This may be old news to gamers, but a reader just brought it to my attention:
Capcom and IGN recently put on a little online gaming “reality” show called Capcom’s Cross Assault, based on the game Street Fighter x Tekken. The show, like the game, pits a team of Street Fighter players against a Tekken team.
During a live stream of the ongoing battle on day five of the tournament, Twitch.tv community manager Jared Rea made a few remarks criticizing the assholish, and often misogynistic, comments of some of the fighters.
Here’s how the Penny Arcade Report summarized what followed. (I’ve taken the liberty of highlighting several particularly egregious comments in bold.)
“This is Aris,” a voice said on the feed. “If you don’t like onions, you get your sandwich without onions on it, man. This is the fighting game community.” He then stated that sexual harassment and the fighting game community are “one and the same thing.”
The voice belonged to Aris Bakhtanians, the coach of the Tekken team.
“The sexual harassment is part of the culture. If you remove that from the fighting game community, it’s not the fighting game community… it doesn’t make sense to have that attitude. These things have been established for years,” Aris stated. He then noted that making sexual jokes at StarCraft players would be inappropriate, so it’s unfair for anyone to tell fighting game fans they can’t viciously mock women. …
“That’s what you’re trying to do to the fighting game community and it’s not right,” Aris continued. “It’s ethically wrong.” This may be the first time in the history of video games that someone had said that removing sexual harassment is ethically unjust.
Later in the, er, discussion, after someone brought up the harassment of a guy playing a female character (“someone yelling the world “bitch” over and over … and then scream[ing] for her rape when she lost”) Aris responded with this:
“What is unacceptable about that?” Aris asked. “There is nothing unacceptable about that. We’re in America! This isn’t North Korea! We can say what we want.”
You can listen to the whole discussion on this video; it starts, with Rea’s comments, at about one hour forty-five minutes in. (Aris starts commenting about two minutes later.)
Many more appalling details in the PA report post.
Oh, gaming community! Get it the fuck together.
If the defining trait of “humans” is making rape threats towards other players in video games, then I’m happy to say I am indeed above them. No pretense necessary.
Of course, I seem to have a vastly higher opinion of most humans than you do, and think that they are, in fact, entirely capable of acting like civil adults, and do not actually have to make rape threats and harass people. Not threatening to rape people is actually really, really easy, so I’d have to have one hell of a terrible outlook on humanity if I felt that they couldn’t pull such a thing off.
@ katz- I am not a gamer, but I kind of want to spread that video all over the online gaming community. I don’t believe in harrassing real people, but I think it would be instructive as fuck for mysogynistic gamer dudez to see what their behavior really looks like to those on the receiving end.
It’s not a conspiracy when they outright say “women are banned from this event because of the serious problem that is sexual harrassment”.
No, not all humans, just you and other asshats who think they’re cool for using -ist slurs.
Meanwhile, non-jackasses like IR make good, wholesome video games. Games that are just plain fun, without any unnecessary hatred or targeting. Something people of all genders can enjoy, like pregnant poor people fighting over money.
There once was a gent named factfinder,
or, was it preggopunchout? Where’s my binder
full of his pseudonyms
that lack wit but not whim
but to him bear no resemblance or reminder.
I have successfully gone almost 44 years without ever threatening to rape someone, so I think you may be on to something. Granted, for a few of those years I was not very verbal…
Sorry, my mistake. I meant “poor pregnant women trying to cause the other to have a spontaneous abortion for money.” Silly me. ^_^
‘Twas noted he couldn’t find many facts
and his abortion game got a swift axe.
No point could he find,
nor his errors did he mind,
so in reviewing others he stretched himself to his max.
From finding he changed to reviews
For facts he could happily lose.
But he found to his cost
His motivation was lost
So now he just trolls on manboobz
Poor, poor trolls…
You’re prickly little things, aren’t you?
there once was a finder of fact
who often would overreact
when his “organ” was used
as an insult he mused
that all men were now being attacked
I’m not prickly! My stem is notoriously sticky, though.
At least we aren’t poisonous little toadstools love.
No one can be bothered to visit IR/Preggo/FactFinder at his blog, so sad. So he comes here for some social interaction. At least we get more limericks! Huzzahs to Tulgey, Kirby and Snowy — hey, your names all rhyme!
I know you are damaged. Just let your pain pour out, it pleasures me.
kinkayyy?
A group of gamers gathered to discuss
A problem that occured within their ranks.
“They’re rude, they’re crude, they’re sexist and its thanks
To them our female members raise a fuss.”
It took not long before they found they must
do something ’bout those bothers, harsh and wild
who were obnoxious as a stubborn child.
“It seems they should no longer play with us.”
A cry of outrage rang out through the air!
“How could you toss out all my friends?
Sure they may be a little hard to bear,
But gaming isn’t fun ‘less it offends!”
The one solution became crystal clear.
Girls can’t complain if they’re not even here.
Bemused.
IR is pleasured by pain;
He has trouble remembering his name.
When his organ was insulted,
Pregnant women were assaulted…
Perhaps because he lacks much of a brain.
(I’m a little rusty with the limericks.)
Yay Cloudiah!!!!
@IR:
If I wrote you a sonnet, would that please you?
Please call me Cloudy, to keep the rhyming thang going. 🙂
But I, grasshopper, learn at the feet of the limerick/poem-masters.
I… what? Guys, I don’t even.