I think gamers as a whole, though specifically those in niche communities, need to take a long and hard look at themselves. We should celebrate the volunteers that create wonderful content for us, generally with no financial gain. Instead, commonly, there are communities that criticize and tear down every little thing they can think of. They even went as far as to doxx the poor woman. We need to be better, and we need to hold these kind of toxic trolls accountable. Especially those of us who are men, we have a responsibility to call out other men who mistreat women in the gaming industry, or gaming in general.
*Edit: I apologize if I insinuated that all gamers are guilty of this kind of behavior, that was not my intention at all. My sentiment is that many of us do not think about this kind of thing, and less are willing to speak out against their friends. We need to be better about that as a whole. I appreciate you as a person if you are already of this mindset.
Good for her for making the right decision for her own wellbeing. Too many sad little fucks on the Internet who spend all their time harassing others. Pathetic existence.
“gamers as a whole”
leave me out of this i didnt do anything.
I’m not a gamer. I play games, but I’m not a Gamerᵀᴹ. I noped out of the “community” a long time ago.
I’m a little curious where she’s getting the harassment from. If it’s from twitter, I don’t know what to tell her. It’s designed to amplify hate and anxiety. If it’s from lan parties or irl shit, yeah, I haven’t experienced it, but I have seen that to a degree.
edit: Wait. Is the “harassment” coming from needy fans asking her to tweak her work for their liking? That’s a little different from what I assumed this was about. I’m not going to side with the community nagging her for tweaks, but if she’s creating this for herself, she needs to disengage from those types. If she’s creating these mods, putting them out online and expecting only positive comments, I don’t know what to tell her. This is something all big modders and have to deal with.
The article glosses over the sexual harassment until the end. She says that pictures of her were distributed on discord and mentions the daily harassment and sexualization from the community.
Yeah and someone else in this threat brought up that there’s another side to the discord drama. Frankly, this case is too messy to untangle. I can’t tell if she’s being completely honest or if all this could have been prevented of she set better boundaries. Regardless, I don’t think it speaks to the greater issues in “gaming culture”.
I’ve been a great fan of gaming for my entire long life. But I don’t play online games any more, because so many gamers are toxic. Obviously there are good individuals and some good outposts, but taken as a whole it is a toxic community.
The sentiment is that we all have a responsibility to hold our community accountable for this type of behavior.
Lol you’re getting downvoted for having a rational viewpoint and wanting something you care about and enjoy to be safe for other humans to enjoy it too.
How fucking dare you
Lolol. Win some, lose some, it doesn’t really matter. I made my point and am satisfied with that; it’s anyone’s right to disagree with me.
And if I am in the wrong for wanting a better community, then the state of humanity just makes me a little more sad. Far from surprised, however.
“Your opinion means nothing to me, I’ve seen what makes you cheer!”
“Our community” feels a bit monolithic. It’s like saying “film watchers” or “readers”. Lumping anyone that plays video games regularly into a single social group feels unhelpfully reductive.
The problem is as prevalent and pervasive as the gaming community as a whole, which is most definitely monolithic.
we all have a responsibility to hold our community accountable for this type of behavior.
Much like the “teach men not to rape” sentiment, the ones that will listen weren’t the problem in the first place. If the people that need to be called out were reasonable, they wouldn’t need to be called out, they don’t see what they’re doing as wrong. So we’re just screaming into the void.
So, I’m not trying to be severe here, but your argument implies you would watch someone be raped without intervening. Your argument falls apart for me with that context. Someone has to yell into the void, it’s something more than letting the problem fester unabated.
The ones who will listen need to learn to speak. Otherwise, why are listeners paying attention at all?
My argument doesn’t imply that at all. My argument is that you can’t reason with the unreasonable. You absolutely should say or do something about these people in the moment, but its extremely rare for them to realize they were in the wrong.
Telling someone on a forum that the way they’re treating a creator is wrong is not at all comparable to catching someone during a rape, and implying that because I think trying to reason with an internet troll is useless means I’d just let a rape happen is disingenuous.
i don’t disagree, call out the retards for being retards, but please word it better.
Not even being sarcastic; I am completely open to suggestions and constructive criticism.
That’s a pretty harmful word though, my guy, kind of antiquated. There are better insults, like “cock-brained” or “silly stupid little groundfuckers”, to name a few suggestions.
“word your comments better”
– the guy using slurs
i didnt do anything.
Exactly. Hence why the assholes get away with driving good people out. Maybe if people stood up and told the trolls to STFU and instead defended these people they wouldn’t be forced out of the community.
Blame me for something someone else did why dont you.
blame me for not forming a lynch mob why dont you.
blame me for not knowing this ws even happening.
people wonder why other people check out from communities and just go “oh” when they hear this shit is happening.
again.
leave me out of this ,i didnt do anything.
Fuck you for bringing sex into this. Fans should not harass volunteers as basic courtesy, the end. Most importantly because the modder wasn’t harassed for being a female but because her work, but you can’t get clicks unless you mobilise the culture war fanatics. American culture wars are pervasive and cancerous and we should strive not to emulate what goes on in that late stage capitalism hellhole.
Considering the woman being harassed explicitly stated that the harassment she received was mainly misogynistic in nature, no. It very much is relevant to the situation.
No shit sherlock, as opposed to what? Polite gender neutral harassment that is the norm? Do you think the damzel in distress trope does anything for the mod author? Do you think the idiots that harassed her would not harass an author of different sex or gender?
Don’t you have some female modders to harass?
I’m an equal opportunity hater, I don’t discriminate. Of course, I’m not American so I understand that non discrimination is a hard to grasp concept overseas.
Discrimination is just American?
You are the champions of the western world
quick question what languages do america, mexico, brazil and haiti speak?
This is a weird and popular trope with various European countries that hold themselves above others. Somehow things like racism and bigotry are purely an American phenomenon, usually said alongside spewing some sort of bigoted vitriol like this guy.
while i understand the sentiment, I don’t think anyone gets the nickname “slutty sex kitten” in a non gendered reason.
Thing is, her identifying as a woman has 0 to do with the harassment. I get that clicks get food on the table, but it’s always the same BS disingenuous framing.
i mean i suppose it’s still gendered but i can assure you there are tons of gay male couples doing that
Well that felt unkind. The distinction between male and female is being made because the modder states men are sexually harassing her. There are other forms of harrassment listed, but it seems reasonable to make a distinction since there is a sexual nature to part of it.
Quite literally in the article, the first reddit link points to a female user disliking what the mod author did with Daegon. Again, bringing sex into this does nothing but generate clicks. There is an online community that always goes too far in the harassment of PEOPLE, as experienced by modders, devs, et al from all the ticks in the spectrum of sexuality since the dawn of social media. That’s it.
This broad dynamic isn’t new and it isn’t unique either to gaming or to men. Every single creative volunteer community on the net is filled with assholes and drama llamas, of any and all genders. It’s just the nature of the thing. You see the same things over and over with game modding, cracking, romhacking, emulation, manga scanlation, anime fansubbing, vocaloid production, mmd modeling, fanfic, fanart, and so on and on.
People often (generally?) are willing to invest the time and energy into whatever it is that they’re going to post online at least in large part because they crave the attention they hope it will bring, and specifically, they want to be lauded for their talent and skill.
And that often runs up against the fact that an awful lot of the responses they’re going to get are going to come from self-absorbed and entitled assholes bitching because they don’t like whatever it is that they’re getting for free, and think they have to be accommodated.
And very often, the response from the creator, unsurprisingly really, is to effectively (or even literally) say, “Fine then - fuck you all. I’m done.”
And 'round and 'round it goes, and has from the start, and likely will never stop. It’s just an unfortunate but pretty much inevitable clash between a personality type that’s likely to create and share something online for free and a personality type that’s likely to comment on something somebody else created and shared with them for free.
I don’t disagree with you but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story. The gaming community has a pervasive sexism problem that’s normalized, and that part is unique in that it all comes from men.
I have only ever played three games online. The first was Final Fantasy XI, and I was part of a group/guild with nice people. It was fun!
The next was Team Fortress 2 because my husband wanted me to play with him. The vitriol and misogyny hurled at me over voice chat after two matches made me never play again.
The last was Destiny, and I turned off voice chat completely.
but I feel that it is important to recognize and call out the misogyny element in this story
I don’t.
I think that countering misogyny with misandry is rather obviously a losing strategy.
How was it countered with misandry?
I don’t want to hammer on this really, because I think you mean well, but…
You’re not condemning the specific assholes who treated you poorly - you’re condemning “men” generally. Your point and your focus isn’t that they were assholes, but that they were men, as if that’s the actual problem - as if their failure isn’t being assholes, but simply being men.
I don’t know if that’s your actual view, but that is the way it comes across. And broadly, that view is part of the problem, since it alienates men who deserve no blame and diverts attention from those who do. And that’s exactly what I meant when I said that countering misogyny with misandry is a poor strategy.
Thousands of hours, months of hard work. For about 300 bucks and a bunch of incels doxxing and harassing her.
I cannot fathom why she left.
People are asses sometimes, but whenever these conversations come up, I wonder: What do you even want from us? How are random people on the internet supposed to hold random anonymous trolls on the internet “accountable?” You can call them asses, but so? What if they don’t care? They’re anonymous. You could get mods to ban them, but if it’s a free service they can always make another anonymous account. It’s even more confusing in the context of something like an online game as opposed to a forum. What are you supposed to do about someone being an ass when you’ve probably never seen them before and probably won’t see them again?
People are not assholes just because they’re anonymous. They’re assholes because they’re sociopaths. The Internet still is the refuge for isolation and escapism. I don’t think that will change, but maybe those people will be happier in the future.
Some people probably know them in real life. Like, you might have a friend who’s like “Yeah this [slur] wouldn’t update her mod so i posted [hateful thing] on her insta”. You could talk to them. People listen to their in-group more than randoms online.
But then again, the worst sort of people probably mostly have the worst sort of friends, and reinforce their bad behavior.
I mean, call them asses. Maybe they don’t care, maybe they do, but we keep the problem relevant by being vocal against this kind of thing. To not do anything at all is to encourage trolls.
The prevailing wisdom for dealing with trolls in the past has been report, block, and move on. You never know if someone is going to thrive on that kind of conflict and a whole lot of motherfuckers love it.
I’m not saying it’s right or wrong because honestly I don’t know. I’m just sad they’re running off people contributing to their community and mad that they’re sexually harassing people.
The phrase is “don’t feed the trolls”, not the contrary.
now before anyone gets misled by some of the reddit threads gamesradar linked to, some quotes from the relevant reddit thread:
I worked extensively on most of her mods. In the period immediately following the Daegon 2.0 controversy, I tracked down several recurring trolls (people here might remember them as cycling through Reddit usernames like “SeranasStankPussy” and other such things) as originating from literal Kiwifarms.
She made a female follower mod called Daegon. It was a suggestive follower with sexy voice and looks, and “bratty princess” personality.
There was an idea about developing romance option for the follower. The fans were so excited about it. However she ended up adding a bodyguard character as Daegon’s romantic partner instead of opening the options to player. Daegon also had a major backstory rewrite, which was deemed as straying too far from TES lore. Fans felt betrayed. The backlash was so fervently hostile that anything the author posted always received downvotes and she was demeaned/harassed for posting anything (something like “you dare to show your face here?”), even when it’s not related to Daegon.
At the time, she removed the old version and people leaked her discord server chat, which was very hostile and demeaning to the people complaining.
Basically: the mod author developed and people on her discord developed a para-social relationship and it went as expected. You can search this sub for that whole thing
There’s more details on her discord (as usual):
my photos get passed around on skyrim servers, im called a slut and whore, and for what?
gamesradar linked to a few of the threads that got overwhelmed with trolls, who amplified how she blocked users (some of which inappropriately) from her mod pages and claimed she encouraged her fans to doxx people based on a single out-of-context screenshot of a random discord fan.
Christ, humanity at its best.
Sounds like the exact kind of entitled, whiny man babies i was expecting.
This is a both sides suck here for me.
I read a few of the reddit threads and there were legitimate criticisms that the follower started out cringey and edgy but a lore-friendly bratty elf and then after some big update the follower was turned into an over-the-top melodramatic edgy super evil non-lore-friendly entity (vampire demon dragon princess from another reality that is more powerful than any of the gods of TES) who now had a boyfriend equally evil with many voice lines about how much the two of them were horny for each other, and like to burn down inns full of people for fun.
There were some cringey guys upset they were being cucked, too many gamers in general are obsessed about the possibility of being cucked by some pixels and are ridiculously fragile about it.
But the mod author lashed out at both the trolls and people caught in the crossfire, the community became more upset, just an angry cycle. People asked about being able to download the old version before the changes since the mod author hid the older version - Nexus doesn’t allow mod authors to delete their work anymore so people’s mod lists don’t break but they for some stupid reason allow mod authors to hide older versions from users which can only be accessed by having the right link and it is a pain to get. Eventually the mod author releases the older version again as its own mod. But at this point the community hates them because of an image showing someome on the mod author’s discord talking about doxxing anyone who upset the mod author which the author offered gleeful support of.
There was a guy in the thread (ZootAllures9111) who said he helped develop and code the mod (you quoted him in your comment) and he said that practically all criticisms were trolls from kiwifarms, and that the person who wanted to doxx others on the discord was just being silly and edgy and only disingenuous people would take their silly edginess at face value. Also that they won’t play “this game with you” when asked how the mod author responded to this person wanting to doxx people because (CW:transphobia) the only image you need to look at is some random troll on a website called kiwifarms complaining about being a third wheel to two horny NPCs in the mod and something about being a cuck and that other followers don’t need sex to sell basically. Then when someone in the reddit thread asks why they keep posting and deleting their same comment with someone else chiming in confirming they also noticed this, the guy offers a reasonable explanation about network issues and then says, “I remember you from the comment sections of our mods now by the way, you are exactly as disingenous as I thought yesterday and you’re not gonna get anywhere pretending otherwise.” Which the innocent guy replies, “You should maybe take a break because you’re getting paranoid now. I’ve never used your mod, have no intention to, and the first time I’ve heard of all this drama was when this thread came up.”
Why mention this? Because I think it is shitty to “joke” about doxxing people and defend this “joking” and call everyone speaking out a troll from kiwifarm and I can see why the community doesn’t like the direction the author took and how annoying it is to not be able to go back to an older version of the mod. And I’ve read the threads, they were not overwhelmed with trolls unless you think people who criticize a mod author are always trolls. But I also think it is shitty and unacceptable how much harassment the author got. They are not the first author to get harassed off of Skyrim modding, even Vilja’s author was chased off for IMO stupid reasons. The Skyrim modding community is full of assholes, both mod authors and users alike. It used to be routine how many mod authors would lose their shit and delete their mods.
i get that there’s valid criticism, but the amount of bad was incongruent with the amount of vitriol in that era that were so demanding
the mod author lashed out at both the trolls and people caught in the crossfire
where tho
it is shitty to “joke” about doxxing people
definitely, but none of us have seen the context. i’ve been having trouble finding the discord server, and it’d be great if you could find it and the context
they were not overwhelmed with trolls
that’s how they read, especially when you compare their comments to the reddit post i linked. not even the sympathy for a person who leaves explains the difference to me
I typed a long ass comment on my phone and summit crashed not saving any of it, fucking hell. Anyway I have to refind all the comments again.
Here is where:
u/WoodenRocketShip
People absolutely dragged the mod and the mod author when the update with her boyfriend came out. Normally if people got that mad over something that happens in a mod you’d get pushback from others saying that it’s just not for you and it’s not your place to judge, but the mod author was also silencing critics and absolutely going off with her army of followers, so yeah no pushback everyone was on the same page. For a couple of weeks she and her mod were the big bads of this subreddit.
u/Live_Hippo_5885
That’s a bit wild silencing your critics changing her race and backstory is a bit drastic but it’s their mod I suppose, I don’t really care that she has a boyfriend I like having a bro to adventure with dude’s just kind of a dick imo.
u/WoodenRocketShip
Yeah see if it was just that, then I’d just chalk it up as a mod that I’m uninstalling and never thinking about it again as I barely liked Daegon before. If the mod author didn’t go around silencing criticism in the mod’s comments, some of which wasn’t even criticism and was from genuine fans curious about certain things, then I don’t think many people would have said anything.
People on this thread claimed they were banned for not liking the mod, asking questions about the mod, etc. before the comments section was removed altogether.
The context of the discord image joking about doxxing given by the Zoot guy defending the mod author is that it was a random discord user who they did not know who was known for being overdramatic and later on they think someone else told the user to cool it. Doxxing is serious to me so I do not think this context absolves the image, it feels worse since the mod author doesn’t even know the person and just gleefully agrees with them to the point another rando has to tell them to stop. I think the mod author is immature and the random user probably a teenager. It’s the only thing that makes sense why they would joke like that. I’m not digging for the discord, I’ve not only already wasted enough time with this comment since summit crashed on me but also find it a waste of time.
The thread talking about the mod author leaving was very sympathetic. My original comment had the top 9 or 10 comments and a few replies from the thread to prove to you that it was not overwhelmed by trolls. But there is no way I’m doing that again. Just read it yourself. If you still think they are not sympathetic enough then something is seriously wrong with your interpretation.
I actually read the part about banning too many people, though I wouldn’t characterize it as “lashing out”. I’m pretty sure I included a quote about it but I didn’t. Weird.
I wasn’t saying they weren’t sympathetic enough, I’m saying that the amount of criticizing here is way too little compared to the two threads linked in the article to shrug off as caused by sympathy.
I think it is lashing out to ban people for no reason. They were so upset by the trolls that people with legitimate criticisms were banned (which Zoot says they never had an issue with, it was only trolls they did not like) and then people just curious about the mod and asking questions were also banned.
Sorry, I seem to be misunderstanding you because I do not know what you quite mean anymore. You said “that’s how they read, especially when you compare their comments to the reddit post i linked. not even the sympathy for a person who leaves explains the difference to me” which I thought meant there was an overwhelming amount of people who were trolls for not having sympathy for the mod author leaving. Now you are saying that people were criticizing too much in the other threads, and I’m not sure what is being shrugged off as sympathy.
Man, gaming communities are so fucking toxic.
I put wheels on my car which are a cheap copy of a very popular wheel because they were $500 not $2000 and I dont race. Every car meet someone has to comment that Im running “fakes” and try to give me a hard time about it. Yeah, Ive got a mortgage and a kid. Fuck off with your Supreme snapback ass hypebeast bullshit. I’m building the car I can afford.
People are toxic, even communities who preach peace and love as their doctrine have people who will whip out the moral-cock ruler and start shit over who is more peaceful and loving.
I agree. [email protected] is a pleasant exception.
I didn’t know they’re here. I only go to reddit for the coordinates exchange sub. Thanks!
Now I want to start playing NMS, I’ve had it in my backlog for a while
Gam*rs need reeducation.
Is gamer a swear word now too?
Always has been 😎
Oh
the boob jiggle physics are genuinely ridiculous on this mod, i just watched the preview. gamers are brain broken
Incels/“gamers” harassing a woman - shocker.
This isn’t even about gaming, necessarily.
Girls who code are rare. There are probably more AFAB coders at my work than those who identify as female. And a hell of a lot more men.
And I’m in a progressive city in a progressive state.
I’m certain it’s culture, and it doesn’t just go for programming, it goes for almost all of STEM. There was a recent “Stuff You Should Know” episode about toy chemistry sets, and they made it a point to talk about the marketing, and how it always was with boys, for boys. My son, 8 year old kid, says “that’s just wrong! Girls can do all that stuff!”. He’s got it figured out.
As a welder, I’ve had a female coworker ONCE in 15 years working in the industry. My current work doesn’t even have a bathroom for women in the same building as most of the workers. If we did hire a female welder, she’d have to walk across the parking lot to the administration building to actually use a women’s bathroom.
There are probably more AFAB coders at my work than those who identify as female.
Did you get this backwards?
No…but I am being hyperbolic. I definitely interface with more transmasc and nonbinary coders than I do with cisgender female coders. This may also be because, again, cultural reasons.
There certainly are more cisgender female coders, but they are still a minority group by a big amount, and they tend to not draw much attention to themselves.
I was asking because the usual stereotype is than many younger programmers are transfemme.
Which does not reflect my experience in the working world at all.
Welcome to the world of making software for random people, almost certainly made worse by she being a woman.
As others pointed out, most people do appreciate it, but they tend to be silent about it, whilst a small minority are demanding little whinny bitches (in a non-gendered way) who think they’re owed service and some are even trolls.
To those reading this, I suggest when you get something you like for free you at least give some feedback that you liked it and, if the person has some kind of sponsoring scheme going on and you really like it, consider contributing, if only to incentivise more of the same.
Those on the other side are people too and they will appreciate it.
i’m sorry that you have to deal with the outfall of this, OP. gamers are notoriously the most overly sensitive group to generalize, even when they’re meant to think “i recognize that this is pointing out bad apples in my community”. instead, they immediately start defending themselves as if you specifically named them
the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”
the sane response is to go “wow that is awful. the gaming community does indeed contain some terrible people, i am glad to be one of the good ones and will distance myself from this behavior”
I’d say the saner response is none at all. This seems like a pretty niche community issue somewhere on the internet involving at most <100 people. I doubt anyone here is closer then 3 degrees of separation from anyone involved. Why would you expect any of the outsiders here to “take a stand,” based on incomplete information?
Yes, but how many of these niche communities are there? Hell, lemmy itself is a niche community and everybody here should take a stand against this sort of stuff occurring here.
On here I’d 100% agree, though if some member here got into some kind of discord drama that you weren’t apart of, why would you choose a side? You’ll have incomplete information, and no doubt one of them will claim they were harassed while leaving out some important details.
Reading the article, this is a typical case of burnout. It’s happening to every artist, content creator, modder, foss developer, etc. On the long term we all have to find a balance or we won’t last long. And tbh, just learn to ignore the trolls and focus on the positive things and your passion or they will win. You can’t take them seriously. It seems the person in the article has already found herself another passion project and could throw away the suffocating chains of responsibilty and something she did not enjoy anymore and move on. I think instances like these really show us we are all just humans and we should appreciate the things we are given.
