Game Abuse

This week, I read the article "Game Changer: Why gaming culture allows abuse... and how we can stop it" written by Katherine Cross. This article talked about a few instances around 2006 where women who stood out in the gaming community by playing, commentating on, or even designing games were verbally abused and sexually harassed by a (substantial) portion of male gamers (as in, they made national news). Cross explains one of the reasons that this harassment took place, then goes on to tell how the tides changed and a greater portion of the gaming community stood up for the women who were under attack.

The main problem that caused this harassment, Cross says, is that the players doing the harassing felt threatened. She says that previously, games and video game playing was mostly done by men. Cross says that the world of games was kind of like a mens locker room where they can go and be themselves and no one would care. They could go to games and be the most important person in the world. (I'm completely summarizing the article, by the way, sorry.) So when a woman was entering that world of games, a portion of male gamers felt like their dominance was being threatened. Thus, verbal abuse and sexual harassment was used to "put the women in their place" so to speak in this "mans world of games."

Cross goes on to say that because of the sheer amount of abuse and harassment from the few instances that she spoke of, these issues were brought to a national level and gamers from every walk of life stood up for the women who had been harassed. One of the organizations who's employee had been attacked with harassment donated to an anti-bullying charity, and the subject was talked about in news sources a lot. Some of the more public figures who did the harassing apologized as well.

So, how does this article relate to my research topic of community in online gaming? Well, behind every player in-game is a human being in the real world. Something like verbal abuse or sexual harassment towards any player, regardless of gender, is that action to those people in real life. Sometimes, people think a game is just a game, but it is not. A game brings people together from all over the world, and bullying or hurting those people builds up walls between people as well as hurts the person on the receiving end; and that is simply not acceptable.