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.
It was terrible watching all of this unfold for the past few days. Someone even told me that they were mad that she closed her Twitter and deleted a bunch of posts. I’m thinking, really? I’m pretty sure if the internet had a collective, testerical mantrum over my very existence, I’d probably cut as many ties with it as possible, too. Who the hell could blame her for that?
It blows my mind that people can watch this happen and still deny that gamer culture is incredibly hostile to women, PoC, and queer people.
Michael Sawyer did a short video mocking the “controversy” over Mighty No. 9:
And might I add one other thing, as a lifelong fan of the Mega Man series: I have never understood people who obsess over the backstory of these games. However, that pales in comparison to the people who are afraid that the backstory of a similar game might contain feminism. The people who are up in arms over that drawing clearly have no real problems, if this is their outrage.
message to these asshats: gaming is not just yours to defend, it is everyone’s to enjoy.
What’s funny is that part of how they decided she was a radfem is because she supports Anita Sarkeesian, whose views are flatly moderate with regards to feminism…
This culture is a large part of the reason I never got into video games. I mean, there’s plenty of misogyny in the table-top RPG community, but it just doesn’t seem as overwhelming. When it’s just me and my friends at the game table, we’re insulated from all this. We can make as many female, male, or otherwise heroes as we like, and no one will care.
As a gamer by and large I don’t deal with it, but it’s because I keep my interest confined to my room. If I were more active (aka visible) in the gaming world I know it would be far worse. I simply enjoy playing video games and don’t talk to misogynists who think they own them (unless to tell them they’re asshats).
Plus, I don’t play MMOs so the only people I interact with are other people that I know in real life that play similar games as me. I’m lucky because I don’t have any interest in having my love of gaming spill over into other areas of my life. Having a public opinion on video games + a vag = waiting for the immediate shit storm.
If it was a dude who had drawn a female Mega Man there would not be this kind of outrage, especially since dudes do that kind of stuff all the time.
“with the brain we can’t really study what the cells are doing in vivo over time.”
Ah, yeah, that would be an issue. Regarding ethics though, I’m gonna assume you mean with, uh, what is functionally vivisection-esque “research” not donating one’s parts to science // transplants. (My pharm student passed the human dissection bit without doing the dissection, so I’m going to hope to all the gods that the cadavers had donated their bodies! The other option is so much less ethical and all kinds of Victorian era squick)
I was reading about the targeting of Zoe Quinn last night and I found that incredibly shocking just because of how senseless it is. I mean, it’s all senseless hatred, but there’s at least a (twisted) reason for the attacks on the other women mentioned in this blog post. The attacks on Quinn seem like such a stretch even for the gamer misogynist crew, but I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised by anything they do anymore.
Their reason for hating her is because she had the audacity to make a game about depression, which apparently is not something women know anything about. Apparently the cure for depression is copious amounts of penis. Ew, I just grossed myself out.
I read the MS comments. The same victim blaming and hand waving that goes on every time a woman is harassed is happening there. Such a disappointment. I love The Mary Sue and I thought better of it’s readership. There are some bright spots though.
Salacious!
LOL!! …
I “think” women have higher rates of depression just lower rates of suicide. But then again we aren’t likely to commit suicide if we can’t find a penis.
BUT Salacious ,
If it was a dude that drew her ,her boobs would have been a LOT bigger ! Lots more cleavage and ass !
When it comes to them, “radical feminist” is a codeword for all feminists. Much like “radical Islam” is a codeword for the right for all Muslims.
A ‘right’ to feel depressed????
That’s a new one on me. I guess we(women) need to have a million woman march that its our civil right to “feel’ depressed .Cuz God almighty no one will take that right from me!
That’s one thing I will never let go of .Is my right to feel hopeless and like utter shit!
@ lana you are so right about the size of her boobs! It didn’t even occur to me. Maybe that’s fuelling some of their anger. She doesn’t look quite fuckable enough.
I am in love with the idea of a game about surviving depression. I’m not a huge gamer but I do like a bit of computer animated adventuring and RPGs have helped me work through negative feelings (Ganondorf represents self-hatred! STAB HIM IN THE FACE!) Having a game to play that straight up intends to tackle the challenges depressed people face would be awesome!
“No Gurrls alowd” is their message, I guess. Apparently if you are female, you are a fake geek gurrl. Go to youtube, search for the Double Clicks and listen to/watch their video “Nothing to Prove”. The version they do with the geek girls is great. Why these guys are so angry with women I have no idea. You`d think that gaming had room for games for all sorts of people, just as manga, anime, book genres like science fiction, fantasy, mystery, etc. do. Oh, wait, our old friend, Theodore Beale is supporting “the fight” against “pink science fiction”, which he and some like thinking friends have started up. I guess they want to drive women out of science fiction and fantasy just as these gamers are trying to do. I wish these guys would move somewhere remote and just GO Their Own Way and quite going on about it on line.
@Sassy Owl I get so enraged when people complain that either the woman involved turns off their internet activity or they actively fire back and talk about the abuse they’ve received.
So many asshats have talked about how Anita is playing the damsel in distress by even TALKING about the harassment she receives/d. Or they downplay the harassment and use it as an excuse to say she just can’t handle the criticism and therefore her opinions weren’t valid in the first place if she won’t address the criticism. I hear this all of the time on youtube because she disabled the comment section. Fuck that. And Fuck them.
No one should have to deal with that kind of abuse, especially when they aren’t even doing anything radical!! It should not be accepted that a women in the gaming world has to put up with this to survive/succeed.
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed
I read this article and it kind of spells out why/how it’s become a boys club. Basically marketing has just heavily inculcated the idea that gaming is for boys. But, with the limited data available it’s been proven that women make up 47% of the gaming market. People who don’t like those figures just say well they don’t play “real games” they’re not “real gamers”.
I Really Should Take Up Gaming To Piss Off Some Random Sexist… My Phone Is Helpfully Capitalizing All Words.
Sorry About The Layoff Inurashii!
So when the guys complain we can call them “ass holes in distress! ” LOL!!
Salacious ,
The first thing I noticed. She wasn’t a spilling out firm tripple D breast , with a 14 inch waste leading down to her honkie donk rounded hard as a rock ass protruding out of her short shorts, connected to her shapely muscular smooth legs that start around her neck!
I’m surprised there wasn’t more outrage (that I know of) with regards to the remake of the Lara Croft series. She’s actually an anatomical human being in the new version (and pretty awesome).
Andrew Johnston,
LOL!! That video (interview ,fake right ?) Is SOO hilarious.
I like his end question to . I have played so many games (I’m not a gamer) but since games came out where Im a guy ..I mean I was a little Italian guy with a mustache named Mario for Christ’s sake! Didn’t bother me as long as I got lots of money and went to the next level!
Just the other day I played frisbee on Wii but I took over my 5 yo grandsons character because hell..frisbee is frisbee .Not because I am pretending I am a 5 yo male!