

Female Bioware writer harassed on Twitter - i386
http://www.themarysue.com/inclusion-what-jennifer-heplers-story-is-all-about/

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bri3d
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.

~~~
i386
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.

~~~
socialist_coder
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.

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Fargren
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.

~~~
pyre
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.

~~~
smacktoward
> 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.)

~~~
mattgreenrocks
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.

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swordswinger12
The reddit hivemind does something ferociously stupid that makes all internet
users look like drooling morons -- is this news to people?

~~~
mayanksinghal
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.

~~~
wdewind
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.

~~~
mayanksinghal
> 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.

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

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

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chaostheory
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.

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

Thanks!

~~~
chaostheory
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.

------
vishaldpatel
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.

------
shingen
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.

~~~
doktrin
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.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
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>

~~~
jrockway
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)

~~~
mattgreenrocks
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.

