So the #GamerGaters are mad about a new study that suggests that some of the most dickishly misogynistic male gamers are quite literally losers. That is, men playing video games like Halo and Call of Duty online tend to lash out at women players when they’re doing their worst.
Looking at the behavior of a number of men and women over the course of 163 games of Halo 3, researchers Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff from the University of New South Wales and Miami University found that
lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance.
In other words, the more of a video game loser they were, the more of a misogynistic loser they became.
We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena.
In other words, they hate losing … to a girl.
The researchers argue that the entrance of larger numbers of women into the dude-heavy world of video games is especially threatening to “[l]ow-status and low-performing males,” who
have the most to lose as a consequence of the hierarchical reconfiguration due to the entry of a competitive woman. As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.
If this all sounds to you like a plausible explanation for a lot of the anger driving #GamerGaters, you’re not the only one to see the connection.
A recent article on the study on Yahoo News suggests that,
[a]s gaming has traditionally been a male-dominated pastime, these findings could go some way to explain 2014′s Gamergate furore. Several high profile female game developers were targeted with a torrent of misogynistic abuse, including rape and death threats, coordinated by factions of male gamers using sites like 4Chan and Reddit.
And this is what has the #GamerGaters on Reddit’s KotakuInAction subreddit pig-biting mad. In a thread complaining about the Yahoo News piece, the regulars show just what losers they really are by lashing out at … women.
Evidently forgetting that the study in question was conducted by two men, a Redditor called Katastic_Voyage won more than 130 upvotes with a lovely rant declaring that
There’s a huge freaking difference between shit talking, and bullying.
But most of these articles and “papers” are written by women, who live in a woman’s world, and don’t understand the first thing about what it’s really like to be a man. The others are by men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it–they were likely forced to grow up in a woman dominated, catty, passive-aggressive world.
Ok, my bad. The researchers might appear to be men, but are probably “men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it.”
And somehow this all has something to do with metal music:
Woman call all men “dumb” because that’s what they call anything they don’t understand. It’d be like someone who likes classical music calling metal dumb. Even if they’re actually related. Even though there’s plenty of beauty and complexity in metal… they don’t ever dive into it so they deride and dismiss it.
It IS real music, mom! (Sound of bedroom door slamming, followed by the muffled intro to “Enter Sandman.”)
So they take things like:
The need to compete? They think it’s violence.
The need to shit talk? They think it’s bullying.
The fact that men can look at other women and not cheat? It blows their minds that men can actually feel pleasure just seeing a woman of beauty… and that’s it.
Uh, I thought we were talking about video games. Did some mean lady just break up with you?
A fellow called Zakamaru, replying to Katastic_Voyage, decided to show how not mad he was about women invading “male spaces” by getting mad about women invading “male spaces.”
It’s what happens when a bunch of women get into male spaces and some fail to understand it.
Gaming has always been competitive. I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I was called various names and derogatory remarks, but it doesn’t fucking matter. You get insulted all the time, and it takes a special type of person to actually take offense to that. …
It’s not that we hate women. With gaming being a predominantly male hobby, it’s going to have elements of masculinity, competitiveness, and testosterone floating about. When people shit talk, they will use any sort of “weakness” that you have and attack it. If you’re unskilled, you’re a noob/scrub. If you’re an obvious underaged child, you get called a kid. If someone needs a quick all-purpose insult, you’re now a faggot.
When some women see this, they immediately think that it needs to change to fit their worldview. To them, these insults are simply unacceptable, and are “x-phobic” or whatever tumblr buzzword they feel like using today. Never mind the fact that gaming was born from a bunch of socially awkward men who carved out their own space with their own culture and lingo. No, now you have to cater to ME, because I’m a GIRL.
Boy, you guys really put those dumb lady researchers (who aren’t ladies, but who maybe sort of really are) in their place.
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@AllisonW
I’ve put an embarrassing number of hours into MH3U but have been progressing very very slowly through the single player stuff. I have a tendency to try and forge everything at once which slows me down considerably.
The only game I’ve played where I’ve actually enjoyed multiplayer with random people on the internet was Dark Souls, and the very limited nature of the interaction was a big part of why, so maybe I’ll get 4 from the library first and see how that goes.
@Belladonna993
We actually owned a Nintendo before they bought a microwave, and we never owned a dishwasher. The Intellivision was a gift from my mom’s parents before I came to be, which I played on a black and white TV set. I had cousins with all the fancy amenities like said dishwasher that I envied greatly.
My parents went without a lot, and worked hard to keep my brother and I from knowing that. I wish I’d been less oblivious as a kid.
@contrapangloss: You should probably consider getting Dwarf Therapist. It reads out all your dwarfs, their labors, preferences, thoughts, inventory, heck I don’t know the half of it. It organizes them into a big list you can sort practically any way you want. I primarily use it to monitor dwarf labors.
@some sort of username, sorry, I should have refined that question a bit. Half-Life is wonderful. I was a bit meh on Fable, tbh, but I liked what little I played of the first Age of Empires. And horses are some of my favorite animals, although I’m not up on breeds and bloodlines and things of that nature. I just like to watch ’em.
@pendraegon
That Deviljho fight actually wasn’t too bad with a couple of friends, smoke bombs, and a Deadly Poison (early G-rank poison/high raw/high sharpness sword-and-shield; Deviljho is *extremely* weak to poison).
I’ll say again: no one was born good at this game. That “wall” you just hit in high rank is the game starting to ask more of you, not telling you that you can’t solo anymore. You might need to craft new weapons or armour (possibly adapted to a particular monster) to get over these walls, or make sure your armour is fully upgraded, or look up strategies for fighting the monsters that are giving you trouble (turns out sometimes there’s a trick to it or a particular skill that makes them a lot easier), or just keep practicing. You’ll get there.
@AllisonW I jsut spent a lot of time getting eviscerated by them. lol I was maining a charge blade at the time and it didn’t go well for me.
At this point I mostly go for team ups, I like hanging back as a Gunner and playing sniper these days. Unfortunately it can be weeks between times when I’m able to play and I have to keep relearning skills and by the time I’m proficient again I find myself without time to play. Especially since 4 is my first MH game. Plus with the new Fire Emblem coming out next year I’m going to have even less time to play MH.
http://memeorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/I-See-What-You-Did-There-Cat.jpg
I was mildly curious about the appeal of the Sims for a while, having never played it. Then a friend showed me a Youtube video recently of Top 10 Worst Things You Can Do To Your Sims (or something).
Curiousity = killed.
You folks are all clearly techno literate. Can anyone recommend a good manual for WordPress? We’ve got a professionally built website which appear to be built in WordPress (with some Tickera and Eventbrite bits bolted on, it also links to things like Facebook and Twitter apparently).
I’d like to be able to do a bit of tweaking every now and then without having to pester the designer every time.
The writing team for 5e has basically lost all my respect. We just made it through the initial book adventures, Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat, and, ugh, the very end battle for Rise of Tiamat is just shittily written in every way.
Plus, the errata and additions they’ve been making are just horrible. They’re destructive, non sensical, and utterly unhelpful. And apparently one of the guys working on it is a horrid online abuser and gaslighter, so yeah, there’s that.
I’m sad actually, I liked it to begin with but holy crap they have their heads firmly wedged up their asses.
The ABA publishes a book called “WordPress in one hour for lawyers” which might be relevant.
Other options are the “Missing manual” series, the “Head first” series, or the “in depth” series.
@Gipsz Jakab
I have to play a game that is made completely with single player in mind, like Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3 and such, since most multiplayer FPSs skimp on the story and lack stealth.
The only multiplayer FPS I like is the L4D series. I don’t like multiplayer shooters where you compete against people.
And 90% of the FPS are CoD and its clones so most FPS do suck.
Oh, wait, I forgot zombies are controlled by people.
Okay, I don’t like SYMMETRICAL FPSs. I also just don’t like war games so that 98% of all FPSs in creation.
@Falconer
Eh, it’s fine. Age of Empires III is something of the odd one out of the series, rather unlike the previous entries in the series. As for Fable it was my first RPG so I imagine my memories of it are a bit rose tinted, I think I was only 11 or something when I played it too so my tolerance for some of the poor gameplay choices would have been higher, heh.
@ maistrechat
Ooh, that’s weirdly specific. I can get quite solipstic with that.
This is actually in relation the our military fitness thing rather than the barristering, but I’ll check out the other leads too.
Cheers for the tips!
@Binjabreel I assume you’re talking about Zach something or other, maybe the RPGpundit who I believe is also involved in the 5th ed writing. Both of whom are also pretty freaking terrible. Disappointing to hear that the adventure path they have are such let downs, the books are gorgeous at least I was thinking about picking up Rise too.
One the plus side RPGPundit’s little hissyfit about Blue Rose being remade turned me onto the kickstarter for it.
@Pandapool
As a random shot in the dark but have you ever played/heard of Spec Ops: The Line? It’s a war based third person shooter but it’s a deconstruction, focusing on the over-glorification of war in most video games and getting rather dark.
if that doesn’t tickle your fancy there’s also Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It’s a third person action game with shooting and stealth elements with a heavy story narrative focusing on social issues such as economic inequality and “technophobia”.
I can’t think of any other interesting, story based shooters right now but if my suggestions don’t appeal to you anyway I guess i tried, heh.
@Misha
Lol, the Sims is great. Any of those worst things you can do to your Sims is entirely in the hands of the player. You can have a family and treat them with love for generations or just torture them.
Just because you can do something in a game doesn’t mean you have to do it. It’s kinda like killing sex workers in GTA except there’s utterly nothing to gain in The Sims except an empty slot for another Sim.
I don’t know if it happened in Sims 3 or 4, because they are notoriously hard to kill in those games, (like, seriously, there’s no challenge keeping them alive; I have yet to have a Sim in Sims 4 and Sims 3 die from anything other than old age; at least in Sims 1 and 2 you had to really keep on top of what your Sims were doing because one wrong move and they dead) but in Sims 2, the Grim Reaper will taunt you for killing all your Sims off.
So, I mean, it’s not encouraged. It’s like not playing Mass Effect because you can cause an entire genocide of several species of sentient life. You can also save those species and bang hot space aliens on the side.
@Some sort of username
I’ve had Spec Ops spoiled for me, so I’m not sure I would like it as much if I played it. I do like its idea, though because if there’s one thing I hate is the over-glorification of war.
And I would consider the Deus Ex series more stealth with shooter elements. I have the first game on my computer that I should probably finish sometime. I’ll probably have to start over because I don’t remember where the hell I am in it. Deus Ex is awesome, though.
ooohhh that rant by Zakamaru, what a painful read. I can feel the pent up anger through the screen. That guy needs feminism.
@Pandapool
Ever played any of the Bioshock games? They are quite interesting storywise. The gameplay is kinda crap however. But the amazing worlds the games take place in and the narrative makes them soooo good.
Pandapool:
Technically true, but that’s basically just Sturgeon’s Law in action. That’s not specific to FPSs.
I understand if they don’t fit your personal taste; to each their own. It just kind of sounded like you were dismissing them as being bad, period. Again, if that’s not what you meant, never mind.
Haven’t I seen that in a Gamergate argument? 😛
Seriously though, the Sims does look fun. I find it hard to step out of my comfort zone however and try new things. I’m more of a game voyeur with a lot of genres, I love the storylines and the music for many games even if I don’t fancy playing them. The soundtrack for the Halo series is lovely.
Although I’ve been watching my SO play the Witcher 3 and I’m gearing myself up to have a go. I have been playing Life Is Strange though, and I’m quite looking forward to the release of No Man’s Sky – a procedurally generated fricking universe in which you can cruise around for pretty much forever exploring new worlds, trading, getting into space fights or just collecting info on cute animals and weird plant life. It looks pretty immersive.
@Gipsz Jakab
The hate for CoD is something i always found ridiculous. There rarely seems to be any good points made as to why the game is shit. Typical hate of a popular thing i guess.
Really, 2013’s Ghosts was indeed shite (except for the story parts in space, that was epic!) but Advanced Warfare is really good and im really liking the look of Black Ops III. I might even buy that game! Might.
Although Ghosts also had female soldiers in the multiplayer which is really cool.
The big hardback adventures say they’re written by the Wizards RPG Team, but Dragon Queen / Tiamat at least was farmed out.
Belladonna993:
The original one was the one that I played. We tended to lose nine times out of ten. Unfortunately the person who owned the game got married and left town.
Fantasy Flight republished it in 2005, and updated it and started doing expansions over the next few years. The later edition actually has a possibility of ‘rescuing’ the game even after you get to the ‘reality rips open and the Ancient One enters’ stage.
Falconer:
That’s probably true to some extent. (I started with the 1981 Basic D&D boxed set myself.) Role-playing games as a whole were still pretty new, what with D&D first being published in 1974 and Traveller in 1977. Traveller actually had a fleshed-out background world, while D&D didn’t really have that until later. The original World of Greyhawk was sort of an assumed default background based on Gygax’ own home campaign. (A lot of the names in old default D&D spells, like Bigby and Mordenkainen, are characters from Gygax’ home campaign.)
pendraegon:
Agreed on that. At least pretty much all of it is documented online as well as in the books. But yeah, it’s got to the point where you need a spreadsheet and time to figure out which of the hundred different possible feat tracks you want to follow.
Then again, I used to play Champions, which is arguably worse.
Yeah, a PBEM might be fun. I’ve been involved in a few of those in the past. Including some of the earlier Kazei 5 stuff (which is sort of anime cyberpunk; think role-playing Akira in New York).
Not really looked at D&D 5 yet, though on the positive side I’ve heard it’s not as straight-jacketed as 4 and not as bloated as Pathfinder (aka D&D 3.75). I’ve got someone here who’s interested in running a game, though at least he’s likely to throw out the official world and run his own.
@spacelawn
I have one and two but I never finished one. I kept getting lost and, like, enemies respawned so it’s such a pain to travel around. Can’t people just stay dead for at least a little longer? I SHOULD also finish that game, though.
And I dislike CoD because there’s one released every year, pretty much, with the same game mechanic and not much different other than maybe minor graphics update. It’s also all about war and shooting things which is just not my cup a tea. Plus, like, it’s the prefered game of douchebros so yeah.
@Gipsz Jakab
Naw, I’m just being hyperbolic. There’s no good or bad genre of games for the most part, and there’s games I like that would be considered FPSs, so my hate on FPSs for the most part is just out of the exhaustion and overproduction of the genre. There’s 20 million FPS war game shooters coming out every year and it’s just bleh. I’m happy it’s slowing down a bit. We really need to get away from shooter genre for a bit.
@Misha
11 year hardcore Simmer here and Sims is one of the best selling PC game for a reason. Get Sims 2 collection if you ever get into it. It’s the best of the series and has awesome animation and you can have alien babies and puppies and be a vampire or a zombie and hug bigfoot and accidentally starve your pregger Sims to death. It has TONS if mods and custom content being made for it everyday still. You can customize the crap out of it! I had a zombie apocalypse world where people would get eaten by zombies everyday in the middle of a desolate desert filled with glowing green lakes of sludge. It’s great! 😀