Saying that female objectification in games is bad = threat.

[Gaffer]

I don't have anything to add to what has already been said. It's just nice playing with all sorts of people whatever their race, gender, sexual preferences, life choices, etc.

(I realise now that I often use the word 'gay' in game when something unfortunate/annoying happens and while I have no ill will towards them, it is still something I shall endeavour to stop)

Thanks to all the ladies who play on the server (be they known, or unknown), it has been a pleasure playing alongside you (all the guys too). Not the reptile people though i know you're out there... *twitch*

[Karma_geddon]

I really hope many other communities will follow the games.on.net example and show these bigots the door.

I'm seriously starting to think of an initiative:

i don't know if you peeps are aware of who PewDiePie is (but you probably are). He's a youtuber that makes gaming videos (like many others do these days) AND he's the youtuber with the most subscribers on the *whole* Youtube (he just reached 30 millions people), and many of his viewer (probably the majority) are adolescents or pre-adolescents...
And I think: it could be GREAT if he decided to make a video on this topic.

Many could say that his sense of humor is not very mature (and they would be probably right) but he's always been very sensible on more mature topics (he does a lot of charitable projects, for example; or, just watch one of his last videos, the one about the comment section and the ice bucket challenge).
He's in the best stance (and I mean it literally: he's in the best stance *in the whole world*) to deliver a message to a huge portion of the gaming community, expecially the younger ones, about how it is wrong to do this.

I could just write to him. And if he ignores me (he probably will, at least because he doesn't know me and he's flooded with messages) maybe a more extensive, "spammy" initiative could be in order, to attract his attention on this topic.

Hopefully the UT community is a little more open to this entire topic, as female characters were always present. In fact, the original Unreal game had a female character as default model. (Due to alphabetical order of player models, but nonetheless "Gina" was the default.)
For those who didn't know: Rachel 'Angel Mapper' Cordone, one of the best UT2004/UT3/UDK mappers/modders around, was born as a male. She openly talked about her "final step" in becoming female on the BeyondUnreal Forums without getting any negative feedback in that thread. There are also openly gay players on BUF (I'm not aware of openly lesbian players, but maybe I just didn't see it getting mentioned) and they don't get any more flames than anyone else.

That's very good and warmful to know... At least, there's still hope

[MrPenguin]

I really enjoy the diversity on this server, it makes it a much nicer place to play.

There is another UT2k4 server I play on regularly, because its the only one offering a particular game type, and there is occasional sexist chatter on there which is annoying (there is one female player who is also an admin, and when she's around it stops)

I've also seen some rather silly female custom player skins in use on some servers ... though why you'd want to fight in a bikini I've no idea, especially on the arctic maps

[Dalyup!]

I highly doubt that would help Karma if PewDiePie even did do that. I perhaps have an optimistic outlook on people but, from my experiences in the gaming community, people are generally decent and would not say discriminatory and despicable things to others (they do during anger some times, but it's not normal). It is usually a vocal minority who do and they get shunned by most communities for being total assholes. I believe it's the culture people are raised in that affects their attitudes to sex/race/sexuality/etc rather than anything else, and I would say it overrides any cultural influences the Internet might have. So that's the main thing that needs to be addressed. Nor, do I believe, simply being told that your prejudices are wrong will actually make a difference. I think people need to realise themselves that what they thought about people not like them is wrong by interacting with such people and seeing that they're really no different than themselves. Fear of the unknown washed away with knowledge. It needn't be outright hatred either. For example, when I was a pre-teen, I was somewhat nervous around Muslims because of all the shit I'd been hearing about terrorist attacks etc and I had never really interacted with a Muslim. I understood that the majority of Muslims were nice, no different than me, but the unease remained due to what, I can only guess, as a lack of confirmation. It wasn't until in a few years later that when I became friendly with several Muslims and good friends with one, that I truly understood that they really just are the same as me, a little bit different of course, but they were not some alien "others" - they were human.

Writing this at 3am was probably a bad idea, as I have realised that would mainly work for race/sexuality rather than sex. Perhaps sex to a lesser extent - personally I didn't really know any girls when young nor had any female role models so there was some unease and believing the bullshit society teaches you about women. Making friends with girls quashed that, although there are still some mysteries. Anyway, I'm rambling: what I'm trying to say is the Internet culture is merely a reflection of "real life" culture, and when the latter improves so will the former. Furthermore, people are undiscriminatory by default, and those who are not will not give a shit if they're their prejudices are evil/stupid - only experiences will change their opinions. Regarding attitudes to women, that is probably more our societal/religious cultures than anything else.

Also, for me, female gamers were certainly unusual to encounter when growing up, but there was no reason to treat them differently or rudely or whatever. I was playing for fun and so were they.

[Karma_geddon]

I decided not to write to PewDiePie for now... Because meanwhile, the Internet exploded for the leak of celeb nude selfies. There's no way to attract the online community attention on this topic for now... Too much noise from other topics.

Still, a petition on Change.org about this has been started.
I suggest that everyone who took a stance in this thread might leave a sign there, and maybe share it on social network and/or in other trusted circles of people, as I did. It takes just a minute and could do a lot.

The Gaming Indutry: Please stop the hate

@Daly: I do recognize that this is a problem hard-coded in our global culture, right now. And *that's* why I think that it could be a very effective to deliver a message through games (or through exposed personalities of the gaming community) to start (or to contribute) to change things on a more macroscopic cultural level:

a lot of the gaming community (or at least, a lot of the part that plays mostly to AAA games that often objectify women, like GTA) is made by adolescents or pre-adolescents; gaming is a part of their life, often a very important part in terms of energy and time investment. And pretty soon, these kids will become adults.
To educate through games, is a very effective way. Expecially if the adolescents are exposed to them on a willing and daily basis.

Of course, it would not be enough to change things entirely. But we'll have to start somewhere, and this might be a good and effective way to start.

[Maniac]

Well, i'll probably be beaten or strongly discouraged for this, but there are some important points missed on already posted replies.

The video games are rightfully considered like a case of (escapism), and from this, we can derive following theses:

1. First: in VG, having an anonymous avatar, a player often exhibits behavior, which is not typical for his/her real life actions (which can include but is not limited by the inferiority complex, hidden aggression or other personal issues). So, in most cases, aggressive behavior and threats (including sexual harassment) are to be viewed more like inside-directed action to increase one's self-esteem and rating in community (an important remark here - the rating itself can be even lowered by such action, but one's perception of own rating rises, because it falls in nicely to his/her "alpha" behavioural pattern.), and less like an outside-directed action to influence other players in any way.
   So, agressive attitude toward women is a self-esteem action, not a social one.
2. Also, an avatar is a "separate character", and (consciously or not) it has "it's own life". Experienced D&D players, actors and other impersonators can create fully independent character (it is very hard to tell that it is linked to certain player - it may have catchwords, some parasite words, another race, gender, whatever), whereas novice impersonators are usually quite clumsy with it. Avatar almost always has personality traits which are desired by player and which player often lacks, so (see [1]), if player M is told that player V is a girl, M can easily tell many bad things - but not because it is his typcial behaviour, but because it is what his "ideal character" would do.
   So, harassing is how a person sees his/her ideal behavior, not how he acts IRL
3. Last, but not least: a player with subjective lower or midde position in a community (subjective position is how he/she sees himself/herself) would surely subconsciously try to increase own rating by 1) marking some other player as "different" and 2) dominationg that player to show his/her allegiance to community by keeping its stability (which belongs to "safety" in Maslow's pyramid, only 1 step from physiological needs).
   So, the real source of agression is not someone's gender, but the difference between you and him/her
4. One more important note: an active feedback (a demonstration of fear, anger or whatever) from victim only encourage the online harasser (not alway so in real life, but almost a rule in Internet, see Anonymity_on_the_Internet for this and previous points). At the same time, discouragement from other members of community usually gives much better effect (even if it is not visible).

TL;DR: the problem is mostly not in player's gender, but in personal issues of some f*ckers out there, who wants to bolster their self-esteem through displaying accented rude animal behavior; ignore them and ask admin to make them suffer.

P.S.: My own opinion on topic is as following: at least in last years there is absolutely no prejudice vs females in game production (e.g. see Bioware games), the biggest part of it comes from community. That's not game developers who should be addressed, but community administrators. Write the rules, ban those wannabe machos as fast as they appear, and you'll see none in your server for a long time. As for playing in communities without administration or with bad administration is same as walking in deep downtown at 9:00 P.M. - you most probably will get beaten, raped, robbed and killed, or, at very least, dipped in sh*t knee-deep while being upside down.

[MrPenguin]

Hi Maniac, nice to see you here

I think some players enter game communities with some of this "baggage" - that they have to establish some sort of position by exhibiting exaggerated aggressive behaviour. While this may be a projection as you suggest, it can also be a learned behaviour from the experience of trying to "fit in" in some gaming communities. Which also means it can be un-learned!

Certainly at CEONSS I think its pretty clear to anyone joining that the kinds of behaviour that are rewarded with positive social interaction are generally pro-social anyway, as - in general - we're "social" players rather than "competitive" players, with a lot more diversity than you find in many game communities.

(I used to play StarCraft II - I'd played original SC for years - but gave up as I was fed up with constantly having to block/report players for being pointlessly abusive d**kheads, especially to new players. The game seems to actively encourage idiocy in its players)

[Maniac]

... it can also be a learned behaviour from the experience of trying to "fit in" in some gaming communities. ...

True, the source of this behaviour can lie anywhere, but still i am quite sure that good admins can easily set up rules for a community, not some country's Ministery of Culture or press or game devs or mr.Clean.

And, i want to emphasize again that chosing community is up to you, and that there will always be many bad ones. You can not change morale of anonymous community (such as Internet) via raising its publicity - polite members do not do it anyways, and impolite ones will only get more active.

... (I used to play StarCraft II - I'd played original SC for years - but gave up as I was fed up with constantly having to block/report players for being pointlessly abusive d**kheads, especially to new players. The game seems to actively encourage idiocy in its players)...

I personally play SC2 now, and I only blocked a couple of them in last several years - blocking persistent ones is pretty easy (kudos to developers for easy ignore system) and, taking into account SC2 specific of forced random matches, chances to meet them again is pretty low.