actually DO something. The reason “white knighting” is despised is because it’s really about people making themselves feel good about themselves. Less rewarding of progressive rhetoric and more reward of progressive action.
Encourage people to talk about the transformative effects of a more diversified working environment. We hire a lot of women because it makes our products better. Not because women are “just as good” as men but rather because men and women bring unique strengths.

Running a company dominated by one sex puts them at a distinct disadvantage in the talent area. Men and women are different. Here’s a “sexist” statement: It has been my experience that women are better at UI design than men. I have no idea why. That’s 20 years of observation talking. Men tend to be better at debugging. No idea why. Don’t care. Both seem to be equally effective at writing buggy code.
Scrutinize and punish those who make false claims on this topic. We need to be very very careful about tarring and feathering people on this issue. Don’t reward those who are trying to profit from playing the sexism card.

Choose to be part of the solution: Do your part to make the Internet a less toxic environment. Don’t just blindly support empty, feel good pap. Keep your critical thinking cap on.

Update: Slashdot comments are very interesting and in stark contrast to the empty progressive rhetoric on Twitter. http://games-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/07/22/229256/the-daily-harassment-of-women-in-the-game-industry

Update 2: Added more content, added item #2 regarding anonymity. Fixed Typos. (see edit history).

Update 3: Added pics from Twitter.

Update 4: Typos, streamlined.

Update 5: Crossed out item 2. I've been persuaded that it's a bad idea.

Hah, those "case studies" were really quite horrible.

I'd like some hard statistics and genuine research done on the subject, not these clickbaiters filling up empty space with emotional content. No matter how much you suck Tumblr's dick ("WARNING; TRIGGERING CONTENT") it doesn't do much to change anything.

I know it seems horrible, but feminists getting shit on for posting their opinions is just as bad as people getting shit on for trying to argue with them. It's just a spiral of trolling. "Oh no, our representative got spammed so we better go spam anyone who doesn't agree with them."

Also, shame on Polygon for wanting the clicks, or wanting to be a part of the discussion, but then chickening out with crap like this

We have disabled comments for this post. While most comments were respectful and within the guidelines of Polygon's TOS, our staff came to the decision that the piece could and should stand without comments. When a contributor wants to share something highly personal with our readership, we want to offer them a place to do that without having their stories called into question, shouted down or dissected (even by the commenters offering support).

I guess people actually talking to you after you talk to them, even if they agree with you, is just too "triggering"...

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Let me illustrate how quick people are to drop any sense of civility when this topic comes up:

My point: I have seen plenty of cases where women play the sexism card when there was no sexism. Even in the article, it uses 4 anecdotes, a significant chunk of which was the kind of abuse the people in tech support or game designers see (unfortunately) routinely. We all have public access to twitter, flame wars are common and they tend to be pretty equal opportunity.

And then the responses:

To which I respond:

Which gets:

Buzzfeed's Nicol Leffel goes right to name-calling almost immediately.

Nasty, horrible people will try to personalize their trolling. Their goal is to maximize emotional pain. Deal with that and you deal with a lot of the cesspool of Internet communication. But the problem with the game industry is much deeper than that. The problem is that too many studios (and yes, game publications) are basically boys only clubs.

TO SUM UP:

The answer to speech you don't like is more speech. And if it seems like I'm making this topic personal it's because it is. I'm still pissed off at how I was treated. Sloppy opinion pieces like this create an environment where differing views are vilified.

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Heh. Just FYI,FB, the freak show that is broken forum is linking. Love the idea of a forum founded for the losers who got banned from other sites.

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A few notes about myself first off. Hopefully this will stem the tide of assumptions. I hate to have to do this, but after a sufficient number of online debates regarding contentious issues, I feel that some background on who I am tends to reduce the frequency of unfounded vitriol flung in my direction on account of false assumptions.

I am a male senior in CS wishing to work as a game programmer for PC games upon graduation.
I have more female than male friends
Most of the people I play League with are female (I have a gay friend that introduced me to the group that he plays with which is entirely female, leading me to frequently play with them)
I am in my university's game develpment club which roughly 30% female. The group itself is small and I would say that I am friendly with all of them (save for a couple of guys that I have problems with due to their lack of respect for the work of others, but that's another topic...)
The CS department at my university is roughly 5% female
I have an ex-girlfriend who is a die-hard feminist
My current girlfriend is not a feminist and is the sort of person that... shall we say... responds to a hand grenade with a nuclear barrage when it comes to insults, particularly related to gender. Simply put, I am a rather feminine male and she is a rather masculine female.
I am friends with the former student president of ACM at my university (she tried it for a year, being voted in by a huge margin, but was bored by it in the end)
I am religious and the idea of being disrespectful to anyone (let alone sexually harassing someone) is absolutely abhorrent to me. Lack of empathy for another human being is without doubt the character flaw that I despise more than any other. I take time periodically to re-evaluate my stances on things to attempt to remain unbiased while still noting the perspectives of others.

There are those that will abuse their position as a minority. My ex-girlfriend was one such person. She had never been harassed (she is also in computer science and wishes to go into mobile games), yet continuously tried to milk her position as a rarity. It wasn't a matter of "well, if it's there, I'll take it." It was as if she felt she deserved compensation for wrongs she had never received. After we broke up (which on account of unrelated matters), we lost touch. I assume and hope she has not been harassed in the intervening time.

The other females in CS at my university all seem pleasant individuals and are generally respected by the male population. Of the males that I have spoken to, I cannot imagine any of them being the type to sexually harass women. As such, from my own anecdotal evidence, I am inclined to believe that events such as those in the Polygon article must stem from a very small fragment of the male population.

That said, in my time playing Warframe, I have seen Rebecca, the developer's community manager receive large volumes of professions of love and is frequently complimented during livestreams on her appearance. Indeed, she does appear to be good at her job, though these compliments would likely not appear with the same frequency were she not a woman (it is worth noting that I've seen declarations of love for the other lead developers in the Twitch chat during livestreams). Annoying though these positive comments likely are, I hope that she does not privately receive negative ones as well.

Sexism in the gaming industry is a very volatile subject and must be handled with care. The moment you attempt to speak words of moderation, you are villainized by the internet (this has happened to me before which is why I generally tend to avoid contentious subjects online despite the fact that I enjoy talking about these in person). There are those that abuse their situation and there are those that are threatened. I would have to say that more openness for peaceful discussion is the only way to actually reduce the frequency of sexual harassment (and other ills) suffered by women in the industry while also reducing the frequency of false positives. I know nothing of the tale of which Frogboy speaks, but in questions of character such as that, onlookers are forced to stay on the side of caution. I believe more open discussions on the subject rather than the current "rant about how sucky it is for women or we vilify you" would be helpful in preventing abuse of the situation by that small fraction of women that do abuse their position.

Unfortunately, like any potentially contentious topic, people automatically assume the worst of the other side when it comes to internet discussions. Of course, that's only a stone-throw's distance away from the fundamental lack of ability for humans to be willing to see the perspectives of others which account for the vast majority of ills in society. Seeing as how political parties aren't going away any time soon, I doubt this will either, but... Eh... one can hope...

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Quoting Xan,

reply 3

Heh. Just FYI,FB, the freak show that is broken forum is linking. Love the idea of a forum founded for the losers who got banned from other sites.

What are you doing lurking there then?

I've tended to think of that place as more of a gathering of Internet pansies. They wilt unless they're constantly supported by like minded douchbags. They're obsessed with me/Stardock because our continued success flies in the face of their philosophy of bitching and moaning being a life plan. I used to occasionally check in but it's always the same pap: sneering at their betters while offering nothing themselves.

The only reason they get banned is when they lose an argument to someone they flame out and get kicked off. They can't handle even the mildest of disagreement. It's a shame really because if they had some emotional control over themselves they might be able to contribute to a discussion.

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Unfortunately, like any potentially contentious topic, people automatically assume the worst of the other side when it comes to internet discussions. Of course, that's only a stone-throw's distance away from the fundamental lack of ability for humans to willing see the perspectives of others which account for the vast majority of ills in society. Seeing as how political parties aren't going away any time soon, I doubt this will either, but... Eh... one can hope...

Indeed. It is a delicate topic and yet one handled with the subtlety of a battle axe.

I've walked into studios and game magazines that had the vibe of a college frat house. They aren't welcoming environments for women and that is a big part of the problem. I've seen some of the very same game magazines whose idea of hiring women is to have a female receptionist blast "the industry" for sexism.

The problem is that there is a serious issue in our industry with sexism. But articles showing off how vile Internet users can be to one another as "proof" of sexual harassment are less helpful than they might seem. They allow the real issue to be hidden under the fact that gamers are often a bunch of monstrous sociopaths. They use crude, sexual insults when they target women because their goal is to upset their target. They'll use a different, but still personalized, set of insults to rile up men.

Xan brought up Broken forum in an earlier post. Anyone who's ever read the vile crap they've written about me could consider this: If I were female, it would be really easy to make the case that it was a misogynist hive of evil. But they're not. They're just a bunch of anti-social jerks.

Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.

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I can't speak as a gamer. But as a forum goer, I doubt men get as many requests that they show pictures of themselves as women do. That might not seem offensive to you but I find it a little degrading.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 5

What are you doing lurking there then?

Oh you're no fun, Brad! You should totally read that place. They're hilarious. It's like a community of utter failures trying to justify their sad state in life by saying they're just too "real" to succeed or that they won't sell out "to the man". These are the dudes that if you met in real life they'd be mousy wimpy twerps but become Internet warriors behind the keyboard. God bless them.

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Quoting Frogboy,

reply 6

Indeed. It is a delicate topic and yet one handled with the subtlety of a battle axe.

I've walked into studios and game magazines that had the vibe of a college frat house. They aren't welcoming environments for women and that is a big part of the problem. I've seen some of the very same game magazines whose idea of hiring women is to have a female receptionist blast "the industry" for sexism.

The problem is that there is a serious issue in our industry with sexism. But articles showing off how vile Internet users can be to one another as "proof" of sexual harassment are less helpful than they might seem. They allow the real issue to be hidden under the fact that gamers are often a bunch of monstrous sociopaths. They use crude, sexual insults when they target women because their goal is to upset their target. They'll use a different, but still personalized, set of insults to rile up men.

Xan brought up Broken forum in an earlier post. Anyone who's ever read the vile crap they've written about me could consider this: If I were female, it would be really easy to make the case that it was a misogynist hive of evil. But they're not. They're just a bunch of anti-social jerks.

Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.

Perhaps the most enlightening article I've ever read on the dregs of humanity was a Kotaku article that I believe was republished from elsewhere. It was simply a game journalist sitting down and grabbing a beer with a troll they'd met online. People tend to assume that trolls are dirtbags because they hide behind computer screens. While being anonymous does afford some level of protection for scummy behavior, there are those that simply don't give a crap about the feelings of others. It could very well be that the people who troll in more traditional ways simply go after women with sexual harassment for the same reasons that a troll might troll noobs if they knew how much I hated watching such behavior happen and how desperately I try to stop it. I doubt this accounts for all the sub-humans that make vile comments to women online, but it is likely a notable fraction.

Also, I'm going to steal the battle axe phrase.

Quoting Emily,

reply 7

If anyone does that, forward the PM onto a dev. If nothing else, the person would surely be banned.

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Quoting Emily,

reply 7

Yea, that's pretty bad. Let us know if that happens on our forums.

But you nail one of the biggest issues in the pervasive sexism that is on the net. It's not just abuse but the objectification of women.

CariElf, our lead on GalCiv and GalCiv II and The Political Machine gets a lot of people who say they really love her but want pictures of her. I don't think most people realize how sexist that is.

Another example of hypocrisy comes from our friends at Broken Forum. When I was accused of "sexual harassment" one of their regulars posted (paraphrasing) "Yea, I remember meeting him at a Qt3 dinner and he came in with 3 women. Talk about insecure." The three women were our PR manager, our Marketing manager and our Executive Scheduler. I.e. all positions of authority at our company. But they assumed because I traveled with 3 women that they were somehow just "arm candy". That's the kind of sexism you regularly see by the very people who constantly "white knight" the issue.

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It's a bit sad that more focus isn't put on the general incivility of the Internet. Men can be creeps both in real life and at a bar. The Internet just exasperates that. But the issue is a lot broader than people being abusive of a sex. Anyone who has ever posted a YouTube video can tell you that.

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Your first mistake is trying to have a meaningful conversation on Twitter....

When ever you question any aspect of a politically correct issue or statement (or something that questions the majority opinion on a site), people will automatically label you as the devil (or engage in name calling to further vilify you). For example, some guy on SD didn't like some ideas I was suggesting and called me Communist.

I also remember in the early days of FE, a certain group of people would label anyone who offered their opinion or a suggestion as an "entitlement gamer". I had to laugh at this because I deal with real entitlement junkies every day who believe that they are owed things in life,... just because, and whine endlessly about their lot in life and how things are unfair, etc.

But, such is the nature of the Internet.

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Quoting TheJaker,

reply 11

Truth. I once posted a skit of us testing bee allergies in the office and people thought that was real. It was reported, in the media, as REAL.

Charles Randall, who, I repeat, is not a pedophile, I don't care what others might say, has said that I am a "known sexist". I'm "known" because I once said, in an email back in 2010, in sarcasm that I'm a sexist, vulgar, and inappropriate person. Now imagine how Charles "Not a pedophile" Randall might feel if people kept making false cliams about his NON-pedophilia. If someone says something in writing (if ANYONE says it apparently) even if it's sarcastic, some idiot will assume it's true.

Like bee experiments.

The problem isn't the jerks themselves. It's when people get dehumanized. I don't even want to talk about some of the horrific death threats my family has received over the years.

These guys make these vile claims against those they think deserve it. But they have such thin skin when the spot light is put on them.

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BTW Brad..aren't you supposed to be on vacation?

Seriously, put down the laptop and relax.

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Seriously Brad, you're going to make the BF crowd cry. They migrate between victimhood and perpetrator with such ease.

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Remember Angie Gallant? The women who smeared your book because her nutty husband got banned for stalking you?

She writes:

So says the Judger of Nipples, Arbiter of their Television Worthiness.

Can you speak to the "Nipples on TV" thing? I've read about it. Are you allowed to talk about it?

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Can you speak to the "Nipples on TV" thing? I've read about it. Are you allowed to talk about it?

Oh I'm under no "gag" order. I've been free to talk about that case in an unlimited way (and I insisted that she be able to do so too because I would be delighted if both sides of that situation were made public instead of her false, inflammatory statements) since her case was dismissed with prejudice.

But of course, the media has been curiously uninterested in covering our victory in the case. They were all over painting me out to be a monster. But when we won, silence and excuses.

Anyway, the nipple thing.

Here's the whole story (collaborated by MULTIPLE female witnesses in deposition -- not that that part came out in any media account):

She was scheduled to go on XPlay to demonstrate one of our games. But she had a real issue with Xplay because of how they portrayed women. She repeated discussed how she watched an episode where she could see Olivia Mund's nipples on TV. She and I kind of ridiculed the way XPlay was objectifying women.

Anyway, a minute later, she asks me, "Come on Brad, do I have to go on Xplay? Can't you do the demo instead?" and I responded "But your nipples look better on TV than mine do!" It was all part of a running joke about XPlay's presentation of women that we *both* were part of and laughed about.

Think about how many jokes or sarcastic quips you make a given day. Now, imagine all tone or context being taken out and imagine how a cynical media or Internet jerks could use those quotes.

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Olivia Munn was never on X-Play.

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Brad, reading your posts here, I understand where you're coming from and the nuance you bring to the topic, but your Twitter response was fairly thoughtless. One of the, if not the #1, criticism/annoyance with discussions on sexism, racism, etc. is that privileged groups often blunder into those discussions with the attempt to frequently de-rail the topic and steer it back to them. For example, on racism "Yeah, but reverse-racism is a thing too!!" for example. Your first reaction/response was to direct the topic back to you personally and cast doubt on the veracity of the issue. People freaking out with vitriol at that isn't necessarily just a response to your comment, but rather to the cumulative effect of comments like yours being the go-to response from people not in that group on a fairly regular basis. I'm saying this as a white male myself - just trying to give you some perspective on how this gets viewed. Like I said, I understand this wasn't necessarily your intention, but, that's the way it comes across, and the short burst nature of Twitter is not really conducive either to these discussions.

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Quoting Gazornenplatz,

reply 18

Olivia Munn was never on X-Play.

Some G4 show. I don't remember which G4. I assumed Xplay.

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Quoting Ekko_Tek,

reply 19

I am sure that I am the most tone deaf person out there.

The intent was to respond to Jeff Green, my friend. Others chose to join in. I agree, Twitter is an imperfect tool for such discussions. I just found the whole article exploitive of an important issue. Part of my issue has to do with knowing the various media sites and many of the studios.

That said, having been shit on about an issue where the allegations against me were with either completely made up or taken so out of context and then reading the article I can say that the abuse I took during that time makes what appeared in that article look like a walk in the park.

I had people posting my home address and saying that someone should come to my house and teach me a lesson one dark knight. I had Google maps pictures of my homoe with a skull and gross bones pictured. The email I received, in the hundreds a week, for months after the story hit are things that you can't easily set aside. And for what? If the allegations made against me had been even 25% true, then sure, I say I deserved it. But I didn't send "purity tests" out as suggested or make random nipples comments or ask about bras or anything like that.

So no, I won't be letting this issue go. Ever. As long as jack asses like Charles Randall and his ilk want to libel me on the net I'll happily and enthusiastically respond.

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Olivia Munn was on Attack of the Show, which certainly did have questionable portrayals of women on it. They didn't do videogame demos, though, so I don't know why her objections would have led to an agreement between the two of you about the objectification of women on a show you wouldn't have ever been on.

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Quoting Gazornenplatz,

reply 22

I don't want to speak for her. But I suspect her issue was with the network's treatment of women and not wanting to appear on it.

Ultimately, I was the one who did the demo because she didn't want to be on their show.

Discussing the objectification and demeaning of women has been a topic we have discussed at length at work over the years. We don't like it. Have never liked it. And I like it even less when I see guys who probably have never lifted a finger to help women in the game industry act like they're somehow doing something good by blindly supporting (and I don't think their support is genuine) any sort of anti-harassment article that comes out, even sloppy ones like the one discussed here.

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