Platform for fun ? Kendra Ednacot plays a video game at Comic-Con, a pop culture convention in San Diego last month. Photo: Sandy Huffaker/The New York Time
Source: Amy O'Leary | New York Times
When Miranda Pakozdi entered the Cross Assault video game tournament this year, she knew she had slim chance of winning the $US25,000 prize. But she was ready to compete and promised fans watching online that she would train just as hard as, if not harder than, anyone else.
Over six days of competition, though, her team's coach, Aris Bakhtanians, interrogated her on camera about her bra size, said ''take off your shirt'' and focused the team's webcam on her chest, feet and legs. He leaned in over her shoulder and smelled her.
Pakozdi, 25, an experienced gamer, has said she always expects a certain amount of trash talk. But, as the only woman on the team, this was too much, especially from her coach, she said. It was after she overheard Bakhtanians defending sexual harassment as part of ''the fighting game community'' that she forfeited the game.
Sexism, racism, homophobia
Sexism, racism, homophobia and general name-calling are longstanding facts of life in certain corners of online video games. But the Cross Assault episode was the first of a series this year that have exposed the severity of the harassment that many women experience in virtual gaming communities.
And a backlash - on Twitter, in videos, on blogs and even in an online comic strip - has moved the issue beyond endless debate among gaming insiders to more public calls for change.
Executives in the $US25 billion-a-year industry are taking note. One game designer's online call for civility prompted a meeting with Microsoft executives about how to better police Xbox Live.
In February, shortly after the Cross Assault tournament, LevelUp, an internet broadcaster of gaming events, barred two commentators who made light of sexual harassment on camera and issued a formal apology, including statements from the commentators.
Even so, Tom Cannon, the co-founder of the largest fighting game tournament, EVO, pulled his company's sponsorship of the weekly LevelUp series, saying ''we cannot continue to let ignorant, hateful speech slide''.
''The nasty undercurrent in the scene isn't a joke or a meme,'' he said. ''It's something we need to fix.''
Bakhtanians, whose actions during the Cross Assault tournament were captured on video, later issued a statement in which he apologised if he had offended anyone. He also blamed ''my own inability in the heat of the moment to defend myself and the community I have loved for over 15 years''.
But the issues raised by the Cross Assault episode gained more attention with Anita Sarkeesian's campaign in May to raise $US6000 on Kickstarter to document how women are portrayed in video games.
Her YouTube and Facebook pages were flooded with hate-filled comments.
People tried to hack her online accounts. Sarkeesian responded by documenting the harassment, posting online the doctored, pornographic images of herself that her detractors had created.
Supporters of her efforts, aghast, donated more than $US150,000, further angering her critics. A man from Ontario created an internet game where players could ''punch'' her, layering bruises and cuts on her image until the screen turns red.
''The gaming industry is actually in the process of changing,'' Sarkeesian said. ''That's a really positive thing, but I think there is a small group of male gamers who feel like gaming belongs to them and are really terrified of that change happening.''
When Sam Killermann, a gamer in Austin, Texas, saw the reaction to Sarkeesian's project, something ''broke through'', he said. A few weeks ago, he began a campaign for ''Gamers Against Bigotry'', asking people to sign a pledge supporting more positive behaviour. The site received 1500 pledges before it was hacked, erasing its list of names.
Fat, Ugly or Slutty
Like Sarkeesian, many women gamers are documenting their experiences on blogs such as Fat, Ugly or Slutty (whose name comes from the typical insults women receive while playing against others online). It cheekily catalogues the slurs, threats and come-ons women receive while playing games such as Resident Evil or Gears of War 3.
The blog publishes screenshots and voice recordings that serve as a kind of universal citation in each new controversy, called upon to settle debates or explode myths. For instance, many of the site's recordings feature deep voices captured from the chat features of online games, debunking the widely held belief that bad behaviour begins and ends with 13-year-old boys.
Jessica Hammer, a longtime player of video games and a researcher at Columbia University, said the percentage of women playing such games online ranges from 12 per cent to close to half, depending on the game type. Industry statistics from the Entertainment Software Association say 47 per cent of game players are women, but that number is frequently viewed as so all-encompassing as to be meaningless, bundling Solitaire alongside Diablo III.
Women report greater levels of harassment in more competitive games involving strangers. Some abandon anonymous play for safer communities or ''clans'' where good behaviour is the norm.
In other game communities, however, sexual threats, taunts and come-ons are common, as is criticism that women's presence is ''distracting'' or that they are simply trying to seek attention. Some have been offered money or virtual ''gold'' for online sex. Some have been stalked online and in person.
Stephen Toulouse, who was the head of enforcement for Xbox Live from 2007 until February, policed the most egregious behaviour on the network, owned by Microsoft. And women were the most frequent target of harassment, he said. In that role, Toulouse experienced the wrath of angry gamers first hand, who figured out where he lived, then called the police with false reports about trouble at his house (more than once, SWAT teams were sent).
James Portnow, a game designer who has worked on titles including Call of Duty and Farmville, wrote an episode about harassment for his animated web series Extra Credits. In it, the narrator says, ''Right now, it's like we gave the school bully access to the intercom system and told him that everyone would hear whatever he had to say. It's time we take away that megaphone.''
At the end of the video, viewers were encouraged to email Microsoft's Xbox Live's team, asking for changes to communication tools and improvements to reporting systems.
After hearing from gamers, Microsoft called Portnow and invited him to headquarters. He met with a team of executives, including a vice-president, for four hours, and they discussed how Microsoft was developing better algorithms for things like automatically muting repeat offenders. Microsoft confirmed it was working towards improvements to its community tools.
''For the longest time, people have seen games as a children's pastime, and we as an industry have stood behind this idea,'' said Portnow, who will be speaking on a gaming convention panel later this month called Ending Harassment in Gaming.
''But that's not true any longer,'' he added. ''We are a real mass medium, and we have a real effect on the culture. We have to take a step beyond this idea that nothing we could possibly do could be negative, or hurt people.''
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