International Women's Day

[WHAM]

Khris: If such is your characterization, then there must be some kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication. As before, I'll be happy to discuss, but it might be best not to hijack this threat with further unrelated chatter on the topic.

Danvzare: As with most modern issues of equality or inequality of the two genders, I think you identify the issue quite correctly. There was and is a natural trend toward a more balanced representation, but the hasty push for immediate change at the cost of other merits, such as artistic integrity, results in pushback and missteps that could have been easily avoided.

[Ali]

It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.

This is the same imaginary bad guy again. What "overcompensation?" Are the majority of video game characters women? Are most games marketed towards women? Are the majority of devs women?

You said yourself that women in video games are doing about as well as they used to. So what has the hostile pushback been against? It's been against a small handful of female creators, characters and performers who DARED to try to exist in nerd-bro-land.

Don't worry, friend. I forgive your ignorance. Just please stop saying such nonsense so that we can remain civil.

Fuck you. Of course I'm not going to be civil with someone who uses the phrase ""oh the poor Jews" -bandwagon". Extremely fuck off.

[Blondbraid]

Don't do it.
Engaging with Jack and his "arguments" means he has "won". Just don't do it.

I wish it was that easy, but many people just take a lack of answer as silent approval instead. 

Well, I think the Adventure game genre has been largely spared from the brunt of it, but I've seen lots of hateful comments surrounding many other games, and to name just one example the latest Battlefield got tons of hate for being "disrespectful to history" by letting people pick the gender and skin color of their avatar in a game set in WW2, whereas the 2004 game Silent Storm, also set in WW2 and you can pick the skin color and gender of your avatar, doesn't have a single review scolding the game for it.

I decided not to buy BF5 because of this. Allow me to explain the difference between the two games you described as examples and why your comparison of the two of them is nonsense:

Battlefield 5 did have the soldier's race and gender be historically accurate in the campaign, it was just in the multiplayer you could freely choose it for your avatar, and multiplayer fps by their nature aren't meant to be realistic simulations of war when people can effortlessly bunnyhop across the map and anyone can use any weapon without training. But even if you think it ruins your immersion or was a bad creative choice, do you think the developers deserve the death threats they got over the game?

And the female soldier in the trailer did not have a robot arm. It was an arm prosthetic, and it was accurate to what was available at the time, just look at this photo of a real prosthesis next to the woman in the trailer:

And real people like Virginia Hall and Douglas Bader did get sent on dangerous missions into enemy territory despite having prosthetics. They're not exactly like the character in the trailer, but said character is not completely made up from nothing either.

Also, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus also got a ton of hate for being "an SJW game" and featuring women and people of color despite being an alternate history sci-fi game with nazis on the moon, so you can't use "historical accuracy" as an argument there.

The reason why I feel as though people are annoyed with things like International Women's Day, and the Battlefield fiasco, and so on, and so on. Isn't because of women. But because of the political correctness that's constantly being shoehorned in.

The problem is that to a lot of people in anti-SJW circles, merely being a woman is seen as a political statement, and merely saying that you want women and minorities to receive the same respect as the men in the majority is "political correctness gone mad".

I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

[WHAM]

Battlefield 5 did have the soldier's race and gender be historically accurate in the campaign, it was just in the multiplayer you could freely choose it for your avatar, and multiplayer fps by their nature aren't meant to be realistic simulations of war when people can effortlessly bunnyhop across the map and anyone can use any weapon without training. But even if you think it ruins your immersion or was a bad creative choice, do you think the developers deserve the death threats they got over the game?

Absolutely not. Harrassing people is never a solution, and I think the only real action people should have taken if they felt the devs made a mistake here, is to not buy the game.

As for the prosthetic arm: historically it makes no sense for a person with such an injury, male or female, to be running around jumping out of buildings in France. The female character here feels like an unrealistic and forced attempt to create the "ultimate cool girl" character. Fine from a marketing perspective, but unfortunate in the eyes of the players who view Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

[Danvzare]

It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.

This is the same imaginary bad guy again. What "overcompensation?" Are the majority of video game characters women? Are most games marketed towards women? Are the majority of devs women?

You said yourself that women in video games are doing about as well as they used to. So what has the hostile pushback been against? It's been against a small handful of female creators, characters and performers who DARED to try to exist in nerd-bro-land.

Holy crap! What is with the sudden spike in hostility!
I haven't seen this kind of shit storm, since Trump was elected. 

The "overcompensation" isn't me saying that women are getting MORE representation. I'm saying that what representation they are getting, is being pushed more.
Am I making sense?

Look. Forget it. I'm out.
This is getting more hostile than when we talk about verbcoins. And at least then, people actually try to figure out the full intent of what someone is trying to say, rather than simply trying to find something to disagree with.

I recommend others to do the same.
Or at the very least. Wait a little bit before responding. I remember reading a long time ago (during a course I did) to never respond on a forum when you're emotional. And clearly this is a touchy subject for everyone here.

[Khris]

I know someone who was actually going to go out of her way to NOT see it, because she thought it was just going to push an agenda, just because of how the news made it out to be.

TFW you have to go out of your way to NOT see a movie.

Fine from a marketing perspective, but unfortunate in the eyes of the players who view Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

TFW you are a player who views Battlefield as a series with roots in history or any semblance of realism.

[Matti]

Comrades,

Don't be too hard on Jack. I won't adress her directly because her insecurity in its lowest form expresses itself in seeing „white knighting“ and „cultural marxism“ everywhere. Her delusional belief system even goes as far as stating that a gender applied to you is something „natural“ and comes with your sex while a self imposed gender and pronoun are crazy soviet shenanigans. Jack just wants to speak up against the protected classes on their high horses before it's too late and thus must mandate that others have to believe in it.

In all seriousness though:

I'm glad that the AGS forums are still among the few rather nice places in the net where right-wing conspiracies and hatred (being defended by referring to „freedom of speech“) are not welcomed and don't go unchallenged.

The misogyny, especially as it expresses itself in the internet â€" from hateful comments to all the death threats - is disgusting. Defending all the despicable thoughts and behavior as freedom of speech is a poor disguise. Whining about censorship while spreading the hatred and even turning around the truth by playing the victim is as pathetic as it is common behavior nowadays. Many men babble about being treated unfair while all they really want is to protect their privilege to treat women (and many other people) like shit without having to fear consequences.*

Really, the misogyny is breath-taking.


*This is sometimes described as „These days you are not allowed to say anything that might hurt the feelings of any one“. These are some really hard times...

Edit: Phew! A lot of new comments. Mine may not be up to date

[Ali]

Holy crap! What is with the sudden spike in hostility!
I haven't seen this kind of shit storm, since Trump was elected. 

The "overcompensation" isn't me saying that women are getting MORE representation. I'm saying that what representation they are getting, is being pushed more.
Am I making sense?

I don't think I was actually rude to you, but it's possible that some of my anger at WHAM for being a fash has spilled over.

I still think what you're saying doesn't make sense. How can "overcompensation" be the right word if women aren't getting MORE representation - at worst, wouldn't that just be "compensation"? What makes it worthy of a hostile backlash? Is it reasonable to hold the victims of hate campaigns responsible for the existence of those hate campaigns?

[Snarky]

It's a real shame how this overcompensation for better portrayals of women in media, has led to such a hostile pushback.
Of course you've also got the sexist pigs. Unfortunately on both sides. But loudmouths like them are present everywhere. And can usually be easily ignored. It's when you lump everyone who disagrees with you into that group that there's a problem.

There's no point on the political spectrum that is inhabited exclusively by saints, but I think it's a false equivalence to talk about "both sides" as somehow equally bad in this case. For example, it's been demonstrated in several studies that women face significantly more threats and harassment online, and that the harassment they receive is more violent, sexual and gendered. That women expressing views labeled feminist (or sometimes just opposed to the "alt-right") are particularly targeted is readily seen. This is a problem beyond "the Internet is full of assholes", and needs to be acknowledged in debates such as this if it is to proceed on a sound basis.

As for "can usually be easily ignored" – no, that's no longer true. For one thing, that level of harassment of individuals can be traumatic in itself; for another, the most hateful voices are successfully making a lot of the Internet inhospitable to mainstream participants (just look at any unmoderated comments section on anything even vaguely related to politics), driving out any positive dialogue and creating radicalizing echo-chambers (assisted by some really bad algorithmic biases in services like YouTube and Facebook), which is a real democratic problem. I mean, you just said you're withdrawing from this thread, and this is nothing compared to the vitriol seen in many online spaces. Thirdly, while the so-called "alt-right" is still relatively small overall, it now wields real political power in a number of countries, and is able to punch above its weight online through targeted campaigns. For example, Captain Marvel was recently targeted by a flood of negative user reviews on Rotten Tomatoes: receiving more ratings before its release than Avengers Infinity War has racked up to date. This obviously had nothing to do with the quality of the film, just a backlash against a film about a female superhero and the mildly feminist girl-power stance of its marketing. Stupid as it may seem, film companies do care about things like this, and are generally conservative in trying to avoid controversy (no matter how ginned-up).

In that context, I think it's only natural that other criticisms (e.g., according to trustworthy reviews I've seen, Captain Marvel is only so-so) can sometimes be mistrusted as a front for hostility based in misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc. After all, on the Internet, it very often is. If your position is one that is mainly taken by bigots, you might have to be pretty careful how you express it if you don't want to be taken for a bigot. (And also, maybe if the web is overflowing with criticism ranging from reasonable to hateful of something or someone, and most of it inspired by bigotry, you don't have to add your voice to that choir even if you have valid points.)

[Blondbraid]

Snarky:

[Jack]

I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

Much has been made about this, it seems to be your entire basis for why people should be censored when not speaking highly of the protected classes. But how many of these threats have been confirmed as real? You accused people on the other side of the spectrum of complaining that "progressive" games are bigoted and racist, in a fantastically devious attempt to make others think such things are wrong, but do you really think just "the other side" is capable of this kind of duplicity? Ali made the bold statements that 100% of the hate was real, even though gamergate itself was not. Is it impossible that some pantyfa type sent themselves a bunch of death threats with swastikas on them, just so they can say "look how attacked we are"? Is everyone on your side good? Is it impossible that there were some Jussie Smolletts on the "good" side of gamergate? 100% real?

[Khris]

Shut up

[Dualnames]

I honestly can't be arsed to read all of this, I'm not sure what has prompted Khris to say shut up so many times, but it's hilarious!!! I also think, in my honest honest opinion, that political/heavy discussions like these, shouldn't be done over a forum. It won't work, and it always result into namecalling. Concerning Captain Marvel, the people flooded it, because Brie Larsson has said some inflamatory things over the past few weeks, and people were trying to get back to her by downvoting the movie, cause people are dumb sometimes, and can't separate an actor/actress from a movie. I haven't seen the film, but I've seen the Room and Brie was fantastic in it!!

What I personally think, I am 300% with any diversity as long as it's not there for the sake of diversity. A badly written character is a badly written character no matter what minority it represents.
I think also we need to move on from "why isn't Batman asian/black/trans/whatever" and actually instead of trying to change a character that applies to a demographic, actually write new characters that represent and are more relatable to people.

"Be excellent to each other" is what I think we should all do.

[Blondbraid]

I honestly can't be arsed to read all of this, I'm not sure what has prompted Khris to say shut up so many times, but it's hilarious!!!

I don't think you would find it as hilarious if you actually read the context. If you can't be bothered to read any of the previous posts, why are you taking time to write a long reply?
Snarky has basically already debunked your argument in his post.

I also can't give gamergate any benefit of a doubt or consider both sides equally bad when one side just calls the other fascist or bigoted and the other send explicit threats of torture, rape and murder and threats to the kids of their opponents.

Much has been made about this, it seems to be your entire basis for why people should be censored when not speaking highly of the protected classes. But how many of these threats have been confirmed as real? You accused people on the other side of the spectrum of complaining that "progressive" games are bigoted and racist, in a fantastically devious attempt to make others think such things are wrong, but do you really think just "the other side" is capable of this kind of duplicity? Ali made the bold statements that 100% of the hate was real, even though gamergate itself was not. Is it impossible that some pantyfa type sent themselves a bunch of death threats with swastikas on them, just so they can say "look how attacked we are"? Is everyone on your side good? Is it impossible that there were some Jussie Smolletts on the "good" side of gamergate? 100% real?

You haven't actually read any of the stuff me or Matti or Snarky has written on why this stuff is dangerous if that's your takeaway, and you still haven't answered my question about the Hungarian ban on gender studies.

Real criminals like Eliot Roger, Alek Minassian and Breivik have been radicalized online and have killed real people because of their beliefs, and when death threats and hatred is normalized it's only a matter of time until someone else is emboldened to kill or hurt people, and what you see as harmless jokes they see as approval of their abuse, and the hatred is real, unlike the "censorship" you imagine.

But seriously, wasn't it enough that you got the World Suicide Prevention Day thread locked thanks to your "jokes" and prevented everyone else from sharing their thoughts there, are you going to derail this thread until the Moderators lock it down too?

[Ali]

It seems impossible to have conversations with people who refuse to engage with reality.

Insubstantial and malicious allegations against women are spun into an absurd "soviet" conspiracy, while *years* of actual, well-documented harassment, and violent misogynist attacks are all being faked by professional victims. It's like talking to flat Earthers, but not fun. I can forgive the sheer stupidity of it, but not the essential lack of compassion.

To address the OP's question, this recent thread from Jessica Price is not encouraging https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1105186403741134849

[Jack]

Real criminals like Eliot Roger, Alek Minassian and Breivik have been radicalized online and have killed real people because of their beliefs, and when death threats and hatred is normalized it's only a matter of time until someone else is emboldened to kill or hurt people, and what you see as harmless jokes they see as approval of their abuse, and the hatred is real, unlike the "censorship" you imagine.

But seriously, wasn't it enough that you got the World Suicide Prevention Day thread locked thanks to your "jokes" and prevented everyone else from sharing their thoughts there, are you going to derail this thread until the Moderators lock it down too?

I thought it was them darn video games that made the kids shoot people. Oh right, there wasn't internet in those days.

The joke in that thread was hilarious, it was followed by tomes of shocked descriptions of gross emotional victimisation and swearing, and then the thread got locked. Because jokes like that cause real hurt to real people and school shootings too. At the very same time you can't lament that they're not allowed any more, because obviously you can still say anything you want (as long as there's no conceivable way that anyone at all would be offended by it). This doublethink, which is expected of everyone, to me has an exceptionally soviet ring to it.

Regarding the Hungarian false equivalency: My problem with misgendering becoming a legal offence has nothing to do with rights, it's about not wanting to be forced to share anyone else's goofy beliefs. I don't trust in rights because I'm old enough to know how fast they get taken away when they're not convenient.

[Gurok]

Personally, I sometimes feel like it's going backwards

I think there's a deliberate attempt by miscellaneous bigots to pull culture back to a completely imagined "good old days". If Jurassic Park were released now, people would say "Oh, they made the hacker a girl? She's a total Mary Sue." If Indiana Jones were made now, people would be yelling, "why did they make the baddies Nazis? Talk about virtue signalling! Keep politics out of entertainment!"

I'm not sure the adventure genre is immune either. I recently wasted a morning arguing in this Facebook P&C group https://www.facebook.com/groups/230349270493876/ with a few idiots who make it clear that CERTAIN people aren't welcome in nerd-dom. Last week someone posted the feminist frequency video where a trans woman journalist criticises Leisure Suit Larry because of the scene where a trans woman "hilariously" rapes Larry. Most people were NOT happy, deliberately misgendered her, were homophobic towards me for POLITELY telling them to "fuck off and die", and then started to talk about GamerGate and Cultural Marxism, as if both those scandals weren't totally imaginary. The same thing happened when Chuchel turned orange and they were FURIOUS that developers would deliberately try not to seem racist. Free speech, etc.

It annoys me, not only because P&C games were pioneered by several women devs. But because weird niche interests attract people who feel like outcasts. How dare these twats start gatekeeping? It infuriates me to see these emotionally stunted 30-year olds putting up a "no girls or gays" sign on their treehouse.

As I see it, either you allow criticism or you don't. You don't get to choose whether criticism is allowed based on whether you agree with it.

When I see someone saying complaining about a black Stormtrooper, I say to myself, "well, that's not how I feel about it" and move on with my life.

[Dualnames]

I apologize.

[Scavenger]

, it's about not wanting to be forced to share anyone else's goofy beliefs.

So am I getting this correct, you think that being transgender is a "goofy belief" and you really want to misgender trans people because you don't think they're legitimate? Because the vast, vast majority of people are gonna ask for he/she/they. And even if it was an exotic pronoun, is it any different from having an unusual name?

[Khris]

That moment when Jack is talking about other people's "goofy beliefs".

Jack: shut up

Everybody else: don't quote him. Don't engage with him or his "arguments". If you do, he "wins". Just don't.