First, this Reddit post, written by lurker_lenore was written by a rather disgruntled gamer who argues with the necessity for a policy like this. The essay is unsubstantiated, or as the author wrote:

Disclaimer: I don’t have sources for a lot of this. It’s inference based on personal experience, so I welcome anyone who does have a source or correct information.

At least it’s honest, and the author did ask for evidence from readers to strengthen the argument. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem that anyone was able to fulfill the request. lurker_lenore’s main argument was that sexual discrimination in the Xbox Live community is not an issue. In fact, the type of harassment in said community goes well beyond sexual discrimination and is an important part of the experience. By banning sexual harassment, the community is doing a disservice to women who need to develop a thicker skin. The author goes on to argue that sexual harassment in gaming was in fact fabricated by the group Fat, Ugly or Slutty, who fail to recognize that all Xbox Live members experience vile treatment, but women simply “handle it differently.”

In any social environment, individuals will attempt to gain social leverage with their peers, usually in the form of acceptance and approval. In general, women tend to gain this leverage against men by asserting their sexuality; while men gain it between one another via their accomplishments; finally, men seek it from women through emotional empathy.

lurker_lenore’s final arguments against this type of lifetime ban state that it will create a divisive community, including an atmosphere where it is far more acceptable to harass men, where women are marginalized by gamers for being women (because clearly they are not already) AND for thinking that they are better then men and deserve better treatment, and finally, where all the men-hating women will begin to hate Microsoft for:

implicitly stating that women are not as resilient as men, or capable of dealing with insults and trash-talk without kindergarten-esque rules of engagement.

Iron-clad. Surprisingly, not all the comments agree with the author; a few even invite him to play with or as a female avatar so that he might witness the reality of the situation first hand. However, the majority of the comments came from people who agreed. These posts argued that because it is okay to sling homophobic insults at men, sexualized comments directed toward women are fair game, or that the whole reason for the new policy is because the head of 343 is a Feminist, or that women are being infantilized by this policy, or, my personal favorite  that game companies should continue to appeal to their main demographic of white males so that they can sell games.

A few comments brought up questions of enforcing this ban, which is actually a good point. This problem was brought up in a few blogs as well, including one by Mary Sue contributer Becky Chambers. In her piece she applauds the policy, pointing out that Halo 4 and Microsoft are giants in their field, and this could set a precedent for harassment policies all over the industry. Chambers also questions the implementation of the policy, stating that players might benefit from warnings or reports so that they might learn which behavior is acceptable. This leads me to another blog post I found on Gamasutra by Jon W. who challenges the policy because, as he puts it, the game has trained boys to be sexist by supplying them with a game franchise full of “guns and titties.”

In light of these two posts, it will be interesting to see how this permaban will be enforced and whether there is a feedback system that re-educates players in a code of conduct. Finally, however, it should be restated (as it has by many bloggers and journalists including Chambers’ Mary Sue piece) that although Wolfkill and Ross chose to highlight harassment against women in their interview, the Halo 4 policy includes a ban for the myriad of discriminatory comments. It seems that because the two chose to discuss gender in their interview (possibly because they are women), all the male gamers (and I say this because I have not yet read a post by a person who identifies as a women and disagrees with the sentiment of the policy) claiming that women need to ‘ball up or get out’ should be gently reminded that this is a policy meant to make the gaming community a safer place for everyone.

DEAR ADA

By Mitu Khandaker and Emily Flynn-Jones

Dear Ada is a website making a space for feminine (though not necessarily female) voices to talk about & explore their thoughts, feelings and experiences with gender issues and the epistemic community of games. This site will give women from all areas of experience and all angles of expertise in games and feminist discourse the opportunity speak. We want to hear from players, hardcore fans, feminists with valuable perspectives for application to the culture of games, men with feminist messages, indie start-ups, industry professionals and all the in-betweens.  All these voices together can give a greater representation of the diversity of females and perspectives in games and gaming culture today. The diversity can hopefully reach a greater audience, make space for all kinds of perspectives and opinions so as not to alienate anyone who already feels marginalized and provide variety enough of content for individuals to relate. This space can also provide the anonymity for those who feel they need to speak out but might be compromise by doing so.  From the contributions to the site we also hope to be able to study the demographics of contributors (even those that are anonymously published) and track themes that might be useful in pushing forward feminist agendas in the games community and acting for equity.

DRAGONSPEECH

By Heidi McDonald

Dragonspeech is a game that was invented by a workshop group during the inaugural Feminists in Games workshop, in an effort to:

1) demonstrate the efficacy of the FiG organization;

2) address the important issue of harassment in the gaming community;

3) address harassment in society at large.

The game will raise awareness about the effects of all types of harassment in games (as a metaphor for harassment in real life), and will prescribe an effective remedy for harassment in both virtual and real spaces. Dragonspeech will call out game harassment and demonstrate its effects in a visual, tangible way. It also provides a practical solution for harassment in the form of coalition building and peer support. As a secondary agenda, the game will bring awareness to the Feminists in Games group and be a tangible example of the kinds of work done by us, at our conference.

EXPANDING AND STRENGTHENING THE DAMES MAKING GAMES NETWORK

By Cecily Carver, Jennie Faber, Alison Harvey & Helen Kennedy

Building on past success: The New Game Makers/DMG Incubator 2

The New Game Makers is a series jointly presented by Bento Miso and Dames Making Games. The series will bring women working in diverse roles within the games industry to Miso for a 1-hour lecture followed by a 2–3 hour hands-on workshop where participants will work on a small project with the assistance of the guest speaker and other participants. The series will run in conjunction with a six-week Dames Making Games (DMG) incubator based on the model of the Difference Engine Initiative (DEI) and the first DMG incubator, which will guide and support a small group of women through the process of creating a small, complete game.

DMG Toronto’s second incubator will run from July through mid-August (six weeks), in conjunction with a speaker series (The New Game Makers) featuring women game professionals. The guest speakers come from a wide range of roles, from producer and management positions to design, music, art, and development; and from organization sized from small indie companies to triple-A studios. Incubator participants will be selected from an application pool, with the goal of creating an enthusiastic and committed group with a diverse mix of skills and interests who might not otherwise have the opportunity to develop their interest in games in this way. While the incubator will be limited to six participants, the speaker series will accommodate a larger group (up to 30) for each presentation.

Extending the network: DMG Montreal & DMG Bristol

Working in collaboration with DMG, Alison and Helen will organize incubators in two novel contexts: Montreal, Quebec and Bristol, UK. Both of these settings feature growing independent game communities that would greatly benefit from context-specific feminist interventions aimed at encouraging more female-identified people to feel confident in the process of games design. Like DMG and DEI, the purposes of these context-aware interventions will be to facilitate community building, networking, skills development, mentoring, and personal growth among participants, as well as the creation of games by novice developers.

We will make interventions in our respective communities with the comprehensive documentation and feedback generated in DEI and the activities of DMG, by past facilitators, embedded academics, and current organizers. Using these best practices as guidelines, we will then consult with constituents in the local communities (via indie game collectives, local academics, developer hubs) about ideal locations, promotions venues, showcase locations, etc. Structurally, incubators will be run in the format of DEI, with six 3–4 hour sessions run over 6 weeks and capped off with a showcase to demonstrate the completed games.

 PsXXY¥borg (pronounced “cyborg”)

By Hannah Epstein

The purpose of this game is to emancipate a domestic game designer, so that she can create a game that is beautiful, immersive and transcendent of gender normative representation. Through using Unity and the Kinect, PsXXY¥borg will come to life as multi-player game, suited for public installation, as the more people playing, the more complex the game play will become, all in the name of redefining the social and political importance of games. The game, PsXXY¥borg, will be inspired directly by the writing of Donna Haraway and her proposed post-gender cyborg. It will be designed to contain these elements of theory, putting into practice and artistic expression the very ideal beliefs housed within the post-gender cyborg framework.

WOMEN IN THE GAME INDUSTRY – LESSONS TO LEARN

By Sonja Ganguin and Anna Hoblitz

Gender differences are typically discussed when it comes to the use of computer– and video games. However, today, the typical gamer is not male. In Germany, for example, 10.8 million women play regularly – these are 44 % of the gamers (BIU 2012). Yet this positive development cannot be seen in the videogame industry, which is still a male-dominated field. Why only few women work in this creative and challenging area is not quite obvious. At the same time there are successful women in the game industries as producers, developers, publishers, etc. However there is little known about their biographies, careers, points of views and attitudes. What was their specific way into the industry? How would they describe their own role in the business? Are they confronted with gender differences in their daily work and what are their strategies to deal with it? To answer these questions we plan to develop a basic study that focuses on the perspective of women working in the game industry by interviewing them as experts. With guided expert interviews, the women’s biographical status as well as key factors for success could be determined. The identification and analysis of success factors and strategies, for example in the arrays of education, social networking and projects, will indicate possible starting points for supporting female students getting started their career.

On the one hand, the aim of the study is to describe a status quo of the actual situation of women working in the game business. On the other hand, it is necessary to deduce recommendations for effective and appropriate promotional measures to strengthen women’s position and especially to reduce the barriers that prevent them from joining the game industry. This cooperation and the subsequent study intend to take concrete measures, for example a mentoring program for women could be developed which is based on the results of the survey. Female students could get into contact with a female mentor working in the games business and their communication could give some insights into the industry and facilitate young women’s entry into this profession.

The first comes to my attention through an interview posted on ZDNet with Susan Buck, Lecturer at U Penn in website design and development and developer at Photojojo.net. In the interview Buck discusses how she fought her way into the field through self-instruction and the realization that she was not being given the same tools as the young men around her. Most recently, Buck co-founded the organization Web Start Women, an organization dedicated to bringing women into web design, and

cultivating open, supportive, intimidation-free environments where women and girls of all ages can learn, build and code together.

Another project is called AdaCamp. This is another program created to bring women together to increase their participation in open technology and culture fields. AdaCamp 2012 is being held in DC and is a part of a larger project called Ada Initiative, and is

is a 150–200 person unconference in Washington, D.C. on July 10–11, 2012. It is co-located with Wikimania 2012, the global conference for Wikipedia and related Wiki projects. Wikimania brings influential and talented people from around the world who are interested in improving the participation of women in Wikipedia and other open data projects, as shown by Wikimania’s selection of Ada Initiative co-founder Mary Gardiner as a keynote speaker.

Finally, NSERC (National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) has created a webpage dedicated to Women in Science and Engineering in order to provide information about policies aimed at increasing the participation of women in these fields.

Fat, Ugly or Slutty

Fat, Ugly or Slutty: Exposing Harassment in Online Gaming:

Alison Griffith’s talk

Framing Feminism 101: Women’s Everyday, Everynight Lives

Erica Meiners’ talk

Do, Make, Try: Transformative Feminist Work

Emma Westecott: “Game Development as Domestic Practice”

Celia Pearce: “Where the Girls Are: Redrawing the ‘Magic Circle’”

In the meantime, here is a video of the talk by Profs. Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson. This was the FiG welcome talk, and a primer about how we might bring a feminist perspective to our work in the games industry (and to our work in a broader sense). Enjoy! Take notes! (also, wear headphones for the Q&A because it’s a little hard to hear).

The article in highlights a few organizations that led a protest against selling pornography at eye-level, some of which ended in shop owners agreeing to cover up the images on the magazines on display.

As 17-year-old Nina Mega from Edinburgh put it: “Sometimes you get the idea that the world is a pretty misogynistic place and feminists are few and far between, but when you see all those like-minded people together – men and women – you just think: ‘Wow.’”

Nudey magazines aren’t the only things spurring a call for change in the UK. Also particularly upsetting to young feminists is the debate over potential compulsory lessons on abstinence (only for teenage girls of course) as well as the growing anti-abortion movement and the number of women losing their jobs (there are twice as many women expected to lose their jobs as men).

A note to Nina: The world is full of misogyny, but it’s important that we keep organizing and fighting, especially as the going gets tough. Right on.

by Suzanne de Castell