Welcome to the first installment of “what the hell is wrong with people, I mean really,what the hell Saturday.”
Today we’re going to look at a couple of recent controversies in the world of gaming. And by “controversies” I mean “women daring to get involved in the gaming industry and getting harassed by misogynistic assholes.”
First up, let’s look at the tale of a woman who’s now facing an angry internet mob because she drew a picture of the video game character Mega Man … as a woman.
A little backstory: The video game makers Comcept recently raised roughly a million bucks on Kickstarter to fund a game intended as a sort of sequel, at least in spirit, to the old Mega Man games. And they hired a woman named Dina Abou Kara as a community manager to handle their forums and other social media.
There was just one little problem: when the folks at Comcept announced her hiring, they also posted a picture she’d drawn of Mega Man, imagined as a woman. Aghast at the very notion of such a gender switch — though Dina wasn’t even involved in the actual making of the new game — the “community” collectively lost its shit.
As Ian Miles Cheong notes on Gameran,
Finding fault with her presentation, these persons decided to pry into Dina’s personal life by combing through her Twitter account for other transgressions against the human race, and found that she had written tweets supportive of feminism and linked to one of Anita Sarkeesian’s videos. …
These vocal individuals went so far as to produce a video “calling out” Dina’s past with “dirt” on her—because sympathising with the feminist cause is indeed enough to demonize someone according to these people. The vocal, well informed fans have since been calling for her resignation from the developer. At this point, these individuals have flooded the game’s development forums, and are trying to hold the game hostage by asking for refunds.
One user, a Mr. Nicholas Day, wrote: “This is a bad idea guys. I don’t want any anita sarkeesian feminism all up in my megaman reboot. I don’t want a sjw [social justice warrior] monitoring the forum, deciding who has good opinions and who has bad ones.”
So, yeah.
And while we’re speaking of douchey gamer assholery, there’s a whole other tale of harassment developing. An indie game developer named Zoë Quinn made a game called Depression Quest, and, a couple of days ago, she posted it to Valve’s Greenlight service, hoping that Valve would pick it up and sell it.
Instead, angry dudes attacked her as a “cunt” and an “attention whore” who could never truly understand depression because “all females are sluts and have no right to be depressed.” And then, she says, some dude or dudes started making obscene phone calls to her.
Here’s her eloquent response:
I'm not going anywhere, assholes. I hope my games about love & empathy & vulnerability piss you off.
— zoë “Baddie Proctor” quinn (@UnburntWitch) December 12, 2013
Check her Twitter for updates and more examples of the shit she’s been dealing with. FOR MAKING A GAME ABOUT DEPRESSION WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEING A WOMAN.
The Mary Sue has more about both stories.
Whoa. Lots of anger out there. I don’t understand it.
I just got laid off from my job in the video game industry.
Part of me is like “Fuck this and fuck these people. I will be better treated and paid elsewhere.”
The other part of me is like “Go fuck yourselves, I’m not going anywhere and I will create feminist media and shove it in your unthinkable faces.”
its this kind of shit that makes me ashamed to be a gamer, and a male one at that.
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
uhhhhhhhhh…
I would make points like the fact that Owen Wilson, a white attractive heterosexual man, also deals with depression. Or that depression hits everyone. or so on and so on.
These people are just fucking bitter for no good goddamned reason.
@inurashii Video game industry is a harsh place. I am on board with the other part of you that wants to make decent feminist media, especially in gaming. Also a friend of mine was in games QA for Pandemic. I’ve heard second hand out bad shit gets. hugs?
also the free depression quest thing on her site is .. wow. I can’t do this. 😐 Hits too close to home. Well done though.
I like this insult. I am stealing it.
Goddamn…..do these misogynist asshats realize that they actually make gamers as a whole look bad(as much of a minority as they really are)? Or do they simply not care?
My money’s on the latter, personally…..
They aren’t thinking about how they look. What they see as ‘their’ hobby is being ‘invaded’ by
feministswomenbitches and they HAVE to defend it.The comment section in the Mary Sue article is fucking terrible. All I see is “BUT NO NO NO WAIT THE ONLY REASON PEOPLE HATE HER IS THAT WE THINK SHE LIED ABOUT SOME THINGS SEXIST HARASSMENT ISN’T A THING STOP BEING A SJW”
Is it that hard to, you know, put that aside and say “Yes, they were harassing her, that is wrong?” How the fuck does anything else in this situation matter?
It makes me want to be a gamer so I can go and invade their sad, misogynistic patch.
I love her response.
Why do sluts have no right to feel depressed? Depression is a mental illness (that, according to the latest research, may not actually have to do with serotonin deficiencies–instead, it might be a lack in growth of new synapses: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/13/new_developments_may_help_those_with_depression_partner/). You don’t have a right to feel depressed–you just do. And it sucks ass.
That research I linked to is preliminary, but it makes some sense–it explains why there is such a lag time in anti-depressants actually working. But this kind of research… I’m not even convinced that most mental illnesses are one thing and not several similar effects lumped together, and the most recent research was in cell culture, which does not always act like the biological symptom. But then again, we really can’t cut open depressed people’s living brains to study the cellular dynamics, so…
The only reason this whole events keeps on going is because the 4chan board /v/ keeps whining about even though no one else on the internet gives a shit, they keep trying to defend their hatred like as if it is legit but at the end of the day Ms. Karam has no influence on the game and only a loud minority is upset most people don’t care, and want to see what Karam does before completely judging her based on two things.
This video sums up my thoughts perfectly, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow—AaOIEo
wordsp1nner — you can cut open mine when you’re done with it! (No, really, it’s in my living will, I want whatever parts of me that are useable, for any purpose, to be used)
On topic, dafuq? No really, what the fuck? Women can’t be depressed? The fuck is this shit?!
Ignoring the obvious, I have one “question” for them — post-partum depression.
Yeah, because no one has EVER drawn iconic male video game characters as women. Now, excuse me as I just post a bunch of completely random URLs.
http://luna-akari.deviantart.com/art/Female-Mario-174365052
http://arkazain.deviantart.com/art/Female-Link-317691595
http://files.gamebanana.com/img/ss/srends/80046a.jpg
http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Daily/2010/09-Sept/27/Team%20Fortress%202%20girls/TF2Medic2–article_image.jpg
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/7180/lduke.png
gah that doujin mario *cringes*
When *I’m done with it! Nice error there eh?
My response to this? Go to the Android developer’s page and download the SDK to finally get around to that feminist leaning app game I designed eons ago.
Makes me wish I had toughed it out in the gaming industry instead of limping off to lick my wounds in plain old vanilla corporate IT.
@inurashii: Yeah, I probably could’ve picked a better picture. I just realized that after I posted it. Like this: http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs6/i/2005/068/e/1/Paper_Mario_tTYD__Gender_Swap_by_pixlem.jpg
Argenti,
Besides the, um, ethical issues, there are some technical issues. Preserved tissue can be studied for proteins/mRNAs, etc, but with the brain we can’t really study what the cells are doing in vivo over time. (It is easier with things like blood and skin, where you can take different samples from the same person over time and keep them alive relatively easily. Not really an option with brains.
That actually kind of relates to the egg donation conversation the other day. The South Korean researcher who faked his human cloning results? Well, one of the other dimensions of the scandal was allegations that he had coerced his female lab assistants to provide the eggs, which really brings up some questions about getting research material from the researchers. I mean, I think there are cases where it is eminently ethical, since taking the sample has almost no risks and it is very likely that the researcher would be willing to provide (or would love to provide*), and since they are right there… well, it does get rid of some of the hassle. (I met some grad students who work on one of the projects that is collecting lots of human genomes for research. They got to send in their own DNA for free as part of the benefits package.)
But certainly in other cases, where the procedure is dangerous… it brings up the possibility of coercion, which I don’t think is okay in any case, but is much more likely for some than others.
*For example, I doubt you’d have trouble getting more enough volunteers for any genetic sequencing project. Bio nerds, after all.
I’m still agog (and aghast, but not yet akimbo) at people using ‘social justice warrior’ as an insult. “You horrible person, with your fight for social justice! How I despise you!” As my mother used to say, they cannot know what they look like.
whew yeah that’s better XD
I mean really the first iconic ‘rule 63’ is arguably The Great Giana Sisters, which got a pretty respectful spiritual successor made recently. 🙂
It’s kind of ironic since a lot of female characters in video games, and other media like comics are actually just female versions of male characters (which Anita talks about in one of her videos as Ms Male Characters).
And anyway, I’ve been reading/debating with people on youtube on videos that attack Anita and it is outrageous the kind of vitriol that gets spewed. There is a disproportionate amount of fear about what will happen if feminism or females in general are allowed any small amount of control over video games. They honestly think video games as they know it will be over. I play video games and I’d be equally upset if video games were “ruined”. However, that’s not going to happen. In fact, feminism is more likely to inject some much needed life into the video game industry which has been churning out carbon copies of the same stuff. It’s only recently that we’ve seen a lot of innovation and will continue to see more, so whatever these people think is going to happen, it already is happening and it’s a good thing for everyone!
Their justification for this hate is that Dina is a radfem and a SJW. The proof for this is some vague tweets that they dug up.
It doesn’t matter if she’s a feminist, that’s just an excuse for them to say they don’t hate ALL women just the radfems.