#1reasonwhy

What bugs me is that, ok, Patrick should have asked when he contacted the writers. Just a simple "I was planning on using your Twitter picture with your segment, unless you have another picture you'd like me to use?" He should have asked. However, when Ms. DeLoria realized what picture he used and was bothered by it, why didn't she email Patrick and ask him to take it down instead of griping about it on Twitter? I feel like she could have avoided a lot of snark at both her and Patrick by going to offending party privately first.

Sorry, it's pretty unrelated to the discussion. But it's been bugging me.

She doesn't have any chance of getting posted to http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/ that way.

I definitely agree with this. Patrick made an error, but just because twitter has opened up whole new opportunities for being passive-aggressive on a grand scale doesn't mean one has to take advantage of it. What bothers me more about it is that when someone actually suggests what you just said here, that if she emails Patrick he'll probably change it, she mopily replies 'Too late now.' Oh, Eeyore. Will social media never cease to fail you?

It could just as easily have been interpreted as offensive to ask her to take on a more "serious" persona versus the one with which she chooses to engage the world on a daily basis. I mean, ultimately the problem is readers being goons about the picture, not the picture itself.

Giant Bomb and others need to take seriously the culture they are fostering in unmoderated comments; at the very least, they should be something you have to opt-in to read. Nowadays, it's hard to imagine even the old Wall Street Journal dot matrix sketch going without lewd comments, and if you're not going to moderate then at least deny them the eyeballs of the general reader.

Maybe she thought he did it consciously? I know that some people do that kind of thing on purpose and get super passive-aggressively dickhole when asked to not do it / change it. If she deals with a lot of those people on a regular basis, it could be her standard procedure.

Did what consciously? Posted her Twitter picture to insult her? That's quite a conclusion to leap to, especially when the pictures he used for everyone else in the article were also their Twitter pictures. Assigning bad intentions to something that was likely an honest mistake, then complaining publicly to everyone but the guy who could do something about it is no way to behave. Just because you think someone's response might be immature doesn't mean you get to go first.

For the record, Aaron, I'm not angry at you for suggesting the possibility or anything. :)

Used that specific picture of her without asking her. I dunno, playing devil's advocate is sort of a thing I do. *grins*

It all seems harmless and only odd due to the twitter complaint instead of a private email. It would be different if GB had dug up that picture somewhere and not used her twitter profile pic/facebook profile/gmail profile or something. They should have asked what picture to use, but the one they defaulted to also seems entirely reasonable as an avatar to associate with the person.

While I doubt Patrick secretly harbors sexist ideologies, I admit that I find he didn't expect the backlash and trolling the cosplay picture would invite. That he did not foresee the barely-comments that would pop up as a response suggests either a certain degree of naivete or lack of understanding of the pervasiveness of sexism in the gaming community. He doesn't seem to understand the degree of caution required to talk about feminism or even be a woman with interests like any other human being -- not because of malicious intent, but simply because of not having experienced the misogynistic background radiation.

In many ways (in my mind, anyway) it's less about the picture and more that she was identified as a cosplayer alongside her status at writer at Gameranx. I've never heard of DeLoria before, have no idea what she writes, but slapping "cosplay" next to her name was obviously (to me, anyway) going to see people go straight for her appearance. Maybe she's best known for her cosplay and it was relevant to her qualifications, but it just taps into the "women only dress up to get geek attention / fake geek girl" meme.

"Was identified" makes it sound like it was misleading or an effort to discredit her. Again, it's how she seems to present herself to to the world, and it would be equally offensive (and easy to circumvent and then turn into another bullshit metaissue) to softpedal what seems to be an important aspect of her frame of reference for gaming.

I guarantee that the vast majority of first reactions to the women in that article centered around examining their appearances, and that would be true regardless of their occupation. The problem, and it is a real problem, is GB trying to talk about serious things without engaging their complicity in generating an environment where toxic misogyny and sexism can thrive uninterrupted. Their ostensible goals in terms of advocacy and the desires of a big piece of their audience are directly at odds, and they need to engage that much more aggressively than they have. I don't think that means the writer was malicious or even all that negligent in the particular act of titling her or putting her picture up, but I do think what someone said earlier about their (at best) general naivete with respect to the people that frequent their site is at the heart of it.

Leigh has realised the potential problems with #objectify and is now trying to call it off.
http://sexyvideogameland.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/no-more-objectification.html

yep. To her credit, I think. A couple trans women I follow that work in the industry called her out on it, and she seemed a bit taken aback but interested in dialogue, and apparently this was the end result. I can most definitely see the point where this could be *really* damaging to trans people or just dudes with body issues in general ( THOSE EXIST IN THE GAMES INDUSTRY? GET OUT!) so yay.

It's probably for the best, but I was looking forward to an opportunity to commend Patrice Désilets' precise and well-groomed facial hair.

You can still do that, I'd think. Compliments on looks are a nice thing, in certain ways(I like your shirt/hair/sweet ass 'stache). The issue is not compliments, it is judgement based on looks alone, or prioritizing looks over writing ability, talent, etc. for women in games.

I think a facial hair commendation is just being nice. Saying that facial hair makes him look hot is objectification.

you stay silent and go to your bunk.

Just wanted to share...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...me-industry/275JKqy3rFylT7TxgPmO3K/story.html

This article was about the trials women have getting in to the game industry. Missing on the web site? The lurid shots of Poison Ivy and Harlequin in Arkham Horror that were used as the eye catchers on the front page of the Boston Globe's Sunday business section.

Who needs masculism? Well, nobody it turns out. A dumbass MRA hashtag (created in response to #ineedfeminismbecause) has been completely overrun by feminists, trolls, and feminist trolls.

#ineedmasculismbecause, restoring faith in humanity.

@scalzi #INeedMasculismBecause otherwise my penis will invert.

— Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft) February 8, 2013

Yessssss, Cliff Pervocracy is the best of best people.

An interesting study: researchers set up Halo 3 accounts played by different people of varying skill levels and would play pre-recorded generic comments from a male, from a female or say nothing at all.

Overall results: female voice received 3x the negative comments of the male voice and no voice conditions, and didn't receive any more positive comments than the other voice conditions.

So yes, competitive FPS gaming while female is actually a more insulting experience if you choose to say anything.

I tried playing multiplayer games on Xbox Live years ago but I couldn't stand the sexist/racist smack talk by pre-teens, teenagers, and 20-somethings. I rather play multiplayer PC games where most of the "conversations" are text-based that I can ignore much more easily.

This isn't news to anyone who's actually gamed while female, but perhaps will convince some of the doubters. As for myself, I stick to having a male looking xbox live avatar and not speaking to anyone I don't know, to avoid the worst of the nonsense. Life is too short to deal with that endless sea of boiling idiocy.

Without the advent of party chat, I couldn't play Halo et al. online anymore. With it, I'm pretty much just in party chat with a friend and we chortle at the terrible play of most pubbies.

I just leave voice off by default, and enable for a party. That's...well, it. No reason to ever turn it on otherwise. Voice chat in games has as much value as a youtube comment.

Wait... you're a girl??!

TF2 is the only FPS I ever play, and the few times I've spoken on voice, no one seemed to give a shit, which pleasantly surprised me. But yeah, by and large, unless I'm playing with a group of people I know, I am a mute. It helps that I mostly play as a medic, people are always pretty nice to medics. :P

Except this is only true for specific multiplayer games. Games that benefit from cooperation, like Planetside, MOBAs, anything Arma, etc. need voice chat and virtually have a "No Girls Allowed" sign hanging on them.

I would venture as to say typing is still more useful. Takes a little longer if you're a slow typer, but you can much more easily understand the person without a stream of "What? huh? huh?" because of a shit mic or just forget 10 seconds after, or not hear it because you were distracted as compared to text, which lingers for a moment.

Not that it makes the boys' club mentality any better, because it turns out that when they don't have voice, they just type their stupid shit.

that's why every single game should have Smite's voice command system. it's brutally simple and effective.

TF2 and Counter-Strike have been doing nicely with that for ages too. TF2 even boosted it to automatic contextual triggers. MORE OF THIS.

Maybe for slower games like RPGs or games with predictable patterns ala UT TDM, but there's no substitute for voice comms in quicker games that require some strategy. Stuff like Artemis isn't going to work well text chat only. TF2 and Counter-Strike don't have any surprises and have a compact scope of play, whereas battles in Planetside or Natural Selection are pretty much won or lost based on communication. Speech is the most natural way to convey a wide array of possibilities quickly and any game where you need to organize in a hurry, that's going to be the preferred method.

Isn't Artemis in the same room, though?

Also, I'm just sayin', the last thing I want when playing a game is someone's awful voice in my ear. I don't even want someone else in my game 98% of the time, because other people are horrible!

My first exposure to FPS chat was on Counterstrike public servers. XBL holds no surprises for me.

I linked the study because it's some sort of evidence, as opposed to just personal anecdotes. It's a source to point at when people say there isn't a problem.

I probably am beating a dead horse here, but I gave up team-based FPSs when voice chat became and integrated feature instead of something set up outside the game in ventrillo or teamspeak.