Do you frequently play games online in multiplayer mode? When you play online, do you use a mic to communicate to other players? According to a report entitled “Teens, Technology and Friendships” released by the Pew Research Center, if you’re a teenage girl, the answer to both of these questions […]
harassment
30 posts
While I have spent the last three decades of my life being as politically active as was feasible at any given time and being as verbal about said politics as I could, I have to admit that doing the same with my work as a games scholar has not been […]
Sometimes gamers forget that the virtual worlds we participate in, while they often become as much our “real” world as meat space, are not subject to the same laws of freedom of speech as our meat space. When we participate on forums, chat within a game, or send someone a […]
Episode 99: August and Everything After: An Actual Discussion on Ethics and Gamers (Right click and save as to download, or hit us up on iTunes or Stitcher) This week, Alex, Alisha, and Sam talked GamerGate, the continuing, shifting mass that continues to dominate so much of the discussion of […]
In some ways my experience last week could have been the closing scene from a cheesy Disney movie: a girl enters the room and a hush falls across the crowd. The sudden arrival seemed to have fundamentally changed the character of the environment. Except, of course, it wasn’t a ball […]
Last week a witch hunt pervaded the Hearthstone community. Like most witch hunts, it spawned from a baseless accusation: a top Hearthstone player is not who they say they are. This statement, which was little more than a rumor, quickly became accepted as fact as it spread across Hearthstone communities, […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the continued impacts of GamerGate lately, though not perhaps in the larger sense of wondering what it all means, but how it jibes with my experience with and in gaming media. While it’s been several years since I did any writing about games outside […]
A recent post on the Feminist Frequency tumblr titled “One Week of Harassment on Twitter” detailed just that — a week’s worth of tweets directed at Feminist Frequency, at Anita Sarkeesian, and at feminists in general, especially those associated in any way with gaming critique. Some are wildly ridiculous, almost […]
So often, when anyone calls for greater diversity in video games, their requests are met with one very common answer: “You want something different? Make it yourself.” These days, we’re told, anyone can make a game. It’s so easy. The tech requirements have been reduced to almost nothing; with a […]
The convention season is drawing to a close and while it has been an extremely exciting season due to the new consoles coming out this year, it certainly wasn’t a season without its struggles. From Gamescom, to PAX Prime, to E3 the shortcomings of the video game industry in respect […]
Writer Jennifer Hepler has been in the spotlight again recently, as she announced she was leaving BioWare. The minute the news hit, stories cropped up that she was leaving over the extreme harassment she suffered over a 2006 interview in which she said she didn’t actually enjoy, or was good […]
Phil Fish is struggling under the burden of criticism and the malicious conduct of the gaming community. The indie creator who was responsible for the puzzle game Fez, which was created and released after a string of unfortunate and strenuous circumstances, has raised quite a commotion within the gaming industry […]
The internet can be a dark and scary place. Internet trolls reside in many places, but are most commonly found lurking on the comment sections of blogs and YouTube, in online multiplayer games, or really just anywhere more than two people are able to communicate and fight with each other […]
Author’s note: My views in no way shape or form represent the views of my employer as a company. They are my own personal opinions and should not be associated with the company any further than by the fact that I work there and these experiences come from their employing […]