sophiaserpentia | (no subject)

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In light of Activision-Blizzard's RealIDFail, it's dawned on me that there is a sizable void.

There are lots of women who play games. There are no developers catering to them.

Gaming has been historically extremely male-centered. The stereotypical gamer is a teen boy in his parents' basement hunched over an XBox or a Nintendo. The stereotypical game designer is a man who, ten years ago, was that boy. Game designers target boys' and men's idea of fun. Game advertisers target the interests of boys and men. And, as RealIDFail demonstrates quite clearly, game developers have little interest in the specific concerns of women online, where those concerns differ from men's, or in the specific ways in which women use social networks differently from men.

I'm cherry-picking my examples here for emphasis, but as anyone in the wide world of woman-gamer blogging can tell you, dealing with misogyny -- as well as racism, homophobia, and transphobia -- in the gamer universe or in game advertising or content is an everyday thing.

So... why should we? Make that trade-off to play games we enjoy, I mean?

If there are any development studios with an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-'phobic perspective, I want to find out who and where they are. A very cursory google search does not reveal the names of any studios developing from this perspective.

If there aren't... I want to play a role in founding one. Anyone else interested?

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I've seen some discussion that Real ID is likely to cause legal problems in Europe too, over EU privacy laws.

Ha! Or maybe a knee rest on the floor could make raiding interesting.

I think they've actually been careful enough to avoid breaking laws yet, because so far everything is "optional." At some point, though, they are going to spring a new TOS on us -- maybe even without announcing it -- that we click to sign, implying our consent to have our IDs shared with other gamers and, as you've said, "trusted partners" who will offer special deals.

The sad thing is, even though Acti-Blizz is supposedly emulating Facebook, even Facebook's privacy options are far better than RealID. Acti-Blizz is not making any of this optional, and as I said to

lassiter above, I think they will likely spring on us, one day, quietly, a new TOS that gives consent to have our names shared with other players and "trusted business partners" (with personally-tailored special offers of course). Anyone who waits for it to get to that point will find themselves staring at the screen having to make a split-second choice of whether to keep playing or not.

I just checked something on facebook and actually found it was more public than I thought - there's a subtly hidden link on the privacy options, above the basic default ones where you just go through the friends only check off list. Go to basic profile information - I did that and managed to make myself pretty much totally unsearchable now. If you aren't logged in, you can't see my profile at all. It gives you an error page. My email is unsearchable even if you are logged in. That's the level of privacy I prefer.

It is because the most recent generation has grown up under CONSTANT SCRUTINY.

Yes. They also are unlikely to have experienced some of the pitfalls that come with blindly trusting people.

Our society is shifting, by degrees, to a state where privacy doesn't exist. Each change acclimatizes us just a little bit more to the post-privacy world. Some have been talking about the RealID controversy as an historic event. That could be overstating it, but they may be right: what happens this week could very well decide the future of privacy in online gaming, which in the last ten years has become very suddenly an iconic aspect of American society.

Interestingly, I've been reading that teenagers are not embracing Twitter. They may not be quite as eager as we think to live under continual scrutiny. We'll see.

And... oh yes, any endeavor I launch will NOT be a fucking Barbie doll makeup dress-up game.

*nods* That aspect of this will make it difficult. Investors will not flock to our doors, at least in the beginning, so for a while it will be a labor of love/activism. Still... please keep me in mind. I believe in this very strongly.

I didn't know that about the 56% figure, that's fascinating. I know that somewhere around 30% of people who play MMORPGs are women. That's a number that could be bigger too, and I think is likely to grow.

That's good to know about Bioware & Turbine. I would, a few years ago, have included Blizzard, because at the outset, WoW was fairly woman-friendly. Female toon models were not disproportionate caricatures, and there was nothing in the game content that implied, anywhere, that women are less capable and less fully empowered. That came from the players, who brought their sexism, racism, and 'phobia with them from Earth... and by degrees, over the years, Blizzard has done less and less to stop them from spewing it in-game.

Thank you for the nod to WIGI -- I will look into them.

Sign me up.

People of all skill sets and abilities will be needed.

I'll keep you in mind. Someday we might have a website and stuff! :P

I just went over and read the stuff on WOW (I don't play it myself) and I am appalled -- but not surprised -- by the recent developments.

One thing that made me sad were all the comments from people saying "this doesn't affect me, I'll just keep playing." I wouldn't want to keep playing a game that just made it clear that GLBT, women, anyone who was ever stalked online, people who want to keep their gaming personas apart from their work personas, and people who wish to avoid being harassed because of their ethnicity are unwelcome.

Of course, being a woman who has been stalked, perhaps I lack perspective on the matter.

That's a big part of why I'm feeling so driven away and alienated by this. There's no indication that they ever gave a moment's thought to the fact that women, GLBT folk, people of color (especially people with Middle Eastern or Asian names), or survivors of abuse and stalking, would feel particularly alienated and pushed away by this. Even if I could live with the changes, with never using the forums, and the increasing emphasis on merchandising tie-ins and special offers and microtransactions in a game that already costs $15/month, I don't know that I want to give my money to a company so appallingly insensitive to minorities.

I ask a question, clearly stating that I do not understand and I get jumped on. If I did not know you better I would think you were being insecure and defensive. But that is not like the you I used to know.

You didn't ask a question.

Me writing that I never figured out why... sure seems like a question to me. I comprehend why teens pay the games, but not others. Yet lots of people play the games and have played them since video games were not yet online. Gazillions of hours plus costs for the games. They must get something out of it. It is obviously not a passing fad. But I sure do not understand.

I work 7 days a week, but they are short days, and my commuting time is less than 5 minutes. I know people who work 70 or 80 hours a week, and spend an additional 5-10 hours a week commuting. And they play on-line games.

I asked them why they told me, and I I still do not understand. Perhaps I just am wired differently than gamers. Fuck if I know.

I currently have time. And willingness. Not sure what I can do.

Perhaps childling conscription. He has actually done some volunteer labor for a small mmo game that he was into for a while.

You never asked a question. If you really wanted to know why S., or I, or any of us who have actual interest in this issue, play online games, you could have asked an actual question, like,: "I'm confused. Why do you spend so much time playing online games?" You did not do this. You made a statement about how you never understood why people play, and followed it with a judgmental statement about how you think it's only acceptable for juvenile, uncreative people. Someone stood up for themselves politely, and you followed up with yet another assumptive statement about gamers, namely that they must have less important things to do with their time than you do. That still wasn't a question. If nothing else, it might help you to know that in the English language, questions have question marks at the end of the sentence. Perhaps in the future you could try to remember this rule to avoid further misunderstandings.

Sorry I did not express myself more clearly.

Not saying kids are uncreative, but they lack control in their lives and they lack opportunity to be creative. Schooling can be creative, but not in my experience of schools.

I did not mean to imply that only uncreative people gravitate to game playing. I made a slap-dash comment. Not edited, not contemplated before posting. Sorry if my wording did not convey the intent of my comment.

*nods* Accepted.

As to a reason why *I* play so much, or have been - because different people have different reasons - well I always was a fan of the RPG style of games, but being a mother and working full time had difficulty getting involved in any of the tabletop style get togethers, which is largely comprised of younger, responsibility-free people who have disposable income for the books (or at least the GM does). Online gaming is cheaper than cable television and more engaging, and meant I could have many of the elements of RPGs, but on my own time table, when it was convenient for me. The social isolation and relative immobility I've experienced here in Boston encouraged me to choose online gaming as a main source of my recreational free time. Social/creative aspects of the game were very valuable to me, in fact, and often I would log on merely to talk/roleplay to people without actually "playing" the game at all. The creative and interactive aspects of the game led me to most of my creative writing endeavors over the last five years.

So the social networking in online games is like social networking on FB or LJ? I can relate to that.

Sort of, except you choose an avatar as a representation of yourself, as how you want to relate, or appear. The choices in a fantasy game are generally limited to the setting of the game, so people play games based on their own personal - preference? Archetypes?
For a long time I played mainly female trolls in Wow. They are tall, oversexed, practice voodoo, and have Jamaican accents.

That came from the players, who brought their sexism, racism, and 'phobia with them from Earth... and by degrees, over the years, Blizzard has done less and less to stop them from spewing it in-game.

Honestly, I think this real ID move by Blizzard will function to return gaming to more of a white-het-boys club. Not only will the voices of oppressed people be silenced, fewer would-be allies will speak out. On top of that the "post rating" feature will further drown out the voices of those who speak against misogyny, racism, homophobia and transphobia.

Blizzard's community team will be able to quickly and easily locate highly rated posts to participate in or to highlight discussions that players find worthwhile.

And Blizzard does like to claim that they respond to the wants of their player base. The ones who communicate with them via the official forums.

I'm sure that the mainstream commercial gaming industry will look to Blizzard, see who stuck with them through tough economic times, and continue to define that as the "gaming base" that needs to be catered to. In spite of the social engineering that is obviously happening to keep the increasing number of voices who would say differently silenced.

I agree -- I hope they enjoy their new sausage fest.

It's also one of the things that led me to the epiphany of the OP. Acti-Blizz made a cold calculation, and people like you and me and most of the people I love and care about and enjoy playing the game with were deemed expendable. I don't know how else to interpret this. Either they knew it would silence us and they don't care, or they didn't even bother to worry about it, the cluelessness of which would be inexcusably bad for an environment this size. And that awareness it makes it less than likely that I will return to WoW -- and SC, and Diablo -- even if they reverse this, because who knows how *else* this attitude will seep out into the WoW environment.

I'm sure that the mainstream commercial gaming industry will look to Blizzard

*sighs* Probably. Well... fine. If they don't want our money, they obviously don't need it badly enough. Time I don't spend playing a game can go towards figuring out how to manifest this new vision anyway.

This is drifting way off topic from the original post, but I am learning things about my quirks which have irritated many people over the years, but left me bewildered as to why they were irritated at me.

Years ago, you suggested I might have Asperger's syndrome. You got me looking in that direction. No official diagnosis, but Asperger's sure seems to match many of my quirks.

I almost never use a question mark. I tend to ask questions by making statements. Instead of asking someone, "Are you OK?" I write "I hope you are doing OK."

I can see from this thread that I still have a ways to go in taming this quirk.

Let me think more about this. I'll getack to this thread in a day or two.

It appears we revolting peasants have forced Activision to retreat. For the moment.

And yes, the smokescreen claims around protecting the forums from trolls were dismissed early and just fueled more and more rage, especially when the blue posters refused to respond to anyone except by deleting all threads but one.

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