So, in order to take my mind off of the incoming election results and what they mean to the world, I've been doing a little bit of reading about the Microsoft crackdown on sexist trolling in video games. In concept I believe this to be a laudable cause, however I have some commentary on it, for both points of view.
Firstly, I will admit that to degree (certainly lesser then everyone seems to think) there is a degree of inherent sexism in video games, largely stemming from it's recent emergence from a hobby for fat, neckbearded virgin males living in their parents basements and into broader public acceptance. There are a lot of women who can't stand to play online games with mic support because of it, however we need to separate those from the snowflakes who think any sort of online trash talk is a legitimate threat of bodily harm or rape.
Firstly the trash talk is probably 50% of the reason people play online, well not just the trash talk, but the ability to communicate with both one's team and one's opponent, the other 50% being the fact that we can interact with people instead of asshole AIs, without actually having to undergo the unpleasantness of actually seeing these assholes in person. If you want to ban trash talking from online gaming, get the fuck offline and load up the chessmaster, you're a fucking killjoy and I don't want anything to do with you.
When I log on, and get on a killstreak or just start winning a match in any sort of strategy game, there will be a torrent of abuse thrown my way, once the accusations of hacking die down, then follows the threats to rape and murder me, my mother, my non existant pets and sisters, my brothers, my grandfather and once even a pet goat. (I have never owned a goat, no implied that I have.) And I in turn have described to them, in what I consider to be much more creative detail, exactly what sorts of large sharp unpleasant objects I will inset slowly into their urethras, and certain penetrating injuries I will deliver to their eye sockets and cranium before penetrating them with an organ of my own.
This is a part of the game and in fact, as anyone who has been involved with any real sport knows, a part of all games.This isn't what I take umbrage with, and if you're the sort of person who does, go die in a fire you useless snowflake.
However the problem is this, there are women and girl, how log on, and are subjected to the same torrent of abuse, directed at them not as an opponent or a superior gamer, but simply because they have the gall to be a gamer online, and seriously guys, this isn't cool.
I'm lucky enough to have a GF who will game with me to some degree, and so it's not a problem for me, but if nothing else, why would you want to drive women away from gaming? We need more girl gamers, even if you ignore the inerrant unfairness and sexism, why would you want to log into a sausagefest all the time? Seriously, WTF is wrong with you assholes.
Now that that is settled, here is my second problem; Microsoft employs a horde of retarded monkeys as their moderation team (joke's on you if any of you fuckers are reading this, I'm a PS3 gamer). I've seen people ban-hammered in a game for some almost imaginary slight, when the opposing team was both exploiting a bannable glitch and spouting the kind of invective that would get you arrested for hate speech in some countries. Giving these useless fuckers just one more reason to kick people isn't going to solve anything. In a well moderated and professionally maintained environment this would be a boon, here it will likely amount to lots of people having people they don't like banned on the "zero tolerance policy". More people for me to frag, I suppose.
Also literally just got the news, Obama won, congratulations America for choosing the lesser of two evils.
Anyhow I'll maybe make another post on sexism in gaming (both what is legitimate and what is bullshit from the femsquad) tomorrow, but likely it'll be a rant on the election.
Have a nice day.
-Shadow
Stand up and fight!