The battle of the sexes within the gaming industry sometimes resembles a playground free-for-all. Words are flung like mud, more than one person is bleeding, and everyone is screaming. Off to the side, a gaggle of kids are scratching their heads and wondering if they hear a noise.
Sometimes, this behaviour draws some attention, an example being the Gamergate controversy. The online harassment directed toward women during Gamergate caused many of them to become afraid for their lives—and they’re still dealing with the effects today.
It’s difficult to write the words that I’ve been called, or have seen used toward other female—as well as male—players. They are violent, vicious, and filled with hate. I’ve been called a cunt, a whore, and a slut; I’ve been told I need to go back to the kitchen; male gamers have told me they’re going to hunt me down, rape me, kill me.
All this because I love games.
There are gamers who ignore that women are targeted, violently killed in-game, and hyper-sexualized, and that women lack decent representation in general. Female gamers who speak up are immediately targeted by male gamers, who send enough death and rape threats to achieve the desired result: women being pushed out of the online world.
When video games first came out, they were targeted toward everyone—if you had an interest, you could play—but that’s changed over the years. Women still play as much as they ever did, but gaming companies started to avoid acknowledging their existence.
And at some point it was decided that they didn’t exist at all.
TABLETOP GAMING FOR THE KINDA-WIN
While there is still a lot of pushback from the video gaming industry toward anyone who doesn’t identify as male, board and tabletop gamers are a step ahead. LANtasy director of gaming Bonnie Beyea says that when she was hired at LANtasy—a broad-spectrum gaming convention that is being held on March 18 and 19 this year at Pearkes Recreation Centre—she would only come on board if the directors let her write an anti-harassment policy, which they did.
“I’m a huge believer that there has to be consequences for that sort of thing,” says Beyea. “We don’t see it a lot—knock on wood—especially in Victoria, but there has to be a policy clearly stating that we don’t accept that sort of thing. That way, if there is a problem, it gives the convention people something to turn to and say, ‘You agreed to our policies, you didn’t follow them, here’s the consequences.’ Maybe you’re scolded, depending on what it is, up to ejecting you from the convention, because it needs to be a welcoming environment for everyone.”
Beyea says that there are still troubles at conventions, and a lot of women are afraid to report them. She says she saw it herself when she was doing security at PAX, a convention held in various cities around the world.
“Nothing made me more frustrated, but totally understanding, when, after the convention, you see a post on Reddit or something from a woman who said, ‘I was at PAX and I got harassed.’ And it makes me want to cry, because my security team, that’s why we were there. Like, come see us, please, we will believe you. This is our job. But I totally understand why these women, and sometimes men, are afraid to report it, and that’s what we need to change. No victim blaming at PAX—if you report it, I’ll believe you. It’s that simple, right?”
This sense of inclusion that Beyea fights for may explain why women and non-binary folk are more—but not always—prominent in the tabletop or board-games communities. Audrey Greenlees, a student in Camosun’s Comics and Graphic Novels program, has found gamers at conventions to be accepting.
“Everyone has always been super happy just to have another person to play with,” says Greenlees. “I’ve never personally perceived it as a gender thing, but I can be a little oblivious to that sometimes. Everyone I’ve ever sat down to play with has always been really accepting, really understanding if I don’t know how to play a game, and helping me figure out the rules. It’s kind of a big thing, because I’m usually very shy with people, but there’s something in conventions that brings out the friendliness in everyone.”
For anyone unfamiliar with tabletop role-playing games (RPGs), game night usually involves a game master (GM) or dungeon master attempting to kill off the players in highly creative and entertaining ways. Death doesn’t come because of a player’s gender or identity; when a player dies, it’s usually because dice rolls failed epically, or because of a player’s stupidity.
In one of the tabletop games I was in, a player had their plate-clad paladin jump into water to save two other characters—Telkhines—that were born in water. He refused to let go of his shield after he jumped in with it. The Telkhines saved themselves as the GM required the player to make a series of dice rolls to see if he would drown (non-gamers, stay with us here). He almost did—twice—because he was adamant about rescuing his shield.
Beyea says sharing these types of stories is what makes tabletop so much fun.
“When you get a good group together,” says Beyea, “that’s why I love board games and role-playing games. It’s the shared social experience, sitting around a table, or online via hangouts. But I prefer the table—just sharing those kind of stories, I love that. That’s why I get so enthusiastic about my hobby. Find the right group, because it’s amazing.”
For casual gamers like Greenlees, playing with people online doesn’t have a lot of appeal, but board games do. Greenlees says that when her husband brought home a board game recently, he was worried that she would be upset because he’d been a little frivolous with the budget she sets.
“I like to be sitting with friends in a room and catching up and laughing,” says Greenlees. “Lately I’ve been playing a lot of X-Wing Miniatures. It’s a tabletop game where you fly ships against an opponent and try and kill them. He thought I would be totally against it, but he didn’t know that I basically watched all of the dogfights on History channel. And so, we proceeded to play five games and I beat him at four of them. It was great.”
THE POWER OF ANONYMITY
As we’re chatting, second-year Camosun English student Dan Allen-Lompert asks if I’m sure I want to hear the words he uses to describe players online, and he shies away from telling me the most offensive. In terms of harassment, Allen-Lompert says there is a huge difference between video games and tabletop games.
“Video gamers are anonymous,” says Allen-Lompert. “They can troll each other without having to see each others’ faces. Tabletop gamers, it’s a different environment. We’re all together, either being co-operative or competitive, so there’s a different aspect, especially when you’re being co-operative. A friend of mine will say certain things that I won’t say when we’re playing board games, but if we’re playing video games—even to my little lady—I will tell her she’s a bad gamer. I’ll probably use the words ‘pathetic,’ ‘stupid.’”
I ask Allen-Lompert why he would say things like that. His answer is simple enough: he says it’s because he’s in the mood for games.
“It’s not a normal thing, where I just go up to her and go, ‘You’re pathetic, cook my food, go into the kitchen and make me a sandwich. This is pathetic, you’re pathetic.’ It’s not that,” he says. “It’s just, I’m in the mindset of video games, so it’s win or lose. And if I lose, then everything is pathetic. If I win, she didn’t help, I did all the work. But we still won.”
Any online player can tell you how much of a pain other players can be. They stand in the fire and expect to live through it, they don’t help at all, or they do something really, really stupid, and everybody dies. When that happens, tempers flare, screaming happens, and someone usually ends up rage-quitting. Lorysa Fernandez, a student in the Comics and Graphic Novels program, says that she has been called some pretty strong words—including “fucking cunt”—and sometimes the other player didn’t even know she was female.
“I was playing Overwatch,” says Fernandez, “a three-on-three elimination, and someone didn’t like my playing style. It’s not like I was sitting back or coasting and letting other people play. I was just playing in a way this person didn’t view as being perfect, and they started typing into the message box, ‘This person’s trolling us, let’s report them.’ They called me a f-ing c-word. First and foremost, you don’t know I’m actually female, because I was playing on my boyfriend’s account at the time. That was one of the ones that really bothered me because it felt more like, how could you possibly know I’m female? If they’re going to call you something, you find the exact reason that you get to throw that word in their face, but in a way that makes them respect you, not want to tear you down.”
Comics and Graphic Novels student Jessica Ruffolo—who recently won the TECTORIA Video Game Industry Award for Artists—says most gamers she knows are fine with her being a gamer.
“I usually try to talk to people who aren’t misogynists, so most of the boys I’ve talked to are just fine with it and it’s chill,” says Ruffolo. “But if I do meet strangers, I am a little bit cautious, you know? You don’t really know who they are yet.”
Camosun College Student Society First Nations director Draco Recalma—a two-spirit second-year Indigenous Studies student—laughs when I ask if he’d been harassed online before.
“It’s all the time. All the time,” he says. “When I go out to play games, I have to put on a certain façade, I guess, and be more masculine, and then they’ll harass me less. But if I show any kind of sign of femininity, they basically try to kick me out a lot of the time.”
Online players target others in the more notoriously violent video games; Fernandez says that a female gamer is almost guaranteed to get gunned down on the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) network if they’re spotted.
“To be fair, if you’re on GTA, you know the world you’re stepping into beforehand,” says Fernandez. “But I was on there with my significant other, so I knew I at least I had someone to back me up if someone did come target me. But I didn’t realize, until this first time I was starting to play the GTA online features, how male gamers target female gamers in that game. There are people who, if they see another online player, they’re just going to gun them down anyway. But from what I’ve been told, if you’re a female gamer on the network, you’re almost guaranteed to get gunned down if you get spotted.”
I’ve often wondered what someone gets out of deliberately being mean to another player. Allen-Lompert says there’s a certain feeling of catharsis in being a troll.
“Especially if you’re an angry person like me and you dislike people,” says Allen-Lompert, “and you’re very competitive when you want to play games. If I lose, I feel a lot better when I just let it out, instead of just holding it in. And everybody tells us, ‘You should let it out anyway.’ It’s mostly a catharsis. But if they’re stupid, once again, they deserve what they get. Most of the time, it’s not intentional. Probably about 80 percent of the time, it’s not intentional. But there’s a good 10 percent there when that person just deserves a good reaming.”
Jordan Abrey, a Digital Production, Writing and Design student at Camosun, says that the world of gamers is a world of poorly socialized people who aren’t very good at communicating with each other.
“That’s why they’re there, playing video games,” says Abrey. “It’s easy; it’s comfortable for them. They don’t have to worry about embarrassing themselves or saying the wrong thing. And when they’re in a situation when they’re playing with a girl—there’s probably like two girls in a server, or whatever—they find themselves in this position where they actually try. And they try and they fail. They have elementary-school capabilities of getting along with the opposite sex. Because they’ve been so suppressed that they try, and they’re failing, and they’re hurting… they’re offending the girls, and a lot of the time they feel really bad. But I don’t really feel bad for the guys. I mean, I don’t think that they’re the villains. They’re saying the things, they’re doing the things, and they’re really wrong, obviously, but they’re just trying.”
While more of a console gamer, Olivia Roberts, also in the Comics and Graphic Novels program, says that she hasn’t really experienced harassment.
“But back in high school, I did feel like I was one of those very rare girls who admitted to being a total geek and playing games,” says Roberts. “If you think about it in an isolated way, to me it’s not considered a bad thing. It actually made me feel more unique, in a way.”
DIVERSITY DILEMMAS
Today, diversity in video games leaves a lot to be desired. Women are shown to be weak, witless, incompetent, and expendable. Fernandez says that the issue has become a lot more transparent over the past few years.
“In the ’90s, there was such a definitive boys-versus-girls side to it,” says Fernandez. “Because I played Assassin’s Creed and I never once took a moment to realize there are several times when prostitutes in those games get held at knifepoint or at gunpoint and you never have an opportunity to save them. They’re literally pawns in the game. You can also use them to distract people, by basically walking in front of them and flirting with them. That’s what happens in an industry where we let the other gender dictate how we are depicted.”
To the ire of the old boys’ club of the online world, gaming companies—board, tabletop, and video—are realizing this need for better representation of non-male characters and are starting to embrace diversity. What the boys’ club doesn’t seem to realize is that a lot of people aren’t actually asking that scantily clad women in video games disappear altogether. Greenlees says there’s nothing wrong with sexualizing some characters.
“There’s a niche for that,” she says. “I think the problem is that niche being mainstream. I look forward to it being less mainstream and having more body positivity in all ways. I look forward to having a game sometime where heteronormative characters—male or female—are either equally proportionate to all others or the token characters, for a change. Because it’s not just the women in gaming, it’s the trans women, the trans men, the asexual characters who you basically don’t see.”
Ruffolo says that she wants to see more diversity in games as well, pointing specifically to the representation of women of colour.
“I don’t even necessarily want strong girl characters, just characters that aren’t objectified,” she says. “They can have their flaws, and maybe they’re sensitive and everything, but they’re not treated so static, as a girl character often is. Just a real character.”
Roberts hopes that gaming companies will change their representation of women characters in the days to come.
“It’s fine to sexualize a little bit, but too much, and you’re kind of losing the main focus,” she says. “But in the future, I’m hoping that there will be more fleshed-out characters, as opposed to just, ‘Oh, hey, you’re a female character, let’s put the bounce simulator on you, and we’re good to go.”
Allen-Lompert doesn’t see a problem with the way women are portrayed in video games now, but he also says he wouldn’t be upset if women got better representation.
“I think women are in a huge position of power, because men just want to be with them,” he says. “That alone, you can bend us to whatever way you want to bend us. I don’t have a problem with the way it is now. If I want to play a video game where there’s a smart lady, who’s dressed up in a formal uniform, like an office uniform, fine. I’ll play that game. If it’s a good game, I’ll play it. But if it’s sexy ladies, sure, I might lean a little more toward the sexy ladies.”
And Beyea says that sometimes you just have to call guys out on their behaviour, and make them think about it.
“All the guys I’ve ever dealt with, once you tell them, they’re like, ‘Oh, okay. That’s a thing, let’s start doing that,’” says Beyea. “Or often, they just don’t realize. Like, ‘Okay, what you just said there, that’s not cool, and here’s why,’ and they’re like, ‘Oh, okay.’ So, personally, I’ve had to learn to stop doing the puff-up, because that doesn’t work, because then they’ll get hostile to me.”
Male gamers took something I love—gaming and nerd culture—and turned it into something I refuse to do with others. Which takes some of the fun out of it. Part of being a nerd is getting really excited about the super-cool thing—board game, tabletop RPG, video game, console game, whatever—and sharing it with as many people as possible.
But nerds—like myself—are generally antisocial misfits with little to no points in charisma or social skills. We get passionate about a thing and don’t like to see other people tear it down.
So it’s time to rebuild.