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Game On Ladies - A man logs in as his wife's character in a videogame

54 points by danielhunt 13y ago

emiliobumachar 13y ago
From the comments section: "Og there’s plenty you can do, problem is, people are convinced that nothing will be done, so they never bother with reporting the offenders."
ElongatedTowel 13y ago
Nonsense, a lot of male players play with female characters. No one who played such games for longer than a week would even assume you're female based on your character.
- vacri 13y ago
  Female gamertag, not character. There are far fewer males running around with female tags, not that it doesn't happen.
  - officemonkey 13y ago
    That's why I tend to use gender neutral names for my accounts. On the internet, no one knows who you are (except for the NSA.)
  - ElongatedTowel 13y ago
    Oh, I misread. Well, my point still stands in other games were the sex is only given away by the character.
    - Pitarou 13y ago
      No, it doesn't stand at all. Forgive the brief reply, but I'm entering this on a smartphone. This is an important matter, and you clearly haven't got it yet. Think about it for a while. If, after some reflection, you still don't see why your point doesn't stand, post a reply, and I'll explain when I'm sitting at a keyboard.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Yes, but calling yourself Dizzy Lizzy instead of Lord of Death Pain Master is a dead giveaway to pro gamers. Also, nonsense what? You never encountered sexism when playing online? Just consider how it's actually considered perfectly fine by many to call a decisive win "rape" :/
  - ElongatedTowel 13y ago
    Agreed, I misread. I usually play games where the giveaway is both the name and the character, which I guess most people try to match. Surely there where a few people who thought I was female and surely they were behaving differently. But I think that's true for a lot of people playing those games regardless of what gender they think they're playing against. It can be nonsense and obscenities through and through.
  - onlyup 13y ago
    How is using the term "raped" sexist? Are you also offended by the words "dominated", "murdered", "owned"?
    - PavlovsCat 13y ago
      How is using the term "raped" sexist? Because when it comes from people spraying porn on any surface they come in contact with, or who address females (whom they don't happen to suck up to) as "bitch" on principle, or any male they don't like as "fag", it's rather obvious how this all connects, and that it's basically insecure dumb male chauvinism letting the hair down. At this point it doesn't even matter if some females parrot the language as well, the source is still obvious. Are you also offended by the words "dominated", "murdered", "owned"? Not offended, but I pity the fools, yes. These concepts have one thing in common to me; I understand how they would seem desirable to people who can't make women laugh nor orgasm. Of course, just because every Volvo is a car, doesn't mean every car is a Volvo. But still.
      - ntumlin 13y ago
        I still don't understand how the term "raped" is sexist. For "raped" to be sexist, it would have to imply some gender when both men and women can be raped.
- antihero 13y ago
  The article said it was based on her gamertag.
yummyfajitas 13y ago
How does this differ from the normal male experience in video games? "Go get butt-raped" would hardly be an uncommon thing for a male player to hear. Wouldn't it be sexist for gamers to tone down the trash talk simply because a woman is playing?
- EliRivers 13y ago
  The normal male experience involves that kind of talk in reaction to what you do. It's the reaction to your actions in the game, or to your own comments. The normal female experience involves that kind of talk in reaction to what you are. Being female. Doesn't matter what you do, or what you say; you get a constant barrage of abuse, hatred, and threat of rape. For being female and daring to play a game.
- DanBC 13y ago
  > the first thing I hear over the headphones was: “Oh great.. a girl player? F*ck. Are you serious? Let’s kick her and hope we get someone else.” The first thing I hear when I log into games is not "Oh great... a boy player? Fuck. Are you serious? Let's kick her and hope we get someone else." > Wouldn't it be sexist for gamers to tone down the trash talk simply because a woman is playing? Did you seriously just ask if it would be sexist to not be sexist?
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    The first thing I hear when I log into games is not "Oh great... a boy player? Fuck. Are you serious? Let's kick her and hope we get someone else." I've heard various things of this nature, for various non-gendered reasons. Give a team any reason to think you are either a) a bot or b) not good and they will boot you. Did you seriously just ask if it would be sexist to not be sexist? Sexism is treating people differently based on their gender. So yes, I assert it would be sexist to say to men "jail rape u gayayay nigz" but to tell women "tally ho madam, you have soundly defeated me."
    - Lewisham 13y ago
      I understand your point re: definitions of sexism, but I think EliRivers gets it right here in regards to performance versus person. And it's different to be on the receiving end when you're the threatened minority. It just is.
ry0ohki 13y ago
1) As a guy, I've had horrible stuff said to me as well. I've heard N-word, "fag", etc... These are 12 year olds we're dealing with. 2) There seems something deeply ironic that the big strong man was signing on to unlock things for the poor wife here...
- zimbatm 13y ago
  1) During the game yeah. Not just while logging in. I bet nobody just tried to kick you out of a game because of your nametag.
  - yummyfajitas 13y ago
    I've had people try to kick me out for various reasons - not typing a response fast enough, thinking I'm chinese, and a number of reasons I couldn't even decipher. Due to white knight emotional impulses, we treat attacks on females in games as special. But I don't see a logical reason to do this.
    - zimbatm 13y ago
      Yeah but it has nothing to do with your identity and it's not systematic.
      - troels 13y ago
        Surely, the racism part is. But since race isn't announced through the name tag, I imagine it's less prevalent.
        jiggy2011 13y ago
        Some games do show the players nationality (at least to the extent that is represented geolocating their IP address).
  - ry0ohki 13y ago
    Nope, my screen name is from a anime, and I've been called all kinds of asian slurs as a result (I'm not asian)
cclogg 13y ago
This case might just be a thing with random matchmaking too. In my times playing Counter-Strike (and Source), you'd frequently be playing on the same server, and so a community would build; everyone was generally very cool to both girl and guy. But there are bad/trolly servers of course. WoW probably fits somewhere in this model too. I guess I'll give a shout-out to the AHP custom map server (on cs source), as that is probably one of the best examples of good.
mehwoot 13y ago
The fact is there are a lot of assholes on the internet. People will insult you no matter what, and in doing so they'll insult you using any way you are different: if you're a girl, if you're gay, if you're not white, if you're younger than average, older than average, from another country, not good at the game (noob), too good at the game (get a life), etc, etc. Sucks, but in almost every game there is no requirement to identify yourself much.
- PommeDeTerre 13y ago
  Online games are a form of competition. Competition of any sort usually has a physical aspect, and a psychological aspect. If Competitor A can use insults to get Competitor B flustered to the point that it affects Competitor B's ability to play the game, then Competitor A has given himself or herself an advantage. If Competitor A's insults get Competitor B to quit playing altogether, then it's even more of an advantage for Competitor A. Once you realize this, the insults become irrelevant. Just ignore them. It's not difficult, and they really have no impact unless you let them bother you.
patio11 13y ago
There are wide swathes of the video game community which are absolutely toxic, in every possible way you can imagine and some which people of good will would have difficulty imagining. I wish game companies did a better job of market-based approaches to limiting this. I've often thought, in League of Legends, that I'd pay $100 for access to a special queue which matched me up with other people who had paid $100 to access it. If you earn an account ban, you can probably find a new credit card, level up again, and pay $100, but it should cut down on casual sociopathy. (Yes, that's classist as heck, but after a bad day of LoL I'm pretty OK with that as long as it means that I can play a relaxing game with people who are capable of meeting the absolute minimal norms of civilized society.)
- pestaa 13y ago
  I'm continually surprised where civilized folks are coming from. I'm currently in lower tiers (silver 5) where I've met the most understanding strangers, who probably play occassionally like me and quite possibly wouldn't pay $100 to get isolated queues. On the other hand if I come across gold or higher tier players in normal games, they tend to have exactly zero tolerance for mistakes and absolutely no patience to solve situations; even if they'd be willing to spend $100 to play with curated comrads. I'm not suggesting that commitment to the game (and therefore willingness to pay extra) is inversely proportional to the quality of behavior, but I've seen my share of anecdotal evidence. (Probably the situation is better in diamond and above, but boy I suck to ever reach it.)
- spindritf 13y ago
  > I've often thought, in League of Legends, that I'd pay $100 for access to a special queue which matched me up with other people who had paid $100 to access it. Do you even need a fee? I used to play Counter-Strike a lot and there was always a wide variety of servers. From "free for all" (FFA) and anything goes to private ones that required registration and had staff strictly policing skill, teamplay, language, microphone noises... Then there were "gathers." Like pick-up games in soccer or basketball but organized via IRC. People who were annoying just wouldn't get picked. All of that was free for the participants. Servers, channels, websites were all provided by the players themselves. I don't really play computer games any more but is this not an option for modern games and systems? Another regression like Usenet?
babebridou 13y ago
I'm a guy and a gamer... I've opened my eyes on this issue for some time now. Yes we trash talk a lot in games, and yeah we don't see it as a big deal for the most part, because there's a part of creativity in trash talking in some ways so we can ignore all but the more original (and often laughable) insults. But when someone is revealed as a woman, some people really go nuts. It activates some really ugly beta part in their brain, they can't help it, they need to harass, tediously, methodically reduce the other player to her gender, whatever she is doing or however she performs, whether she's in his team or not is irrelevant. That wouldn't be an issue in itself, there are crazy and stupid people everywhere. The problem is, the proportion of obnoxious and sexually insecure male gamers is through the roof, maybe something as high as 5% of the gamers are like that, and they are very vocal, and they don't quit. Such people don't rage quit on girls like they would on guys, when they get beaten or when they're ignored, for some reason they need to keep harrassing forever, it's a matter of virile pride you know. It's either that or they fall in love, which sometimes is even worse. Girls have to deal with them every single day. People really need to wake up on these issues. They add up and pile on each other. They span a very large spectrum of the industry, from day to day community interactions to elements of storytelling and character design. If you want to wake up to these issues in pictures and with a good laugh, check out these two blogs: http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/ http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/ (a more constructive take on the issue of character design, specifically female armor) http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/ http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/ (a hilarious take on the issue of objectification of women, this time in comics)
- notsorryatall 13y ago
  A more relevant picture would be this: http://imgur.com/F8j0Ieq http://imgur.com/F8j0Ieq
  - CJefferson 13y ago
    I really hope this is a parody.. but I can't decide. I know lots of women who played computer games all through the 80s and 90s.
  - EliRivers 13y ago
guard-of-terra 13y ago
That's what we would call "moral majority". You should avoid places where "moral majority" tends to gather. I've played quite a bit of Diablo III hardcore last year on Europe, and people were mostly friendly. Altough you should not take everything being said in game chat at its face value - it's game after all.
ArcticCelt 13y ago
They should implement a "send a copy of this chat to their mom" feature for minors. I bet it would be fun.
- Sharlin 13y ago
  For adults as well. Might even work quite nicely.
moshdixx 13y ago
Wow, congratulations, somebody just found out that teenagers can suck sometimes. Here we go nobel prize.
zokier 13y ago
Maybe this is a good time to re-evaluate what sort of communities you want to be associated with. There is a solution for these problems; just segregate yourself from the abusive people. Public multiplayer is not just worth it.
stefantalpalaru 13y ago
Children are cruel. News at 11.
stefan_kendall 13y ago
Most female players I come across in online games are bad. I met one really good player once, and she was a CAL counter-strike player. It may be that I've played with more women than I know, but those with girly names tend to be awful. I'd probably give the boot too if I was playing Gold on ME3.

54 points by danielhunt 13y ago

From the comments section: "Og there’s plenty you can do, problem is, people are convinced that nothing will be done, so they never bother with reporting the offenders."

ElongatedTowel 13y ago

Nonsense, a lot of male players play with female characters. No one who played such games for longer than a week would even assume you're female based on your character.

vacri 13y ago
Female gamertag, not character. There are far fewer males running around with female tags, not that it doesn't happen.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  That's why I tend to use gender neutral names for my accounts. On the internet, no one knows who you are (except for the NSA.)
- ElongatedTowel 13y ago
  Oh, I misread. Well, my point still stands in other games were the sex is only given away by the character.
  - Pitarou 13y ago
    No, it doesn't stand at all. Forgive the brief reply, but I'm entering this on a smartphone. This is an important matter, and you clearly haven't got it yet. Think about it for a while. If, after some reflection, you still don't see why your point doesn't stand, post a reply, and I'll explain when I'm sitting at a keyboard.
PavlovsCat 13y ago
Yes, but calling yourself Dizzy Lizzy instead of Lord of Death Pain Master is a dead giveaway to pro gamers. Also, nonsense what? You never encountered sexism when playing online? Just consider how it's actually considered perfectly fine by many to call a decisive win "rape" :/
- ElongatedTowel 13y ago
  Agreed, I misread. I usually play games where the giveaway is both the name and the character, which I guess most people try to match. Surely there where a few people who thought I was female and surely they were behaving differently. But I think that's true for a lot of people playing those games regardless of what gender they think they're playing against. It can be nonsense and obscenities through and through.
- onlyup 13y ago
  How is using the term "raped" sexist? Are you also offended by the words "dominated", "murdered", "owned"?
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    How is using the term "raped" sexist? Because when it comes from people spraying porn on any surface they come in contact with, or who address females (whom they don't happen to suck up to) as "bitch" on principle, or any male they don't like as "fag", it's rather obvious how this all connects, and that it's basically insecure dumb male chauvinism letting the hair down. At this point it doesn't even matter if some females parrot the language as well, the source is still obvious. Are you also offended by the words "dominated", "murdered", "owned"? Not offended, but I pity the fools, yes. These concepts have one thing in common to me; I understand how they would seem desirable to people who can't make women laugh nor orgasm. Of course, just because every Volvo is a car, doesn't mean every car is a Volvo. But still.
    - ntumlin 13y ago
      I still don't understand how the term "raped" is sexist. For "raped" to be sexist, it would have to imply some gender when both men and women can be raped.
antihero 13y ago
The article said it was based on her gamertag.

yummyfajitas 13y ago

How does this differ from the normal male experience in video games? "Go get butt-raped" would hardly be an uncommon thing for a male player to hear. Wouldn't it be sexist for gamers to tone down the trash talk simply because a woman is playing?

EliRivers 13y ago
The normal male experience involves that kind of talk in reaction to what you do. It's the reaction to your actions in the game, or to your own comments. The normal female experience involves that kind of talk in reaction to what you are. Being female. Doesn't matter what you do, or what you say; you get a constant barrage of abuse, hatred, and threat of rape. For being female and daring to play a game.
DanBC 13y ago
> the first thing I hear over the headphones was: “Oh great.. a girl player? F*ck. Are you serious? Let’s kick her and hope we get someone else.” The first thing I hear when I log into games is not "Oh great... a boy player? Fuck. Are you serious? Let's kick her and hope we get someone else." > Wouldn't it be sexist for gamers to tone down the trash talk simply because a woman is playing? Did you seriously just ask if it would be sexist to not be sexist?
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  The first thing I hear when I log into games is not "Oh great... a boy player? Fuck. Are you serious? Let's kick her and hope we get someone else." I've heard various things of this nature, for various non-gendered reasons. Give a team any reason to think you are either a) a bot or b) not good and they will boot you. Did you seriously just ask if it would be sexist to not be sexist? Sexism is treating people differently based on their gender. So yes, I assert it would be sexist to say to men "jail rape u gayayay nigz" but to tell women "tally ho madam, you have soundly defeated me."
  - Lewisham 13y ago
    I understand your point re: definitions of sexism, but I think EliRivers gets it right here in regards to performance versus person. And it's different to be on the receiving end when you're the threatened minority. It just is.

ry0ohki 13y ago

1) As a guy, I've had horrible stuff said to me as well. I've heard N-word, "fag", etc... These are 12 year olds we're dealing with. 2) There seems something deeply ironic that the big strong man was signing on to unlock things for the poor wife here...

zimbatm 13y ago
1) During the game yeah. Not just while logging in. I bet nobody just tried to kick you out of a game because of your nametag.
- yummyfajitas 13y ago
  I've had people try to kick me out for various reasons - not typing a response fast enough, thinking I'm chinese, and a number of reasons I couldn't even decipher. Due to white knight emotional impulses, we treat attacks on females in games as special. But I don't see a logical reason to do this.
  - zimbatm 13y ago
    Yeah but it has nothing to do with your identity and it's not systematic.
    - troels 13y ago
      Surely, the racism part is. But since race isn't announced through the name tag, I imagine it's less prevalent.
      - jiggy2011 13y ago
        Some games do show the players nationality (at least to the extent that is represented geolocating their IP address).
- ry0ohki 13y ago
  Nope, my screen name is from a anime, and I've been called all kinds of asian slurs as a result (I'm not asian)

cclogg 13y ago

This case might just be a thing with random matchmaking too. In my times playing Counter-Strike (and Source), you'd frequently be playing on the same server, and so a community would build; everyone was generally very cool to both girl and guy. But there are bad/trolly servers of course. WoW probably fits somewhere in this model too. I guess I'll give a shout-out to the AHP custom map server (on cs source), as that is probably one of the best examples of good.

mehwoot 13y ago

The fact is there are a lot of assholes on the internet. People will insult you no matter what, and in doing so they'll insult you using any way you are different: if you're a girl, if you're gay, if you're not white, if you're younger than average, older than average, from another country, not good at the game (noob), too good at the game (get a life), etc, etc. Sucks, but in almost every game there is no requirement to identify yourself much.

PommeDeTerre 13y ago
Online games are a form of competition. Competition of any sort usually has a physical aspect, and a psychological aspect. If Competitor A can use insults to get Competitor B flustered to the point that it affects Competitor B's ability to play the game, then Competitor A has given himself or herself an advantage. If Competitor A's insults get Competitor B to quit playing altogether, then it's even more of an advantage for Competitor A. Once you realize this, the insults become irrelevant. Just ignore them. It's not difficult, and they really have no impact unless you let them bother you.

patio11 13y ago

There are wide swathes of the video game community which are absolutely toxic, in every possible way you can imagine and some which people of good will would have difficulty imagining. I wish game companies did a better job of market-based approaches to limiting this. I've often thought, in League of Legends, that I'd pay $100 for access to a special queue which matched me up with other people who had paid $100 to access it. If you earn an account ban, you can probably find a new credit card, level up again, and pay $100, but it should cut down on casual sociopathy. (Yes, that's classist as heck, but after a bad day of LoL I'm pretty OK with that as long as it means that I can play a relaxing game with people who are capable of meeting the absolute minimal norms of civilized society.)

pestaa 13y ago
I'm continually surprised where civilized folks are coming from. I'm currently in lower tiers (silver 5) where I've met the most understanding strangers, who probably play occassionally like me and quite possibly wouldn't pay $100 to get isolated queues. On the other hand if I come across gold or higher tier players in normal games, they tend to have exactly zero tolerance for mistakes and absolutely no patience to solve situations; even if they'd be willing to spend $100 to play with curated comrads. I'm not suggesting that commitment to the game (and therefore willingness to pay extra) is inversely proportional to the quality of behavior, but I've seen my share of anecdotal evidence. (Probably the situation is better in diamond and above, but boy I suck to ever reach it.)
spindritf 13y ago
> I've often thought, in League of Legends, that I'd pay $100 for access to a special queue which matched me up with other people who had paid $100 to access it. Do you even need a fee? I used to play Counter-Strike a lot and there was always a wide variety of servers. From "free for all" (FFA) and anything goes to private ones that required registration and had staff strictly policing skill, teamplay, language, microphone noises... Then there were "gathers." Like pick-up games in soccer or basketball but organized via IRC. People who were annoying just wouldn't get picked. All of that was free for the participants. Servers, channels, websites were all provided by the players themselves. I don't really play computer games any more but is this not an option for modern games and systems? Another regression like Usenet?

babebridou 13y ago

I'm a guy and a gamer... I've opened my eyes on this issue for some time now. Yes we trash talk a lot in games, and yeah we don't see it as a big deal for the most part, because there's a part of creativity in trash talking in some ways so we can ignore all but the more original (and often laughable) insults. But when someone is revealed as a woman, some people really go nuts. It activates some really ugly beta part in their brain, they can't help it, they need to harass, tediously, methodically reduce the other player to her gender, whatever she is doing or however she performs, whether she's in his team or not is irrelevant. That wouldn't be an issue in itself, there are crazy and stupid people everywhere. The problem is, the proportion of obnoxious and sexually insecure male gamers is through the roof, maybe something as high as 5% of the gamers are like that, and they are very vocal, and they don't quit. Such people don't rage quit on girls like they would on guys, when they get beaten or when they're ignored, for some reason they need to keep harrassing forever, it's a matter of virile pride you know. It's either that or they fall in love, which sometimes is even worse. Girls have to deal with them every single day. People really need to wake up on these issues. They add up and pile on each other. They span a very large spectrum of the industry, from day to day community interactions to elements of storytelling and character design. If you want to wake up to these issues in pictures and with a good laugh, check out these two blogs: http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/ http://womenfighters.tumblr.com/ (a more constructive take on the issue of character design, specifically female armor) http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/ http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/ (a hilarious take on the issue of objectification of women, this time in comics)

notsorryatall 13y ago
A more relevant picture would be this: http://imgur.com/F8j0Ieq http://imgur.com/F8j0Ieq
- CJefferson 13y ago
  I really hope this is a parody.. but I can't decide. I know lots of women who played computer games all through the 80s and 90s.
- EliRivers 13y ago

guard-of-terra 13y ago

That's what we would call "moral majority". You should avoid places where "moral majority" tends to gather. I've played quite a bit of Diablo III hardcore last year on Europe, and people were mostly friendly. Altough you should not take everything being said in game chat at its face value - it's game after all.

ArcticCelt 13y ago

They should implement a "send a copy of this chat to their mom" feature for minors. I bet it would be fun.

Sharlin 13y ago
For adults as well. Might even work quite nicely.

moshdixx 13y ago

Wow, congratulations, somebody just found out that teenagers can suck sometimes. Here we go nobel prize.

zokier 13y ago

Maybe this is a good time to re-evaluate what sort of communities you want to be associated with. There is a solution for these problems; just segregate yourself from the abusive people. Public multiplayer is not just worth it.

stefantalpalaru 13y ago

Children are cruel. News at 11.

stefan_kendall 13y ago

Most female players I come across in online games are bad. I met one really good player once, and she was a CAL counter-strike player. It may be that I've played with more women than I know, but those with girly names tend to be awful. I'd probably give the boot too if I was playing Gold on ME3.