How hard is it for game devs to organize themselves and start companies that respect them? Worker-owned game studios. Is that hard? Are they unionizing?
But my point was that imo, everyone that cares about the problem is already aware of it, and more awareness doesn’t solve the problem either.
I’m not sure that’s true. Yes people who care are aware, but I’d argue there are many who don’t now and aren’t aware. I for example didn’t know the impact was measurable in performance. My gullet has been open a few times while gaming online and the regret kicked in not long after, but using my mic has been so rare, I wouldn’t have been able to tie the shitty responses to decreased performance.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the “gamer girls suck because they’re women” crowd joining the challenge figured out that they were part of the performance problem. That is if they had the ability to self-reflect, which probably the minority has.
At a certain point, awareness becomes preaching to the choir. The assholes who are causing the problem won’t change their behavior unless they are forced to.
Oh, in that regard, yes, I agree. At the very base level, assholes will be assholes and those people can only be forced or kicked out
It’s not about experimentation, but awareness. Experiencing life as a woman IRL is not easy - you can’t get a sex change on a whim or quickly hop into a female body. In an online game however, changing your voice is the probably the most convincing way to do so and it’s quite easy.
If even a small percentage of men experiencing the other side of the coin became active in improving the gaming space, it would be something.
Waiting and hoping for better moderation tools and clear community standards is non-active course of “action”. It’s like saying "I’m not going to vote because the system is shit 🙅 " and expecting it to get better.
If your view is that most people are self-centered and nasty I think you maybe need to socialize with different people. Like you said the anonymity of the internet dehumanizes people and encourages more toxic behavior, I don’t believe most people really are so toxic though.
It comes from real life experience. Growing up where I did was eye-opening to human misery and cruelty. Sadly, other people had it even worse than I did. I’ll stop there before I get too negative.
Oh no, there are definitely racist and misogynist gamers out there, no doubt. It’s just that women are easily identifiable by their voice (or being confused for 10 year old kids), which stands out. It’s the same as having another skin color, get-up, car, that the majority of your area - it stands out.
The article you posted doesn’t mention (nor link to a study) about how harassment changed with voice changers, which I would be interested in. My guess would be that it becomes comparable to that experienced by male or male sounding gamers - which the article doesn’t mention either.
It’s very obvious you’re not a woman, frankly.
I actually quit playing online games with people who aren’t friends and when I did, the mic was mostly off + other players were muted very often. Do you still think I’m not a woman?