Female Bioware writer harassed on Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Female Bioware writer harassed on Twitter

themarysue.com

40 pointsi38635 comments

I found this article interesting but the title of the submission disingenuous.

The linked article tries to put the gender aspect aside and focuses on the actual controversy: a games writer saying they don't actually like playing games, and the stupid response of many in the gaming community. The title of this submission converts the whole thing back into an issue of gender.

I'm not saying I think either aspect is more important, but I almost didn't click this link because I wasn't interested in seeing another gender discussion at the moment. When I decided to do so anyway I was pleasantly surprised.

I disagree. As far as I am aware, a significant portion of threats were sexual in nature or focused on body image which would not happen if the person in question was male.

If the person in question was male the insults would just focus on penis size and sexuality. I agree with the previous commenter, I don't think gender is as big of an issue is people make it out to be.

I'm sure they were - one visit to almost any /r/gaming thread, /v/ post, or Xbox Live session will inevitably yield plenty of racial and sexual slurs.

However, what I liked about the linked article is that it tried its best to avoid discussing those concerns in favor of the more novel controversy about a game writer who doesn't like playing games. Hence, to me, the submission's title seemed disingenuous as it framed the article as one about gender, rather than something different.

Although that might intuitively seem true, I'm not sure it really is. Heaven knows enough jokes have been made about Gabe Newell's weight (I'm pretty sure gamer law requires at least one to be made in the comments of every story about Valve), and I can only imagine the comments people would make if he were openly gay. Suffice it to say the obvious maleness of most participants on Xbox Live doesn't stop people throwing around sexual accusations like they were going out of style.

For what it's worth, I would have loved a "skip combat" button on Mass Effect 2. The combat was decent, but it got dull after a while, very repetitive. By the end I just wanted to see the next dialog and make the next choice. That's where the real engagement of the game was for me.

And I love playing games in general.

I'm coming around to that view, myself. I've long since switched to playing most games on "normal" difficulty or below, because ratcheting up the difficulty really only adds tedium, not challenge. Once you figure out how to beat the bad guys, you just have to work at it longer on nightmare difficulty. And very quickly, the repetition is not fun.

I've definitely had games where I was enjoying the story and every once in a while I would totally have used a "fast forward combat" button if I had it.

While some games just add tedium at higher difficulties, many good games require you to come up with different strategies and use features you wouldn't otherwise use. And for many games, being on edge because you are close to losing is part of the atmosphere.

What games? Most of them tend to get difficulty wrong: "this guy requires 3 headshots instead of 1!" It's better when the difficulty shows itself as more enemies, or stronger enemies, etc.

Off the top of my head, Bioshock: at lower difficulties, I found it easy to run through the game guns blazing; at higher difficulties you need to use your skills and the environment to your advantage. When 3 head shots are unviable or a drag, have you tried setting the enemies up the bomb?

Another example is Dungeon Defenders, where strategies differ dramatically (as in almost 100%) in the later stages of the game -- which in this case just means same levels, stronger enemies. Baldur's Gate (2, particularly) also was much deeper when it was difficult, forcing you to think more tactically to win fights. The list goes on and on.

The MGS series is a good example of a game series that scales difficulty well; the enemies are stronger AND work together better as a team, will hunt you better, etc.

The general ideas expressed by the person at the center of the controversy seem a bit more than that. It makes it almost more of an interactive novel than a game. She was basically saying that she doesn't think that a majority of women will enjoy any part of the game other than the dialog/story. If that is really the target market, then why bother creating the gameplay aspects?

Not saying this is a bad thing, just that creating gameplay elements that most of your target market will not enjoy seems superfluous.

> If that is really the target market, then why bother creating the gameplay aspects?

I think this is a function of the economics that rule the game industry today. (Yes, even at BioWare.)

The problem is that what used to be a distinct genre of game, the first-person shooter, became so economically successful that now it has become the default template for every type of game. Stories that in the past would have been told in the format of an adventure game, or an RPG, or a strategy game, are now forced into the format of an FPS, for the simple reason that today AAA titles are FPSes, full stop.

This leads to all sorts of weird mutant games, such as the Mass Effect titles, where the things the designers want to do jar roughly against the format. You spend most of your time in Mass Effect games running around gathering power-ups and shooting stuff. (Pedantry alert: it's from a third-person perspective rather than first-person, but the core run-cover-shoot mechanics are the usual FPS staples.) Periodically this tedious routine will be interrupted by a brief non-shooting interlude, which happens to be where all the interesting stuff in the game happens. But after a few minutes of that the game pulls you right back to the running and gunning. You can practically hear the game grunting at you through clenched teeth: "This is a AAA title, dammit! You better believe you're going to be running and gunning!"

If adventure games were still an economically viable genre, you could imagine Mass Effect making a hell of an adventure game. Rip out all that running and gunning and just focus on telling the story, since that's clearly where the designers' hearts are anyway. But they can't do that, because between publishers, retailers and gamers, the marketplace won't allow it. If you want to make a game with a AAA budget in the 2010s, it has to be a shooter, or at least be close enough that you can argue the point.

So you get a bunch of games that try to weld the mechanics of the FPS onto stories that would fit other formats much, much better. (I'm looking at you, BioShock.)

Great insight. I've been gaming for a long time and I never thought of it like this. Do you think this is also why the RPG market is split between Japanese and Western RPGs? Western RPGs tend toward the "go kill everything" motif, whereas Japanese hold your hand the whole time, story-wise.

Well, the interactive novel game genre does exist. I'd say the biggest exponent of it is the Visual Novel, which is in general purely interactive dialog. Very popular in Japan. Still, these games are more popular among men than women.

The other genre that eschews most non-story-driven gameplay is the graphic adventure. But the thing is, the genre has basically been non-existing since the 90s. The last AAA adventure game was Grim Fandango in 1998. There's a recent resurgence, but mostly as indie games or remakes of time tested classics.

My point being that it doesn't seem like game without strong gameplay elements are selling a lot, neither to men nor to women. I think it's important to find a balance between history and gameplay if you want to have broad appeal.

That seems like less of an argument for Bioware letting you skip combat in Mass Effect games and more of an argument for Bioware making combat in Mass Effect games not suck.

The reddit hivemind does something ferociously stupid that makes all internet users look like drooling morons -- is this news to people?

Okay, so I have been sitting on these thoughts for quite some time now. Here are they:

1. I am no HN veteran (or tech veteran, for that matter) but I love this place and respect it much more that any other internet community I have a part of (a handful of them).

2. I have been to reddit not more than a dozen times and probably half of these referrals would have been from here, HN.

3. Whenever I read Reddit bashing in HN, my respect for this community decreases a little. Of course I consider HN to be a superior forum of intelligent interaction than reddit and hence I am on HN and not Reddit. I think that most of us would believe that to be true - but please, for the sake of keeping the sanctity of intelligent and useful discussion intact, we don't have to describe the superiority of intelligent discussion on HN every single time there is a post regarding Rededit! Probably all of us are aware of the differences and those who don't, won't care anyways.

4. You generalized the entire Reddit userbase to be drooling morons - the drooling part of which I guess refers to the male chauvinism. This was done despite the fact that the author of the article is not sure if gender had substantial contribution to the type of reaction the lady had received. In the comment, the another painful point that I see is that the entire community (and not just the people who acted like 'drooling morons') is shown in a derogatory light. Me, being less aware of how Reddit works - but aware enough to see that this is a wrong generalization, just made up my mind that I had to defend this community (even though I am not a part of it) and hence see reasons to probably even see a rationale behind the behaviour of 'drooling morons', not because I support them but because I want to strongly disagree with you. And I am wrong to do that, but that is in my nature and probably there would be others who would consciously or subconsciously feel the same. The point is, ad hominem and sweeping generalizations are illogical and harmful as they entice (or gives freedom to) people to be illogical in response.

No I think you misinterpreted his statement and overreacted, even though I am an avid redditor and agree with you entirely. He said the hivemind, which in my opinion refers to the mob mentality that comes out of the entire 4chan/btard movements and has leeched into reddit. Occasionally it is used for good (hivemind hunts down cat abuser) usually it is used for, as parent commenter said, "ferociously stupid" things.

Reddit is like a bar, and I love bars but there is no denying some ferociously stupid things happen in them.

> No I think you misinterpreted his statement and overreacted

That is most probably true. As I said, I have been sitting on these thoughts for quite some time now. This just gave them an out.

Having been 'round these here parts of the Internet for a while now, I wouldn't say reddit is making anyone look bad. Reddit is not a bad approximation of internet users in general.

I suppose this is an insult to reddit's self-perception, and non-redditors' self-perception, but meh.

According to the comments, 4chan's /v/ played a part as well.

If people misbehave to get attention, and when they misbehave they get a ton of attention, aren't we the real problem?

The entire "attention economy" of the Internet is the problem, and this is another symptom.

It's ironic that a lot of gamers would be raging on what Jennifer had to say. If you compare Bioware's masterpiece Baldur's Gate II with its more recent games, there is a lot more dialog and story in the former. Aside from the dialog alone, there are books and manuscripts you can read, and almost every weapon had its own special story to tell.

Having said that it's a shame that Jennifer hasn't tried more indie video games as opposed to the mainstream console games. There's actually some games on iPhone that are pretty much interactive 'Choose your own adventure' games that are the size of a novella in content.

Which games would these be? I'd love to try some good ones...

Thanks!

myquest: rise of the hunter

The Gamebooks Adventure series by Tin Man Games

There are plenty of other quick games too that aren't stereotypical like one I really like called Fairway Solitaire. There are too many to count. Smaller companies just take interesting risks that large game publishers will almost never take.

Somehow I don't see the logic. She's not a fan of gaming. So she'd like to make games less game-like to make the non-gaming crowd buy games. They're called books, tv shows and movies. And there are plenty of non-gamers consuming them.

People often like to make things like this about the Internet. It's not, it's about human behavior and probability. Saying anything through a broadcast medium has a calculation involved in regards to the likelihood you're going to get attacked over it.

The world is filled with trolls. It doesn't matter what attributes you possess, thick skin will serve you well in life, and that will always be true. If you're fat or skinny, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, you're going to get shit on, berated, harassed, and so on, at some time or another. Almost any sharp edge in any direction, about any topic, basically, results in blow back. That's not to say all scenarios are created equal.

You can hardly name something that isn't divisive these days. And now you know what nearly everybody thinks about everything courtesy of Facebook, Twitter, et al.

Mediums change, but trolls remain the same.

> If you're fat or skinny, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, you're going to get shit on, berated, harassed, and so on, at some time or another.

I think it's just about disagreement and in order to empower themselves the attackers vilified and demonized the developer. It's not so different from the way people will vilify (rightly or wrongly) an entity like the RIAA or a country such as Libya or a profession such as law, or a person such as any ex-president. It's easier to disagree with someone who's been vilified beyond recognition, rather than have a discussion on the factual data.

I think this is what's happened here. The humanity of this person was removed and reduced to repugnant caricature which made it easier to pile on the fun. Yes, people do this every day.

It's not right, but it's human nature. Still, that's not a reason to ignore the issue. It's probably related to or one of the reasons why women avoid tech. Those who pursue it have to be so steadfast that they can survive all the sexism and ridicule. The closest men come to this is straight male on straight male sexual harassment. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/01/12/abuse-of-po...

Fair point, but it's plainly obvious that the internet facilitates this type of abusive, anti-social behavior.

Also, my take-away from the article was not an attack on the interwebs. If anything, the community was blamed - not the method of communication.

Agree. Eight years later, "John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory" still rings true for me: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19

I don't think the Internet is a relevant part of the equation. There are plenty of trolls in the real world. Remember the "Don't taze me, bro!" guy?

(Also: Bill O'Reilly)

The Internet is part of the equation. It makes it much easier to get away with this sort of behavior, and there are virtually no consequences. You're right: trolling still happens outside of the Internet, but we have more social norms in place to deal with it in real life. If there was a way to have more consequences to what people said online, then we might see more civility.

But, we're human, and we can't have nice things.

Absolutely. Trolling isn't some new phenomena that suddenly sprung up because of the internet, it is just a name that was slapped on an existing behaviour. Trolls before the internet often lurked in the Letters section of newspapers or in face-to-face social mediums. You could easily argue that ancient Roman graffiti was mostly trolling (drawing a phallus on a public figure is still common behaviour today). Anonymous trolling isn't new and it isn't going away.

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