PC Inside The Culture Of Sexism At Riot Games; Update - Riot employees say company has made "real progress" in fixing its sexism issues

[XxEvil AshxX]

Well SOMEBODY has to keep those minorities in line.

[fuckle85]

On 8/9/2018 at 1:54 PM, Hurdyb1 said:

 

Holy shit that was disgusting to read. Riot needs some serious cleaning and help,

 

Reality show idea: Like Kitchen Nightmares meets Survivor.  Features Anita Sarkeesian visiting and renovating toxic game studios.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

2 hours ago, fuckle85 said:

 

Reality show idea: Like Kitchen Nightmares meets Survivor.  Features Anita Sarkeesian visiting and renovating toxic game studios.

 

Please no. I’d be rooting for the studio to eat her. 

 

How about somebody with some actual HR experience and acceptible interpersonal communication skills. 

[fuckle85]

13 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

 

Please no. I’d be rooting for the studio to eat her. 

 

How about somebody with some actual HR experience and acceptible interpersonal communication skills. 

Seems like you're kinda up in your feels about her.  Why, if you don't mind my asking?

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

7 minutes ago, fuckle85 said:

Seems like you're kinda up in your feels about her.  Why, if you don't mind my asking?

At least for what she got famous for, many of her arguments and examples were poorly researched and she came off as uneducated about the subject matter she was lecturing on. She’s not a gamer yet tried to pass her self off as an expert on games and the industry to gain notoriety and take money from people that either don’t know any better or don’t care.

 

While she takes a stance against sexism, bullying, threats, and violence all towards women, she cannot abide any person or group that is not women or her be victims of any of it either. 

 

At the end of the day what it comes down to is she wants to be the center of attention and regarded authority on stereotypes and civil behavior. Free of challenge or responsibility. I don’t think she’s even genuine. Because if suddenly the world became a utopia for women, where they were honored and respected both in media representations and in every facet of society she’d essentially be out of job and out of any spotlight. 

[darkness35]

7 hours ago, Spawn_of_Apathy said:

At least for what she got famous for, many of her arguments and examples were poorly researched and she came off as uneducated about the subject matter she was lecturing on. She’s not a gamer yet tried to pass her self off as an expert on games and the industry to gain notoriety and take money from people that either don’t know any better or don’t care.

 

While she takes a stance against sexism, bullying, threats, and violence all towards women, she cannot abide any person or group that is not women or her be victims of any of it either. 

 

At the end of the day what it comes down to is she wants to be the center of attention and regarded authority on stereotypes and civil behavior. Free of challenge or responsibility. I don’t think she’s even genuine. Because if suddenly the world became a utopia for women, where they were honored and respected both in media representations and in every facet of society she’d essentially be out of job and out of any spotlight. 

This .

 

She got famous for fucking cherry-picking her arguments for the sake of arguments.  Legit fucking cancerous and leaves a bad name to actual feminists (or the ideology of) .

[Keyser_Soze]

They made an ugly logo that everyone hates

 

 

[Paperclyp]

I remember watching her videos at the time and they were pretty straightforward, just pointing out obvious sexism in games, and the reaction to them essentially proved her point a lot of the time. 

 

I don’t know much else about her. 

[skillzdadirecta]

5 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I remember watching her videos at the time and they were pretty straightforward, just pointing out obvious sexism in games, and the reaction to them essentially proved her point a lot of the time. 

 

I don’t know much else about her. 

 

If you kill the messenger then you kill the message. 

[Paperclyp]

9 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 

If you kill the messenger then you kill the message. 

I remember a common rebuttal to her videos was that she didn’t even play games for real lol. 

[skillzdadirecta]

Just now, Paperclyp said:

I remember a common rebuttal to her videos was that she didn’t even play games for real lol. 

 

That's been said in this very thread.

[Bacon]

8 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

I remember a common rebuttal to her videos was that she didn’t even play games for real lol. 

I don't know if she plays games or not. However, man or woman, if you don't play video games I literally don't care about any opinion you have on them. I don't want someone who doesn't play video games to tell me how video games should be and I don't want devs listening to these people. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I don't know if she plays games or not. However, man or woman, if you don't play video games I literally don't care about any opinion you have on them. I don't want someone who doesn't play video games to tell me how video games should be and I don't want devs listening to these people. 

Does that prescription extend to other activities, such as politics?  Should an individual be engaged in "political activity" in order to critique some aspect of it?

 

In regard to video games, there is already one group who doesn't play video games and exerts a significant influence on their development: shareholders.  You already lost that battle a loooooooong time ago.

[Paperclyp]

7 minutes ago, Bacon said:

I don't know if she plays games or not. However, man or woman, if you don't play video games I literally don't care about any opinion you have on them. I don't want someone who doesn't play video games to tell me how video games should be and I don't want devs listening to these people. 

That’s not an uncommon view but it’s certainly feeding in to the idea she attempts to expose - that games (certainly back then) were a boys club with a lot of sexist tendencies.

[skillzdadirecta]

4 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Does that prescription extend to other activities, such as politics?  Should an individual be engaged in "political activity" in order to critique some aspect of it?

 I can't think of ONE sport that doesn't have a bunch of dudes that have built careers off of commentating on the very sport that they themselves have NEVER played. Basketball. Football, Baseball and Boxing are the ones that come to mind the most.

[Paperclyp]

3 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

 I can't think of ONE sport that doesn't have a bunch of dudes that have built careers off of commentating on the very sport that they themselves have NEVER played. Basketball. Football, Baseball and Boxing are the ones that come to mind the most.

Or the inverse where athletes should shut up and dribble.

 

Also god if only players commented on sports or voted for season awards it would be a joke. The NBA does players only broadcasts and it’s unbearable. 

[Bacon]

11 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

Does that prescription extend to other activities, such as politics?

It depends. Politics isn't really a hobby like gaming, and politics affect basically everyone in some way. But, yeah, it kinda does. Like, do you really want someone like me to tell you about politics? 

[mozart_beercan69]

1 hour ago, Bacon said:

It depends. Politics isn't really a hobby like gaming, and politics affect basically everyone in some way. But, yeah, it kinda does. Like, do you really want someone like me to tell you about politics? 

 

Forgive me if this sounds facetious, but yes.  How can anyone take someone's opinion on anything seriously unless they play, and more importantly, are very skilled at video games?

[Bacon]

1 minute ago, mozart_beercan69 said:

Forgive me if this sounds facetious, but yes.  How can anyone take someone's opinion on anything seriously unless they play, and more importantly, are very skilled at video games?

True. Like, if you haven't even beat dark souls then I don't think you should be able to vote. 

[darkness35]

16 hours ago, SFLUFAN said:

Does that prescription extend to other activities, such as politics?  Should an individual be engaged in "political activity" in order to critique some aspect of it? 

 

In regard to video games, there is already one group who doesn't play video games and exerts a significant influence on their development: shareholders.  You already lost that battle a loooooooong time ago. 

The argument isn't whether or not if someone should speak because they're not affiliated with the specific hobby.  The issue is more about spewing straw man arguments that cause more logical fallacies and ignorance to the problem. I don't have an issue with issue about female representation or the portrayal of them, but I have a significant issue when someone cherry picks arguments for the sake of causing issues.  If the issue is about the playerbase being predominately male, then I would offer the rebuttal that the very same female base assumed video gaming was only for males, and enforced that stereotype that females couldn't partake in that activity.  Or, her arguments that females are heavily sexualized in video games, and those depictions are sexist?  What if her argument implied that she was slut shaming females who feel empowered in showing off their allure, especially in the modeling/adult entertainment industry?

 

She claims that she is advocating for better female representation, when clearly she is further widening the gender gap between males and females in gaming.  She isn't a feminist at all if she wants to project her own views on how females should be depicted.  My reasons alone are why I don't take her seriously at all.

[Paperclyp]

6 hours ago, darkness35 said:

If the issue is about the playerbase being predominately male, then I would offer the rebuttal that the very same female base assumed video gaming was only for males, and enforced that stereotype that females couldn't partake in that activity. 

You don’t see issues with this line of thinking? There are concrete reasons why games (especially 10 years ago or so) did not appeal to women or actively looked to keep women out. It’s not the fault of women. And in retrospect obviously a lot of women WANTED to engage with the hobby but were actively pushed away by the way things were. 

 

Bringing these issues to light was good. Look how many games exist that don’t cater solely to young males as opposed to a decade ago. It’s made the whole industry better. 

6 hours ago, darkness35 said:

Or, her arguments that females are heavily sexualized in video games, and those depictions are sexist?  What if her argument implied that she was slut shaming females who feel empowered in showing off their allure, especially in the modeling/adult entertainment industry?

Without context, we’re just pissing in the wind. WHICH characters are you talking about that she criticized? Who designed that character? Who was that character marketed to? How was that character developed in the game? 

 

This is what happens in most discussions about her. 

 

If she is arguing from such a poor starting premise and her arguments are so weak, it should be simple to provide a rebuttal. But you can’t just do it with vague and sweeping statements like you just made. 

[skillzdadirecta]

3 minutes ago, Paperclyp said:

 

If she is arguing from such a poor starting premise and her arguments are so weak, it should be simple to provide a rebuttal. But you can’t just do it with vague and sweeping statements like you just made. 

 

A.K.A. "A strawman argument."

[Paperclyp]

7 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

 

Anyone who argues based off an absolutist premise that doesn't accurately reflect reality isn't someone we should be looking for to provide constructive criticism.

 

 

 

I’d be willing to listen to the full context of those comments, but here are my thoughts: 

 

Nobody is saying you have to look for her to criticism. I’m just saying the criticisms she does have in games are accurate in a lot of the videos I’ve seen. You can discount her completely based on her overall viewpoint (which may not be accurately portrayed in that 10 second clip), but it doesn’t make her wrong about everything. 

 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

7 hours ago, darkness35 said:

 Or, her arguments that females are heavily sexualized in video games, and those depictions are sexist?  What if her argument implied that she was slut shaming females who feel empowered in showing off their allure, especially in the modeling/adult entertainment industry?

If those heavily sexualized depictions of women were actually being created by women, then the issue of sexism (at least on the part of the creator) is somewhat mitigated though the sexism of the intended heavily male audience remains in play. However, because those depictions are pretty much exclusively created by men, then they are far more likely to be sexist, whether intentionally or otherwise.  As for the second sentence, I have absolutely zero idea how that is in the lest bit relevant when the discussion is largely centered on male creators and a male audience.

[Paperclyp]

8 minutes ago, Man of Culture said:

 

Jordan Peterson isn't wrong about everything. Neither is Ben Shapiro, President Trump or even the Christ Church shooter. But we revile these people for very good reasons, mostly because despite the fact that they occassionally say something intelligent and worth listening to, we know that their beliefs tend to be couched in flawed, faulty ideologies that are both intellectually harmful and lead to real world consequences. So why are we giving a pass to someone who is equally reviled because she says some things you might agree with?

 

Nothing she has said about games media is ground breaking, controversial or in conflict with information that had already existed in any way worth celebrating or debating. All of her videos are based on topics that had been done to death in academia and backed by things written were already aware of, cultivation theory, for example.

 

Because of the slow, plodding nature of her videos --she spends whole minutes just describing phenomena we already know about-- she is unable to spend an adequate amount of time provide solutions and ends up doing nothing but problematizing. This leads to her videos being boorish and annoying to say the least, especially her earlier work which is couched with errors. If you want to get really picky, the grand majority of her content caters to "white feminism", failing to cater to the pet issues of intersectional feminists and disabled people. She also uses rather "problematic" words and phrases such as "prostitute women" which can be construed as her being sex negative, viewing sex work as an inherently victimizing culture, taking away pride and dignity from sex positive feminist and sex workers who are pro "sex for cash" and for the destigmatization of prostitution. Now I don't think Sarkeesian is like that, but if you actually follow the various sects of feminism and how they think, you can easily pick apart Sarkeesian's work as being problematic from a variety of perspectives.

 

But you don't even need to look at her work through various social justice lenses to find problems with her work or herself as a person. It all starts with one very simple concept. She begins with a conclusion and finds the evidence to develop an argument supporting that conclusion instead of examining evidence to build a case or to discuss trends and how they might have real world ramifications. This might be fine in a highschool debate classroom, but when you're a self-proclaimed expert on things like video games and harassment, you're going to be taken to task when people find out that you're going about things in an entirely wrong way.

 

We just gloss over this because she was able to successfully navigate through the turmoil of gamergate and come out on top because trolls and retards were more than willing to be participants in harassment campaigns against her.

There’s a lot to unpack here and I’ll try to get back to it. 

[Paperclyp]

3 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

 

Jordan Peterson isn't wrong about everything. Neither is Ben Shapiro, President Trump or even the Christ Church shooter. But we revile these people for very good reasons, mostly because despite the fact that they occassionally say something intelligent and worth listening to, we know that their beliefs tend to be couched in flawed, faulty ideologies that are both intellectually harmful and lead to real world consequences. So why are we giving a pass to someone who is equally reviled because she says some things you might agree with?

I don't want to repeat myself too much, but again, I'm not giving her a pass. I'm not convinced that her ideology is as flawed as you think it is, though. And if say Shapiro came out with a series of videos that critiqued some aspect of video games, even if it's coming from a bad or faulty place, I don't think its always necessary to throw it out as completely un-useful (not a word?) criticism. And this does get complicated because maybe Ben comes out with a misleading series of videos that makes it seem like, hey, every game is liberal. See here are 10 examples of liberal games. He doesn't explicitly say this, but the implication is there, and the trolls and / or people who don't think critically run with it and it spreads, and I think that's kind of where you're going with the real world consequences thing. With Sarkeesian's work though, I think it's hard to say that's what's going on. 

 

I think what you see is 90 percent "this bitch doesn't even play games," or (frankly) absurd arguments like darkness made up there, that maybe it's the WOMEN who are sexist because they think video games are for men only. 

 

3 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

Nothing she has said about games media is ground breaking, controversial or in conflict with information that had already existed in any way worth celebrating or debating. All of her videos are based on topics that had been done to death in academia and backed by things written were already aware of, cultivation theory, for example.

Sure, but especially back then it's not like the general game player was thinking about that shit at all. I don't think she was claiming to be pointing out any groundbreaking stuff, and again, the disproportionate reaction is more telling. I mean, wouldn't you agree that the reaction to her videos was kind of insane? 

3 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

Because of the slow, plodding nature of her videos --she spends whole minutes just describing phenomena we already know about-- she is unable to spend an adequate amount of time provide solutions and ends up doing nothing but problematizing. This leads to her videos being boorish and annoying to say the least, especially her earlier work which is couched with errors. If you want to get really picky, the grand majority of her content caters to "white feminism", failing to cater to the pet issues of intersectional feminists and disabled people. She also uses rather "problematic" words and phrases such as "prostitute women" which can be construed as her being sex negative, viewing sex work as an inherently victimizing culture, taking away pride and dignity from sex positive feminist and sex workers who are pro "sex for cash" and for the destigmatization of prostitution. Now I don't think Sarkeesian is like that, but if you actually follow the various sects of feminism and how they think, you can easily pick apart Sarkeesian's work as being problematic from a variety of perspectives.

I appreciate the detail here, and you clearly have put a lot of time and consideration into this. But again, like at the time I personally wasn't thinking a whole lot about sexism in games. Perhaps you were, and that's admirable, but her just putting these issues out there was informative to me, and opened my eyes to a perspective I had not considered. I don't actually remember what my initially reaction to them was at the time, but I remember I found the videos tedious and annoying as well. But often times the solutions aren't rocket science. For example I remember a video where she talks about how a lot of female characters are copies of male characters with like a bow on their head. That's an easy fix. Also I think people tend to overreact about what the presenter is implying in videos. Like the perception is a lot of times "YOU ARE BAD FOR LIKING THIS," when really I think the intent is, "Here is a thing I think is a problem. It's not the end of the world, but I think it could be better." 

 

4 hours ago, Man of Culture said:

It all starts with one very simple concept. She begins with a conclusion and finds the evidence to develop an argument supporting that conclusion instead of examining evidence to build a case or to discuss trends and how they might have real world ramifications. 

But do you really think that's what she did? Or that the conclusion is wrong? Wouldn't you agree that there are a lot of problematic tropes about women in video games? Like nearly every single AAA game on the shelf? I certainly think so. 

 

It's not like she's a flat-earther. The evidence is abundant that her conclusion is correct. 

[SimpleG]

https://kotaku.com/riot-files-motions-to-block-former-employees-from-takin-1834335897

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

46 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

https://kotaku.com/riot-files-motions-to-block-former-employees-from-takin-1834335897

And that motion will be upheld in court.

[darkness35]

On 4/21/2019 at 7:07 PM, Paperclyp said:

 

 

I think what you see is 90 percent "this bitch doesn't even play games," or (frankly) absurd arguments like darkness made up there, that maybe it's the WOMEN who are sexist because they think video games are for men only. 

 

That's a little unfair if you assumed my argument was calling women sexist for saying video games are for men.  I'm also surprised you never heard about narratives where women enforced the gender role stereotype towards their own gender with video gaming.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Riot employees are supposedly planning walkout over management's legal findings to block lawsuits.

[Paperclyp]

15 hours ago, darkness35 said:

That's a little unfair if you assumed my argument was calling women sexist for saying video games are for men.  I'm also surprised you never heard about narratives where women enforced the gender role stereotype towards their own gender with video gaming.

Oh I’ve heard it. And I responded to you to back your points up and you never replied. 

[darkness35]

On 4/29/2019 at 8:31 PM, Paperclyp said:

Oh I’ve heard it. And I responded to you to back your points up and you never replied. 

I just delegated it to @Man of Culturesince he's able to explain it better. 

[Keyser_Soze]

So there's a walkout today

 

 

[Emblazon]

Not sexist (though I'm certain that occurred), but the fucking stories I have...

[skillzdadirecta]

5 hours ago, Emblazon said:

Not sexist (though I'm certain that occurred), but the fucking stories I have...

 

You worked there? Sounds similar to my experiences there... nothing sexist but talk about CRUNCH.