There are hierarchies of gaming culture. If Starcraft tourneys in Korea are the upper echelon where the players are in suits and have sponsors, then surely fighting tournaments are at the very bottom.
Funny you mention that; this weekend, several thousand people came from around the world (mostly adults) to APEX 2015, the largest Smash tournament in history. We’re E-Sports now.
That’s a good point. There are millions of people who play video games in the world (possibly even a big billion) and a study by some tech site showed that the number of GamerGate “supporters” probably numbers somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
It is not representative of gaming culture as a whole.
But… why ?! 
Underlining mine.
FYI - Performing difficult combos while not looking at the screen is no different than touch typing (in fact that’s how I learned to touch type - by playing Diablo 2 on a mouse & keyboard. And I’m a duffer compared to real gamepad warriors. ) Twitch & Youtube is full of people doing game speed runs while simultaneously reading a chat stream and talking with a roomful of people.
The wire and the unnamed (male) co-conspirator glimpsed fleeing the scene is just so much unsubstantiated bullshit.
You mention gamergate. There’s no question that the misogynistic atmosphere created by that mess can spill over into the real world. In other words, I don’t believe for a minute that it’s a coincidence that this conspiracy blew up around a female competitor or that they’re saying she must have had a man running her character for her.
It’s true that fighting games have a problem with death threats, rape threats and hostility, even in excess of videogames in general. However, fighting games are on the verge of becoming seriously big business as the pro-gaming leagues attract ever more eyeballs - and more importantly, bigger and wealthier sponsors. In the last couple years, there have been several high profile incidents where players where banned, sponsorships pulled, and events affected by toxic behavior.
The problem exists and people are taking steps to correct it. Like Gamergate in general, there is considerable push back from the more … I want to say, conservative but I don’t mean the current right-leaning political movement exactly. (There’s an overlap, but I’ll get to it.) I mean the players who have enjoyed all this time talking trash about raping women, telling them to go make a sandwich, calling them sluts, demanding to see their breasts - you know, all the usual stuff you see on Fat, Slutty, or Ugly. There’s a certain sort of hyena who enjoys that behavior and for the last twenty years, videogames were designed for and marketed squarely at their funny bones.
Well, it’s a new day. More people play computer games, the computers are cheaper and smaller and in the hands of more people, it’s easier than ever to make them and sell them, and a whole new breed of games is being created to appeal to different markets of people. The conservative players who are no longer the sole target audience feel threatened by the new people’s growing influence. They feel their identity as “gamers” is under threat and they’re pushing back at attempts to include a wider audience.
They’ve learned that they shouldn’t call people racist names. They know that they shouldn’t be religious bigots. They’re grudgingly getting used to the idea that they shouldn’t call people homophobic names. Society reinforces the idea both in game and out. Now they’re being told that they shouldn’t call women, “bitch” or “cunt” or use sexist language. It’s natural (if aggravating) that they will push back against it. Society needs to do a better job of reinforcing that sexist language is is as unacceptable as racist language is. Unfortunately, current American culture doesn’t treat sexism as being as big a problem as the other forms of bigotry.
The good news is this is changing, in no small part because Gamergate has brought out the WBC-level misogynists to the microphone. Sponsors refusing to support sexist players and events will have a tangible effect over the next ten years as well. Of course, it feels like a long time, living through it, but we’re changing the world, here. One day at a time.
Moving beyond the realm of the philosophical, I want to point that there are real world consequences of allowing hatred to fester online. Multiple women have been chased from their homes - often at the advice of law enforcement, who take the death and rape threats seriously.
Anita Sarkeesian was forced to cancel a speaking engagement at a university in Utah after they received a threat from someone promising a “Montreal Massacre style attack”. She also gets bomb threats at her speaking engagements.
http://www.standard.net/Police/2014/10/14/Utah-State-University-student-threatens-act-of-terror-if-feminist.html
Zoe Quinn recently wrote a piece about the long term affect this has had on her life - http://ohdeargodbees.tumblr.com/post/107838639074/august-never-ends
She goes into detail about the ways the current legal system just isn’t able to handle this sort of thing and about the way it’s spread to all her friends and family. It’s not just Quinn being harrassed and doxxed - it’s her family, her friends, her coworkers, their families, friends, coworkers, old classmates, neighbors. If you were ever at a convention that Quinn attended, you’re fair game. There’s probably a swat team and a dozen pizzas headed to your door right now.
Oh, the swatting. Yeah, that’s a real world problem, too. Here, just to pick a random example, from the last month -
Again, there’s good news.
Quinn has set up a service called Crash Override to help people faced with online harassment -
Sarkeesian is working with groups such as Intel to promote diversity-
She will be refocusing Feminist Frequency to highlight anti-harassment efforts
Randi Harper, a software engineer, is creating programming tools to help handle online harrassment -
Twitter is changing their service in response to its being used as an online harassment vector -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/12/02/twitter-rolls-out-new-anti-harassment-tools/
So I don’t want to say that the situation is hopeless, or anything. Just that the fight against ignorance takes many forms.
I pulled all these examples from gamergate, just because it was so easy. But it applies to other issues as well. When you talk to people online, the operative word there is people, not online. People are talking and hate speech is not lessened just because you read it in game chat.
TL;DR -
Online threats produce real world results, both good and bad. Words have power. Letting hate speech fester online creates genuine problems offline. It doesn't matter if the hate speech is sexist, racist, homophobic, or religious bigotry. It doesn't matter if you're chatting in game or on the telephone - either way, you're socializing with real people. There is no scenario in which it is harmless to allow people to spew hatred at other people.I would very much like increased enforcement of white collar crime (eg credit card fraud) or death threats.
Ok, let’s say the trend is towards improvement following Merneith’s fine and recommended post. Fast forward 10 years. Let’s say a line is drawn between death threats among anonymous posters who don’t know each other’s address and other types. Let’s say somebody over 21 makes a death threat against someone with a publicly listed address. Pretty offensive really, even if it’s hot air in 99%+ of cases. What should be the sanction?
I’m happy with fines: I like greater enforcement but less than gruesome punishment for first offenses. Or hell second offenses. Lawyers might tell me that cops have better things to do though. I think an agency should be appointed for this BS. Because I am irritable and not a lawyer. Does anyone have an idea how greater enforcement would work out in practice? Or are casual and non-legal sanctions as sketched by Merneith sufficient?
I’m not calling for zero tolerance, just accountability.
That’s because so many people have yet to figure out how and when to turn off their damn computer. Most of that crap goes away when one does that.
It should not be the responsibility of the target of threats to stop using the Internet.
Exactly. And what about people whose job it is to use the internet every day? Someone like Lindy West, who is a writer for a website and who has had to come to terms with the fact that she is going to live every day with a shameful level of personal abuse?
And what about someone like Anita Sarkeesian, whose profession it is to make videos and write things for distribution on the internet? How is she supposed to just turn off the internet?
The idea that the kind of abuse that many women have to put up with is something that it’s their burden to tolerate or avoid is shameful.
as a rule of thumb, it should be obvious that a death threat can’t be taken seriously anyway. its almost always just someone running their lip. on the internet back in the 90’s and early 2000’s this type of shit happened all the time and no one batted an eye. the commercialization and drastically increased popularity of the internet now compared to then has caused issues like this to be scrutinized and talked about way too much.
just like how about anything and everything is analyzed from 1000 different angles these days due to everyone and their brother having access to the internet and any little tidbit of information…and subsequent postings to a social media site to be debated about for hours at a time.
anyone with half a brain would remain silent if they were actually going to kill someone, and even if they started spoutin’ off at the mouth out of sheer anger and actually fully intended to carry out a killing, then they would abort the kill plan as they know other people know they’re mad and thus have motive to kill. this applies more to real life of course, but with logs and such it should apply to the internet although not everyone thinks of server logs and the like, and not everyone has half a brain regardless.
but most that shit comes from teenagers anyway, who might get so fired up they think themselves they’re going to fly out on the next flight out and kill someone, but 5 minutes later get preoccupied with something else and forget about it.
regardless, most laws in the U.S. regarding death threats state somewhere in the actual penal code text something along the lines that a reasonable person would fear for his/her life, the threat was specific/detailed, or whatever. not just any “i’ll kill your fucking bitch ass” is going to get someone arrested, much less convicted unless the verbal assailant is arrested in some bumfuck town with a bored police force, then a similarly thumb-twiddling D.A.s office actually reviews the arrest report and files on it…and then the defendant takes a guilty or similar plea. surely most juries wouldn’t convict if a “i’ll kill your fucking bitch ass” case is heard before them…considering the fact that juries are instructed by the judge and via written jury instructions to heed the text of the penal code itself (and guided to do as such by the judge and jury instruction sheets). most juries aren’t like reactive lynch mobs by the time they sit through the entire trial and hear the judge repeatedly admonish them to follow the letter of the law.
That totally helps when people start calling in bomb threats to your speaking gigs. Or start calling the police to your house on phony domestic abuse charges. No, that crap does not go away when you turn off your computer if you’re targeted by this breed of monster (troll seems too soft a word).
And you know what? Some people actually have their careers online. I know, big shocker there, but you can make a healthy living off of many different things online. PewDiePie earns between $800k and $8M a year playing video games on camera. Sarkeesian basically built her career via her youtube channel Feminist Frequency. Many indie scene video game publishers do all of their marketing and production online, and a large part of their careers deals with the internet.
And just in general? You shouldn’t have to abandon the internet. This kind of harassment shouldn’t be possible or excusable, and you trying to diminish the problems people like Quinn face in situations like this is appalling.
And even if particular threats aren’t meant literally, they can still amount to harassment.
Next you’ll be complaining because Carmen doesn’t really die on stage.
One does not know the depths of one’s own fury until you have been tea-bagged by a twelve year old girl from Petaluma.
Retweeted by reporter Dave Weigel. A couple of hours ago game developer Brianna Wu tweeted an image from a video allegedly threatening her with death tonight. https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/564304224033705984
The hell?
I didn’t get the sense that it was because she was a girl, but that she was 10. 10 year olds are into video games, sure, but not exactly known to have the skills to be at competitive levels. Her being a girl was probably a bit of misogynistic icing, but I’d be pretty shocked at a 10 year old with the skills to beat adult enthusiasts at a competitive game. In fact, not just enthusiasts, she beat Tyrant, a competitive player that is one of the best players, period. A guy who wins national tournaments. Not to mention the person raising doubts about her for performing difficult combos while not looking at the screen was Sky, who is considered the third best player in NorCal (though he’s nowhere near as good as others), so one would assume he’d know if that was plausible.
This wasn’t a 20 year old woman or I’d totally agree with you, and you should know that that’s not an act because I agreed with you plenty in the Gamergate threads. However, 10 year olds generally just don’t have that level of coordination or structured practice at that age. In fact, the original post mentioned in the article barely mentions her gender. All of it was focusing on ‘we got beaten by a 10 year old’. He says to lighten up about it, though, sage advice:
I do think her being a girl made the blowback much worse. I think that point is almost indisputable and highlights something wrong. However, I don’t think it’s too plausible that a random, unknown-until-now 10 year old, male or female, was wrecking pro-level competitive players that practice every day. It’s not impossible, but I’d characterize it as so staggeringly unlikely that almost any alternate explanation makes more sense.
One thing I really don’t like about this thread is the resignation that this is just how the internet is, though. I think we need to take more responsibility for a place that real people with real feelings socialize, and stop treating it as some inherent cesspool.
I really like this old article from wired.
Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start
Ms. Wu discusses her situation at Huffpo. Also a Gawker article.
http://internet.gawker.com/the-psychopaths-of-gamergate-are-all-thats-left-and-th-1683271908
Brianna Wu claims that she knows the real name of the guy who posted the threatening video on You-tube. The perp claims that he drove to her house, but got into a car crash and came back. Brianna Wu says that she has reported the incident to the authorities, but that, “…there have been no prosecutions for the hundreds of death threats that have been sent to Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, or myself.”
Wu is a software professional who uses twitter as a marketing tool. She thinks law enforcement needs to step it up. I agree. I also think this story deserves mainstream press coverage. Nobody should be subjected to this crapola and (separately) it has gotten to the point where it is interfering with commerce. It’s not just a local crime story.