Funnily enough despite the stereotypes that are bandied about in the depiction of each, the gaming community is most similar to physical sports in regards to the attitudes that dominate it.
Totally, the same kind of dumb bullshit I've seen in MMO chat channels, and guild channels is just as awful as "locker room" talk.
It's worse imo. Gaming is all the shitty and competitive aspects of sports with none of the concepts of sportsmanship.
Most depictions of 'sportsmanship' are purely PR, and absolutely doesn't extend to the women in the sporting community.
Nah. Especially in children's sports leagues these kind of concepts frequently drive rule-making and culture. There is a socially and authoritatively enforced code of conduct to some extent or another. More in some sports then others.
It's also when gender segregation in sports is first introduced and ingrained, with the least reason to do so. Young girls who wish to play sports in boys teams are met with derision and discouragement, and when there is a team for girls, it's almost always less funded and supported.
Not sure what thus has to do with the idea of sportsmanship honestly. But regardless, like a lot of things it's both variable and getting better over time. There's lots of growth in girl's sports from my experience and girls participating in boy's sports at lower age levels has been a thing for quite awhile now, though generally not at high numbers. Most of the discouragement I saw and heard about from women while participating in women's sports was directed at them by their own families frankly and not by their fellow players or coaches or whatnot.
Because saying 'the sports community is less toxic than the video game community because of 'sportsmanship'' in the scope of a #MeToo thread is pretty fucking vile, considering that women have historically never been the recipients of this gift in either.
Sportsmanship and a lack of sexism are not really the same thing though. It's different parallel concepts of proper behaviour that deal with different things. The video game esports thing imo is basically all the issue you see in sports but with extra issues on top of that, some that end up related to #MeToo or the like and some not, because of the lack of any sort of culture of sportsmanship to dictate behaviour.
Right, and I'm saying that 'sportsmanship' doesn't dictate behavior in the sporting community's treatment of women. Said behavior objectifies them and dehumanizes them and harms them just as much as any other community, because the sporting community largely doesn't consider women to be members unless they express a willingness to excuse its problematic and harmful behaviors.
That really depends and is often not accurate in my experience. It depends on a lot of things but plenty of sporting communities consider women to be members. Perhaps one of the things to emphasize here is that sports culture isn't just professional sports culture or the feeder systems into that. It's not even primarily that frankly, given the number of people who aren't in those systems.
And while sportsmanship itself is generally not directly concerned with gender-relations in my experience, it is concerned a lot with how you treat other competitors, which as I said earlier can end up touching on those issues. It's also got plenty of experience with things like "How not to get fucking sued" that mean organizations will have rules and guidelines that would look at some of the shit you see described above about esports and go "what in the fuck are you doing?".
Well then allow me to state that your experience is woefully inadequate to be making that claim with any credibility.
And yours isn't somehow? Come on.
Reading about esports from the perspective of being involved in sports is like a giant "Jesus christ, what are you people doing?". Some of it just little stuff that's got nothing to do with the current topic, some of it definitely touching on it.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I'm of the view that the competitive bracket of video games reflects the community of the game itself. It does come with the added caveat though that through the fame gained comes power to abuse, which is kinda what this thread is about.
Enforcing ethical standards on the competitive bracket MIGHT trickle down to the community level but I'm not so sure it is guaranteed. At minimum though, it would prevent abusers from getting fame and fortune, as well as not being an influence on younger people. Traditional sports have declared such intentions but you still have instances like football players who have committed crimes still playing the game. I guess it's up to video games to be better.
As for the community level, I have been arguing for years that as you find shitlords you do what you can to convince them to stop, and if they refuse, they can't be a part of your community. Let them gather into their own groups of toxicity - what eventually happens is they start infighting over stupid shit and continue to fracture, to the point that some of them will come around. Not all, but some. Again, at minimum this will create an "out of sight, out of mind" effect, which will spare people from being in the presence of their abusers or those who remind them of their abusers.
Funnily enough despite the stereotypes that are bandied about in the depiction of each, the gaming community is most similar to physical sports in regards to the attitudes that dominate it.
Totally, the same kind of dumb bullshit I've seen in MMO chat channels, and guild channels is just as awful as "locker room" talk.
It's worse imo. Gaming is all the shitty and competitive aspects of sports with none of the concepts of sportsmanship.
Most depictions of 'sportsmanship' are purely PR, and absolutely doesn't extend to the women in the sporting community.
Nah. Especially in children's sports leagues these kind of concepts frequently drive rule-making and culture. There is a socially and authoritatively enforced code of conduct to some extent or another. More in some sports then others.
It's also when gender segregation in sports is first introduced and ingrained, with the least reason to do so. Young girls who wish to play sports in boys teams are met with derision and discouragement, and when there is a team for girls, it's almost always less funded and supported.
Not sure what thus has to do with the idea of sportsmanship honestly. But regardless, like a lot of things it's both variable and getting better over time. There's lots of growth in girl's sports from my experience and girls participating in boy's sports at lower age levels has been a thing for quite awhile now, though generally not at high numbers. Most of the discouragement I saw and heard about from women while participating in women's sports was directed at them by their own families frankly and not by their fellow players or coaches or whatnot.
Because saying 'the sports community is less toxic than the video game community because of 'sportsmanship'' in the scope of a #MeToo thread is pretty fucking vile, considering that women have historically never been the recipients of this gift in either.
Sportsmanship and a lack of sexism are not really the same thing though. It's different parallel concepts of proper behaviour that deal with different things. The video game esports thing imo is basically all the issue you see in sports but with extra issues on top of that, some that end up related to #MeToo or the like and some not, because of the lack of any sort of culture of sportsmanship to dictate behaviour.
Right, and I'm saying that 'sportsmanship' doesn't dictate behavior in the sporting community's treatment of women. Said behavior objectifies them and dehumanizes them and harms them just as much as any other community, because the sporting community largely doesn't consider women to be members unless they express a willingness to excuse its problematic and harmful behaviors.
That really depends and is often not accurate in my experience. It depends on a lot of things but plenty of sporting communities consider women to be members. Perhaps one of the things to emphasize here is that sports culture isn't just professional sports culture or the feeder systems into that. It's not even primarily that frankly, given the number of people who aren't in those systems.
And while sportsmanship itself is generally not directly concerned with gender-relations in my experience, it is concerned a lot with how you treat other competitors, which as I said earlier can end up touching on those issues. It's also got plenty of experience with things like "How not to get fucking sued" that mean organizations will have rules and guidelines that would look at some of the shit you see described above about esports and go "what in the fuck are you doing?".
Well then allow me to state that your experience is woefully inadequate to be making that claim with any credibility.
And yours isn't somehow? Come on.
Reading about esports from the perspective of being involved in sports is like a giant "Jesus christ, what are you people doing?". Some of it just little stuff that's got nothing to do with the current topic, some of it definitely touching on it.
I've spent a good deal of time directly interacting with both, often concurrently; so yeah.
Esports teams, just like any sports team, are actually very cordial with one another! They're courteous and respectful while still being competitive. They acknowledge that it's just a contest and that there are no personal stakes. Many esports players are true 'sportsman' and keep a healthy emotional distance between the outcome of a match and how they view their opponents as a result. There's very little animosity or negative treatment to people they view as being part of their community, which once again doesn't typically include women.
And they're treated like athletes by their fans and sponsors, so in turn they feel comfortable acting like how they perceive athletes act. Complete with their treatment of women. And their fans and viewers follow suit, because they like this person who is charming and charismatic.
And sports communities, even local ones and at the formative level, establish all of these worse tendencies just as heavily.
The ironic part about your argument is that the video game community downplays their own general misogyny by comparing themselves to the sports community! Just an endless cycle of everyone pointing fingers at one another.
I can understand an initial reaction of 'woah, this community *I* identify with can't possibly be as bad as this community I *don't* identify with! Those other people are way worse!' But I would urge you not to do that, and to confront the realities rather than attempting to excuse or minimize them.
I'm of the view that the competitive bracket of video games reflects the community of the game itself. It does come with the added caveat though that through the fame gained comes power to abuse, which is kinda what this thread is about.
Enforcing ethical standards on the competitive bracket MIGHT trickle down to the community level but I'm not so sure it is guaranteed. At minimum though, it would prevent abusers from getting fame and fortune, as well as not being an influence on younger people. Traditional sports have declared such intentions but you still have instances like football players who have committed crimes still playing the game. I guess it's up to video games to be better.
As for the community level, I have been arguing for years that as you find shitlords you do what you can to convince them to stop, and if they refuse, they can't be a part of your community. Let them gather into their own groups of toxicity - what eventually happens is they start infighting over stupid shit and continue to fracture, to the point that some of them will come around. Not all, but some. Again, at minimum this will create an "out of sight, out of mind" effect, which will spare people from being in the presence of their abusers or those who remind them of their abusers.
Communities that center around a person or group of people really need to take direction from the people that community is centered around in order to have any lasting impact. A top-down approach is always going to be required.
Even if a community tries to police itself, and even if they're effective at it, as long as the spotlight is being shone on problematic individuals, people will always be quick to rationalize their own efforts at emulating said problematic behavior.
Which is actually quite a bit different than an entire organization trying to take steps. Because the 'sports' community is actually just a collection of tons of smaller communities, based around individual sports and leagues and teams and players, just as the 'video game community' actually encompasses all of the leagues and conventions and genres and titles and teams and individual players. Enforcing ethical standards from these organizations can absolutely have an impact, but not if they target the fans or greater community directly. Their efforts would be too many steps removed to be noticed. What would have to happen is these organizations to put pressure on their teams, in hopes of putting pressure on players, who would ultimately, hopefully, reach fans.
I'll also fully admit I know the gaming community better than I do like the sports community. So my perception is molded by my disgust at routine behaviors I witness in my community and the silence from that community regarding those behaviors.
Like all these "oh my god this streamer was a creeper/rapist" things have another gross element that a lot of those communities knew about these guys, did stuff to distance their events from these guys but didn't warn the outside community at large.
Unless you have direct evidence that is probably the wiser case given that people are falsely accused and stories do circulate. And that it might not be their place to share given they were not the victim. As evidenced by the last few pages of this thread.
I'll also fully admit I know the gaming community better than I do like the sports community. So my perception is molded by my disgust at routine behaviors I witness in my community and the silence from that community regarding those behaviors.
Like all these "oh my god this streamer was a creeper/rapist" things have another gross element that a lot of those communities knew about these guys, did stuff to distance their events from these guys but didn't warn the outside community at large.
Unless you have direct evidence that is probably the wiser case given that people are falsely accused and stories do circulate. And that it might not be their place to share given they were not the victim. As evidenced by the last few pages of this thread.
You can boot people out of events without being specific about why. Being quiet just generates the missing stair problem.
Also, it's not that this is somehow a 'gaming problem'. This is a humanity problem.
People abuse power for their own gains everywhere, to the detriment and suffering of others.
You'll find this everywhere you look, once you look.
I find this argument in this thread to be as convincing and relevant as "All Lives Matter".
That is super callous and rude, and I will not let it stand that you compare me with these racists assholes. Wow. I'm really angry. This is extremely insulting.
No, it does not compare to it.
I was referring mostly to the conversation about how "Nintendo was wise not to do online because it's a cesspool"
No, they just had no proper strategy and can maybe circumvent some of the blame going around (and there's plenty), but they also, with their non-involvement, did nothing to prevent it.
I'm saying sexism and abuse is a problem everywhere, and if you act like it's more awful in gaming, you further the interpretation that it's somehow not that big and just happening in some toxic circles. It's not.
You need to look to the solutions other places are trying to use and use those in gaming, and everywhere.
To take your super insulting line of reasoning, it's like you're going
"racism isn't systematic, it's just a problem of some places!"
Same for sexism. Everyone needs to fight it where they are. But it is everywhere and will come out everywhere, and the fight will have to go on for a long time, probably forever
Right, so JK Rowling’s disgusting transphobic bullshit aside, does Nintendo have anything to do with Smash tournaments other than having made the game? I’m certain they can’t be too happy about their games being associated with all of this, considering their family friendly image.
They sort of hate their games being used for tournaments, they push that smash products are meant for everyone to enjoy at home together. Theres theory that a previous game involved a 'trip' mechanism where your character could just trip over themselves when moving at any time, to stifle competitive high level play.(Imagine in street fighter you go to do a move, and sometimes your character just falls over instead)
Nintendo went on a campaign of DMCA'ing any video content of their games being put online, and forced a program where you have to have them take the monetized money from your content, and then they pay you from that. They used this system to lock out tournament streaming and tried to do takedowns on events that would stream smash. Nintendo is about 2 decades behind when it comes to the internet and highly skeptical of it. In a few cases they've actively hampered features to make consumers not want to engage with online in their products.
Given how toxic literally all fighting game communities seem to be, I'm not surprised that Nintendo wants to shut down the scene as much as possible. The only "good" stories I've ever heard come from that particular subset of gamer chuds is usually related to incredible displays of technical skill versus incredible displays of humanity.
Anything bad come out about SonicFox yet? Everything I've heard about the black, gay, nb, furry, 5 time Evo winner has been pretty much inspirational.
Nothing to my knowledge and he has come out swinging hard and calling out people who he knew.
If nothing else, he's trying to clean house where it needs cleaning.
Allegations came out for one of their friends and follow DBZ player, Nakkiel, and their response was to basically both sides it and victim blame.
The allegation was (Trigger warning for sexual assault)
him fingering her while she slept. This was after dismissing her being "too tired" as a reason for not having sex with him and generally not taking no as an answer.
Right, so JK Rowling’s disgusting transphobic bullshit aside, does Nintendo have anything to do with Smash tournaments other than having made the game? I’m certain they can’t be too happy about their games being associated with all of this, considering their family friendly image.
They sort of hate their games being used for tournaments, they push that smash products are meant for everyone to enjoy at home together. Theres theory that a previous game involved a 'trip' mechanism where your character could just trip over themselves when moving at any time, to stifle competitive high level play.(Imagine in street fighter you go to do a move, and sometimes your character just falls over instead)
Nintendo went on a campaign of DMCA'ing any video content of their games being put online, and forced a program where you have to have them take the monetized money from your content, and then they pay you from that. They used this system to lock out tournament streaming and tried to do takedowns on events that would stream smash. Nintendo is about 2 decades behind when it comes to the internet and highly skeptical of it. In a few cases they've actively hampered features to make consumers not want to engage with online in their products.
Given how toxic literally all fighting game communities seem to be, I'm not surprised that Nintendo wants to shut down the scene as much as possible. The only "good" stories I've ever heard come from that particular subset of gamer chuds is usually related to incredible displays of technical skill versus incredible displays of humanity.
Anything bad come out about SonicFox yet? Everything I've heard about the black, gay, nb, furry, 5 time Evo winner has been pretty much inspirational.
Nothing to my knowledge and he has come out swinging hard and calling out people who he knew.
If nothing else, he's trying to clean house where it needs cleaning.
Allegations came out for one of their friends and follow DBZ player, Nakkiel, and their response was to basically both sides it and victim blame.
The allegation was (Trigger warning for sexual assault)
him fingering her while she slept. This was after dismissing her being "too tired" as a reason for not having sex with him and generally not taking no as an answer.
Well that is really not great. I will wait to pass judgement to see if they double down or not when people point out the flaws in that line of reasoning. And the only reason I am giving them that much is because they are gay and perceived by society as a man. Also 22 which is probably the bigger reason.
They do go into a bit more detail saying that the only reason that guy's getting as much of a pass he is is that the dude stopped the moment he heard "no". Sonicfox then expounds further about making sure that kinda stuff is okay beforehand and some of their own experiences.
I can obviously see where it shouldn't have been done in the first place, but as far as their more nuanced take on the situation, I personally see where Sonicfox is coming from and why they wouldn't necessarily grab their well-used pitchfork in this instance.
The rape accusations I mentioned up thread are basically confirmed. A former mod of one of the men who raped a woman at SGDQ, Giantwaffles specifically, has come forward to say that he spoke directly with the guy after the events and he confessed to raping her. The mod claims he never showed any sign of the pain he had caused but was only worried about how it would affect his streaming. Going to spoil this next bit at it is basically just personal stuff.
I think I am done with this for a while. I know that all this has to come out in order for change to be made but it is seriously messing with me. Between this, the absolutely disgusting lack of action taken by the federal government over the coronavirus, and the atrocities being committed daily by the police against black people I need a break. I sincerely thank those of you who are having to wade through this seemingly never ending river of shit so that it can be brought to light. But I just can't do it right now.
They do go into a bit more detail saying that the only reason that guy's getting as much of a pass he is is that the dude stopped the moment he heard "no". Sonicfox then expounds further about making sure that kinda stuff is okay beforehand and some of their own experiences.
I can obviously see where it shouldn't have been done in the first place, but as far as their more nuanced take on the situation, I personally see where Sonicfox is coming from and why they wouldn't necessarily grab their well-used pitchfork in this instance.
From personal experience:
Someone who is asleep is not able to consent. Someone who is just barely waking up is not able to consent. When you are first waking up, you have a difficult time assessing what is and is not real. You can quite literally get all the way through sex before your brain catches up with your body and you become fully aware of what you're doing. You do NOT start going at someone while they're not fully awake unless they have given you permission ahead of time. It's basically being drunk and/or hallucinating.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
So I caught up on the last few pages of this thread and have a question: among all this discussion about the abuse of minors participating in these events is there anyone suggesting imposing a hard age requirement? I am not in any way excusing the acts of abusers but does it not make sense to keep children out of adult-dominated competitions? Out of curiosity I looked up player eligibility requirements for League of Legends participants and they have age requirements of 17 for main League Championship Series events and 16 for League Academy Championship Series events. Should this not be the standard? A 14-year-old can't take part in athletics for adults. Why should e-sports be any different?
So I caught up on the last few pages of this thread and have a question: among all this discussion about the abuse of minors participating in these events is there anyone suggesting imposing a hard age requirement? I am not in any way excusing the acts of abusers but does it not make sense to keep children out of adult-dominated competitions? Out of curiosity I looked up player eligibility requirements for League of Legends participants and they have age requirements of 17 for main League Championship Series events and 16 for League Academy Championship Series events. Should this not be the standard? A 14-year-old can't take part in athletics for adults. Why should e-sports be any different?
There absolutely should not be children at these events. MAYBE with a parent chaperoning.
Minors=! children. The league standards mentioned above allow minors.
In general, shooing victims out of a space is NOT the best way to handle it. But if you're going to have teens and kids present, you should have enough moderation present to deal with the headaches that causes, whether by requiring a guardian or some other method.
(most of those headaches to be clear won't involve #metoo things. OTOH plan for the worst hope for the best)
I don’t know how I feel about making video game competitions adult-only events. I feel like they should go in the other direction - ban alcohol across the board, institute some kind of required chaperoning, educate children and their families on how every single adult is a dangerous, slavering beast, and then promote young talent.
Okay it may not be that simple I just feel like my take on “think of the children” is more about getting rid of the adults to provide a safe environment for the kinds rather than to exclude them to not provide more toxic opportunities to the adults.
Are my thoughts bad here? I dunno. I am not engaged with esports at all.
Someone posted some new rules a page or two ago. They now explicitly require a chaperone, exclude minors from any events with alcohol, and exclude alcohol from a bunch of events. I think that may be just one organization but it's a start.
I think most athletic events have divisions set aside for young people because they can't actually compete with adults, but kids want to do competition, and by and large adults want kids to exercise competitive spirit in a controlled space. Having them compete with just other kids is great, in that case. Video games are different in that many young people can compete with adults. In addition, my hunch is that the bench just ain't deep enough in most competitive scenes to support two separate leagues. There aren't that many people playing, for example, Smash, on a professional level. It does seem to me, in that case, that the onus should be on the adults to make the scene safe for young folk, rather than trying to kick kids out of competitions we'd normally encourage them to get involved in.
These are just surface thoughts, though, and I'm sure there's a lot of nuance that needs to get worked into this sort of thing.
Edit: It's insane that minors were apparently allowed to go without a chaperone in a remote event that involved adults and alcohol.
I think most athletic events have divisions set aside for young people because they can't actually compete with adults, but kids want to do competition, and by and large adults want kids to exercise competitive spirit in a controlled space. Having them compete with just other kids is great, in that case. Video games are different in that many young people can compete with adults. In addition, my hunch is that the bench just ain't deep enough in most competitive scenes to support two separate leagues. There aren't that many people playing, for example, Smash, on a professional level. It does seem to me, in that case, that the onus should be on the adults to make the scene safe for young folk, rather than trying to kick kids out of competitions we'd normally encourage them to get involved in.
These are just surface thoughts, though, and I'm sure there's a lot of nuance that needs to get worked into this sort of thing.
Yeah, sports do tournaments and shit for kids all the time. The key is it's all run and supervised by adults at all times.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Yeah I am not saying they need to be banned from observing the events just from direct competition with adults. I don't think children should be part of the pro "scene" if you will. I see that photo of the 14-year-old boy on a stream and I just don't think he should be there at all. No matter how talented he may have been, he belongs in the spectators area with a guardian present just like he would be going to a ball game.
Also, it's not that this is somehow a 'gaming problem'. This is a humanity problem.
People abuse power for their own gains everywhere, to the detriment and suffering of others.
You'll find this everywhere you look, once you look.
I find this argument in this thread to be as convincing and relevant as "All Lives Matter".
It's more like if someone were to say
"Why only focus on violence towards black Americans from the cops when it's all over society?"
One, yes, it is correct that sexual harrassment and rape culture do not purely exist in the esports scene. It is also correct they exist elsewhere.
But here's the thing, you can't solve all of everything everywhere at all times all the time. But what we can do, as people who are enthusiastic about video games, is clean up our own house as part of a worldwide effort.
It's not the same thing as "all lives matter", but what it does is normalize the problem instead of compartmentalize it. And compartmentalizing it allows it to be workable by smaller populations of people.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
Age bracketed leagues are also a filter - each tier recruits out of the one below, developing and condensing talent on the way up. E-sports don't really seem to work that way.
That twelve year old boy a few pages back? He was already a top player in the big leagues. It's not developing and condensing talent, it'd be Lebron James beating up a bunch of JV freshmen for laughs.
Age bracketed leagues are also a filter - each tier recruits out of the one below, developing and condensing talent on the way up. E-sports don't really seem to work that way.
That twelve year old boy a few pages back? He was already a top player in the big leagues. It's not developing and condensing talent, it'd be Lebron James beating up a bunch of JV freshmen for laughs.
You can't directly compare here because LeBron with all his skill and ability would be useless if his physical size and performance were that of a child. Same isn't true for esports. Though this is verging on GST territory.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
One of the reasons why I pay zero attention to e-sports is because it borders extremely close on child exploitation for me.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Age bracketed leagues are also a filter - each tier recruits out of the one below, developing and condensing talent on the way up. E-sports don't really seem to work that way.
That twelve year old boy a few pages back? He was already a top player in the big leagues. It's not developing and condensing talent, it'd be Lebron James beating up a bunch of JV freshmen for laughs.
LeBron James did spend his teens utterly dominating other teens. He still couldn't go pro until legal adulthood.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
Other sports allow people to go pro earlier. Just googling it, the English Premier League's youngest pro was 16yrs and 30 days old. Freddy Adu somewhat famously went pro in MLS at 14. Kobe Bryant signed his 1st contract at 17 (I think he had to re-sign it at 18). Baseball is kind of unique as far as major US sports, but barring special circumstances, every team signs multiple 16yr olds every year.
Moreover, I'm not sure it's a great idea to put an arbitrary age minimum on competitions with millions of dollars on the line. It seems like too often these arbitrary limits are really just ways for people to exploit labor in some way, like the NCAA for example.
A much better comparison than sports would be boardgames. Chess, Go, and the like have been around for decades and preteen prodigies beating masters is a common enough trope that I have to assume they have worked how to handle this sort of thing. Or maybe those communities have all the same problems.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
A much better comparison than sports would be boardgames. Chess, Go, and the like have been around for decades and preteen prodigies beating masters is a common enough trope that I have to assume they have worked how to handle this sort of thing. Or maybe those communities have all the same problems.
I swear I read an article recently about a chess metoo moment, but quarantine plays so many tricks with my mind.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
The labor isn't the thing harming the child here.
I have to wonder if the style of competition we embody in the US is actually harming the kids who participate.
I know competition can be good in developing well-rounded individuals, but when you throw money and national attention into it I kind of think you're no better off than pimping them on Disney XD for advertiser dollars.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
The labor isn't the thing harming the child here.
I have to wonder if the style of competition we embody in the US is actually harming the kids who participate.
I know competition can be good in developing well-rounded individuals, but when you throw money and national attention into it I kind of think you're no better off than pimping them on Disney XD for advertiser dollars.
I mean how often are seeing kids from broken homes who were used for ad clicks on youtube or regular acting wind up messed up people. Is it a good thing to push a 14 year old into a money competition for a video game?
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
The competition isn't causing the problem, though. Why limit a kid's chance to make some money and achieve something, when the problem is clearly the parts where nobody is holding a controller?
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
The labor isn't the thing harming the child here.
According to what? We have lots of restrictions on child labour, period. And even then it can still be a real shit show.
Just cause it's video games doesn't suddenly change anything.
SumaiL is a millionaire and has been playing DOTA2 since he was about 13, winning his first Valve event at 15 and winning The International at 16. The International prize that year was $6,634,661 for the winning team.
There's been more than enough evidence that MOBAS are just as capable of being exploitation pits of toxic masculinity and child rape. It's not just a Street Fighter or Smash thing.
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And yours isn't somehow? Come on.
Reading about esports from the perspective of being involved in sports is like a giant "Jesus christ, what are you people doing?". Some of it just little stuff that's got nothing to do with the current topic, some of it definitely touching on it.
Enforcing ethical standards on the competitive bracket MIGHT trickle down to the community level but I'm not so sure it is guaranteed. At minimum though, it would prevent abusers from getting fame and fortune, as well as not being an influence on younger people. Traditional sports have declared such intentions but you still have instances like football players who have committed crimes still playing the game. I guess it's up to video games to be better.
As for the community level, I have been arguing for years that as you find shitlords you do what you can to convince them to stop, and if they refuse, they can't be a part of your community. Let them gather into their own groups of toxicity - what eventually happens is they start infighting over stupid shit and continue to fracture, to the point that some of them will come around. Not all, but some. Again, at minimum this will create an "out of sight, out of mind" effect, which will spare people from being in the presence of their abusers or those who remind them of their abusers.
I've spent a good deal of time directly interacting with both, often concurrently; so yeah.
Esports teams, just like any sports team, are actually very cordial with one another! They're courteous and respectful while still being competitive. They acknowledge that it's just a contest and that there are no personal stakes. Many esports players are true 'sportsman' and keep a healthy emotional distance between the outcome of a match and how they view their opponents as a result. There's very little animosity or negative treatment to people they view as being part of their community, which once again doesn't typically include women.
And they're treated like athletes by their fans and sponsors, so in turn they feel comfortable acting like how they perceive athletes act. Complete with their treatment of women. And their fans and viewers follow suit, because they like this person who is charming and charismatic.
And sports communities, even local ones and at the formative level, establish all of these worse tendencies just as heavily.
The ironic part about your argument is that the video game community downplays their own general misogyny by comparing themselves to the sports community! Just an endless cycle of everyone pointing fingers at one another.
I can understand an initial reaction of 'woah, this community *I* identify with can't possibly be as bad as this community I *don't* identify with! Those other people are way worse!' But I would urge you not to do that, and to confront the realities rather than attempting to excuse or minimize them.
Communities that center around a person or group of people really need to take direction from the people that community is centered around in order to have any lasting impact. A top-down approach is always going to be required.
Even if a community tries to police itself, and even if they're effective at it, as long as the spotlight is being shone on problematic individuals, people will always be quick to rationalize their own efforts at emulating said problematic behavior.
Which is actually quite a bit different than an entire organization trying to take steps. Because the 'sports' community is actually just a collection of tons of smaller communities, based around individual sports and leagues and teams and players, just as the 'video game community' actually encompasses all of the leagues and conventions and genres and titles and teams and individual players. Enforcing ethical standards from these organizations can absolutely have an impact, but not if they target the fans or greater community directly. Their efforts would be too many steps removed to be noticed. What would have to happen is these organizations to put pressure on their teams, in hopes of putting pressure on players, who would ultimately, hopefully, reach fans.
Unless you have direct evidence that is probably the wiser case given that people are falsely accused and stories do circulate. And that it might not be their place to share given they were not the victim. As evidenced by the last few pages of this thread.
I find this argument in this thread to be as convincing and relevant as "All Lives Matter".
You can boot people out of events without being specific about why. Being quiet just generates the missing stair problem.
Isn't the entire point of this movement is that it DOES happen everywhere, and it needs to be rooted and burned out where it is found?
Like, yes, abusers are in gaming, in politics, in film, and ALL of it is unacceptable. I feel that was the point that was being made.
EDIT: to expand on that, it's not a puerile dismissal like "All lives matter" or "Blue lives matter" is.
Yeah, this is about focusing on a concentration of bad.
That is super callous and rude, and I will not let it stand that you compare me with these racists assholes. Wow. I'm really angry. This is extremely insulting.
No, it does not compare to it.
I was referring mostly to the conversation about how "Nintendo was wise not to do online because it's a cesspool"
No, they just had no proper strategy and can maybe circumvent some of the blame going around (and there's plenty), but they also, with their non-involvement, did nothing to prevent it.
I'm saying sexism and abuse is a problem everywhere, and if you act like it's more awful in gaming, you further the interpretation that it's somehow not that big and just happening in some toxic circles. It's not.
You need to look to the solutions other places are trying to use and use those in gaming, and everywhere.
To take your super insulting line of reasoning, it's like you're going
"racism isn't systematic, it's just a problem of some places!"
Same for sexism. Everyone needs to fight it where they are. But it is everywhere and will come out everywhere, and the fight will have to go on for a long time, probably forever
Allegations came out for one of their friends and follow DBZ player, Nakkiel, and their response was to basically both sides it and victim blame.
The allegation was (Trigger warning for sexual assault)
Well that is really not great. I will wait to pass judgement to see if they double down or not when people point out the flaws in that line of reasoning. And the only reason I am giving them that much is because they are gay and perceived by society as a man. Also 22 which is probably the bigger reason.
PSN:Furlion
I can obviously see where it shouldn't have been done in the first place, but as far as their more nuanced take on the situation, I personally see where Sonicfox is coming from and why they wouldn't necessarily grab their well-used pitchfork in this instance.
PSN:Furlion
From personal experience:
There absolutely should not be children at these events. MAYBE with a parent chaperoning.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
In general, shooing victims out of a space is NOT the best way to handle it. But if you're going to have teens and kids present, you should have enough moderation present to deal with the headaches that causes, whether by requiring a guardian or some other method.
(most of those headaches to be clear won't involve #metoo things. OTOH plan for the worst hope for the best)
Okay it may not be that simple I just feel like my take on “think of the children” is more about getting rid of the adults to provide a safe environment for the kinds rather than to exclude them to not provide more toxic opportunities to the adults.
Are my thoughts bad here? I dunno. I am not engaged with esports at all.
These are just surface thoughts, though, and I'm sure there's a lot of nuance that needs to get worked into this sort of thing.
Edit: It's insane that minors were apparently allowed to go without a chaperone in a remote event that involved adults and alcohol.
Yeah, sports do tournaments and shit for kids all the time. The key is it's all run and supervised by adults at all times.
It's more like if someone were to say
"Why only focus on violence towards black Americans from the cops when it's all over society?"
One, yes, it is correct that sexual harrassment and rape culture do not purely exist in the esports scene. It is also correct they exist elsewhere.
But here's the thing, you can't solve all of everything everywhere at all times all the time. But what we can do, as people who are enthusiastic about video games, is clean up our own house as part of a worldwide effort.
It's not the same thing as "all lives matter", but what it does is normalize the problem instead of compartmentalize it. And compartmentalizing it allows it to be workable by smaller populations of people.
That twelve year old boy a few pages back? He was already a top player in the big leagues. It's not developing and condensing talent, it'd be Lebron James beating up a bunch of JV freshmen for laughs.
You can't directly compare here because LeBron with all his skill and ability would be useless if his physical size and performance were that of a child. Same isn't true for esports. Though this is verging on GST territory.
We generally have lots of restrictions on child labour.
LeBron James did spend his teens utterly dominating other teens. He still couldn't go pro until legal adulthood.
The labor isn't the thing harming the child here.
Moreover, I'm not sure it's a great idea to put an arbitrary age minimum on competitions with millions of dollars on the line. It seems like too often these arbitrary limits are really just ways for people to exploit labor in some way, like the NCAA for example.
I swear I read an article recently about a chess metoo moment, but quarantine plays so many tricks with my mind.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Also, I highly doubt any 14-year-old Smash player has millions of dollars on the line.
I have to wonder if the style of competition we embody in the US is actually harming the kids who participate.
I know competition can be good in developing well-rounded individuals, but when you throw money and national attention into it I kind of think you're no better off than pimping them on Disney XD for advertiser dollars.
I mean how often are seeing kids from broken homes who were used for ad clicks on youtube or regular acting wind up messed up people. Is it a good thing to push a 14 year old into a money competition for a video game?
pleasepaypreacher.net
probably not in smash, but in other esports its certainly possible. What's the top prize for the LOL, or DOTA championships?
According to what? We have lots of restrictions on child labour, period. And even then it can still be a real shit show.
Just cause it's video games doesn't suddenly change anything.
SumaiL is a millionaire and has been playing DOTA2 since he was about 13, winning his first Valve event at 15 and winning The International at 16. The International prize that year was $6,634,661 for the winning team.
There's been more than enough evidence that MOBAS are just as capable of being exploitation pits of toxic masculinity and child rape. It's not just a Street Fighter or Smash thing.
Fighting games pay almost nothing by comparison.